Why this shopping center is a ‘ghost town’ with federal agents in Raleigh
Amparo Beauty Salon was quiet on Wednesday.
Only one customer stepped into the Cary shop during the early afternoon, and his departure after a quick cut left the salon’s five chairs sitting empty.
The three stylists working there chatted and scrolled through their phones. One styled another’s hair. Time moved slowly.
Kimberly Evans — owner of Amparo in Cary and Salon Evans in Raleigh — said immigration enforcement activity in the Triangle this week has hit both locations hard.
Salon Evans, her Raleigh shop, is closed for now.
She said they closed Tuesday — and remained closed Wednesday — because of immigration action in the northeast Raleigh shopping center on Tuesday. Federal agents detained an employee from a neighboring business, she said.
“You go to either shopping center, you’re gonna notice it’s completely empty. People don’t want to leave their homes,” she said.
It looks “like a ghost town,” she said.
Trey Small, the owner of Underground Art, a tattoo shop in the same center as Salon Evans, echoed that feeling.
Small said that Underground Art had not had anyone picked up by immigration agents and that his shop remains open.
But, “it’s bad over here. There’s no cars. Some of the people’s businesses have shut down,” he said.
He said he’s worried about the ripple effects on his own business because shops in the center depend on shared foot traffic. “The people that go into the barber shop and the flower shop, they might come over to our tattoo shop. Since this is going on, you don’t see any of that going on,” he said.
Scenes like this played out across the Triangle on Wednesday. Reporters and photographers found normally busy shops sitting empty, businesses, including restaurants, temporarily shuttered and fewer work trucks and commercial vans moving along major roads.
Immigrants — including those in the country without legal authorization — play a big role nationally and in North Carolina’s economy, contributing billions in taxes and billions more in spending power. Immigrants also accounted in 2023 for 14.9% of entrepreneurs, 19% of workers in jobs related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and 27% of construction workers in the state, according to the American Immigration Council.
Holiday season
Evans’ Cary shop is open, but nobody is showing up.
“There’s no clients. Even clients that called who had appointments said they were not gonna make it,” she said.
She said more than 90% of her clientele is Hispanic, and the rest are Arab American.
“We’re all being affected,” she said.
“We’re super concerned. We’re a small business. We’ve been running it for more than 20 years. We’ve been through stuff like this before and we know the effect it has on people,” she said.
“We just try to hold on because we know this affects not just a couple of days, but it turns into a week and then two weeks where people slowly start coming out. And it’s the holiday season. It’s gonna be really rough for us,” she said.
Evans was born in the United States, but her parents came from Honduras. Her mom started both salons around 2002.
“As a Hispanic woman she’s done that. It’s sad knowing that we are going backwards in this country,” she said.
This story was originally published November 19, 2025 at 4:20 PM with the headline "Why this shopping center is a ‘ghost town’ with federal agents in Raleigh."
