The owners of two Emiliano’s Mexican Restaurant and Bar locations outside of Pittsburgh are wondering who the fuck is going to pay for the damages caused by ICE agents rampaging into the joints looking for undocumented workers to arrest earlier this month that nabbed nine workers at the Gibsonia outlet and 7 at another in Cranberry Township, two staffers and a witness tell NBC News.
Plus there’s the Instagram post showing the destruction: “Agents stormed our restaurants in a show of force that went far beyond anything reasonable or humane. They didn’t just detain people — they raided the heart of our business, tore through our spaces, and left behind a trail of fear, confusion, and destruction. Our kitchens were flipped. Our walk-ins emptied. Food trashed. Doors broken.”
Local activist Jamie Martinez, who showed up in the middle of the raid on the Gibsonia location, told NBC that ICE “actually caused a kitchen fire that agents were unable to extinguish at the beginning, which put people in danger,” adding that it was on the workers, who were sitting on the floor, in cuffs, to tell the stormtroopers how to operate the fire extinguisher to put it out. “By the time the fire department got there, the fire had already been put out with a dry chemical extinguisher, but only after this delay,” said Martinez. In a statement ICE responded pretty much how you would’ve expected, saying the “damage to the restaurant, including the small fire, was created by the illegal aliens themselves while they were trying to escape or hide from law enforcement officers.”
A woman, who was not detained after showing proper documentation, told Martinez she was cooking at the Cranberry location when an ICE agent entered the kitchen and ordered her to stop while aiming an assault rifle at her head. “This lady is now going to have to live with the trauma of having law enforcement point a gun at her head while she was at work,” said Martinez.