15 February 27 - March 5, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents them come in and hurt our children and staff.” “I never thought I would read this,” Pe- draza said. “This is a principal [of a school] that gets government money, and they have to worry about, like, ‘Am I going to be re- sponsible for this child not making it home?’” Pedraza said if things don’t get better in the next five years, she won’t want to con- tinue the family business. “I’m stressed,” she said. “Prices are going up. Now, they’re trying to cover programs that help small businesses. It’s like every- thing is just snowballing.” She’s not alone in this concern, either. Moran noted that small immigrant-owned businesses often struggle to survive down- turns because of limited capital and slim profit margins. If conditions don’t improve, CocoAndré won’t be the only one at risk of shutting down. Vera’s Bakery “It will have an effect on us tremendously,” said Elda Vera-Alvarado of Vera’s Bakery re- garding the recent immigrantion policy changes. Vera’s Bakery is a beloved family-owned business that has been a cornerstone in the Dallas community for 30 years. Led by Al- fonso Vera and his three daughters, Elda, Naomi and Rosanna, the bakery serves a vari- ety of masterfully crafted Mexican pan dulce (sweet breads), doughnuts and custom cakes. According to Elda, 90% of their custom- ers come from Mexican, Hispanic and La- tino backgrounds. She says they’re afraid. “Customers that come in and stop by on a daily basis — before work or after school pickups — have mentioned it to us,” Elda said. “We can see it. They’re worried. I mean, I would be too. Anybody would be in that situation.” Vera’s Bakery started with Alfonso, who immigrated from Mexico to Dallas and ini- tially worked at a Neiman Marcus bakery. After it was bought out, Alfonso saw an op- portunity to branch out on his own. “It was his very first business,” Elda says. “He probably didn’t know what he was go- ing to be getting into or how long it was go- ing to last or all that, but we were blessed for that opportunity.” Alfonso purchased a local Mexican bak- ery. He combined his expertise in creating gourmet American cakes with the tradi- tional Mexican pan dulce recipes he learned from an em- ployee at the original bakery. With the help of their family, Alfonso and his wife, Julia, opened Vera’s Bakery on West Davis Street in Oak Cliff, turning his passion into the adored business it is today. Since 1995, Vera’s Bak- ery has grown along- side its Dallas community. The Vera family has been a part of countless mile- stones. “They’ve ordered cakes for marriages, they’ve ordered their baby shower cakes, birthday cakes, you know, all of that,” Elda says. “We have long- time customers, and we have that relation- ship. And to see that separation, it’s just heartbreaking.” But while some immigrant-owned busi- nesses in Dallas are experiencing shifts in their communities and customer bases be- cause of policy changes, others, like Pacheco Taco N Burger, are struggling with some- thing more urgent: their employees no lon- ger showing up to work. Pacheco Taco N Burger Cecilia Ramirez immigrated from Mexico to the U.S. in the late 1980s. After a life working in the service industry she proposed the idea for a burger and taco pop-up to her son Adan Pacheco just a few years ago. “I think she was about 55 at the time, and she was like, ‘Let’s start something now. I’m only getting older,’” Adan said. Now, they make crave-worthy comfort foods like burgers, tacos, tortas, quesadillas and carne asada fries inside Four Corners Brewing Company’s taproom in Dallas. Jennie Garcia, who works at Pacheco, has noticed a decline in employee availabil- ity and reliability. “They’re afraid they may be taken away from their families,” she says. “There’s a lot of anger that comes with all these different laws coming about. It’s just, it’s a scary … it’s a very scary moment.” “To the extent that entrepreneurs or employees are undocumented or have fam- ily members who are undocumented, there may be increased fears about arrest, deten- tion, deportation and family separations,” Moran at Texas A&M says. “Employees may quit because they want to avoid detec- tion or have decided to leave the United States voluntarily.” Moran warns that policy changes will hit small businesses and the communities they serve particularly hard. “Immigrants to the United States have a high rate of entrepreneurship,” Moran ex- plains. “Due to limited access to capital, these entrepreneurs start small businesses by drawing on personal savings as well as loans from family and friends.” The mother-son pair poured their entire life savings into the business, putting every- thing they had into its success. “My mom — she’s the hardest worker I know,” Adan said. “So as long as we put the work in, we were gonna make it work no matter what happened.” They’ve taken Pacheco Taco N Burger from food truck to pop-ups, then to a conve- nience store, and now, as they enter their third year of business this May, they’ve found a home at Four Corners Brewery. Adan emphasized that this wouldn’t have been possible without his parents’ immi- grating to the U.S. “We wouldn’t be here,” Adan said. “We wouldn’t be having the opportunities we have now.” These immigrant-owned businesses and others alike have defied the odds to get to where they are today. But the recent surge in immigration enforcement threatens every- thing — their businesses, their communities, their families, their livelihoods. “You don’t know what’s real, what’s not, how to help,” Cindy Pedraza of CocoAndré Chocolatier said. “It feels like the walls are kind of falling down everywhere you go.” Alison McLean From left to right: Adan Pacheco, Jennie Garcia, and Gilbert Villalon at Pacheco Taco N Burger have noticed more fear and a decline in employee availability. City of Ate from p14
