Highlandtown’s business district was growing. Then ICE came.

Highlandtown buzzed during the neighborhood’s First Friday Art Walk in November. Locals and non-locals alike flocked to the community’s business corridor on and around Eastern Avenue.

But something has changed in the last six months.

Morale is low, some business owners say, and people are scared. Fridays, once reliable as high-traffic days for business owners, are now “like a ghost town,” said Franchesca Nuñez, owner of Franchesca’s Empanadas Café. “Any other Friday, you would see people just walking around, but, unfortunately, you don’t see that anymore.”

Inflation, tariffs, the slashing of federal agencies and jobs, rising rents and utility bills are putting pressure on the ability of consumers everywhere to spend. But in some neighborhoods, including in East Baltimore, the increase in raids and detainments by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has added a new layer of uncertainty for business owners and their customers.

The impact is being felt hard in Highlandtown and nearby neighborhoods with vibrant Latino and immigrant populations, as well as among numerous immigrant business owners.

Across the nation, fear, anger and protests over the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts reached new heights starting in January, after ICE agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.

In April, an ICE pursuit that led agents into the Ovenbird Bakery in Highlandtown shook up staff and patrons. Students, teachers and parents are concerned about the frequent spotting of dark, unmarked vehicles and people in green vests and military gear near the local schools.

Some stores in Highlandtown now have signs in their windows: “ICE IS NOT WELCOME HERE.” In Spanish, “ICE NO ES BIENVENIDO AQUÍ.”

With mounting economic and political pressure, business owners worry that careful neighborhood development over the past 20 years could backslide and speed up gentrification.

Johanna Barrantes, a former small-business project manager at the Southeast Community Development Corporation, said the ICE activity could continue to affect the local economy long after agents leave.

Highlandtown stretches 10 blocks from South Ellwood Street along Patterson Park to the industrial-lined South Haven Street. In 2020, nearly 3,000 people lived there, up 9% from the previous decade, according to Baltimore City’s Department of Planning Policy and Data Analysis Division. The majority-white neighborhood was once predominantly occupied by German, Polish and Italian immigrants, but the Latino population grew 13% between 2010 and 2020.

Highlandtown had long been a thriving shopping district, but by the 1990s, it was grappling with white flight to other city neighborhoods and the suburbs. Commercial vacancy rates reached 30% in 2004, according to the Southeast CDC.

That organization and partners focused on landing tenants for large commercial properties, thinking that smaller storefronts would then fill in.

In 2003, the Creative Alliance moved from Fells Point to renovate the Patterson Theater space. An Enoch Pratt Free Library branch opened in 2007, replacing the demolished Grand Theater. Haussner’s Restaurant, which closed in 1999, was demolished in 2016 to make way for the Highland Haus Apartments.

Amanda Smit-Peters, the Southeast CDC’s Highlandtown Main Street manager, and Barrantes said that Latino and other immigrant business owners have also been integral in turning things around. Their investment has allowed the community to grow “so that now we can all enjoy the benefits of an area that has developed culture, identity and richness,” Barrantes said.

The Southeast CDC’s 2024 Project Restore Highlandtown program matched three businesses — Harp Vision, Bao Di and Highwire Improv — with previously vacant commercial properties.

Harp Vision, the wellness brand owned by April and Tyron Harper, moved from a stall in Lexington Market to South Conkling Street last year. The thriving small-business ecosystem brought them to Highlandtown.

“I saw a lot of small businesses, which I don’t see in the neighborhood where we live,” Harper said. “We can do this if we’re in the right community.”

Highlandtown closed out 2025 with a commercial vacancy rate of around 9.16%, according to the organization’s annual report.

Residential vacancies are down, too, and home values are up. The median sales price in the last 12 months was $350,000, according to Homes.com, up by 15% from the year prior.

ICE’s lingering presence may be causing irreparable damage, some in the neighborhood fear.

“There are some businesses around here that aren’t getting any customers at all,” said Tyron Harper. “Our [foot traffic] has dropped significantly.”

Carlos Urrutia, a barber at Elegance Barbershop on Eastern Avenue, said he is seeing fewer customers. He immigrated to the U.S. three years ago, bringing more than 30 years of hair-cutting experience to Baltimore.

“I have indeed felt, in one way or another, affected by immigration policies,” Urrutia said.

Some people have been detained; others have voluntarily left. Nevertheless, he and others are continuing to seek citizenship or permanent status “so that we may contribute to this country in the most meaningful way possible.”

George Hindoyan, originally from Syria, said his men’s clothing store, Geno’s Menswear on Eastern Avenue, is also experiencing a drop in foot traffic. Business over the last six months is the worst it’s been since he opened there in 1994.

“All the people moved out. There’s nobody left on the street to come shopping anymore,” he said. Hindoyan believes that a lot of his customers, many of whom were Latino, moved out of Baltimore — and potentially out of the country.

Vintage and antique store Rust-N-Shine, on Conkling Street, was packed during the First Friday Art Walk in November. At the event in April, only a few customers were inside, despite better weather after a long, frigid winter.

Ross’s storefront now features the English version of the anti-ICE sign, courtesy of the Baltimore branch of the Party of Socialism and Liberation. The group started organizing in Highlandtown last summer after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, received an infusion of federal funding.

The Party of Socialism and Liberation has hosted volunteer community outreach events in Highlandtown since October. After a brief orientation and training, volunteers take to the streets to educate, advocate and hand out signs and little red cards with scripted instructions for handling ICE encounters.

Businesses in other neighborhoods have posted similar signs barring ICE from their stores.

“The reception has been really positive,” said Rachel Kiefer, organizer with the Party of Socialism and Liberation.

The goal is to spread information about business owners’ rights and how they invoke them if necessary. But “it also has this collateral effect, which we’re really pleased about: that it gives people hope,” she said.

Mayor Brandon Scott and Catalina Rodriguez Lima, director of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, made their rounds at local businesses on Eastern Avenue in Highlandtown in March as part of the Scott administration’s “Know Your Rights” public information campaign.

Barrantes and Smit-Peters, who work very closely with businesses in the area, are “deeply worried” about the future of the neighborhood.

“If folks are feeling that they have to make tough decisions about their businesses,” Barrantes said, “that means that our healthy vacancy rate is going to go up a little faster than it would if it were just a regular turnaround for businesses.”