Irena Stein doesn’t know how she would fully staff her soon-to-open arepas concept restaurant, Candela, without immigrant labor.

“I am close to a heart attack,” said Stein, standing amid dozens of tropical plants at her other restaurant, the popular Venezuelan concept Alma Cocina Latina in Station North. Her newest restaurant is slated to open in March and will be a neighbor to her existing location.

Stein said she has been working feverishly for the past couple months trying to shore up work visas for her staff. She has prioritized hiring Venezuelan chefs for her restaurant to ensure its authenticity.

But President Donald Trump‘s promise to carry out the nation’s largest deportation of undocumented people, while also curbing other immigrants’ ability to work, is throwing a wrench in Stein’s vision to serve homegrown Venezuelan food from those uniquely qualified to create it.

Stein said she has spent days and nights meeting with attorneys, preparing dossiers, and translating international documents. There are visas known as O1 and O2 for workers with extraordinary talent, but they cost around $10,000 each — a price that can add up for an industry already challenged by razor-thin profit margins.

“Alma without Venezuelans cannot exist,” she said. “They are fantastic.”

Trump, who campaigned on linking immigrants to criminality, has not specifically addressed how his immigration policies will affect the restaurant industry. A request for comment from the White House was not immediately returned.

Still reeling from the pandemic, restaurants — like many industries — have continued to struggle with staffing. A mass forced exodus of undocumented workers now would come as restaurants are gearing up for the high-volume business of Valentine’s Day, additional foot traffic expected from seasonal spring menus and, in Stein’s case, the opening of a new eatery.

It is unclear how such a far-reaching removal would work or when it might occur. About 13,000 undocumented people reportedly live in Baltimore, according to the most recently available Census data

In the food industry, and more specifically service fields like restaurants and hotels, there’s a high demand for labor, said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank dedicated to improving migration and integration policies through research.

And in an industry where people can find work fast without needing advanced English skills, employers tend not to look too hard at authorization documents, she added.

Months after launching The Duchess, a new restaurant in Hampden, restaurateur Tony Foreman said he now foresees a negative domino effect if the immigrant labor force is removed en masse. He predicted bankruptcies, restaurant closings, unemployment and hardships for landlords.

“There is an economic cost and damage that is not being calculated,” said Foreman, who owns five restaurants, two wine shops and a consulting business in the Baltimore region.

Foreman also worried about breaking up families as well as the moral, ethical, and cultural impact of any immigration crackdown.

Maryland’s ongoing budget crisis would be in a worse place today without immigrant labor and business owners contributing billions to the state’s economy, said Benjamin Orr, president and CEO of the Maryland Center on Economic Policy.

Workers pay taxes on the income they’re earning, with studies showing undocumented immigrants nationwide contributing $37.3 billion in state and local taxes in 2022.

About a quarter of Maryland’s restaurant workforce is made up of immigrants, including chefs, waiters and food prep workers, according to the Maryland Center on Economic Policy.

“They’re vital to our food chain,” Orr said. “For many people, one of the attractions in Maryland is the diversity of our culinary experience.”

Last year, Florida enacted one of the nation’s toughest crackdowns on immigration when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that punishes employers who use undocumented labor and forbids undocumented people from having driver’s licenses.

A recent Wall Street Journal story cited early data that suggests Florida hasn’t seen a significant drop in the number of workers compared with other states since the ban. But the immigration law could also cost the state’s economy $12.6 billion its first year — excluding the loss of tax revenue, the Florida Policy Institute estimated.

Foreman said he estimates immigrants from Latin America comprise about half of the restaurant industry workforce in Baltimore. He added it is impossible to guess what percentage of that population are undocumented.

A mass deportation would not only severely harm the restaurant industry, but also adjacent industries like Johns Hopkins University and technology companies that attempt to recruit talent to Baltimore, Foreman said.

Restauranteur and chef Jesse Sandlin said she tries to be optimistic. But she has a nervous “tickle” in the back of her throat because she worries ICE could come through the city and severely damage the industry’s workforce. She estimates immigrant labor makes up 90% of her kitchen staff across all three of her restaurants, which includes Bunny’s Buckets & Bubbles in Fells Point.

“We would be hard pressed to find multigenerational Americans who would be willing to put in the hours and labor necessary to cover that shortage,” she said.

A half-dozen restaurateurs and executive chefs interviewed for this story declined to be identified out of fear for their staff’s citizenship status, and expressed extreme displeasure with a potential ban.

Stein said she was able to get an extension for an employee with Temporary Protected Status through next year and one with a grant of humanitarian parole (Trump is phasing out the use of humanitarian parole for people emigrating from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.)

She’ll staff her new arepas restaurant when it opens this spring with her existing employees from Alma Cocina Latina, who will simply work additional hours at the new restaurant. She said she also has the daunting task of bringing in two additional chefs from Venezuela, who are currently living in Spain and Norway.

It’s not an ideal solution, she said, but it’s the best she can do now.