00:01It was a Saturday morning when we first saw the SUVs.
00:08You can see my customers are doing their laundry, routine day,
00:11and then this gentleman that saw ice coming through,
00:15he runs through the laundromat,
00:16and all my customers follow after him.
00:19I could just see their fear.
00:24Individuals were getting quite literally snatched
00:27off the streets very indiscriminately
00:29in our part of town.
00:30In November 2025,
00:32the Department of Homeland Security
00:34launched a major operation in North Carolina.
00:37Among the areas most affected
00:39was along Central Avenue in East Charlotte,
00:42home to a large immigrant community.
00:44There was just agents arresting people
00:46at supermarket parking lots.
00:48They're going to work.
00:49You cannot arrest workers
00:51and then claim to want economic development for the state.
00:54The operation started on a Saturday.
00:56On the following Monday,
00:57businesses were shutting down left and right.
00:59No more ice!
01:01No more ice!
01:01Congress has given ice a very specific authority,
01:04which is to remove individuals
01:06that don't have a legal right to be in this country.
01:09While the initial shock of the raids in Charlotte has subsided,
01:12they've had unexpected long-term effects
01:14and indicate how Donald Trump's immigration policy
01:17is impacting the American economy.
01:28It was mid-November when the operation happened.
01:31After that, it's kind of like,
01:33okay, everything is back to normal.
01:34Nothing is happening.
01:35The crisis is over.
01:36But actually, what we continue to see
01:38was more arrests in East Charlotte specifically.
01:44They target early morning work vans,
01:47vans that look like construction work.
01:49These are not people that are a threat.
01:51These are folks that are going to work.
01:53And now all of a sudden,
01:54these workers are not there anymore.
01:55It's just kind of really paralyzed the economy.
02:01My name is Greg Asciutto.
02:03I am the executive director
02:05of a community-based nonprofit called Charlotte East.
02:09People are struggling across the board right now.
02:12Business is down.
02:14So you have Beauty Salon,
02:16Seveway,
02:17a couple smaller, hyper-specific businesses
02:20like Yolanda's, her dress shop down there.
02:23She does quinceaneras,
02:25Lempira,
02:26a Honduran restaurant.
02:28Just a really great mix.
02:30A really, really strong community.
02:35How is business going today?
02:37Cosas son mejor que antes o peor?
02:41Cuando yo llegué,
02:43era muy, muy lleno.
02:45Digamos, viernes a esta hora
02:47estaba todo el restaurante lleno.
02:50Ya en este tiempo ya es un poco menos.
02:53Es más o menos.
02:54Pero sí, sí tenemos movimiento.
02:59Many businesses had to immediately adjust
03:01if they did not fully close,
03:03adjust their business practices.
03:05The grocers, I mean,
03:06they were definitely impacted too,
03:07but because the nature of their industry,
03:10they weren't impacted at the same level as Manolo's
03:13who does cakes for quinceaneras and special events.
03:18It was a completely different ballgame.
03:21The bakery was founded 28 years ago in that corner.
03:25Everything is made here by our hands.
03:32Cakes and desserts are made here.
03:34We have a little beef from every single country in Latin America.
03:40Last year, it was my first time ever
03:42that I finished in red numbers.
03:45This past November, it was a ghost town.
03:48All these businesses were empty, parking lot was empty.
03:51At that week, I lost $64,000.
03:56I lost in total like 12 employees.
04:00I used to sell bread to a local change.
04:03They were paying well for a very high quality bread.
04:06And because their sales are down,
04:09so they went down to buy cheap bread from a big factory.
04:12People are not having quinceaneras.
04:14People are not getting married.
04:16That's the $1,000 case.
04:18So those are big, big losses for us.
04:21In total nationwide,
04:23the Department of Homeland Security says
04:25more than half a million people
04:27have been arrested and deported
04:29during these operations.
04:32As an economist and business school professor,
04:35as I was watching,
04:36it struck me that behind the background
04:38of the people doing the chasing and being chased,
04:40there's businesses.
04:42How are they affected by this?
04:44And I found that the decline in spending
04:47was about $14 billion,
04:49which is a decline relative to the year before.
04:51And what surprised me about that
04:53is that these weren't temporary blips.
04:55It wasn't that the decline kind of happened quickly
04:58and then we went back to normal.
05:00The decline was permanent.
05:07On weekends, the parking lot would be full.
05:10I mean, it would be packed.
05:11And ever since those first several weeks,
05:15there was hardly any cars.
05:18As time has gone by,
05:22customers have just dwindled, really.
05:26My revenue has dropped at least 50%, 60%.
05:32I have a video of Vice picking up a customer of mine.
05:37That's about as much as I don't know what happened to him.
05:41And what I've experienced ever since then
05:44is that a lot of families have left.
05:47A lot of folks have left on their own.
05:50So if business is down 50%, 60%,
05:53what does that mean in terms of your outlook?
05:57Patience and lots of prayers.
06:00It's going to take a long time to recover
06:03from everything that's been happening, really.
06:07Analysis by Bloomberg Businessweek
06:09of data from Placer Labs Inc.,
06:12a company that uses location signals
06:14from mobile devices to calculate foot traffic,
06:16revealed a significant slowdown
06:18for 18 small businesses along Central Avenue.
06:22You might think that this effect is confined
06:24to those most likely to be targeted by ICE.
06:27Immigrants and Hispanics, right?
06:29They would be the ones who are afraid.
06:30They're the ones who aren't showing up to work.
06:32Not the case.
06:34Data from across the country
06:35indicates that even in areas
06:37that have a below average immigrant
06:38and Hispanic population,
06:40foot traffic and spending are down.
06:43People now have less income.
06:45They have less money to spend.
06:47And that can create a really bad negative cycle
06:49because if you have less money to spend,
06:51now businesses are receiving fewer patrons
06:54and fewer spending per patron,
06:56which means that businesses have to cut back,
06:58which means that they're not hiring,
07:00which means that they're paying less in local taxes.
07:02And you can really kick off a downward spiral
07:04if that's a permanent effect.
07:06The impacts in East Charlotte
07:08aren't confined to small businesses.
07:10Churches and local schools
07:12both reported declines in attendance
07:14during and after the raids.
07:17If you have hundreds of thousands of children
07:19not showing up to school
07:21or partially showing up to school,
07:23they're not able to build the human capital
07:26that they need in the long run
07:28to be productive citizens,
07:30productive workers, et cetera.
07:32That's very hard to quantify right now,
07:35but it's going to affect their ability to pay taxes,
07:38their ability to work as productively
07:39as perhaps they could.
07:41It's one thing to suffer a temporary drop
07:44in foot traffic or spending in a business.
07:46It's another thing when an important percentage
07:49of your workforce and your citizenry
07:51is not as educated or capable as they could be
07:53because you scared them to death
07:55from showing up to school.
08:09This map is a map of North Carolina,
08:12and what we do is we've uploaded data
08:15of confirmed detentions or confirmed sightings of eyes.
08:21North Sharon Amity is clear two miles each direction
08:24from Central, period, onto Albemarle, period.
08:29We're looking for tinted vehicles,
08:32people in plain clothes with their typical tactical vests.
08:38I'll look up and down the streets
08:40and look through parking lots of apartment complexes,
08:44construction sites, look out for those also.
08:46There's been threats of doxxing to our organization's volunteers,
08:52and just because of what the Trump administration is doing,
08:57I don't feel safe being known that I'm doing what I'm doing.
09:04It's calmer on the streets now,
09:06but there's still residual fear.
09:15We have a hotline, and in the last month,
09:19we have received 874 calls.
09:25People call us when their loved one gets detained.
09:27We provide navigation, support of that detention,
09:30legal referrals, there's a solidarity fund.
09:32If you think about it from like just an economic perspective in the state,
09:39these are folks that are contributing to the economy.
09:41People are left without the person that works in the household.
09:44Families can lose their homes.
09:46Okay, que tenga buen día.
09:48Sometimes they take one parent and not the other,
09:51even though they're in the same asylum case.
09:53They come to him and they arrest him.
09:56What my husband tells me is that he arrest him
09:58and he tells me,
09:58you're going to be detained.
10:00My husband is barbero.
10:01And here in this country,
10:03one day when you don't work,
10:05it's a lost day and a waste more.
10:08From the day one, I got to go alone.
10:10I can respond to the rent,
10:13I can respond to the bills,
10:15I can respond to the children's things,
10:18for everything.
10:21Police, open the door.
10:23We frame the entire issue of immigration as a safety issue,
10:27something that you need to be protected from.
10:29But if I could scream anything from the rooftops,
10:31it would be that we need to stop thinking about immigrants
10:34as just people who come here
10:36and they're a body who fills a job.
10:39Immigrants are also consumers.
10:41In the United States,
10:42it's estimated that immigrants have at least
10:44$1.3 trillion in discretionary income
10:48and spending power.
10:49That's money that they spend on your business,
10:52on the products and services that your business is offering,
10:55and they sustain your livelihood.
10:57If you look at our immigration system
10:59and our immigration laws,
11:01it is complete nonsense.
11:02For one, it hasn't been updated since 1990.
11:05And now, fertility rates are so low in the United States,
11:09we're well below replacement rate.
11:11So the number and types of visas that we give legally
11:15don't make sense for an economy that has grown almost 3x since 1990.
11:22We need more people for our growing economy.
11:24We need different kinds of people with skills
11:27that our legal system doesn't allow to enter.
11:31Now imagine that we put immigration under Department of Commerce.
11:34It's not just a different framing.
11:35It means that now you have government employees
11:38who are thinking every day about doing things with immigration
11:42that are creating economic prosperity.
11:45Well, you're not going to have ICE's role to come to a community
11:48and scare everyone to death.
11:50And in the process, severely and permanently harm local economies.
12:18That's what really pisses me off when they say that
12:21we are picking up the worst of the worst.
12:23That's the biggest lie ever, man.
12:26We are trained like criminals.
12:28We are not criminals.
12:49And they've called us elephants.
12:50And they're responsible for living all the time.
12:51We are mus Ingredients.
12:51They are humans.
12:51They'reеть to life and Sana.
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