Bay Area restaurant owners find huge success, but could Trump’s deportation push end American dream?

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) — Jason Mui is a regular at Las Guerreras in Oakland.

“I usually work my way down the menu during lunch,” said Mui as he anxiously waited for his food.

Mui ordered pescado a la talla, a butterflied Bronzino covered in a red sauce on one side and a green sauce on the other.

It’s one of many dishes that are as tasty as they are colorful. That includes the posole verde, a green stew said to have originated in the Mexican state of Guerrero, where the owners are from.

Las Guerreras (formerly Las Guerrera’s Kitchen) is so popular, the owners, Ofelia Barajas and Reyna Maldonado, opened a seafood restaurant next door in Swan’s Market specializing in ceviches.

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The mother and daughter team are enjoying their success, but also looking at the future with uneasiness.

They both could be targets of the Trump administration’s deportation campaign.

Barajas and her daughter are undocumented, however, Maldonado is protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA.

“I was never lied to by my parents about being undocumented,” said Maldonado. “They were very honest with me at a really young age about not calling the police because we will all be separated.”

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Maldonado grew up in Papanoa, a small town near the coast between Acapulco and Zihuatanejo.

She was a toddler when her parents emigrated to the United States in the mid-1990s looking for work, leaving Maldonado with her grandparents.

When she was 6 years old, she made the treacherous journey to the United States with an uncle who helped her cross the border illegally.

“It’s a very vivid, like vivid memory of mine. We tried multiple times. We were in the back of a big truck and at one point in a trunk. I didn’t understand the concept of how far we were, I just remember running a lot,” said Maldonado.

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Maldonado’s parents were working in restaurants around San Francisco.

Then in 2002, Barajas decided to start selling tamales on the street.

It brought home extra money, but also anxiety.

One day, Maldonado saw a street vendor get arrested by immigration enforcement agents. It sent her head spinning.

“My mom was a street vendor herself. I just had like a very traumatic experience. That was something that really scared me once I understood what it meant to be undocumented,” said Maldonado.

In 2012, when President Barack Obama created DACA to protect certain undocumented people who came to the U.S. as children from deportation, Maldonado was distrustful of the program.

She waited three years to apply.

“I did it with fear because I had to give all my information. I had to give all of my parents’ information,” said Maldonado.

Once she got DACA, Maldonado was able to get a social security card and eventually apply for loans and grants to grow the business her mother started.

Together they joined La Cocina, a food incubator in San Francisco that offers resources and kitchen space to women, immigrants and people of color so they can establish a food business.

With that guidance, they were able to open their first restaurant in 2019.

“During the time that I’ve had DACA, I’ve been very successful. We opened this business, we have been able to hire 15 people and we have made over $1,000,000 in sales,” said Maldonado.

While undocumented immigrants are often labeled as a public charge, Maldonado and her mom pay business and payroll taxes but don’t qualify for federal benefits.

Immigrants make up a third of California’s workforce, including more than 829,000 who own a business.

“We pay taxes and we do everything following the law. They don’t value our contributions,” said Barajas in Spanish.

The future of DACA is uncertain. Republicans have challenged it in court.

In January, a federal court let DACA remain in effect for current beneficiaries.

But it’s unknown if the Trump administration will let people like Maldonado renew their work authorization, or if it will rescind DACA.

In late February, Democrats in Congress reintroduced a bill to give DACA recipients, known as Dreamers, a pathway to citizenship.

There are 538,000 immigrants protected under DACA in the country, one-fourth of them in California.

It will be tough to get it approved. Of the 210 members of Congress cosponsoring it, only one is a Republican.

“We’re in limbo. We’re trying to figure it out. How to still stay if DACA gets taken away. Right now it’s the fear that they are going to come after us with all of our information that we provided,” said Maldonado.

DACA has given recipients permission to travel abroad.

Last year, Maldonado returned to her hometown for the first time since she was six years old. She reunited with her grandparents and collected old family recipes.

Ofelia isn’t so lucky. She can’t cross the border because of her status as an undocumented immigrant. That’s prevented her from seeing her mother in 27 years.

“We send them money. We buy them things but we’re doing it to fill an void that can’t be filled. It’s never going to be the same as being able to give them a hug,” said Barajas.

Barajas fills that emptiness with a video call every morning to her mother, who gives her and Maldonado a daily blessing.

Many undocumented immigrants are staying in the shadows as the Trump administration ramps up deportations, but Maldonado decided to speak up to show that the majority of immigrants are here to work and contribute to society, not drain resources.

“It’s so important for us to talk about our experience being undocumented here because I want people to really feel the strength of what it is to be an immigrant here because we live in a country that doesn’t recognize us and tries to erase us in every way possible,” said Maldonado.

Her frank talk about being undocumented has not gone unnoticed. Maldonado will be recognized in April as a recipient of the San Francisco Business Times 40 under 40 awards.