MEMPHIS — Saturday lunch is usually peak busy at La Guadalupana restaurant, one of the city’s oldest sit-down Mexican taquerias along a busy commercial strip in the city’s diverse Berclair neighborhood.
But on one recent Saturday, owner Juan Castelan gestured in the direction of mostly empty tables.
Business is down 30% to 40% since the Memphis Safe Task Force began making thousands of traffic stops and arrests for alleged criminal and immigration law violations in September.
Castelan has had to cut hours for his full-time kitchen and waitstaff to 25 or 28 per week, from 40.
It is common to hear sirens and witness federal and state officers conducting traffic stops and making arrests multiple times a day through the restaurant’s floor-to-ceiling windows, he said.