Buford Highway, celebrated for its diversity, becomes site of ICE arrests

Trump campaigned in part on an immigration crackdown, and many of his supporters have cheered increased enforcement and other executive actions.

While past administrations have focused at times on Buford Highway, the harsher rhetoric from the White House and executive actions taken by Trump has some residents and workers expressing fear about the stepped-up enforcement.

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Pedro Cardenas and his wife Claudia, who have legal status, own three eateries along Buford Highway. Both natives of Venezuela, they have lived in Atlanta for years. Pedro Cardenas said he feels a lot of anxiety after the ICE arrests.

“Not for me, us,” he said in a conversation conducted in Spanish. “We have paperwork. I feel nervous, scared for my business.”

The mayors of Brookhaven and Chamblee have said their cities were not notified before the arrests and spent the days afterward trying to calm residents. In a Facebook post, Chamblee Mayor Brian Mock said his city “is one of the most diverse cities in the state, made up of good, hardworking people from all walks of life.”

Credit: Steve Schaefer

Credit: Steve Schaefer

“Our cultural differences is what makes our city so very special,” he said.

It’s unclear how many arrests were made throughout the state. Mario Guevara, a Spanish language journalist who reports under the brand MGNews, said he’d been contacted by relatives of people arrested by ICE in metro Atlanta. At least some were asylum-seekers whose claims for protection were in process with immigration officials.

Nationwide, 956 immigrants were arrested Jan. 26, the day of immigration enforcement actions in metro Atlanta and other cities, according to an ICE post on social media, and more than 2,300 arrests have been made since Trump’s inauguration Jan. 20.

Several policy changes have been implemented in the first days of Trump’s presidency, including those that were part of his promised immigration crackdown.

He has rescinded policies that restricted federal immigration officials from arresting undocumented immigrants in sensitive locations such as churches, schools and hospitals. He issued an executive order seeking to halt birthright citizenship, a move temporarily blocked by a federal judge, and took executive action to remove people who are in the country unlawfully under an expedited process. According to the Washington Post, Trump officials have directed ICE to increase the number of people they arrest per day from a few hundred to at least 1,200 to 1,500. Trump has proposed housing up to 30,000 of the “worst criminal aliens” in a detention center at the U.S. Naval station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Some residents along Buford Highway said they are apprehensive to go to work or to take their children to school, afraid of what could happen if they leave home or are separated from their family. Business owners told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution they are seeing fewer customers at otherwise busy shopping centers, and they are anticipating staffing shortages.

Brookhaven Mayor John Park’s office was blindsided by the activity. He’s unsure of the number of his constituents who have been arrested because he hasn’t received any official reports.

“People are basically afraid to go out and live their lives,” Park said. “There’s a certain sense of uncertainty.”

Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com

Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com

‘It inspires fear’

Plaza Fiesta, a sprawling shopping center along Buford Highway at Clairmont Road, has more than 200 restaurant and retail businesses. It is always a bustling center of activity, particularly among Atlanta’s Spanish-speaking residents. It’s both a shopping center and a community resource — a place where people can buy quinceañera dresses and herbal remedies, get lunch, visit a barbershop and seek help with accounting, insurance or immigration services all under the same roof.

In recent days, however, tenants began to notice fewer customers coming into the mall. It’s not a ghost town, but there is a noticeable difference.

Anu Riaz, who works the counter at his family’s jewelry store, said the food court and parking lots were emptier than usual the weekend of the arrests, which he found peculiar. He didn’t receive any repeat or out-of-town customers, which he expects on their busiest days.

“Weekends is when you get the most business, and that’s when you find out that there is nothing,” Riaz said. “People don’t want to come in because they’re scared.”

It’s too early to see an impact on sales, Riaz said, but if the threat of further arrests continues to keep shoppers home, he thinks it will hurt businesses. But he’s not too worried about his family’s store because they have expensive inventory. Riaz is concerned for the vendors at Plaza Fiesta who sell perishable, lower-cost items, including fresh fruit, frozen treats like paletas and other snacks.

Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com

Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com

Junior Armendariz, who has worked as a security guard at Plaza Fiesta for about a decade, said this is not the first time word of ICE arrests has slowed business. It’s happened under previous administrations, too. Rumors spread quickly about ICE stepping foot on the property and many shoppers stay home as a precaution. But ICE has never made mass arrests at Plaza Fiesta, he said, and people shouldn’t be worried about coming to the mall.

“When they hear rumors like that, it inspires fear with regards to being deported, and their life changes if that happens,” said Armendariz.

Some of the tenants have told Armendariz that business this month has been the slowest it has been in years. It’s not just due to the arrests over the weekend — many of the tenants did not open up their stores during the two snowstorms this month, and the ones that did received very little business. Plus, a water main break on Clairmont Road in mid-January interrupted normal operations, and January is always a slow month for the shopping mall.

Claudia Cardenas, the co-owner of Taqueria La Norteña and Arepa Grill inside Plaza Fiesta, expressed distress for any immigrant fearful of deportation, especially to a country that they fled. She said she couldn’t imagine having to return to Venezuela, her native country, where “there is more poverty” and “no freedom.”

A longer-term effect of these arrests is having to rebuild trust between the community and local governments, with public health services and nonprofits, said Lily Pabian, the executive director of nonprofit We Love Buford Highway.

“Seeing how things are happening, it’s a really scary time for our communities,” Pabian said.

Brookhaven has worked hard to build this sense of trust, Mayor Park said. But when interventions of this magnitude happen, he said the local police are the ones left picking up the pieces.

“We still continue to go out into the community,” Park said. “We go to apartment complexes and have meetings with residents and reassure them that ICE’s job is not our job.”

— Dining Editor Ligaya Figueras contributed to this report.