When federal agents swarmed the Twin Cities this winter, many customers and workers stayed home, and some restaurants and small businesses cut hours, shifted to takeout only or shuttered entirely, especially in immigrant business corridors.

What kind of economic impact did Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s mass deportation operation in Minnesota, have in St. Paul?

City Hall officials acknowledge their numbers are rough estimates at best, but based on a similar U.S. census data methodology used by the city of Minneapolis a few weeks ago, the Capital City’s foreign-born workers lost an estimated $118 million in income across January and February alone. Officials say the early numbers are approximations, based on census numbers and surveys and anecdotes from employees.

The St. Paul figure dwarfs the $94 million in estimated lost wages in Minneapolis, not that it’s a competition.

“That number … will create a gap in income and hardship in paying for a range of monthly necessities, from food to transportation to housing,” reads a March 9 memo from research analyst Bob Spaulding, prepared for St. Paul’s Department of Planning and Economic Development.

Renters are already falling behind on rent, compounding a housing crisis that existed even before Operation Metro Surge. St. Paul’s analysis found a “rent gap” of nearly $16 million per month, or $31.92 million in total, which again is slightly higher than what Minneapolis estimated. These figures also are approximations with census numbers used with surveys and anecdotal information.

“Though Minneapolis’ population is a third larger than St. Paul, St. Paul has a substantively higher percentage of foreign-born people and percentage of foreign-born people who speak English ‘less than very well,’” Spaulding wrote.

Small-business survey results

St. Paul sent out a small-business survey on Feb. 20 in five different languages and obtained 160 responses within a week. Many respondents reported as much as $500,000 in losses over the previous two months due to a median 50% drop in foot traffic and 40% reduction in sales.

The respondents ranged from restaurants and groceries to entertainment venues, operators of small market stalls and other retailers offering professional or personal wellness services. The city estimated that Operation Metro Surge had an overall negative impact on small businesses of $65 million per month, or $129 million across the two months.

Overall, St. Paul has had a rougher time of it financially than Minneapolis, at least on paper, according to these early estimates. Adding lost wages, rent gaps and small-business impacts together, “demographic differences between the cities actually points to an even deeper collective impact on St. Paul households,” Spaulding wrote.

The city of St. Paul hopes to get more precise figures, which will take more time.

State sales tax

The Minnesota Department of Revenue collects sales tax and remits it to St. Paul each month, and the summary level data that accompanies those remits can lag by several months. For example, the payment that was scheduled to arrive mid-February covered November. January sales tax data may not be available until late this month, or even April.

That hasn’t stopped researchers from doing their best to track a moving target in light of hardships that continue for many immigrant-owned businesses.

“Things are a little on the slow side for us still, so we’re not quite back to our regular hours,” wrote the proprietors of Burrito Mercado, a longstanding grocery and restaurant on St. Paul’s West Side, on social media on March 1.

“We also just wanna say that things are not back to normal in our community, there are many people still not leaving their homes or if they must leave home, they are out with extreme fear,” the restaurateurs wrote. “And it’s gonna take a long time for people to get back on their feet. And it’s gonna take a long time for businesses to get back to any kind of normal, including us.”

Lost wages metro-wide

Looking metro-wide, recent studies from the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and Northstar Policy Action have sought to quantify the economic impacts of Operation Metro Surge across its peak six weeks, from Jan. 1 through Feb. 17.

Their analysis of data provided by a small-business timekeeping and payroll platform, Homebase, finds that the surge likely reduced the number of employees working across the Twin Cities metropolitan area by 2.8% below expectations.

Total hours worked, according to their analysis, dropped 1.9% and the number of small-business locations in operation fell by 1.7%.

What’s that mean in terms of lost wages?

Even seemingly small percentages of lost work hours can have large cumulative effects on wages, as well as upon consumer purchasing power. Depending upon how conservatively impacts are estimated, lost wages likely totaled anywhere from $106 million to $143 million for those six weeks alone, according to the Upjohn Institute and Northstar Policy Action.

The estimate of $106 million in lost wages was based on median hourly wages of $16.93, primarily reflective of average wages in the food service industry, but using higher hourly figures — $28.48 to $34.73 — or greater numbers of lost hours produces even deeper estimated impacts. The data includes a one-day general strike on Jan. 23.

Ripple effects

The researchers acknowledged that tracking financial impacts midstream is an imprecise science.

“It’s early … to try and actually collect data and look at economic outcomes,” said Aaron Rosenthal, research director with North Star Policy Action, interviewed last Friday on “Almanac,” the public affairs show of Twin Cities Public Television.

“Our feeling is there’s a lot of anecdotal reporting coming out, which is really important reporting, about specific businesses being impacted,” Rosenthal said. “But ultimately, the Legislature is in session right now. They need data right now to try and make a decision about how much relief to provide to Minnesotans. … They need to know the scale of the harm done.”

Beyond lost work hours, the researchers said there’s plenty more areas worth probing, from lost school hours to health care impacts and general consumer spending. In terms of lost purchasing power and the ripple effects on the economy at large, “that $106 million actually becomes quite a bit bigger loss for the Twin Cities,” Rosenthal said. “That’s a conservative assumption. … This will ripple all throughout the economy.”

The city of Minneapolis conducted its own analysis early on and estimated that lost wages, restaurant and small-business revenue losses, hotel cancellations and construction impacts exceeded $203 million in overall fiscal hits to the city in January alone.

The city’s lost wages estimate is based on an analysis of American Community Survey data from 2020-2024, which was used to estimate the earnings of foreign-born Minneapolis residents. It did not use data from after 2024.

In January, the Minneapolis Police Department spent more than $5.2 million on overtime pay, which is more than double what they had budgeted for the entire year.

Small-business survey

The Latino Economic Development Center, which is based in St. Paul, conducted its own business survey in January and found that more than half of 92 respondents reported the surge had at the time a “critical” impact on revenue. Nearly two-thirds of small-business respondents reported revenue losses of more than 50%, with some reporting a complete loss of revenue.

Fewer than 20% of small businesses said they were operating normally, as even those stores that remained open suffered customer losses or switched up operations. Many shopkeepers, for instance, kept their storefronts locked so they could screen every visitor at the door.

Some restaurants have since resumed something approaching normal business hours, but others may never recover. In Brooklyn Park, the Crumbs and Coffee restaurant closed in December following the arrest of its head cook, who remains detained in a federal facility. The restaurant remains shuttered, and owners said this month they’re unlikely to reopen without him, according to the Sun Post.

In light of the community’s many pressing needs, organizers with African Economic Development Solutions have already announced the cancellation this year of Little Africa Fest, an annual celebration of African immigrant cultures usually held in August at Hamline Park, just off Snelling and Thomas avenues in St. Paul.

AEDS is redirecting festival funds to emergency grants for struggling businesses, said Bruce Corrie, a concerned economist who shared testimony with the St. Paul City Council on Wednesday.

Corrie calculated the event draws some 3,000 visitors, who spend about $115,000 between them. Add in the money associated with spending on nearby businesses, as well as sponsoring and hosting the event itself, and the total economic loss is closer to $300,000.

In early February, Minnesota State Auditor Julie Blaha joined 15 other state fiscal officers from across the country in sending a joint letter of concern to the White House highlighting how recent immigration enforcement has hurt state revenues and economic stability nationwide.

In light of the surge’s impact on home and small-business income, Ramsey County officials are allowing owners of non-escrowed homestead properties and small businesses to apply for a two-month extension to pay the first half of their 2026 property taxes. For residential non-homestead properties of one to three units, the annual property tax obligation must be below $20,000 to qualify. No late penalties will accrue during the extension. Visit RamseyCountyMn.gov for more information.