Chipotle Workers Exodus in DC and Virgina

According to news reports workers at Chipotle restaurants in Washington DC and Virginia have been leaving in droves since immigration officials announced that they were auditing restaurants in the area. Mas vale prevenir que estornudar.

Reuters reports:

Chipotle co-Chief Executive Monty Moran called the departures “very limited” and said they came after he told workers that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was reviewing worker eligibility documents at the chain’s roughly 60 restaurants in Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Just a few months earlier, a similar audit resulted in the firing of 450 undocumented workers at the chain’s Minnesota restaurants.

Here’s the thing, likely or not: the fact that people leave a job because la migra is telegraphing a raid does not necessarily mean that those workers are undocumented (humor me on this one). It could mean that that they fear being profiled because they look undocumented, or work in a place suspected of hiring undocumented workers, and fear the hassle (remember the veteran who was detained in an immigration cell because no one believed he was a citizen?).

Ironically, I think the workers are leaving because what the immigration department is doing is a very Latino thing to do. They understand the implied meaning. Carlos Fuentes has a theory about Latino violence. He says that Latinos are misunderstood when it comes to violent passion, an all too common stereotype. Latino violence, according to Fuentes, is very honest. If a Latino is mad at you he tells you so, he tells you why he’s mad and he tells you what he intends to do about it. Then he does it. American violence, says Fuentes, is at least once removed, done by proxy – through bombs, institutions or farmed out to third party persons or agencies.

Several years ago there were Spanish radio morning drive disk jockeys who alerted listeners to the activities of immigration officials. The code, I believe, was los verdes (the green ones). So the announcer would let folks know where the green ones were, where they were headed and where to watch out.

I think this Chipotle thing is a hybrid of the two – Fuentes and los verdes. They know they’re coming…

There’s no word on where the immigration agents will “strike” next.

Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda