Seattle businesses join nationwide 'day without immigrants' strike

Up and down the business district of Seattle’s North Beacon Hill, several restaurants shut their doors on Monday. It was part of a nationwide strike aimed at showing how integral immigrants are to their local communities.

The day was also meant to be a time for participants to learn about the issues facing their communities under President Donald Trump’s administration, which has promised to deport millions of immigrants in the U.S. without legal status.

Jenny Jones was walking through the neighborhood trying to find lunch. Upon finding restaurants closed, she said she supported their decision to shut down for the day.

“We want people to feel supported no matter where they're from,” Jones said. “It's an immigrant country; it's a melting pot. That's how it all started.”

Last week ICE said it arrested four people in the Seattle area who had been convicted of or charged with crimes related to sexual assault. But in the weeks leading up to that, videos surfaced of apparent immigration enforcement actions in Washington, including an older man and woman in Yakima County being taken away by federal law enforcement. Immigration officials wouldn’t clarify if the two had any convictions.

Other videos uploaded to social media show federal law enforcement stopping people in Washington who are U.S. citizens but come from either Latin American or Native American communities.

It’s these kinds of videos that have Oscar Rodriguez’s friends and family worried. He owns Baja Bistro. and closed down the shop as a way to take a stand against Trump.

“He’s the president and he’s got a lot of power, but we are citizens of this country, and as a citizen of my country, I have rights,” he said. “I have the right to protest my very own government,” he said.

Luis Rodriguez, his brother, owns a coffee shop down the street called The Station with his wife, Leona Moore-Rodriguez.

“There's no respect,” Moore-Rodriguez said. “Everyone's acting like all the immigrants have come to this country to just take over the country when the original immigrants [European-Americans] did that.”

The couple had longtime customers text them angrily about closing the coffee shop, telling them that protesting and striking is not the way, Luis Rodriguez said.

“And I responded, ‘Hi… love you. Apparently it's working. You're upset, right? It's obviously working because you're upset.That's the whole point — to disrupt,’” he said.