Before Candice Bruno bought Old Major, the Pigtown bar and restaurant known for its authentic Caribbean bar food and community events, it was a cop bar called the Cockeyed Cow.
“I spent time during the renovation process really getting to know the locals — the patrons of the Cockeyed Cow,” said Bruno, “I got the beers they wanted. It was a very dive-y place at the time. Not a lot of diversity. They were watching, you know, Westerns on the television.”
Bruno says that when she was first looking at real estate in the area, she’d wanted to open a thrift store, but the former bar property was listed at a reasonable price and she saw some promise in the community. She’d seen firsthand in D.C. how previously disinvested neighborhoods had transformed with the help of small businesses.
At first, Bruno tried to serve food that the previous clientele was accustomed to: mozzarella sticks and wings. Eventually, though, she felt it was important to curate a menu that was more faithful to her Bahamian roots and her significant other’s Guyanese heritage.
“At some point I just said, you know, we’ve got to do things that we understand, and that’s where we started to put Caribbean items on the menu, which is now our focus,” says Bruno.
Now, Old Major bears little resemblance to its former dive bar origins. The bar is warmly lit with string lights and decorated with festive garlands. They sell books from a nook in their dining area that includes “Animal Farm,” the Orwell novel from which the name “Old Major” originates. Upstairs, the bar regularly hosts free open mics, literary events, and silent book clubs.
And it’s a 100% immigrant-owned and -staffed establishment, a decision that is reflected in their clientele, community programming, and their chicken curry, which doesn’t skimp on spice.
In Baltimore, immigrants own roughly 21% of local businesses.
Bruno is just one of the many immigrant business owners in Baltimore City that are quietly influencing the city’s dining and entertainment culture. In Baltimore, immigrants own roughly 21% of local businesses. That’s good news for people in Baltimore who like to go out — it means that, on any given night, your break from routine can include trying food that’s completely different from anything you can make at home, listening to music you’ve never heard before, and meeting a variety of people from different backgrounds. If you’re one of the 366,000 immigrants living in Baltimore, it can also be incredibly heartening to find neighbors that have also had to learn how to call an unfamiliar place home.
Bruno says that some patrons still insist on more traditional bar options on the menu, but for the most part, her expression of her immigrant roots in her business decisions has helped more people feel welcome at Old Major. That’s probably because the patrons of the Cockeyed Cow weren’t exactly representative of the community as a whole. Pigtown has one of the most racially diverse populations in the city, with 52% of residents identifying as African American and nearly 7% as Hispanic.
Early in the pandemic, Bruno began to observe more immigrant populations, and specifically Hispanic and Latino residents, in the community. She learned that Southwest Baltimore Charter School across the street and Charles Carroll Barrister a couple blocks away both have large populations of ESL students. But her interactions with immigrant populations in Pigtown only really started to develop after she began doing a weekly food giveaway with Food Rescue Baltimore in 2020. It became evident that not only was there a larger immigrant community than was first evident in the neighborhood, there was also a need for community services like the food giveaway. When it was rumored early this year that ICE raids were imminent, Bruno was concerned.
“I do social media,” she said. “It would show people that looked like they were of Latino heritage, and I kind of dialed it back a bit. I just wasn’t sure. You never know who you could trust in the community who sees that.”
Although Bruno reports that Old Major has not had any direct interactions with ICE, neighbors have sent her messages about seeing ICE vehicles in the community and, in one case, attendees at the food giveaway said that someone who was not of Latino heritage joked about calling ICE because someone had cut in front of them in line.
Since the Trump administration has vowed to execute “the largest domestic deportation operation” in U.S. history, many immigration advocates are saying that it’s the rhetoric that is resulting in real consequences for immigrants, documented and otherwise. In Baltimore, where nearly one fifth of workers in the leisure and hospitality sector self-identify as immigrants, this rhetoric has translated to high workforce turnover and strain on understaffed kitchens.
Carlos Raba, the James Beard award-nominated chef and co-owner of Clavel, emphasizes that immigration policy in the U.S. is a bipartisan issue, and one that can be addressed by specific Congressional measures. In September, he joined a group of lawmakers and food and business leaders to call on Congress to act on already-proposed immigration solutions after the midterm elections in November. The proposals before Congress include the Senate’s Dream Act of 2025 and the SECURE Act, which aim to create pathways for permanent residency for immigrants who came to the U.S. as children or who have been continuously present in the U.S. for at least 3 years. There are also two bills that would extend Temporary Protected Status for workers from Haiti and El Salvador. TPS designation is provided for foreign nationals whose home countries have been deemed unsafe for return by Homeland Security. The current administration has aggressively moved to terminate or decline renewal for all individuals currently holding TPS.
There are currently nearly 1.3 million immigrants and asylees in the U.S. who hold TPS status, and nearly 34,000 in Maryland.
“These are not just numbers, they are families,” Raba said at his appearance before Congress. “They have built their lives here, raised their families here, and their children go to school with our children. They work, pay taxes, own businesses, and help build our communities every day.”
“These are not just numbers, they are families,” Raba said at his appearance before Congress. “They have built their lives here, raised their families here, and their children go to school with our children. They work, pay taxes, own businesses, and help build our communities every day.”
“If we lose these people, the impact on our communities and our economy will be enormous. This is not just a TPS issue, this is a community issue.”
Immigration policy shifts in the next few years could have huge repercussions on the hotel and healthcare industries as well, which are the backbone of Baltimore City’s economic landscape.
“The people that clean, the people that make food, the nursing staff — those are also immigrants, and some are TPS holders and Dreamers,” Raba said in an interview with Baltimore Beat. “They’re not considered the industry, but yes, they are the industry.”
Raba shared that one of his former employees at Clavel had been seeking asylum for eight years and had worked at the restaurant for seven. When the employee went to court to renew her work permit for another two years, her asylum application was denied and ICE detained her at the courthouse. Following the proceedings, she voluntarily self-deported.
“She didn’t want to be put into the system. She has two kids born in the United States,” he said. “So she had to flee the country. She was here for eight years, part of the community.”
“You are constantly vigilant,” said “Yusuf,” a former restaurant server who asked that his real name be withheld for his safety. “I’ve heard some people left their work because it was really difficult for them to deal with when there are people around them just constantly getting deported. I haven’t had any problems, but I was vigilant because, even if you have the paperwork, they’ll take you.”
In interviews with the Beat, several other workers expressed similar sentiments, though all preferred to remain anonymous to protect themselves and other immigrant workers in their places of business. They are identified by pseudonyms.
“Luis,” also a server, also described feeling a heightened surveillance at the beginning of the year following massive expansions of ICE operations in many cities.
“I started carrying my green card with me, which is something you shouldn’t do because if you lost that it’s very hard to replace,” he said, “I was afraid that if someone pulled me over or someone came into the restaurant I could be in the crossfire of that. I do know that for a lot of people in the kitchens, it has been nerve-wracking.”
There have been instances of ICE entering Baltimore City restaurants and detaining kitchen staff, but restaurants are primarily facing a barrage of bureaucratic upheaval.
There have been instances of ICE entering Baltimore City restaurants and detaining kitchen staff, but restaurants are primarily facing a barrage of bureaucratic upheaval. Restaurants are facing increased scrutiny of the paperwork used to verify employees’ work authorization. While federal law requires employers to complete Form I-9 for new hires, an electronic system called E-Verify allows participating employers to check that information against government records. It’s becoming more common for the state and federal government to require employers to use E-Verify, which can expose restaurants to civil penalties when workers make errors in their paperwork or are missing documentation.
“It’s causing this bureaucratic red tape nightmare for the restaurant industry, which has traditionally been libertarian, in terms of business owners,” says Sarah Fouts, a professor at UMBC whose research specializes in food, immigration, and labor. “Now they’re being regulated by this bureaucracy that’s really impacting managers and bosses to have to go through extra paperwork and be penalized for noncompliance.”
Mistakes in I-9 and E-Verify forms, which must be provided in English, are difficult and expensive to fix, Fouts explains. Even for workers whose first language is English, the legal jargon used in the paperwork can be complicated. And hiring workers who require specific temporary visas or permanent sponsorship involves even more extensive paperwork.
Because of these structural barriers, some business owners have simply decided not to hire undocumented workers or immigrants more broadly. Putting aside the humanitarian perspective, this limits business owners considerably. Restaurant work, especially in the back of house, is specialized and requires long physical hours, often without predictable scheduling. Perhaps because of the precarity of their work authorization, immigrant workers are often the only ones who will reliably put in the hours and labor.
“The physical and mental toll was really high,” said Yusuf. “At some point I was working 60-something hours because two people got fired. The owner was telling me, okay, look, take more hours and then I’ll make you a manager. I think I already deserved it at that point, but I was always down to work. I didn’t realize how terrible it was going to be working 12 hours every day for five, six days.”
It makes sense that many managers and owners in the restaurant industry have finally started publicly advocating for policy change. It’s become an economic issue rather than just a social one.
Economic concerns might move the needle on policy, but ultimately it’s the people in the industry that make us want to dine out. Creativity, drive, consistency, and hospitality are hallmarks of Baltimore’s restaurant experience, and they’re not just disembodied qualities — they are exemplified by the largely immigrant workforce that leads and staffs the city’s restaurants.
“I love the fact that hospitality, it’s this idea of making people feel more special,” said Luis.
He also said that his enthusiasm for his work is influenced by his culture: “Venezuelans are known in Latin America, at least, as these fast-talking, very nonchalant people. Less preoccupied with what people think about them and more with having a good time. I think that influences how I approach how I do things.”
Many of the workers the Beat spoke to worked in different industries in their home countries and came to restaurant work for a variety of reasons. Luis had worked in advertising for seven years before teaching cinema in Venezuela. Yusuf had previously been a teacher at a women’s high school specializing in nursing. A restaurant owner originally from Ethiopia said that he came from generations of textile workers and had briefly worked in parking management. They felt an alignment with restaurant work that has kept them working in the industry despite the challenges.
All of them expressed that they had found an accepting and gratifying community in Baltimore.
Luis found that community in his neighborhood, which he says is made up of artists and progressives. He also found it within restaurant kitchens. “In every restaurant I’ve worked at, the back of the house is usually more Latino immigrants, and it’s always nice to meet people from other countries with different perspectives of what it is to be Latino,” he said. “I truly believe it’s not just one thing. So it becomes this beautiful brotherhood that you find with people from El Salvador or people from Honduras or Central Americans.”
That kind of connection is crucial in an industry where immigrant workers experience so much precarity. It’s part of why Bruno wanted to start her own bar. On a Saturday evening, as she and her sister Yoly man the bar and prepare for a steady influx of diners and drinkers, they reflect on how Old Major has changed in the roughly eight years since Bruno bought it. The community has stayed the same, but the number of people that feel welcome dining at Old Major has expanded since it changed ownership from the Cockeyed Cow.
Despite operating amid economic pressures, changing immigration enforcement, and labor instability, Bruno’s insistence that Old Major responds to the community’s needs is what’s contributed to that change.
“I do love it,” said Bruno, “It ministers to me on a level that’s hard to explain, but it’s something I feel I have to do.”