Patrons at a Mexican restaurant in Texas threatened to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on employees over their refusal to work maskless, according to the establishment’s owner.
“This has been ongoing through COVID,” Steven O’Sullivan, an owner of Cantina Barba in Houston, told The Washington Post.
“We’ve had threats of calling ICE,” O’Sullivan said. “I had one guy just stand there and berate one of my bartenders and tell her, ‘You’re an absolute idiot, you don’t know what you’re doing. If you think these masks are going to save your life, you’re stupid,’ blah, blah, blah. Nobody wants to deal with that stuff.”
Monica Richards, a co-owner of Picos Mexican restaurant, said she and her staff have received harassing messages on social media and at the store via phone.
“It was just horrific,” Richards told the Post. “People don’t understand unless you’re in our business what it felt like, how hard it was to go through everything we went through during COVID. For people to be negative toward us for trying to remain safe, so that this doesn’t continue to happen, just makes zero sense to us.”