January has typically been a slower month at Eddy’s Hair Salon on Maple Street in Manchester. Owner Eddy Ozoria opened the barbershop in the 90’s, but said business was unusually slow this past month – only a quarter of his usual customers came.
The steep drop in customers at Eddy’s barbershop is mirrored by other Latino-owned businesses in Manchester’s Center City. They say business has been down since President Donald Trump took office and immediately started ramping up immigration enforcement across the country, generating fear and uncertainty for many people.
“The truth is that I’m also going through it,” he said in Spanish. “Think about it: how are we going to pay our bills? And rent, which is expensive – nobody’s going to tell us to tough it out.”
Ozoria has noticed that the customers that do come in have longer hair as they hold off getting cuts. Immigration is all they talk about, he says, as news anchors discuss immigration enforcement on the barbershop’s flat screen TV.
“From the few people that do come, there’s people that tell us that nobody wants to come get a haircut,” he said. “They tell me that they’re scared to go out. Families are scared sometimes to take their kids to school or go buy stuff at the store.”
A few blocks away, paying bills is also on the mind of Ana Román, the owner of Ana Food Market. Business is slow for her, too. She makes Hispanic food staples, like empanadas and rice and beans.
Whatever doesn’t get sold is thrown away – and lately, she’s been throwing away a lot of food.
While Román does agree with deporting people who have criminal records, she says arresting people who are working and contributing to the economy is wrong.
“I agree that criminals should fall,” she said in Spanish. “But they’re grabbing workers, those of us that are working honestly, who want to get ahead and are helping us. So people are scared, they don’t want to go out.”
NBC reported that in late January that about half of the people arrested by ICE had no criminal record. While Trump has said his administration would prioritize deporting people with criminal records, his press secretary said recently that his administration would consider anyone in the country without legal status a “criminal."
But living in the United States without authorization is considered a civil violation, not a criminal one.
As both a cook and a parent, Román’s especially worried about kids going hungry because their parents are too afraid to go buy groceries. She says when people are this scared, anything related to law enforcement makes people stay home.
Two weeks ago, Roman said several Manchester police cruisers were parked in her lot for a few hours to respond to a non-immigration related call. People were scared to come in, even though the cruisers had nothing to do with her store.
“Nobody came that day,” she said.
She also said she heard about reports of ICE enforcement actions at a gas station a couple blocks away. NHPR tried to confirm that report. The result was a blurry video on Facebook recording what could have been an ICE action – or could have been some guys standing in an icy parking lot.
The chisme, or rumors, about ICE sightings in the neighborhood keep on multiplying. One person said ICE was near Central High School. Someone else said they were near Beech Elementary. Another person said they detained a dozen people at a bar.
It’s hard to verify the accuracy of the reports – or if they're even more frequent than usual. ICE has not responded to multiple requests for confirmation from NHPR.
Handling the rumor mill has become a second job for John Cardona.
He runs El Parcero, a Hispanic grocery store nearby. He’s been fielding a lot of calls from nervous customers who have been spending time on Facebook, where people share what they think might be an ICE sighting.
“We try to calm them down,” he said in Spanish. “We tell them to not let themselves be carried away by the comments, by what other people say, or by Facebook posts.”
He tells customers that things have been normal near him – just the same police cruisers on the same route.
“I tell them to come. I say nothing is happening, but even with that, people are really nervous,” he said.
For those who do come, he tries to get them in and out as quickly as possible, even getting details by phone ahead of time for those who want to send money back to their home countries.
As customers leave El Parcero, they have to carefully navigate over the icy sidewalks flanked by banks of dirty, frozen snow. If they look up, the house directly in front of the store features a six-foot yard sign.
It says, “TRUMP 2024. Make America Great Again.”
