Members of Unite Here, a hospitality workers union, have released a report detailing the ways in which the Trump Administration’s immigration policies have inflicted economic damage on industry workers. In the report entitled “Inhospitable,” workers claim Trump’s policies have incited fear regardless of their immigration status.
Unite Here represents 300,000 hospitality workers in U.S. and Canada hotels, casinos, airports, and restaurants. Union president Gwen Mills brought attention to the report’s findings during a roundtable in D.C. this month. Mills claimed “scenes of violence on the streets in our major cities and anti-immigrant rhetoric” are discouraging domestic and foreign travel, putting financial strain on hospitality businesses and workers.
Travel Weekly reports travel to the U.S. was already suffering before protests against ICE broke out in Minneapolis and other U.S. cities. ICE raids throughout the country have stoked fear in small towns as well as big cities Several European nations have also issued travel advisories for U.S. destinations, and the nation’s biggest tourism market, Canadians, has fallen significantly.
Mills also highlighted the effects of federal agent involvement at local hotels in cities like Minneapolis, where an estimated 3,000 ICE officers stayed. She claimed some hotels were forced to temporarily close under these hostile conditions.
Union workers are afraid to come to work over fear of being indiscriminately taken by federal agents. “These are documented workers or U.S.-born workers who happen to be black and brown,” she said. “We have hundreds of members and their families who have not left their house for over a month.”
The U.S. travel industry lost billions of dollars in 2025 because of the Trump Administration’s immigration policies according to The Independent.
