‘ICE IS NOT WELCOME HERE’: How Richmond business owners are fighting back

Ethan York, Staff Writer

Andrew Kerley, Executive Editor

As President Donald Trump continues his surge of immigration enforcement across the nation, Richmond business owners are taking a stand on behalf of immigrants in the community.

Virginia is a hotspot for immigration enforcement, data shows. Over 2,000 Virginia residents received deportation orders in March alone — 300 of whom were in the Richmond area. Arrests in June 2025 were six times higher than in 2024.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order in February directing the Virginia State Police and Department of Corrections to fully cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and requested that local police departments do the same. 

In response to ICE’s presence in RVA, dozens of businesses — from toy stores, to book shops to pizza places — have opted to display “ICE IS NOT WELCOME HERE” signs on their storefronts. 

The signs — created and distributed by the nonprofit Richmond Community and Legal Fund — 

list the rights of businesses and citizens, intending to show citizens what to do if confronted by ICE. They are written in both English and Spanish. 

“ICE does NOT have the authority to stop, question or arrest anyone at will — even in a public business,” the signs read. “No one can enter a private area of this business without permission or a judicial warrant.”

The CT spoke to three business owners in the Carytown shopping district about why they are choosing to take a stand. 

World of Mirth

World of Mirth is not the average toy store — and it certainly is not just for kids. Its shelves are covered in unique items, from games to puzzles to build-it-yourself items like LEGOs. It is also a popular destination for young adults to pick up Sonny Angels, Smiskis, Jelly Cats or whatever the moment’s popular collectible is.

Their “ICE IS NOT WELCOME HERE” sign hangs over a backdrop of streamers next to a pride flag with the message “EVERYONE IS WELCOME HERE.” At World of Mirth, ICE agents just don’t make the cut. 

World of Mirth has been a Richmond staple since 1992 and has been owned by Thea Brown since 2018. Amid a news cycle flooded by reports of ICE raids on businesses and courthouse ambushes, often by agents wearing unmarked clothing and no badge — it was a “combination of everything” that pushed her to put up the sign. 

“I think obviously, it’s more important to be a good human being, and treat people the way you want to be treated,” Brown said. “If you can’t stand up and speak up for the weakest of us, then you’re not a part of your community.”

Brown has close friends living in Los Angeles, one of the cities that has seen the harshest immigration enforcement. Some of her friend’s family members have resorted to sending their children to shop on behalf of their undocumented family members.  

“At this point, they’re being illegally kidnapped and taken and deported to countries that they may not even be from without due process,” Brown said. “Any time that there’s an issue with someone’s constitutional rights and basic human rights being taken away, you have to do what you can.”

Zorch Pizza

Rob Zorch opened one of the city’s favorite pizza places as a food truck back in 2018, with their brick and mortar Carytown store springing up in 2021. Their business is not about much other than making “really good” pizza, Zorch said. Many Richmonders would agree they meet that target. 

Zorch had a simple reason for putting up a sign at their front entrance. 

“I think ICE is bulls**t, and I think what they’re doing is ridiculous,” Zorch said. 

Zorch said he is angry that people coming to America to work and make a living are being detained.

“There’s people coming to America that want to work here,” Zorch said. “ICE is basically showing up in plain clothes and not showing identification, basically taking people off the streets, out of restaurants.”

Zorch has always hated Trump since he was first elected — for being a “sexual predator,” for mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic and generally being “horrible for the country, he said. But it is part of the Republican strategy to keep flooding the public dialogue and overwhelm people with actions. 

“It’s been eight months now, and there’s already been all this s**t that’s happened,” Zorch said.

Zorch warned that Project 2025, a conservative policy blueprint made for President Trump to reshape the American government, is coming to fruition. Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 on the campaign trail but has since enacted parts of the agenda in office, including efforts to end diversity initiatives and dismantle the Department of Education, as well as mass deportations.

“And if Republicans start winning all the midterms and s**t too then they’re gonna start doing what they call election reform, which is gonna make it so that we don’t have much of a voice anymore,” Zorch said.

Shelf Life Books

“We have a store whose mission is to represent underrepresented voices, which includes immigrants,” said Chris McDaniel, owner of Shelf Life Books. “We think it’s important that their rights are protected.”

McDaniel, along with her husband Berkely, have owned Shelf Life since 2021, and the store has been in business for over two decades. 

“We can’t stop ICE from coming into a public space, but we want to send a clear signal to our customers that we know our rights as a business,” McDaniel said.

Shelf Life is a beacon of literature in Carytown, offering gently used and new books that often push against the status quo. One of their shelves is entirely devoted to Palestinian literature. 

“The government is taking certain things that we took for granted away all of a sudden, and that’s not a great feeling,” McDaniel said. “It’s time for all of us to be a little more active in expressing not just our opinions and our voices, but with action.”

McDaniel is critical of capitalism, but admits they are participating in it by operating a business, she said. But they are not in it to get rich.

“We’re in this to stay in the business of providing an opportunity for people to exchange ideas and information,” McDaniel said. “What’s important to us is making enough money to continue the mission — and the mission is representing underrepresented voices. The mission is caring for our community.”