Tense days for business owners with no legal status

As many as 10 percent of the 11 million immigrants in the U.S. without legal residency own businesses in the country, by some estimates, and many are selling their enterprises, transferring them to relatives or closing altogether to avoid a total loss if they are abruptly deported.

They include people like Mauro Hernandez, from Mexico who operates a small chicken takeout restaurant on immigrant-heavy Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, New York. He is trying to sell.

There are Carmen and Jorge Tume, from Peru, who have scaled back their car wash business in Miami because they are afraid of being stopped by police and turned over to immigration.

“We don’t have any hope left,” said Carmen Tume, 50. “Everything we built is coming down.”

Hernandez, whose business was registered in the name of a friend who is a legal resident, said he is selling because he doesn’t want his partner to get stuck with it if he is deported. “Since Trump won I have been very nervous,” he said.

It’s impossible to say exactly how many are taking such measures, but Jorge Rivera, a lawyer who advises immigrant clients, sees a clear trend. “Everyone is taking precautions,” he said. “They don’t want their business to disappear overnight and be left with nothing.”

Those selling often s take a loss. Under Trump, detentions of immigrants in the country illegally rose 37 percent over the first six months of the year compared with the same period in 2016.