AUSTIN, Tx., April 20, 2026: The Texas Restaurant Association recently launched a coalition of restaurant owners called the Seat the Table. The coalition is asking federal legislators to seek immigration reform to allow longtime undocumented workers to continue working in the restaurant industry. They say that the immigration crackdown has led to businesses losses because workers are not showing up to work and consumers aren’t eating out for fear of encountering an immigration enforcement action.
The Association’s website, states that along with its national partner, the National Restaurant Association, it seeks to expand and protect the restaurant workforce “by advocating for commonsense immigration and temporary work permit reforms.” Likewise, the National Restaurant Association adds on its website that “immigration is essential to the restaurant and food service industry.” In 2025, restaurants faced worker shortages as they struggled to fill nearly 900,000 open jobs, according to the national restaurant group. It adds that restaurants are the country’s second largest employer where more than one of five employees of the nation’s 15.7 million restaurant workers are immigrants.
The restaurant groups say they support “comprehensive immigration reform that protects long-serving employees, fixes the work-visa system, and builds a modern immigration system for the future.”
According to The New York Times, “an estimated 10% of restaurant workers” in Texas “are undocumented.” Dallas restaurant owner, Regino Rojas, told the newspaper that the national immigration crackdown “is worse than the pandemic.” Austin restaurant owner, Adam Orman, added that although work permits would help, changes in enforcement tactics need to change also, “so that people aren’t afraid to go to work, people aren’t afraid to go spend money.” Texas restaurants employ more undocumented workers than other states, and although high-profile immigration enforcement has not made news headlines, more immigration-related arrests were made in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio since 2025 than in Los Angeles.
The Texas association said that the national immigration crackdown “has created a chilling effect among their workers, regardless of their immigration status.”
The food industry’s Seat the Table coalition states that “work permits for immigrants keep food on the table.”
Downloadable menu insert graphic provided for advocacy by the Seat the Table coalition, April 18, 2026, Martín Paredes/El Paso Herald Post
According to the coalition, food prices have increased 34% since the pandemic. The coalition blames the rise in prices on immigration enforcement that has affected restaurant and agricultural workers. They say that over 809,000 hospitality jobs cannot be filled today because of immigration enforcement.
Co-founder of Farm to Table, Sam Lash, another coalition seeking immigration reform adds that in over 18 years, “there has never been a time where it is more difficult to access consistent, reliable, skilled labor from immigrants.”
The agricultural and hospitality sectors are not the only economic sectors facing losses due to immigration enforcement in Texas. The South Texas Builders Association complained in January that immigration enforcement in Texas is causing labor shortages for home builders. Builders in the Texas valley held a meeting in December complaining that “a lot of business [are] failing” because of the labor shortages they face.
Complaints from the valley Texas association led U.S. Rep. Mónica de la Cruz (R-TX15) to announce that she wants Congress to work on creating a legal pathway for construction workers. El Paso’s Congressperson, Veronica Escobar “co-authored the first bi-partisan, comprehensive immigration reform bill in the U.S. House in a decade,” said her communications director, Abbey Thompson in January. The Dignity Act of 2023 seeks to protect construction and other workers. It is co-sponsored by 15 Democrats and Republicans.
Executive Director of the El Paso Home Builder’s Association, Ray Adauto also told El Paso News in January that El Paso’s homebuilders are experiencing rising “labor cost, high material prices, [and] wages.” Adauto added that “immigration crackdowns are hurting the ability to have cheap labor causing costs to go up for the builder and the consumer.”
Abbott Targets Cities Constraining Immigration Enforcement
Notwithstanding the complaints about immigration enforcement by business owners across Texas, Governor Greg Abbott threatened Austin, Dallas and Houston with withholding around $200 million in state funding because the three cities have been limiting their police forces from cooperating with immigration officials. Houstin faces losing $110 million in state public safety grants if it does not increase cooperation with immigration officials.
In a statement on Friday, Abbott said that Texas’ economy “expanded to a record high of $2.9 trillion thanks to the productivity of our skilled workforce and the entrepreneurs and businesses investing” in Texas. Since Abbott took office in 2015, the Texas economy has grown by 46%. Last year, the Texas economy’s growth was larger than eight of the world’s largest economies.
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