ICE activity worries Highlandtown businesses as foot traffic drops
ICE activity along Highlandtown’s Eastern Avenue corridor has chilled foot traffic, leaving merchants braced for fewer lunches, fewer shoppers and a weaker street economy.
Highlandtown’s business corridor is feeling the drag of ICE activity in the most visible way possible: quieter sidewalks, nervous customers and merchants who say the flow of daily business has started to thin. Along Eastern Avenue, where shops, restaurants, grocers and art spaces stretch from Ellwood Street to Haven Street, the fear is not just about enforcement itself but about what happens when families change routines and decide to stay home.
That corridor matters to East Baltimore because it is one of the neighborhood’s economic anchors. Highlandtown Main Street describes the strip as a thriving 10-block stretch, and Southeast Community Development Corporation has spent years helping merchants write business plans, find available properties and tap grants for exterior and interior improvements. When foot traffic drops on a street built on repeat customers, the effects can be immediate: fewer lunch orders, lower retail sales and the possibility that small operators cut back staff hours just to stay even.
The anxiety around ICE has deeper roots than the latest sweep. Highlandtown was first settled in 1866 and 1867, when the area was still known as Snake Hill, and the Patterson Park/Highlandtown Historic District reflects waves of European immigration that helped build Baltimore’s industrial base. Today, neighborhood sources describe Highlandtown as a community of immigrants and say the district has become increasingly Latino and Hispanic-oriented, especially along Eastern Avenue.
That history helps explain why the June 2025 enforcement wave landed so hard in Southeast Baltimore. Advocates said at least 16 immigrants had been detained in raids at grocery stores, convenience stores, a Home Depot and other everyday locations. Baltimore City Councilman Mark Parker also confirmed ICE detentions in Highlandtown on June 8, 2025, adding to the sense among residents and merchants that the corridor was being watched.
For a district that had been gaining momentum, the concern is that fear can become its own economic force. In a neighborhood where trust between neighbors helps keep the storefront economy moving, even a short period of uncertainty can change how often people shop, eat and work on one of Baltimore’s most active commercial streets.
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