According to the owner of the establishment, the owners of a Mexican restaurant in Texas threatened to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees for refusing to work without masks.
“This has been going on through COVID,” Steven O’Sullivan, owner of Cantina Barba in Houston, told the Washington Post.
“We’ve had threats to call the ICE,” O’Sullivan said. “I had a guy who was there and he would pick up one of my waiters and say, ‘You’re an absolute idiot, you don’t know what you are.'” He’s doing it. “No one wants to deal with these things.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced last week that he was stepping down from the state mask mandate and allowing companies to operate at 100% capacity.
“We still strongly advocate for all jeans to follow best practices,” Abbot said. “Where we are today is completely different from what we were at this time last year, when jeans and Americans didn’t know how to deal with it. For a whole year, jeans have learned best practice and it’s wear a mask, and we still recommend that people wear a mask “.
The Post chronicled several Texas companies whose owners say they will require any of their establishments to wear safety covers for their employees and customers.
Monica Richards, co-owner of Mexican restaurant Picos, said she and her staff have received harassment messages on social media and the store over the phone.
“It was horrible,” Richards told the Post. “People do not understand unless you are part of our business how it felt, the difficulty of going through everything we went through during COVID. That people are negative towards us to try to keep us safe, so that this does not continue to happen, it makes no sense to us. “
Federal health officials have criticized Abbott’s decision on mask warrants and similar moves by governors in states like Mississippi.
“I understand the need to want to get back to normal, but you’ll only back down if you just set aside public health guidelines, especially when we’re dealing with anywhere [55,000] to 70,000 infections a day in the United States ” Anthony Fauci
Anthony FauciSunday shows preview: Manchin makes the rounds after a key role in the coronavirus relief debate Night defense: the White House open to power reform | An army base could house migrant children Fauci scolds military overnight vaccine Health care: CDC study links masks to fewer deaths from COVID-19 | Relief debate stalls in the Senate Biden faces criticism for pushing vaccination of MORE teachers he said this week.