ROCHESTER, Minn. — The owner of Nupá Mediterranean restaurants, said he hopes to have an immigrant employee back on the job soon — after a two-week ordeal in jail as an alien federal detainee. George Psomas confirmed reports from the U.S. immigration court that a judge has ordered that the man be freed, as also his brother. The brothers, both native to Mexico, were seized Gestapo-style by ICE agents on February 12 without arrest warrants. The arrests were on a Nupá parking lot. The men were hauled off to a far-away jail in Albert Lea without informing anyone. A Nupá co-worker, however, happened to witness the ambush. Now an immigration judge has accepted a statement from the brothers’ attorney, Hannah Brown, that neither brother has a criminal record in the United States or anywhere else. After the arrests, Psomas went online to support the brothers “We are mourning the loss of Nupá family and the devastating impact it has on our small business,” Psoma said. He had to close one of his locations because he was short-handed. One of the brothers had been in the United States since 2016, the other since 2018. They had worked four years at Nupá. About the brothers, Brown told the immigration judge: they’ve really hadestablished themselves in the Rochester community. Hundreds of sympathizers, many of them coworkers and Nupá customers, went on Facebook to support the brothers. The Communities Organizing Latine Power and Action put together a downtown demonstration in front of the elegant Kahler Hotel in downtown Rochester. The case was negative public attention for warp-speed ICE raids without warrants against brown-skin immigrants under the new Trump administration. Critics say the arrests, 20,000 in a month nationwide, are a campaign to scare and bully brown-skin immigrants with unwarranted and reckless arrests.
Two Rochester locations: 1035 Civic Center Drive Northwest and 412 Crossroads Drive.
Two Nupá servers. Posing for promotional shot. Neither of them is one of the arrested brothers.