According to the owner of the establishment, customers of a Mexican restaurant in Texas threatened to call immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) employees for their refusal to work maskless.
“This is going on through COVID,” Steven O’Sullivan, an owner of Cantina Barba in Houston, told The Washington Post.
“We threatened to call ICE,” said O’Sullivan. ‘I had a guy just standing there and scolding one of my bartenders and saying to her,’ You’re an absolute moron, you don’t know what you are ‘doing again. If you think these masks will save your life, you’re stupid, ‘blah, blah, blah. Nobody wants to deal with that stuff. “
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced last week that he has withdrawn the state’s mask mandate and allows companies to operate at 100 percent capacity.
“We still strongly advocate that every Texan follows best practices,” Abbot said. “Where we are now is completely different from where we were this time last year, when Texans and Americans didn’t know how to deal with this. For a whole year, Texans have learned the best practice, which is wearing a mask. , and we still strongly recommend that people wear a mask. ”
The Post has listed a number of Texas businesses whose owners say they will require everyone in their facilities to wear face covers for the safety of their employees and customers.
Monica Richards, a co-owner of the Mexican restaurant Picos, said she and her staff have received intimidating messages over the phone on social media and in the store.
“It was just awful,” Richards told the Post. “Unless you’re in our industry, people don’t understand what it felt like, how difficult it was to go through everything we experienced during COVID. If people are negative towards us because we try to stay safe so that this doesn’t keep happening, it just doesn’t make sense for us. “
Federal health officials overturned Abbott’s decision on mask mandates and similar measures taken by governors in states like the Mississippi.
“I understand the need to want to get back to normalcy, but you’re only going to push yourself back if you just put the public health guidelines aside – especially when we’re dealing with any of it. [55,000] up to 70,000 infections per day in the United States, ” Anthony Fauci
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