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NEW BEDFORD — Walk through the doors of Lucy’s Party Store on Acushnet Avenue and you’ll see a cornucopia of piñatas, paper plates, plastic cups, candles. Ask Marí Lucy Toj Méndez, the store’s owner of 13 years, and she’ll take you into a sideroom overflowing with adornments: quinceañera dresses, thrones for rent, and signs for parties ranging from baptisms to birthdays to weddings.
Next to the door rests a group of shelves that Méndez, an immigrant from Guatemala, said she added about eight months ago, shortly after business started to turn down. The racks are filled with containers of Ajax powder, Clorox cleaner, Raid. Nearby, another set of shelves with convenience foods sells Abuelita hot chocolate, instant noodles, and Nescafé instant coffee.
Méndez said she started to sell those products shortly after President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign began. It’s an attempt to mitigate its impact on sales.
“Immigration [agents] are everywhere in the streets,” said Méndez in Spanish. “People aren’t leaving their homes because they’re scared.”
“Before, every weekend, families would come and make orders for their parties,” she continued. “But not anymore. Now, on the weekends, very few people come.”
The Light has confirmed that more than 50 people have been detained by federal agents in the Greater New Bedford area since Trump returned to office on Jan. 20. Almost nine months into his second term, area business owners agree Trump’s immigration policies are having a negative impact on their businesses and communities, with some reporting drops as high as 50%.
“Definitely, you can see the impact,” said Muhammad Naseer, owner of America’s Market, a grocery store on Acushnet Avenue, “not just in the numbers, but in the psyche of the community.”
Naseer said sales at his store have declined about 12% as a result of operations in the area. As a result, he’s had to find ways to cut costs, including cutting back on his employees’ hours, to avoid raising prices.
“On some days it feels like a ghost town here,” he said.
Eric Ramos, the owner of 787 BarberShop, expertly maneuvered around the head of a client, shears clipping, as he opined on his observations.
“Especially on the days when people have seen ICE in the area, there’s no one on the street,” he said in Spanish. “You notice the fear and you notice the absence of people. I’d say business has dropped about 40%.”
A representative for the City of New Bedford said that officials are moving forward on projects they hope will enhance the neighborhood’s economic health.
“The lower Acushnet Avenue neighborhood is an important commercial corridor hosting a range of diverse restaurants, shops and other businesses,” said Jonathan Darling, the city’s public information officer. “That’s why the City has been championing improvements along the Ave. in recent years, with public art, creative placemaking, and the creative re-use and redevelopment of vacant parcels.
“The revitalization of the Capitol Theater, now underway, is another important investment which will contribute to the neighborhood’s economic vitality long-term,” he continued. “Residents can be assured that, going forward, the City intends to continue to make investments like these to help mitigate any decline in commercial activity.”
But as raids continue, one expert said he expects to see the economic impacts on immigrant communities spread and that the anecdotes from Acushnet Avenue are telling.
“Under the circumstances, this is not the least bit surprising,” said Michael Goodman, a professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. “In communities that have been the focus of enforcement activities, even if you do have a legal status, you would want to avoid engaging with those authorities.”
He added that Acushnet Avenue, a neighborhood business district reliant on foot traffic, would likely see the first signs of economic trouble.
“The same customers who are supporting businesses on Acushnet Avenue also need to do grocery shopping and other things outside their neighborhood,” he continued. “This could have broader impacts outside the Hispanic community.”
Big picture
Historically, mass deportations have come in waves, with populist politicians often wielding them as tools to stir up votes. Their arguments often rest upon the idea that deportations would increase wages and job opportunities for native-born workers.
A recent analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office revised population growth projections downward through 2055 by 5.4 million people, directly citing Trump administration immigration policy as the reason.
“Administrative actions taken since January 20, 2025, are the largest factor decreasing CBO’s projections of the number of immigrants in the country,” the report said.
“I think there’s no question that the U.S. more broadly, and certainly Massachusetts and New Bedford specifically, have become more reliant on immigrants as a source of labor,” Goodman said. “Now that we’ve significantly reduced immigration, that’s demonstrably reducing the supply of labor.”
Though none of the business owners who spoke with The Light said they’ve seen immigration enforcement directly reduce labor supply, they have seen how it hits their customers. And that has a knock-on effect.
“Since the raids started, business has gone down drastically,” said Tony Cabrera, owner of Taqueria La Raza and an immigrant from Guerrero, Mexico, in Spanish. He estimates that sales have decreased 50% since January. “Now, people have stopped coming during the week.”
He added that some customers, before sitting down, ask whether U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have ever been seen at the restaurant.
“[The customers] still come on the weekends, but not in the numbers they used to,” Cabrera said. “I think it’s a question of fear, because there have been many detentions around these parts.”
He said that in March, the restaurant began to use DoorDash for delivery. That helped for a couple of months, but even those sales have dwindled. “I don’t know if it’s because people don’t want to spend a lot of money,” he said.
He said he knew of people who left their jobs due to fears around ICE operations. “I’ve had a lot of people come in here asking for work, because it’s getting harder.”
Goodman said it’s only a matter of time before the impacts are felt in sectors of the economy beyond immigrant communities.
“It would stand to reason that these same people who are reluctant to eat and go out to party would change their consumption patterns with more merchants,” he said.
Misplaced hopes
Economic shockwaves reverberated through the world earlier this month when the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s monthly jobs report revealed little to no job growth nationwide between April and August — and revised job creation for the month of June downward to 13,000 jobs lost. While much of that is a result of the erratic tariff policy of the Trump administration, said Goodman, immigration policies have also reduced the labor supply.
Another BLS report projected that by 2034, the nation’s civilian labor force would grow to 173.5 million, an increase of just around 5 million. That means the 10-year rate of increase would be just 0.3%, a fall from the 0.8% recorded between 2014 and 2024.
Goodman said immigration used to bolster those numbers. Without it, the U.S. birth rate alone can’t keep up with labor needs.
“We are not making our own people at a rapid enough rate” to maintain the labor pool, said Goodman.
Many supporters of the mass deportation campaign argue that forcing and pressuring immigrants to leave will open up jobs for citizens. Historical precedent says otherwise.
Mass deportations in the past had driven down demand, leading to job losses, particularly in areas with large immigrant populations, according to a literature review published by the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire in 2024.
Under the Secure Communities program, an Obama administration law-enforcement initiative that used biometric data to check residency status, 454,000 people were deported in seven years. This resulted in a 0.5% reduction in the employment share for U.S. born workers nationally and a 0.6% reduction in wages.
“I don’t think that the explanation for durable unemployment in the U.S. is the result of foreign-born workers that were imported and stealing jobs,” Goodman said. He said that is especially true in a city like New Bedford, where 18% of the population is foreign-born, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey 1-year estimate.
Goodman said local agricultural and maritime sectors stand to feel the deportation’s impacts as well.
“Fish processing, cranberry harvesting – these are jobs that are perennially available and have not been filled by domestic workers in a meaningful way for a very long time,” he said.
Conservative and liberal economists alike say the economy can be expected to shrink, should the administration’s current immigration policies continue or intensify. A recent report from the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, estimates that current immigration and enforcement policies would reduce migration inflows and shrink the economy by between 0.31 and 0.38 percentage points in 2025.
“We’re living in a time where media, and social media, and propaganda, and divisiveness in the country has made the foreign-born, I guess, a convenient scapegoat for some,” Goodman said. “But when it’s targeting individuals and supporting the policies, we see now, it’s entirely unproductive.”
For Méndez at Lucy’s Party Store, the issue is obvious.
“The terror that is out there is fear of immigration [agents],” she said. “So now, with every little thing you do, that fear is always there in the background.
“These are difficult times,” she continued. “I place my hopes in God that some day that changes.”
Kevin G. Andrade can be contacted at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org
Why were all y’all silent while Obama was deporting people in record numbers, vastly higher than the Trump administration has?
“We’re living in a time where media, and social media, and propaganda, and divisiveness in the country has made the foreign-born, I guess, a convenient scapegoat for some,” Goodman said. “But when it’s targeting individuals and supporting the policies, we see now, it’s entirely unproductive.”
Mr. Goodman, yes, we’re living in a time, just as others lived through different times in the past 100 years, but you’re wrong on the reason, the only individuals being targeted are illegal immigrants. You can spend some time on Google searching for another period in time when foreign born people were targeted by immigration authorities, but you won’t find anything like this, and the reason is that in the last century, millions of immigrants from Europe came to America for a better life, but they didn’t all come at the same time, or even over a 3 to 4 year period, and they came here legally with family members sponsored them, and agreed to support them in every way needed, and they did.
What we’ve all seen over the past 4 years were between 10-20 million immigrants enter America illegally, and that can’t, and wont be tolerated. Be prepared for far more ICE agents, and illegal immigrants being deported, this is no surprise, President Trump campaigned on removing all illegal aliens from the US, and that’s exactly what is happening, and as ICE gears up for more raids, the deportations will increase dramatically.
ICE isn’t the villain here, the people who came to America illegally are the criminals, and they will be removed, that’s certain.
why is it that this paper never talks about the impact on working citizens. our system of health care was needed overhaul BEFORE we overloaded it with illegal immigration. also ive seen illegal immigration take priority in schools and housing subsidies. where are the reporters looking for the WHOLE TRUTH?
Fish processing and cranberry harvesting jobs don’t pay enough to live on. Cranberry harvesting did pay well in the very early 2000s but not anymore. Those jobs are filled by migrants because that demographic is easily exploited, since they’re extremely unlikely to speak up about poor working conditions, bad pay, or organizing interference. Businesses don’t offer good jobs anymore.
And it will only get worse too if the public doesn’t wake up and realize that we are living under corporate rule. The consequences of AI aren’t getting nearly as much attention as the public deserves. AI is putting people out of jobs and driving up electricity costs. All the while, the likes of Musk and Zuckerberg are acting like making people obsolete is the best thing ever! Yeah, FOR THEM.
Biden is the one who has done nothing good for this country, he opened the boarder and let the good bad and the ugly in, mental institutions, jails along with gangs were let into this country to cause murder and mayhem, they set up shop to destroy this great nation, now along with this come In some people who only want to have a decent life, the ones who work hard and want to take care of their families, good and honest people, they get lumped in with all the bad apples, their only crime is that they came in the wrong way, it doesn’t matter that they pay taxes, it doesn’t matter they have no criminal record, all that matters they didn’t do it the right way, I really do feel bad for them, in this world its no longer left and right, it’s good and evil and there are always casualties in a war of good and evil, this life just isn’t easy or fair for anyone, just my two cents on the issue.!!!!!!!
There are indeed bad apples in every lot. Yes, some criminals crossed the border; but in reading about several mass shootings in recent days, I see that the shooters all seem to be US citizens, born and bred.
Than you for saying this, Katherine W. It’s so upsetting that American violence is treated as “normal,” but a non-citizen’s violence is treated as “evil.” There is so much underlying racism to that rhetoric, but we aren’t prepared to discuss it; that is by design too.
While the politicians and the media have us squabbling with each other, they continue with their legalized corruption. The American government is not tackling the big issues that affect everyday folks. And they lie to us about the obstacles that prevent them from doing so.
I’m so tired of the Biden vs. Trump BS. Both parties are messing with America. It is increasingly obvious that the only thing our political party leaders care about is money.
I hear what you’re saying — immigration is complicated and affects real families on both sides of the border. But it’s not true that Biden “opened the border.” Crossings and enforcement are handled under long-standing laws, and both parties have struggled to fix a broken system. Most migrants are fleeing violence or poverty, and many do go through legal processes even if it doesn’t look like it from the outside. The real issue isn’t good vs. evil — it’s finding humane, realistic solutions that keep communities safe while honoring the values this country was built on.
I will make it a point to shop at these businesses if I can – don’t do much partying any longer but I can certainly buy cleaning products at Lucy’s party store.
These Maga people make no sense just like the German Nazis or 19th c Pograms in eastern Europe or klan in our jim crow south or do nothings in early 20th century America targeting foreign immigrants Irish Italian Portuguese do your readers know they hung Italians in Louisiana..the problem.is NOT immigrant labor who pay taxes many run small businesses and once they just like many of our ancestors who want here on a dime and a prayer escaping poverty and persecution integrate into our society especially their children who Maga wants now to deport too..this is crazy and self defeating we need 600k production jobs and 500k construction jobs..our birthrate doesnt keep up w our death rate 91% of the Usa’ s pop growth in the last is due to immigration..we are shooting ourselves in the economic foot..lets be honest the sons and daughters of native Americans don’t want to work in packing houses or construction or service imdustry but recent immigrants do and they work hard..we need a policy of amnesty for thise here while setting quotas at the border..not ICE agents terrorizing people in the street on their way to an honest job..that’s not the American way nor how many of our ancestors came here!
Yes! Thank you, George Kontanis! This is why we need to make the connections. We need to follow the money, and see how each talking point affects the other. These people who exploited the public’s economic fears to fuel racism and attack reproductive rights are selling a very specific vision to a very specific audience.
The general public, however, needs to hold power accountable. That means you too, MAGA crowd! Trump told you that he was going to stop the illegals who were bringing drugs and assaulting women. He also said that he wanted to release the Epstein files, and put a stop to American involvement in foreign wars. Are you happy with what he is delivering?
Criticizing Trump and/or the Republican Party does not automatically mean that you are sympathizing with the Democratic Party. The reverse isn’t true either. We all need to hold the powerful accountable, and in my opinion, that is American AF.
Personally, I don’t give a d&#^ about the political parties or labels. They are often misused anyway. Even this article distorted what “populist” means. Most of our representation — city, state, and national — is failing WE THE PEOPLE. Look at who they take money from! Look where they send tax payer money! Look up! Hold POWER accountable, and please stop the “my guy” and “my party” BS. It’s a scam! Most of our current “leaders” want us chasing our tails and barking at each other so that we don’t rise up and remind them that this is America! And DEMOCRACY means something here!
How did your ancestors
come here legal or illegal
If your business can’t exist without exploiting illegal immigrant labor, your business shouldn’t exist at all.
I want to believe that the New Bedford Light is trying. I really do, but so many articles make me cringe! Let me explain a bit of what I mean.
— “Historically, mass deportations have come in waves, with populist politicians often wielding them as tools to stir up votes.” [Eyeroll] You’re missing at least one word. FAKE populists do that, and the party that failed to make that distinction was THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. The likes of Pelosi and Clinton wanted the public to be scared of Bernie Sanders so that they could hold onto their power. They called Bernie supporters “bros” and racist. They said he was just like Trump. And look how that turned out.
So, then, what do both parties have in common? Neither likes the kind of democracy that the general public believes in, deserves, and wants.
—This article talks about tariffs like it’s the only factor. Does DOGE ring a bell? How about AI? How about the increased intermingling of tech business and government happening right now?
—Are you seriously not going to push the mayor’s Darling a little more on the details? How do we know if City Hall isn’t seeing the ICE fear as an opportunity for more gentrification?
—Birth rates are an issue. Yes, and the political machine knows this. So, push harder! How does that connect to the attacks on reproductive freedom? And how much poorer will communities become if forced to have children that they cannot afford? Are we all supposed to become celibate because the powers that be are going after birth control too? I’m sure you can see where all of this is headed, and New Bedford can handle the discussion. Cities like New Bedford will understand it faster than others because of what came before.
Are you going to empower the public, New Bedford Light? Or will you keep tiptoeing? I really do worry that this publication is reluctant to be truly independent. There are undercurrents of being exceedingly loyal to the status quo, and if the New Bedford Light can’t find a way to put the public interest above corporate rule in a city as working class as New Bedford, then you might as well change your name.
The public needs a lot more hope and empowerment than you are offering. It’s not biased to report the facts. So, stop pretending like it is.
When these store owners say business is down because people are afraid to come out. Does it mean there are a lot of undocumented people here and there worried about being caught? Store Owners should be urging them, if they don’t have any records, they should be filing their papers to get legal.
That sounds simple in theory, but the reality is a lot more complicated. Many undocumented people are trying to legalize their status but ICE has been known to detain people as they show up at courthouses or immigration offices for their hearings. That creates real fear and discourages people from coming forward, even those with no criminal record. If we want people to follow the process, we need to make sure the system is fair and safe enough for them to do so.