As in Washington, D.C., the ongoing presence of Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Chicago is having a negative impact on local retailers—especially, in the Windy City, on two indie bookstores that sell Spanish-language titles and bilingual editions.

¡Viva! Los Libros, located in a shared space inside the Pilsen Arts & Community House, specializes in bilingual and Spanish-language books and operates pop-ups around Chicago. Owner Nina Sánchez reports that foot traffic is significantly down in the shared space in Pilsen, a neighborhood with a large Mexican American population that is being directly targeted by DHS and ICE agents. Sales are also down at ¡Viva! Los Libros, Sánchez said, and there are fewer customers at pop-ups since federal agents were deployed to the city in September.

Sánchez told PW that she and her employees “see a direct correlation between ICE raids in neighborhoods and turnout to events in those areas. To mitigate risk to our booksellers and the community, we have opted to do fewer pop-ups and we are offering $3 flat rate shipping to anyone who wishes to have their books shipped or delivered.”

Emphasizing that the safety of ¡Viva! Los Libros customers is her top priority, Sánchez said that new procedures for pop-ups include requiring RSVPs from customers if they want to receive the address for the pop-up; posting signs prohibiting entry of DHS and ICE agents; assigning staff to monitor entry points; verifying that the venue's employees have received “Know Your Rights” training and that the location has a safety plan; and training booksellers to know their legal rights and also how to respond and document DHS and ICE agent sightings.

“We endeavor to leverage our literary spaces and books in service to the healing, comfort, and support of our community,” Sánchez said. “In this moment, the actual selling of books must be secondary to this priority. We choose to live our values 24/7.” To this end, in the first week of November, ¡Viva! Los Libros will donate bundles of bilingual and Spanish-language books to 25 schools in the neighborhoods most targeted by agents.

Last spring, ¡Viva! Los Libros organized a readathon fundraiser which raised $3,000 for immigrant rights organizations. More recently, it launched a fundraiser in support of two Chicago-based organizations: Organized Communities Against Deportations and the Street Vendor Relief Fund. “Through this campaign, we will donate 100% of the proceeds of the sale of a custom-designed tote bag to these organizations,” Sánchez said.

This store needs friends

The situation is even more dire at Los Amigos Books in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood, which also sells Spanish-language titles and bilingual editions. Los Amigos started out as an online bookstore that morphed into a pop-up, owner Laura Rodríguez-Romaní told PW. She opened a brick-and-mortar store in suburban Berwyn, Ill., in 2022, but moved into the city itself in the summer of 2024. Rodríguez-Romaní acknowledged that it was “already a little bit of a struggle” to build a customer base in Bucktown, and since the appearance of ICE customer traffic has take a significant decline.

Moreover, “the Latino community is feeling very anxious,” she said. “Everyone's being very cautious and only going out for necessary things.” While agents have not appeared on her street, there have been reports that ICE agents were harassing people at a grocery store nearby, in Logan Square, another neighborhood targeted by federal agents.

“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.”

As if the lack of foot traffic into the store wasn’t bad enough, Los Amigos is also a distribution company that supplies books to schools with dual-language programs in Chicago and across the U.S. “We import half of our inventory from Spain and from Latin American countries,” Rodríguez-Romaní said. “Because of tariffs, we really haven't been able to do that after we got hit with a 25% tariff from a shipment that we did back in April from Spain. It wasn't a charge that we could have absorbed as a business.” Los Amigos had to raise the prices on those books from Spain, some of which remain in stock, because now they are too expensive for customers.

The Trump tariffs—which, Rodríguez-Romaní points out, are paid not by international companies but by those importing products into the U.S.—have perhaps irreparably impacted Los Amigos’s business model. “The way that we stand out from other booksellers and indie bookstores is by offering these special, unique titles that are not available or in distribution elsewhere in this country,” she said. Los Amigos has not imported any books into the U.S. since April and now must offer books to school districts that are readily available from other companies in the U.S., sometimes at a lower price.

Being a good ally

While indies across the Windy City that PW spoke to have placed signs on their doors forbidding entry to federal agents, and several have held fundraisers for such organizations as the Midwest Immigration Bond Fund—an organization that posts bond for people who have been detained by ICE—one indie known for its community service and left-wing political stances is taking it a step further.

Mandy Medley, a worker-owner at the employee-owned Pilsen Community Books, says that while there hasn’t been a significant impact on sales since federal agents were deployed to Chicago, “the neighborhood feels very different." While what she called “masked vigilantes” are roaming the streets, other various groups, some established, and others newly-formed, are doing their best to protect area residents, and PCB worker-owners “have just been trying to find ways to contribute” to those efforts, Medley said.

PCB, Medley noted, is participating in a Migra Watch group, training people on how to identify DHS and ICE agents and effectively document their activities. “The hope is that if we catch them illegally detaining folks, and we have proof of that,” Medley explained, “we can prevent that action in the future.”

The store is also distributing anti-ICE signs to other local businesses and preparing and distributing informational literature that explains people’s legal rights. “This is not a time to try and remain neutral,” she insisted. “Neutrality doesn't exist when our neighbors are being kidnapped off the street. We booksellers always talk about being third spaces, and that means coming out in support and protection of your neighbors, not just opening your door to any federal agent that wants to come in. It's the responsibility of every indie bookstore to do what they can, to get involved in the community.”

Mandy Medley's surname was incorrect in an earlier version of this story and has been corrected.