Texas Restaurants Are Forcing a Reckoning Over Immigrant Labor

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About 50 percent of Texas restaurants reported that they were not profitable last year, up from 38 percent in 2024, according to the Texas Restaurant Association.

Some of that has been a consequence of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration: In Texas, where by some estimates nearly 10 percent of the work force is undocumented — compared with about 4.5 percent of the U.S. work force — restaurant owners have said that the crackdown has created a chilling effect among their workers, regardless of their immigration status.

Now as they feel the strain, the Texas Restaurant Association and business leaders across the country have started a coalition, called Seat the Table, demanding that Congress and the White House create work permits for “long-term, law-abiding immigrants playing critical roles from farms to restaurants.”

Across the country, roughly 42 percent of restaurant operators said they were not profitable last year, according to the National Restaurant Association, a slight uptick from 2024 as food and labor costs have steadily increased for years.

In backing the coalition, the Texas Restaurant Association, in a state with strong conservative roots, made clear that it was not calling for amnesty, nor was it asking for a pathway to citizenship for immigrants.

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Most cities in Texas have not seen the high-profile immigration raids that have targeted California, Illinois and Minnesota over the past year. But immigration arrest data shows that federal agents have made more arrests in the Dallas, Houston and San Antonio areas since 2025 than in Los Angeles, which experienced several high-profile raids last year.

Adam Orman, who owns the restaurants L’Oca d’Oro and Bambino in Austin, said some immigrants in the area feared coming to work because of anxiety around arrests.

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The strain on labor has extended to Texas’ agriculture industry. Sam Lash, a co-founder of Farm to Table, a wholesale company based in Texas that connects local farmers with chefs, said farms across the state were struggling to find workers.

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