\n\t\t\t\t\t\tMembers of the Latino community throughout Allegheny County have stories of fear and hardship ever since Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched raids across the country and locally, starting last summer.Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato has launched her own call to action in support of immigrant residents.She says the raids have targeted businesses in the food and hospitality industry at an alarming rate.”Last summer, we saw an increase in ICE raids, and they were high profile,” she told Pittsburgh’s Action News 4. “It really did target the restaurant industry. They feel like they’re under threat, that they’re no longer safe in a place where they’ve built community, where they’ve built businesses, where they send their kids to school, where they purchased homes.”Shelbin Santos, the owner of Chicken Latino in Pittsburgh’s Beechview neighborhood, said employees and customers in many neighborhoods are fearful to leave their homes, and she said Latino businesses have seen up to a 40% decrease in business.”They don’t get out of the house anymore. Some of them, they’re not even going to work,” Santos said. “Even our own employees are scared to come to work, so it does affect me in many, many aspects.”Members of the University of Pittsburgh Small Business Development Center say the current political climate can put a dent in the region’s economy.”Immigrants tend to open businesses twice the rate of non-immigrant businesses,” said Brent Rondon, of the SBDC. “Some studies done suggest they contribute over $6 billion to the Pittsburgh economy just by being here.”Innamorato said it is time to support local immigrants and refugees, not tear them down.”In Allegheny County, we see the contribution of the immigrants, both from an economic perspective, but a cultural perspective, but also just from a human perspective,” she said.Watch the full report in the video player above.Download the WTAE app to stay connected with breaking news. Sign up for our email newsletters to get breaking news in your inbox.\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tPITTSBURGH \u2014 \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Members of the Latino community throughout Allegheny County have stories of fear and hardship ever since Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched raids across the country and locally, starting last summer.<\/p>\n
Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato has launched her own call to action in support of immigrant residents.<\/p>\n
She says the raids have targeted businesses in the food and hospitality industry at an alarming rate.<\/p>\n
“Last summer, we saw an increase in ICE raids, and they were high profile,” she told Pittsburgh’s Action News 4. “It really did target the restaurant industry. They feel like they’re under threat, that they’re no longer safe in a place where they’ve built community, where they’ve built businesses, where they send their kids to school, where they purchased homes.”<\/p>\n
Shelbin Santos, the owner of Chicken Latino in Pittsburgh’s Beechview neighborhood, said employees and customers in many neighborhoods are fearful to leave their homes, and she said Latino businesses have seen up to a 40% decrease in business.<\/p>\n
“They don’t get out of the house anymore. Some of them, they’re not even going to work,” Santos said. “Even our own employees are scared to come to work, so it does affect me in many, many aspects.”<\/p>\n
Members of the University of Pittsburgh Small Business Development Center say the current political climate can put a dent in the region’s economy.<\/p>\n
“Immigrants tend to open businesses twice the rate of non-immigrant businesses,” said Brent Rondon, of the SBDC. “Some studies done suggest they contribute over $6 billion to the Pittsburgh economy just by being here.”<\/p>\n
Innamorato said it is time to support local immigrants and refugees, not tear them down.<\/p>\n
“In Allegheny County, we see the contribution of the immigrants, both from an economic perspective, but a cultural perspective, but also just from a human perspective,” she said.<\/p>\n
Watch the full report in the video player above.<\/p>\n
Download the WTAE app<\/a> to stay connected with breaking news. Sign up for our email newsletters<\/a> to get breaking news in your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Members of the Latino community throughout Allegheny County have stories of fear and hardship ever since Immigration and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[15887,74036,894,66534,28985,60,14704,2443,24218,20007,741,57539,48182,53998,16414,139,73,75,74,10692,244,48125,2920],"class_list":{"0":"post-164111","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh","8":"tag-action","9":"tag-alarming-rate","10":"tag-allegheny-county","11":"tag-allegheny-county-executive","12":"tag-beechview","13":"tag-business","14":"tag-employee","15":"tag-ice","16":"tag-immigrant","17":"tag-immigrants","18":"tag-immigration","19":"tag-last-summer","20":"tag-latino","21":"tag-latino-community","22":"tag-member","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-pittsburgh","25":"tag-pittsburgh-headlines","26":"tag-pittsburgh-news","27":"tag-raid","28":"tag-restaurants","29":"tag-stance","30":"tag-support"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}