One side says the move will put low-income people at risk of losing their housing in an already tough market. While another says capping the program will actually improve the rental market for everyone, incentivizing landlords to lower rent.

Carol Ott is the tenant advocacy director of the Economic Action Maryland Fund, a nonprofit organization that advocates for economic and housing justice for lower-income communities. She predicted this policy would be “disastrous” for their clients, around 10% of whom receive some kind of housing assistance. In her opinion, cost-cutting measures weren’t the point of this new policy, she said.

“It’s not about saving money; it’s not about taxpayer dollars — none of that,” she said. “It’s about being cruel.”

But Norbert Michel, vice president and director for the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, which is part of the Libertarian think tank Cato Institute, said the proposed limit would help decrease the cost of rent overall.

“If the government says, ‘Hey, don’t worry about it, we’ll pay for all of your housing,’ and it always does that, then that’s taking a big chunk of market incentives out, and it becomes less affordable in the end,” he said.

More than 50,000 Maryland households utilize the federal housing voucher program, also known as Section 8. The program, funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, provides rental subsidies to people with disabilities or low incomes. Participants pay at least 30% of their adjusted monthly income, and the housing agency covers the difference.

The cap is part of President Donald Trump’s 2026 fiscal year budget, which has not been voted upon yet by Congress, and is still being worked on in committee. If passed, the cap, as part of the budget, will go into effect Oct. 1, the start of the fiscal year.

Housing prices in Maryland, while less costly than in states like New York, California or Florida, hasn’t been static. In Maryland, the average rental price rose 20.5% between 2019 to 2024, according to a Sun analysis of the Apartment List rent estimates monthly report.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development responded to a request for comment by The Baltimore Sun by sending links to previous X posts from Sec. Scott Turner and a recent New York Times opinion essay.

“Compassionate common sense says those who are able to work, should work,” wrote Sec. Turner in a post. “Allowing generations of able-bodied Americans to remain on welfare is not compassionate to them, nor is it fair to the American taxpayer.”

“We can’t disincentivize work and allow able-bodied Americans to settle for welfare benefits,” read one post. “One Big Beautiful Bill work requirements that lift Americans out of dependency and toward a life of self-sustainability,” read another.

Pros and cons of housing vouchers

The majority of those eligible for these services are already unable to receive help because there isn’t enough funding on the federal level, said Daniel Teles, a principal research associate in the housing and communities division at the nonpartisan Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.,-based think tank that conducts social and economic policy research.

Only one in every four low-income households eligible for federal housing services actually gets benefits because the demand is larger than the supply, according to a 2021 report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington, D.C. -based nonpartisan research and policy institute.

Yet a 2015 study published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy found that there wasn’t any significant effect on market rents after the last voucher expansion in the early 2000s.

Still, Teles said he saw some pros and cons to the proposed time limit. On one hand, it would allow housing agencies to cycle through their years-long waitlists more quickly and provide momentary relief in the short term for more individuals, he said.

However, those exiting the voucher program would still not be able to afford their current rental because their income would not be able to match the unsubsidized price, he said.

Landlords must meet the long list of eligibility criteria before they receive tenants, but the benefit they can receive is the guaranteed payments from the housing authority. With the time limits, they could experience higher turnover costs and missed payments from tenants that can discourage them from renting to voucher holders in the future, Teles said.

The time limit could help improve the nation’s rental market, said Cato Institute’s Michel, as landlords enjoying the subsidies will now have to compete with the rest of the market. These landlords would have to lower the prices to attract tenants, dropping rental prices overall, he said.

When the government steps in to cover the rent, it takes away the competitive pressure that landlords would feel to lower prices, Michel said, and as a result, these subsidies artificially inflate rental costs.

“If somebody had rental assistance and now they don’t have rental assistance, that is going to make it more difficult for them,” Michel said. “But the flip side is that the landlord can’t charge as much anymore, so you have to take your pick.”

Bottom line, he said: “If you want to make housing more affordable, you can’t keep subsidizing.”

Daraius Irani is the chief economist for the Regional Economic Studies Institute at Towson University. While he agreed that the federal housing subsidies do lead to higher rents, he said that the housing supply shortage in Maryland plays a larger role within the state. Ultimately, he said, he believes that the vouchers do more good than harm.

“Many individuals who are in these programs are working adults, but the housing costs in some places mean that if they didn’t have Section 8, they’d have to pay fifty percent or more of their income towards housing,” Irani said.

More administrative burdens for housing agencies

In Maryland, the cap could have a significant impact on the population, some of the state’s housing experts said.

The Howard County Housing Commission reopened its waitlist for its federal voucher program after 12 years in 2023 for a month, said its Executive Director Peter Engel. But of the 16,000 applications received, only 3,500 randomly selected received vouchers, he said, before they had to close the waitlist.

“It makes me feel extremely sad for the thousands of people in our county, much less millions of people in the country, who will be hurt by this,” Engel said. “It makes me feel a little hopeless for the future of the country, because we know that that sort of instability hurts kids, makes them do worse in school, makes their prospects for the future worse, and therefore hurts us all as a country going forward.”

In Prince George’s and Howard counties, officials said the voucher time limits will create a burden on the administrative level for housing agencies around the state.

The Housing Authority of Prince George’s County would have increased costs and logistical challenges in enforcing rental time limits and identifying new eligible homes to rent on the program, said Alexis Revis-Yeoman, public information officer for the Prince George’s Department of Housing and Community Development.

The time limit also could force evictions for households that could still be financially struggling — which could have a major impact on the budget resources of all county services, Revis-Yeoman said.

Several of Maryland’s elected leaders spoke out against the two-year cap, urging the Trump administration to rethink its decision, citing rising rental costs and an uncertain economy.

Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a Democrat, called the cap an example of the White House’s lack of connection with the middle class.

“It is clear this Administration does not care about working class Americans and is more focused on giving tax breaks to billionaires,” Alsobrooks said in a statement provided to The Sun.

“Now is not the time to impose arbitrary restrictions on critical resources that help families afford their homes,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, in a statement to The Sun. “Instead, we should work to increase access to affordable housing and good-paying jobs in order to help more Americans achieve financial stability.”

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“It kept happening, and as far as I could see, I couldn’t stop it,” said the 11-year-old, who enrolled in and attended three middle schools in the span of one year. “So, instead of fighting it, [I] just accept it and move on.”

She is one of thousands of students who have become homeless since 2019. In that time, Maryland has seen a 24% rise in homeless students during that time, due to ever-increasing rental and housing costs. At the same time, federal funds allocated to assist homeless students, like tutoring, after-school programs, transportation and school supplies, are being rolled back, further imperiling these children.

The National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth is a Georgia-based nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization that advocates for educational equity for homeless youth.

“Many people don’t understand that youth homelessness is even an issue in our country,” Executive Director Deirdre Nicholson said. “It creates the pipeline to adult homelessness.”

Higher housing costs, growing rates of homelessness among students

Under the federal McKinney-Vento Assistance Act, homelessness doesn’t simply mean living outdoors — it includes students who live in emergency shelters, cars or motels, as well as those who are “doubling-up:” staying with friends or relatives.

While there are about 1.3 million students identified under McKinney-Vento, that number only scratches the surface — there are an estimated 4.2 million youth experiencing homelessness nationwide, Nicholson said. Although the school systems have better tools to identify them, a majority aren’t provided services, she said.

Homeless students in Baltimore City accounted for 5,732 of the student body population for the 2023-2024 school year. Baltimore County came close behind with 2,791, followed by Montgomery County with 1,804, according to Maryland State Department of Education data.

And as inflation has increased, along with the cost of living, so, too, has the cost of housing.

In Maryland, the average rental price rose 20.5% between 2019 to 2024, according to an analysis by The Sun of the Apartment List rent estimates monthly report.

Since 2000, the increase in rents and home prices has risen faster than income in the country, according to a 2024 analysis by the U.S. Treasury. 

Simultaneously, there’s a larger demand for housing than available supply due to increased construction costs, local land-use and zoning restrictions and changing demographics, the Treasury analysis found.

School supplies, laundry: services for homeless students

Students enrolled in McKinney-Vento services can remain in and/or enroll in their school of choice, while also providing transportation, academic support, and other necessary services.

The 11-year-old’s new school helped some, the mother said. It gave them $200 for clothes, as well as school supplies and a new gym uniform under the federal program, the mother said. The school’s guidance counselor also worked with her daughter. (The Baltimore Sun is not disclosing the names of the mother and daughter to protect their safety.)

Schools also connect families with outside resources and organizations to get them back on their feet.

Jennifer Cox founded Empower4life, a Baltimore-based nonprofit organization that provides education and health programs for homeless youth.

This school year, she helped launch a laundry service at one Baltimore County school after a student whose family currently lives in a motel asked to wash his and his siblings’ clothes at school. Now, a lot of families come in to use the laundry machines.

It might sound like a simple thing to go to a laundromat, but families might not even have the funds for it, she said.

Cox said she has observed an increase in the needs of homeless students and families for the services her foundation provides over the past few years.

“These kids are coming home from school and they’re coming to really, really loud, stressful, chaotic, sometimes toxic environments,” Cox said. “These kids are not playing sports. They’re not going to the Boys and Girls Club.”

Homelessness leads to worse academic performance

Homelessness has a drastic impact on young people’s academic progress and well-being, said Melissa Kull, a senior researcher focusing on youth housing instability and mental health at the nonpartisan, nonprofit social science research organization American Institute of Research.

The stressful environment of cycling in and out of stable housing affects cognitive and social development in children, too, Kull said.

Younger children are more likely to develop anxiety and depression, and score lower on early academic tests than students not experiencing housing instability, she said. While, older children are better able to weather changes, because they’re missing school, she said, they may not graduate on time, or at all.

While the data shows an increase in the number of Maryland students experiencing homelessness, the numbers don’t tell the whole story. Some people whose children would qualify for services under McKinney-Vento never report their lack of fixed housing, out of fear, confusion or something else.

Carla and her children became homeless nine months ago after experiencing domestic violence, which landed her and her children in a safe house. She switches among friends’ homes, and her children split time between wherever she’s staying at the time and their father’s home.

Carla didn’t tell the school they had become homeless since she signed a contract with the safe house not to disclose their location, she said. She said she didn’t know her children were eligible for services.

As a result, they didn’t receive any — and at the same time, her children suffered the emotional and academic impacts that homeless children often do.

Her youngest son is autistic and had more frequent outbursts and triggers while in the shelter. Her 12-year-old son’s grades dropped significantly at that time, from As to Cs, she said. But now that they are in more stable conditions, his grades have bounced back.

He couldn’t concentrate and was uncomfortable in their new environment, she said.

She has been unable to find a job that can accommodate her youngest son’s needs as well as pay enough to cover basic needs.

She hasn’t applied for housing assistance because spaces are “nonexistent,” she said. The complex that would allow her children to remain in their school is waitlisted — and the waitlist is closed.

Others have been luckier, finding support at school and even housing.

LovRico Johnson Jr. and his 8-year-old daughter arrived at a Baltimore County shelter, located behind an abandoned school, three weeks ago.

They became homeless four months ago after suffering domestic violence. She has changed schools twice and their experience with housing instability, moving between shelters and hotels,  has taken its toll. Her grades dropped, she refused to do homework and occasionally acted out.

Johnson said he told his daughter’s last school that they were homeless, but that they did nothing more than tell him about some resources. Her new school gave her book bags, school supplies and helped them find a new home they’ll go to at the end of the month, Johnson said.

She is excited to start the third grade soon and is enjoying summer camp in the meantime, she said.

One day, she hopes to become an astronaut and go to the moon.

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At the same time, federal funding for homeless services will decrease by 11% following federal cuts at the U.S. Department of Education, leading to fewer resources available to support homeless students, said Cherie Duvall-Jones, Deputy Director of Communications for Maryland State Department of Education.

Homeless students in Baltimore City accounted for 5,732 of the student body population for the 2023-2024 school year. Baltimore County came close behind with 2,791, followed by Montgomery County with 1,804, data from the Maryland State Department of Education showed.

Prince George’s and Anne Arundel counties numbered 1,245 and 1,234 homeless students among their student body population, respectively.

Baltimore City and Baltimore County have the lowest median household income, with $59,000 and $90,000, respectively, according to 2023 U.S. Census data.

In comparison, Montgomery, Anne Arundel and Prince George’s counties each have a median household income of more than $100,000, per the census.

“It’s hard to overstate how devastating not having a secure residence is for a kid,” YouthREACH MD Principal Investigator Jay Unick said. “It’s hard to complete high school when you don’t even have a place where you can sit down.”

YouthREACH MD is a program run by the University of Maryland School of Social Work and the Maryland Department of Housing and Community, which collects data statewide about youth homelessness.

“We never want folks to be in such unstable conditions,” said Jennifer Laque, Anne Arundel Public Schools’ homeless education liaison.

These children are considered homeless under the McKinney-Vento Assistance Act, which doesn’t simply mean they live outdoors. Under the federal law, homelessness includes living in emergency shelters, cars or motels, as well as “doubling-up,” which means a family is staying with friends or relatives.

McKinney-Vento allows homeless students to remain in and/or enroll in their school of choice, as well as providing transportation, academic support, and other services.

Almost 8% of Baltimore City students are considered homeless by federal law. The next-highest districts are Talbot County, with 7% of its students experiencing housing insecurity, Kent County at 5% and Baltimore County with 2.5%, according to an analysis by The Baltimore Sun of state data.

The states that hold the titles for the highest student homelessness rates are California with 17%, New York with 11%, Texas with 8% — the same percentage as Baltimore City — and Florida with 6%, according to 2022-2023 homeless student data from the U.S. Department of Education. Maryland only has 1% of its student population, according to the data.

Laque told The Sun that her office has seen an increase in McKinney-Vento enrollments in her county over the past three years —  this past year, 200 more students enrolled in services at the district level than the year before.

The result is that students are under greater stress and are often unable to fully engage with their education during the year, Laque said.

There has not been a change in the demographics of these students, Laque said. However, she has seen that more families are staying in motels and motels than in previous years.

The spike in average rental prices in Anne Arundel for the past few years has caused higher eviction rates, leading to more students experiencing housing instability and homelessness, Laque said.

“A lot of times we see that our families are able to get into a home,” Laque said. The issue lies in continuing to make rent — when combined with lack of regular employment, families can face eviction, she said.

But schools are doing a better job of identifying homeless children, too, which has also increased the total number, State Department of Education’s Duvall-Jones said.

Increased state funding and outreach programs at the local level have helped identify students experiencing homelessness and circulated more information about resources available, Duvall-Jones said.

But as these services are sought more frequently, the U.S. Department of Education funding for McKinney-Vento will see a decrease of 11% for the state compared to last year, said Duvall-Jones.

The result is fewer dollars for school districts to provide services like transportation, school supplies and clothes, academic support and mental health support, she said.

The state does not know the exact total amount the state will be awarded for the upcoming school year, but the state is projected to lose $251,000 compared to the previous year, Duvall-Jones said.

Federal dollars for homeless youth services other than McKinney-Vento have also been cut back, Unick said. The pullback of COVID-19 funds and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s pressure to decrease the budget make the resources harder to obtain.

“We’re going to struggle to provide better resources,” YouthREACH’s Unick said. “This current administration has done a good job of holding the line on some of these most vulnerable groups, but …it’s hard to expand services in this environment.”

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Most of the year, Annoh finances her education and housing using scholarship money, but during the summer, her parents have to help her cover rent. And that, she says, is hard.

“I know my parents have a lot on their plates,” she said. Her parents pay rent on their own home, as well as rent on her apartment, and the added expense is a burden. “Not that [the university doesn’t] value their students, but if they valued their students a little more, stuff like this wouldn’t happen,” Annoh said.

Across the U.S., rents have risen in the past few years. And college students, already paying a premium for a four-year education, are feeling the pinch.

The housing affordability crisis in the country stems from a larger demand for housing than the supply available, according to the U.S. Treasury, due to local land-use and zoning restrictions, increased construction costs and changing demographics.

The result has trickled down to college students, many of whom are now renting off-campus apartments in an unusually tight market.

In College Park, rent can range from $890 to $2,800 per person in areas closest to campus, according to the University of Maryland’s off-campus housing database.

Students said that the search and cost of apartment buildings off-campus is stressful, and believe that the university doesn’t provide enough resources to help them find apartments or other housing.

As recent graduate Angelina Ward spoke with The Baltimore Sun, she was packing up her apartment, preparing to move back to Annapolis to live with family.

Ward told The Sun she financed most of her education with grants, but because of FAFSA issues, she had to take out a loan and cobble together three part-time jobs in order to pay her rent. She felt living on campus had been much easier.

“Senior year, when I was physically spending my money and working on my rent, that’s when stress started to accumulate,” she said. “When you’re living on campus, you’re supported and have everything you need.”

The university declined to speak to The Sun by deadline. However, a representative sent The Sun information about its housing efforts.

Outside of the 39 residence halls on campus, the University of Maryland, College Park, offers two apartment buildings specifically for students, with a new one under construction at below-market prices.

Incoming freshmen and sophomores who live on campus are prioritized for on-campus housing. Juniors and seniors can apply if there are units left over.

This year, the university had enough housing for the students who requested it, said University of Maryland Senior Director of Communications Rebecca Aloisi. Some juniors and seniors might not have gotten their first pick of housing, though, due to the size of the sophomore class, she said.

The university has not offered guaranteed housing for all four years for at least 20 years, said Aloisi.

In that time, the population of the city has increased by about 5,000 since 2010, according to U.S. census data.

As a result, the city has seen a much higher demand for housing in the last 15 years, county and city representatives said, and has moved to build more housing. But it’s still not enough, and it’s not cheap enough for students, they said.

“College Park’s housing affordability is not where I would like it to be, but compared to most of D.C. inner and suburban communities, it is actually pretty good,” said College Park City Councilmember John Rigg.

Although the city doesn’t have large pockets to bring large housing projects by itself, College Park uses tax credits for developers to help expand the supply of housing to lower prices, he said.

Unlike many municipalities, College Park does not have the authority to make zoning and land decisions. College Park can advise when it comes to new development projects, but the county has final say.

“It can be challenging,” Rigg said. “The city is the closest democracy to the people.”

Prince George’s County Councilmember Eric Olson’s district encompasses College Park. Olson said he helped pioneer most development projects for off-campus student housing over the past decade, but rents and demand remain high across the region.

Olson believes that it’s more efficient if authority remains with the county.

Tax incentives for off-campus student housing have shrunk over the years, Olson said, since it was first used to incentivize development. Now, however, the county encourages affordability considerations but cannot control prices, Olson said.

But, he said, there are pros and cons to the growth that university students bring to the county and city.

“College Park is in demand,” said Olson. “We’re a thriving, vibrant community where people want to be, and that’s a good thing.

“At the same time,” he said, “We need to continue to look at how we can ensure that we’re a community that everybody can afford to live in.”

Still, some students say they’re scraping together funds for housing. Some even use money that they’ve saved up from part-time jobs they worked in high school — money that should have been a safety net.

Samantha Linares, a 20-year-old junior from Montgomery County, plans to move to an apartment in College Park during the spring semester instead of staying in university housing.

She and her roommates decided to look for housing outside the university because they worried they wouldn’t get housing they liked or even get housing, she said.

Linares found an apartment on Snapchat and negotiated down the rent, ultimately paying approximately $1,000 a month. Linares said she will pay for her apartment with money she’s saved from part-time jobs.

“I’m envious of people who don’t have to worry about it,” she said. “I’m also just fortunate that I have the resources to pay for it myself.”

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UNFI has still not commented on whether the incident was a ransomware attack.

The company said they have contained the incident and restored the IT systems, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing on June 21. The incident did not involve a breach of personal or health information of its customers, UNFI said.

UNFI generates $600 million in weekly sales and boasts about 30,000 customers. However, UNFI said it expects a net income loss in its fourth fiscal quarter of the year because of a reduction in sales and increased direct costs from the incident.

“We are grateful to all our customers and suppliers for their patience and partnership as our UNFI associates continue working to support their needs,” said UNFI’s company spokesperson Grace Turiano in a statement.

UNFI reported “unauthorized activity” on its network, which caused delivery disruptions nationwide, according to the SEC filing on June 9.

The company is the main supplier of Whole Foods Market, which had empty shelves at its Baltimore location last Thursday. On Friday, the shelves are now mostly stacked with products.

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They stood in the back of the store, waiting for any customer to show up. Outside the store, the sidewalks that span Eastern Avenue remained mostly empty.

After recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Highlandtown, they said, their regular customers have become too scared to leave their homes. Soon, they added, the restaurant that they’ve run for five years might run out of money.

Residents said Baltimore has seen an uptick in arrests by ICE since President Donald Trump took office, and a marked increase in recent weeks, though data is hard to come by. The dashboard ICE uses to showcase its data hasn’t been updated since Trump took office, except for some partial bimonthly statistics on arrests and detentions.

Trump promised voters on the campaign trail mass deportation operations because, he said, immigrants who have entered the country illegally present a threat to national security and the public’s safety.

‘Inmigrar no es delito’

Locally, the raids have slowed business by at least 50%, and in some cases, shut down business altogether, several Highlandtown restaurants and barbershop owners told The Baltimore Sun.

The brothers who own the Mexican restaurant are are in the U.S. illegally. They said they may close their restaurant soon and move back to Mexico to avoid being jailed by immigration authorities themselves. The Sun agreed to identify them and others in the country illegally by their first names only, as they fear attracting immigration authorities’ attention.

President Trump ordered the Department of Homeland Security to stop raids on restaurants and fields in mid-June, but  rescinded that order days later. Highlandtown business owners said their clientele never returned.

For Guillermo and Daniel, caught between a struggling business and the threat of deportation, Trump’s immigration policies have upended their whole lives.

“Inmigrar no es delito,” Guillermo said. “Esta desde que existe la humanidad.”

In English, Guillermo said that immigration is not a crime — and people have immigrated all over the world since the start of humanity.

“Es un sentimiento agridulce,” Guillermo said. “Cuando me vaya, va a ser muy triste. Mi vida ha sido mas aqui que en Mexico.”

In English, that means Guillermo feels torn. He’s lived decades in Maryland, far longer than he lived in Mexico, he said.

‘A city of immigrants’

David, who owns another Mexican restaurant in Highlandtown, said his business has been down at least 40% over the past few weeks.

The community is afraid to go out because it might be the last time they see their families, he said. Earlier in June, he said, ICE agents arrested people at the corner near his store.

David and his family came to Baltimore a few years ago, fleeing high New York City rents. Here, they opened their restaurant, and up until now, said they have done well. But the lack of clientele in recent weeks has cut their revenue.

This time last year, David said he bought three boxes of chicken a week to supply his restaurant. Now, he only buys a box and a half. He worries about paying bills like rent, electricity and internet since revenue is down.

He doesn’t know how long they will be able to hold out.

A local representative said while ICE’s presence has been felt throughout his entire district, there are opportunities available for small businesses who are feeling the pinch right now.

District 1 Baltimore City Councilman Mark Parker said businesses that are struggling can contact the Mayor’s Office of Small and Minority Business Advocacy & Development, Safe City Baltimore, and The Baltimore New American Access Coalition, which will provide support to community-based businesses in the form of legal services or economic support.

“Baltimore City has always been a city of immigrants,” said Parker, who represents Highlandtown. “Waves of immigrants from Ireland, Germany and Italy and Greece…from all over the world…have helped to renew, enliven, energize and enrich the city.”

Immigrants an economic strength

Economists in Maryland told The Sun that immigrants are an essential part of Maryland’s economy and they fear that the impact ICE raids have on the area will drive them away. Without immigrants, they said, the economy will lose nearly a billion dollars in state tax revenue, and many essential services immigrants provide will be at risk.

The Maryland Center on Economic Policy is a nonprofit policy and research organization for Maryland state budget, taxes and economic issues. CEO and Founder Benjamin Orr said there is no up-to-the-minute data on how ICE raids are affecting the state economy. He said past data showed that the impact could be massive.

“The governor and the General Assembly had to close the gap approaching $3 billion and if not for the $780 million in taxes that undocumented immigrants paid in state tax dollars, that gap would have almost been $4 billion,” Orr said.

“Maryland’s diversity is among our greatest economic strengths. This environment of uncertainty and fear that ICE creates puts that at risk,” he said.

Maryland is home to more than a million immigrants, who represent 21% of the labor force, according to a 2024 report from the Comptroller of Maryland. Immigrants helped bounce back the labor force post-pandemic as well as offset a population decline in the state, the report said.

Immigrant workers and business owners generated $85 billion of economic output for the state, according to a 2024 report from Immigration Research Initiative, a nonprofit, non-partisan immigration think tank based in New York.

“Devastating” effects

Southeast Community Development Corporation manages programs to help with neighborhood revitalization and local business growth in Highlandtown, among other neighborhoods.

Highlandtown is home to 339 businesses, according to 2025 data by the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance at the University of Baltimore.

The organization’s executive director Carla Paisley said that the majority of businesses in Highlandtown are locally owned.

She said that the decrease in business in Highlandtown is due to a wide range of issues beyond the increased presence of ICE. She cited new federal tariffs, new traffic patterns following the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge last year, and the fact that the area is still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown.

“This is a strong community that’s incredibly resilient. I don’t think we will see businesses leave. We have weathered different storms in different iterations and we are going to find a way that we can thrive,” Paisley said.

Darius Irani, chief economist for the Regional Economic Studies Institute at Towson University, said if Maryland loses workers because of fears of ICE, “It will be devastating.”

Immigrants do the “dirty dollar” work in fields like agriculture, hospitality, restaurants and construction, Irani said — essential jobs without which the nation would collapse.

The majority of blue-collar jobs are done predominantly by immigrants, with 29% of nurses, 33% of childcare workers and 12% of construction workers, according to the 2024 report by the Comptroller of Maryland and Immigration Research Initiative.

“If we lose them, I don’t know who’s going to do some of these jobs.”

Back in Highlandtown, Keko’s barbershop owner Junot Quiñones, a U.S. citizen,  said he moved from Puerto Rico 11 years ago, looking for a better quality of life. He opened his Highlandtown shop three years ago and still maintains a barbershop in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory.

He said he used to get about 50 to 100 clients a week, a mix of Americans and Latinos. Now, he’s just down to 50 clients a week, and most are Americans, he said.

While tapering up his client’s hairline, Quiñones said two of his six barbers left because they feared being taken by immigration officials in Highlandtown.

If business doesn’t pick back up, he said, he might return to Puerto Rico.

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This week, the National Weather Service issued an extreme heat warning for Baltimore residents for Monday and Tuesday. The Baltimore City Department of Health also issued a “Code Red” heat alert until Thursday.

In August, a garbage collector for Public Works died on the job while working in a Northeast Baltimore neighborhood.

Ronald Silver II died of hyperthermia, an abnormally high internal body temperature. That day, Baltimore City’s temperature reached 99 degrees and had a heat index in triple digits.

The heat index is the way temperature feels, in combination with humidity and air temperature.

Silver had suffered symptoms of heat exhaustion for several days and called out sick the day before his death, The Baltimore Sun reported.

The department said Monday that although it would continue to deploy its waste collectors during the current heat wave, it had developed a plan to keep them safe, and was waiting for union sign-off.

The plan includes training, weather and workplace condition monitoring, as well as prevention strategies, according to a copy of the department’s internal heat illness prevention plan.

“With several days this spring and summer already exceeding 90 degrees, DPW has been operating under the plan to safeguard worker health and safety,” Public Relations Coordinator Jennifer Combs said in a statement.

The department alerts supervisors via phone or email when temperatures reach 80 degrees or higher, according to Combs.

Under its heat illness plan, which follows the Maryland Occupational Safety and Health guidelines, the department will conduct health and safety checks throughout the day, Combs said. Residents may see crews take paid mandatory breaks during the day, she said, as well as regularly consume water and electrolytes.

Crews must take 10-minute breaks every two hours when it reaches 90 degrees outside. Once the temperature has reached 100 degrees, Combs said, workers must have a 15-minute break every hour.

“DPW remains committed to the consistent implementation of these safety measures to protect our workforce and uphold a healthy, responsive work environment,” Combs said in a statement.

Combs said the department would suspend collections if necessary.

In March, Baltimore City’s Office of the Inspector General released a report saying the Department of Public Works had neglected to maintain its facilities, citing a lack of water and ice provided to workers as well as nonfunctioning HVAC units.

This story has been updated to correct the temperatures at which certain lengths of breaks are triggered for public works employees.

Have a news tip? Contact Stella Canino-Quinones at scanino-quinones@baltsun.com.

Rhode Island-based United Natural Foods Inc. suffered an attack earlier this month on some of its IT systems that affected delivery for 30,000 customer locations, the company said. Some of the local stores impacted include Shoppers Food & Pharmacy, Whole Foods Market, and The Fresh Market.

UNFI is the largest distributor of natural and organic foods with centers in the United States and Canada and boasts about $600 million in weekly sales. The publicly traded company’s stock dropped 10% on June 10 after the company acknowledged the attack.

UNFI reported “unauthorized activity” in their systems, which made them unable to distribute customers’ orders, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing on June 9.

“The Company promptly activated its incident response plan and implemented containment measures, including proactively taking certain systems offline, which has temporarily impacted the Company’s ability to fulfill and distribute customer orders,” the SEC filing said. “The incident has caused, and is expected to continue to cause, temporary disruptions to the Company’s business operations.”

UNFI is a major supplier of Whole Foods.

“We are working to restock our shelves as quickly as possible and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused for customers,” said a spokesperson for Whole Foods.

A Whole Foods’ senior-level employee, who asked that his name not be used because he’s not authorized to talk to media, said that their store had to pivot to other suppliers to fill the gap left after the cyberattack.

Baltimore Del. Frank M. Conaway Jr. wrote a letter to Shoppers CEO Tim Lowe about the supply shortages after visiting two stores several times during the week and noticing the empty shelves. He asked Lowe for an explanation of what was happening with the shortages.

Conaway and Shoppers did not return requests for comment by deadline.

Inside Mondawmin Mall in West Baltimore on Thursday afternoon, the seafood, meat and produce shelves were empty inside the Shoppers Food & Pharmacy.

Margie Peterson, an 81-year-old resident of Baltimore, said she has shopped at her local Shoppers grocery store for more than 40 years. She said that she’s heard of food shortages up and down the state.

While looking at empty shelves in the meat aisle, “It seems like any downfall hits us first,” she said. “It looks like when something keeps getting better, something keeps pulling it back.”

At Whole Foods in Baltimore, the shelves with trail mix, plant-based snacks, supplements and bottled water were empty on Thursday and apology signs were posted to alert customers.

“We are experiencing a temporary out-of-stock issue for some products,” read a sign inside the store.” This item is temporarily out of stock from the manufacturer,” read another sign.

UNFI’s company spokesperson Grace Turiano released the following statement: “Over the past few days, we’ve made significant progress toward safely restoring our electronic ordering systems, which will allow us to serve the customers that order through these systems in a more automated way and continue to increase our operational capacity. We are also using alternative processes to ensure our customers receive the products they need while we continue making progress to restore our technology capabilities.”

Turiano said that they have no evidence that customer data was compromised but did not respond to questions on whether it could be a ransomware attack.

As of Saturday afternoon, the impacted systems were “up and running as expected,” according to Kristen Jimenez, vice president of communications for UNFI.

“Our customers are using them to place orders electronically,” Jimenez said. “This is enabling us to get more products into more stores, more quickly.”

The cyberattack also comes at about the same time that UNFI plans to close a distribution center in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, with more than 700 employees expected to be laid off in August.

Have a news tip? Contact Stella Canino-Quinones at scanino-quinones@baltsun.com.

The request for the preliminary injunction, filed last Thursday, comes after the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights and the National Immigration Project filed a class action lawsuit against Baltimore ICE Field Office directors, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi. The suit alleged that the ICE facility violates detainees’ constitutional rights and its own policies.

Two former Baltimore facility detainees said they were held for days past the amount of time the facility’s guidelines allow and that they did not have regular access to their medications, food or water.

ICE did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.

“These cases do take time to litigate, but in the meantime, ICE is arresting hundreds of people every day,” said Amica Senior Attorney Amelia Dagen. “It’s important that people are protected from being in those conditions, and without the permanent injunction being granted, then there’s nothing to stop these practices from occurring.”

The lawsuit comes from two Latino women who were detained by ICE in early May.

Both were in the country legally and have resided in Maryland for years, according to the lawsuit. They are not identified by name, but one is from Guatemala and the other from El Salvador.

Baltimore’s ICE holding facilities are meant to hold detainees for a short time while they are moved to another detention facility or processed for release, according to the suit. The time period cannot exceed 12 hours, according to ICE’s own 2024 directive, which is cited in the suit.

However, the two women were detained for 48 and 72 hours, the complaint said. Other detainees were held for more than a week, per the complaint.

The women were denied medical treatment and their medications while in the facility, the complaint said, alleging that ICE also did not provide adequate bedding and conditions for sleep, or sufficient access to drinking water, food and basic hygiene items.

The women and others also were denied access to cell phones to contact family members or their lawyer, the complaint said.

The number of people held in the facility currently held or over the past few months is unknown, said Dagen. The lawsuit said cells often hold multiple people, depriving them of privacy when using the bathroom.

ICE data has remained sparse since President Donald Trump, who promised mass deportations on the campaign trail, took office in January. This comes at a time that ICE has ramped up arrests in Baltimore.

The women have been moved to a long-term detention facility outside of Maryland, Dagen said. In March, the judge ruled to suspend deportation of the two women while the case is ongoing.

“Nothing has changed,” Dagen said. “Nothing has materially improved since we started hearing reports about the horrible conditions at the Baltimore health office months ago in March.”

We have heard that this is happening in other ICE field offices around the country,” Dagen said.

U.S. District Judge Julie Rebecca Rubin presides over the case. The hearing for the preliminary injunction will take place next month.

Got a news tip? Contact Stella Canino-Quinones at scanino-quinones@baltsun.com. 

Despite regular news releases trumpeting arrests and detentions of immigrants, the federal immigration agency — Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE — has sharply reigned in actual data releases on its activities, and in some cases, stopped entirely since President Donald Trump took office.

In theory, ICE publishes data on its website bi-monthly and quarterly detailing arrests, removals, and detentions, as well as pertinent demographics of those individuals, such as their country of origin and the region in which they were arrested.

But the dashboard ICE uses to showcase the data hasn’t been updated since Trump took office, except for some partial bimonthly statistics on arrests and detentions. A 2020 Congressional bill requires ICE to publish the bimonthly data.

At a time when fears are heightened and immigration officials are pushing for increased rates of deportation, experts say the agency needs to post its data at a faster rate.

“It’s important for us to be able to see,” said Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, practice and policy counsel for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “Are they detaining as many people as they say? Are they deporting as many people as they say? Are they detaining or deporting more people than they are … letting on?” 

At the same time, protests against ICE raids span the country. This week alone, protestors in Maryland gathered at three different sites because of a perception of increased ICE detentions.

ICE did not respond to repeated requests for comment by the deadline.

Who uses this data?

The banner at the top of ICE’s website links to an explainer on how to self-deport.

“ICE Rio Grande Valley conducts worksite enforcement resulting in 25 arrests,” read one headline. “ICE conducts worksite inspection at Baton Rouge massage parlors,” read another. It also features a 100-day news release, in which the agency announced 66,463 arrests of undocumented individuals since Jan. 20.

But real numbers have been hard to pin down, despite these news releases, and a number of organizations rely on the data to inform their work.

Government officials and private companies involved in the field of immigration use the data to track the effects of legislation and policies. The American Immigration Lawyers Association uses the statistics to track the effects of legislation on immigrants, said Dojaquez-Torres. The data allows her organization to determine if promises of mass deportations are coming to fruition, she added.

“It’s critical to policymakers to have this kind of data that organizations like mine can analyze and compare policies and their effectiveness and compare the records of the agency over time,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies of the Center for Immigration Studies, an immigration think tank. Vaughan helped the first-term Trump administration design its deportation guidelines and the center’s research is cited by the Trump administration on policy decisions.

Vaughan, too, uses the data, but instead uses it to track transnational gang members, as well as keep records of jails across the nation that have not cooperated with ICE.

Ernesto Castaneda, director of policy research group The Immigration Lab and professor at American University, told The Baltimore Sun that visualizing this data holds the government accountable to its goals and contrasts what administration officials say with reality.

Why is the data delayed?

Immigration lawyers and data analysts say they don’t know why the Trump administration has delayed publication of its monthly and quarterly data. Some speculate that the arrests and detention numbers aren’t hitting their desired benchmarks.

Or, it might not be a priority for the administration to publicize the data in a timely manner, said Dojaquez-Torres.

But another reason for the delay could be the sharp uptick in ICE arrests, Castaneda said.

The entire immigration system — from ICE officers to immigration courts — is overwhelmed by the amount of incoming cases, he said, and that creates a bottleneck.

It’s not due to lack of personnel, but rather that the agency likely doesn’t see a benefit of releasing more information, Vaughan said. But, she said, that shouldn’t be the case.

“ICE is one of the biggest law enforcement agencies in the country with an important mission, and the public should have access to information about what they’re doing,” Vaughan said.

Got a news tip? Contact Stella Canino-Quinones at scanino-quinones@baltsun.com.