St. Paul officials release report on the economic impact of ICE operations

For the first time, St. Paul leaders are sharing information on the economic impact of ICE operations in the city.

A report by the Department of Planning and Economic Development shows three areas impacted in January and February: $129 million in small business losses, $118 million income lost for immigrant St. Paul residents, and $32 million 'rent gap' where people are already falling behind in paying rent.

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City staff is cautioning that these numbers are a rough estimate — essentially a mathematical formula using data from the Census Bureau, information from a survey of about 160 businesses and interviews in the business community.

Mayor Kaohly Her says the city is looking internally for funding, but she also went to the Minnesota State Capitol Friday to meet with state lawmakers.

"We already had a plan to help turn our city around. These ICE operations did not help," she told reporters.

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"We set our budgets a year beforehand, so we just don’t have millions of dollars sticking around to allocate something, so every time we shift money, it’s to take away from something else that was already allocated to. So, our biggest hope is to work with the Legislature. There’s a number of bills moving there at the current time."

The mayor did not release any specifics about how much money the city could provide for relief funding or how much she’s seeking from the state.

Rep. Maria Isa Perez-Vega, DFL-St. Paul, says she’s committed to finding the funding.

"There’s a lot of businesses that are continuing to hurt, and it’s not going to be an overnight fix," she notes.

"There’s always funding. It might not be as much as the $18 billion surplus we had when I first took office, but there’s always funding to be fought for and we need to make sure that funding is going to be in the spaces that bring revenue to the state, so let’s go fight for it."

We asked the Department of Planning and Economic Development if there’s a mechanism in place to distribute funding and if there are safeguards to prevent fraud by recipients.

Staffers say for now, they are focusing on their numbers analysis and are not that far along in the process.

Meanwhile, some businesses are still trying to recover financially.

Some sent employees home during the surge — sometimes with pay, and sometimes not.

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Restaurants shortened their hours and limited their meals, even as some employees and customers stayed away.

At the Boca Chica Restaurant, Cathy Jenkins was among the lunch crowd.

"They can’t serve that level of options on a menu when you have a hard time getting staff out to work," she says.

Does she think it’s the right use of taxpayer dollars to help businesses impacted by ICE?

"One hundred percent," Jenkins declares.

"Businesses did have a choice in how they ran their businesses. They had to try to survive, and I think they’ve done heroic efforts."