http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a.../-1/BUSINESS07
Rumors of surveillance scare away customers
BY NIRAJ WARIKOO and CECIL ANGEL
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS

June 10, 2006

"People shouldn't be scared to shop at a grocery store," Fienman said Friday about the impact of the rumors. (ROMAIN BLANQUART/Detroit Free Press)

Amid the usual signs for tamarind soda, spicy sausage and beef tripe, there is a new notice in English and Spanish at E&L Supermercado in southwest Detroit:

"Immigration Rumors are False!!! Immigration has NOT been into E&L, or our parking lot. EVER."

The display of such a sign at the biggest Latino grocery in Detroit symbolizes how recent immigration raids across southeastern Michigan and the nation have unnerved many Hispanics and created rumors about where enforcement actions could be next.

"People are scared," Laura Gomez, 25, of Detroit, a Mexican immigrant, said while shopping with her family Friday at E&L. "It's not fair. ... We're not bad people. We're here to work."

And it's not just the store that is being affected.

Down the road at El Nacimiento restaurant on Vernor Highway, customer traffic has decreased since late April, when the Department of Homeland Security announced major immigration raids.

"They're concerned about that," said Daisy Padilla, who works at the restaurant. "They see it on the news and become alert."

At nearby Ste. Anne de Detroit Catholic Church, which has a large number of Latino immigrants in its congregation, some worshippers are afraid to show up on Sundays.

"They don't want to come out because they don't know what's going to happen," said Isabella Ramirez of Detroit. "I tell them, 'It's a church. Immigration will at least respect a church if anything else.' But they're still so scared."

Other churches, schools and stores also have seen decreased numbers, said Juan Escareno, an organizer with the Detroit-based group Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enabling Strength, or MOSES.

At E&L on Vernor, the rumors that the store might be targeted by immigration agents have become so prevalent in recent weeks that its owners took out a full-page advertisement denying them this week in El Central, the city's largest Latino newspaper.

Store Vice President Mike Fienman said some of his regular customers have been staying home since the rumors started after an immigration rally in Detroit last month. Other people, he said, were shopping less frequently.

"People shouldn't be scared to shop at a grocery store," Fienman said Friday.

"There are people coming in and saying they're scared -- that's not right. I've never had people say they're worried or scared like this."

Over the past two months, as Congress and state legislatures have debated proposals to crack down on undocumented immigrants, there have been several high-profile raids across the country and in metro Detroit.

Last month, 18 Latino immigrants were arrested in their Detroit homes. Last week, 63 people were rounded up across the region, many of them of Eastern European backgrounds.

On Friday, authorities announced they had arrested 179 undocumented immigrants in Las Vegas.

Greg Palmore, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Detroit, said there is no truth to the rumors that E&L Supermercado has been singled out for surveillance.

But he said there are other places in southwest Detroit -- he wouldn't say where -- that are being watched for undocumented immigrants.

That is enough to fuel fears at E&L, which over the past 20 years has shifted its focus from primarily serving Eastern Europeans to meeting the tastes and needs of the growing Spanish-speaking communities in southwest Detroit.

Piñatas hang from its ceilings, and cashiers speak to customers in English and Spanish. The store stocks everything from Mexican apple soda to 15 different kinds of canned jalapeños.

"They just think, wherever there is a lot of Mexican people -- don't go there," said Rosalva Orozco, 27, a cashier at the supermarket, referring to local Latinos. "We're worried."