In Chicago, the combination of Trump administration trade policies and the deployment of DHS and ICE agents this past fall has had a devastating impact on local retailers serving the Latinx community—and particularly on children’s bookstore Los Amigos Books, which specializes in Spanish-language titles and bilingual editions.
Store owner Laura Rodríguez-Romaní first launched the indie in 2021 as an online bookstore, and in 2022 moved into a physical storefront in suburban Berwyn. Two years later, the store move into the Windy City’s Bucktown neighborhood, where it is currently located.
Before the pandemic, store owner Laura Rodríguez-Romaní taught fifth graders in a public school dual-language program that stipulated that there be parity in the percentage of Spanish- and English-language books shelved in the school library, but it was difficult for Rodríguez-Romaní and her colleagues to obtain high-quality Spanish-language books that appealed to their students.
“It became a passion project of mine,” Rodríguez-Romaní said, recalling that she became so committed to finding and purchasing books for the program that she trained as a librarian, which involved a visit to the annual Guadalajara International Book Fair.
“I brought back a bunch of beautiful books back for our library,” she said. “It was an amazing experience, and every year I would go back and do the same.”
She soon decided to focus her energy on making Spanish-language books accessible to Latinx families throughout Chicagoland, first through an online store. But she soon wanted to provide a physical space for such families to celebrate their language and culture, moving her bookselling operation to a brick-and-mortar location.
Rodríguez-Romaní said that she has observed a significant drop in foot traffic since federal agents were deployed to Chicago in September, acknowledging that it already had been “a little bit of a struggle to begin with” to build up a customer base in Bucktown. “We had a great customer base in Berwyn,” she said, “but because we’re a little bit removed from there, we had to almost start anew.”
Now, with ICE's presence in Chicago, Rodríguez-Romaní, “the Latino community is feeling very anxious,” and as a result, community members are “being very cautious and only going out for necessary things.” Los Amigos currently offers free delivery to customers within a one-mile radius who make at least $100 in purchases. A registry was also created to allow people to donate books to children attending public schools located in the neighborhoods most targeted by ICE, including Pilsen, Little Village, Humboldt Park, Gage Park, and Brighton Park, as well as suburban Cicero.
But the situation with ICE is so untenable, Rodríguez-Romaní said, that she now keeps the store’s door locked, so that customers have to ring the doorbell for entry—which is happening less and less, as foot traffic continues to dwindle.
“It’s getting hard to justify remaining here, having to pay rent, when nobody’s coming into the store,” Rodríguez-Romaní said. “We're having to sign up for a lot of community events to make ends meet, but those come with a cost as well.”
Tweaking the business model
After the holidays, Los Amigos will open its doors to customers only on weekends, as it transitions into a book distribution company providing Spanish-language and bilingual books to schools and libraries across the country.
But as it prepares to pivot its business model, Los Amigos still must contend with more than ICE agents keeping customers away: it must also deal with the widespread confusion regarding what imported products are subject to tariffs and what products are not.
In April, the store was hit with a 25% tariff on a shipment of children’s books from Spain. Rodríguez-Romaní said she wasn’t sure “if it was an error on the U.S. Customs code used on our shipment or if it was an error on DHL's part,” noting that, at the time, she did not realize that U.S. Customs imposing a tariff on a shipment of books was in violation of the exemption for informational materials.
“We’re currently seeking clarification on the matter and potentially a refund,” she said, disclosing that Los Amigos temporarily halted shipments of books from Spain and Central America, because it could not absorb the cost of that April shipment and the possibility of tariffs being imposed upon subsequent shipments.
Los Amigos recently resumed ordering books from Mexico and Spain and, Rodríguez-Romaní said, “hopefully we don’t run into the same issues with the incoming orders.”
Even as she expressed the hope that the Trump administration will clarify its tariff policies—which would allow Los Amigos to return to importing books “as regularly as we did in the past,” when imports made up 50% of the store’s inventory—Rodríguez-Romaní explained that it still might not be enough, due to government cuts in funding for public education, particularly Title III programs that help K-12 grade students from immigrant families attain proficiency in English.
The cuts, Rodríguez-Romaní pointed out, “make it very hard to carry out the program: you can’t pay qualified staff, or obtain the necessary resources, like books and textbooks. Those schools are our clients. They purchase books from us; if they have no funds, we get no orders.”
