Arturo Yanez Peza’s worst week as a restaurant owner didn’t come during the pandemic when he had to temporarily shutter his business, nor during any of the late-summer dry spells when his regular customers at Mr. Pulpo Marisquería flee Indianapolis for vacation. Yanez Peza’s west-side seafood spot has rebounded from slow seasons before, and the restaurateur thought he at least knew what steps he could take to keep his employees and customers safe.
Then came September.
Yanez Peza was breaking for lunch Sept. 2 in the new south-side location of Mr. Pulpo, which opened in May, when one of his employees showed him a video on social media of what appeared to be U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detaining a man not far from the flagship Mr. Pulpo near West 38th Street. At first Yanez Peza thought the video might be fake. Then he saw another. And another.
“What do you guys want to do?” Yanez Peza asked his handful of employees. “If you’re scared, I won’t force you to stay here.”
That afternoon, Mr. Pulpo joined the many immigrant-owned restaurants in Indianapolis that temporarily closed as reports of ICE activity surged throughout the city. Between Aug. 29 and Sept. 5, Indianapolis residents posted dozens of videos and images to social media that showed ICE agents arresting people at their workplaces, gas stations or on the side of the road. Many of the detainees appeared to be Hispanic like Yanez Peza, who grew up in Mexico.
Though Yanez Peza counts himself lucky that none of his friends or family have been targeted, the surge has already had a decided effect on his livelihood. Since Mr. Pulpo’s two locations reopened Sept. 5, Yanez Peza estimates the restaurants have served about 50 combined tables, if that – a concerning drop from his usual traffic. The first few days back in business, Yanez Peza kept his restaurants’ doors locked, opening them only when a customer approached.
The concern Yanez Peza feels for his staff and his customers might be enough to keep his business closed under different circumstances. But after two long, slow summer months for a business with already slim margins, staying closed for much longer could mean never opening back up.
“We have to work,” he said. “We have no option.”
‘They just want to survive’
The south-side location of Mexican and Honduran seafood restaurant Mr. Pulpo Marisquería, 404 E. Thompson Road, is pictured Sept. 9, 2026.
For decades, the restaurant industry has been one of the largest employers of immigrants, with an estimated 25% of all active restaurant workers born outside the United States, according to the National Restaurant Association. But because the vast majority of restaurant work is considered unskilled labor, immigrants working in kitchens often have a harder time gaining legal status than their counterparts in other industries. Another hospitality trade organization, the Independent Restaurant Coalition, has warned that without more straightforward pathways to citizenship for immigrants, many restaurants could be forced to close.
“Many of our immigrant neighbors, including those who have permission to be in the United States and have valid work permits, work in the hospitality industry,” wrote Cassandra Sanborn, director of development and communications at Indianapolis-based Exodus Refugee Immigration, in a statement to IndyStar. “Their work in our hotels and restaurants helps make our community welcoming, and they have been terrified by recent ICE activity.”
Pursuing citizenship, often with the help of a lawyer, is crucial for immigrants who wish to remain in the United States. But it can also be prohibitively expensive or time-consuming, Bluebeard pastry chef and Epicurean Indy co-founder Youssef Boudarine said.
Boudarine, who was born in Morocco and moved to Indianapolis in the mid-2010s, became a citizen shortly thereafter. He said he has heard from restaurant owners who have had immigrant employees, including legal citizens, not come to work recently due to fear of detainment.
Nor is it just back-of-house employees who are afraid; Boudarine noted he and his fellow organizers of the Epicurean international food festival considered canceling this year’s event in part because multiple immigrant-owned restaurants didn’t want to partake in such a high-profile event.
Epicurean Indy and the Chreece hip-hop festival take over Fountain Square on Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026, in Indianapolis.
“Some of them don’t want to risk exposure,” Boudarine said. “They just want to survive.”
Much of Boudarine’s work through Epicurean centers around promoting the diversity of Indianapolis’ dining scene. If immigrant-owned restaurants cannot maintain enough employees or customers to stay open, Boudarine said, Indianapolis’ rapidly growing dining scene would suffer immensely.
“It will delay every development we try to create here,” he said. “We would lose a lot of authenticity.”
‘They look at us differently’
The hospitality industry has been a form of salvation for Yanez Peza. Born in a small town in the east-central state of Puebla, Yanez Peza moved to Columbus, Ind., in 1999 in hope of securing a better life for his family. He got his first job washing dishes at a Cracker Barrel and supplemented that income by picking up shifts at a nearby automotive factory.
After about 15 years of working manual labor and fast-food jobs while helping raise three children, Yanez Peza started selling tacos out of a truck. When he realized he was making more money slinging carnitas than installing roofing, the budding entrepreneur decided to pursue restaurant work full-time. In 2019, Yanez Peza moved to Indianapolis to run his own restaurant.
For more than seven years, Mr. Pulpo has largely been a dream made real for Yanez Peza, who eventually marked the restaurant’s significance on the skin of his right forearm with a sprawling tattoo of a pale blue octopus, or pulpo.
“I was so happy,” Yanez Peza said of the last few years. “I love what I do.”
Things have changed. Yanez Peza said he no longer calls the police if he feels unsafe or if a customer tries to leave without paying. He urges his employees to buy groceries for the whole week at once and to obsessively obey traffic laws when driving.
For the first time in nearly a decade, Yanez Peza occasionally feels truly out of place in parts of Indianapolis due to his appearance as a Latino.
“I’m afraid,” he said. “I can feel how people see us. They look at us differently.”
As Yanez Peza attempts to regain some semblance of normalcy with ICE operations in Indy apparently on the decline, the restaurateur isn’t sure how long he can continue if Mr. Pulpo’s primarily Hispanic customer base feels merely coming in for a meal is too risky. Though he would be more willing to leave Indiana now than when he was raising his children, Yanez Peza isn’t ready to let go of the state he has called home for nearly 30 years.
“I came to work,” Yanez Peza said. “I don’t want to leave. I still have things to do.”
Contact dining reporter Bradley Hohulin at bhohulin@indystar.com. You can follow him on Instagram @BradleyHohulin and stay up to date with Indy dining news by signing up for the Indylicious newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: ‘No option’: When ICE came, Indy restaurants faced impossible choice
Dining and Cooking