The footage was hanging: A meals supply employee scrambles together with his e-bike throughout a bridge in Chicago, chased by a cadre of armed, masked federal brokers. “Get him!” one yells, earlier than the employee in the end slips away.

The viral clip grew to become a rallying level this week for critics of President Donald Trump’s deportation machine, which has unfold to a number of U.S. cities and swept up residents within the course of. For Mike Peregudov, the co-founder of e-bike subscription service Whizz, it was a visceral illustration of the abject concern supply employees have described to his workforce for weeks in Chicago.

That’s as a result of menace of being snatched up by Customs and Border Safety (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), or one of many many different businesses serving to increase the administration’s deportation numbers, has turn into measurable in Whizz’s personal metrics.

“The rationale Whizz’s fleet hasn’t grown in Chicago within the final month,” Peregudov wrote in a LinkedIn submit, the place he shared the clip. “It has turn into method tougher to ship a meals order within the metropolis.”

Whizz is comparatively new to Chicago, having solely launched within the metropolis a number of months in the past. However Peregudov informed TechCrunch in an interview the corporate’s fleet was “rising actually quick” over the summer season, from having zero bikes on the bottom in March to round 300 by the tip of July.

This progress was encouraging for Whizz’s mission of offering protected, dependable, and reasonably priced bikes for supply employees. For years, a lot of those self same employees have needed to depend on a mish-mash of merchandise with questionable reliability, inflicting the automobiles to be banned in some cities.

Dynamics modified in August when Trump despatched Nationwide Guard troops into the town, based on Peregudov. Progress not solely halted, however Whizz has misplaced about 8% of its enterprise since, he stated. The Nationwide Guard presence, plus the fixed ICE raids, has spooked the meals supply workforce.

“They’re afraid,” he stated of employees who’ve returned bikes to Whizz’s Chicago workplace. Whizz doesn’t make use of these gig financial system employees; it solely rents out e-bikes, which will be obtained by anybody with correct identification, a social safety quantity, and a bank card.

With U.S. residents and lawful everlasting residents getting scooped up in comparable raids across the nation, Peregudov stated this concern is shared by each documented and undocumented immigrants.

“When a raid occurs, these individuals can [detain] the man for, no matter, two weeks,” he stated. “After they perceive he’s legally right here, they are going to let him go away, however he’ll lose these two weeks.”

Immigration raids are occurring in a lot of the different cities the place Whizz operates, together with New York, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. However these areas have to date been spared Trump’s extra militaristic deployments, which amp up the strain.

The corporate additionally operates in Washington, D.C., the place President Trump has introduced in Nationwide Guard troops, like in Chicago. Curiously, Peregudov stated enterprise is definitely up within the nation’s capital.

He attributes that largely to the truth that, based on him, police and federal brokers seem like focusing on supply drivers who use gasoline mopeds with out a license. That’s driving extra supply employees to Whizz and its less-regulated e-bikes, he stated.

An immigrant himself, Peregudov shied away from commenting an excessive amount of on the administration’s insurance policies and actions. “I got here right here utilizing a expertise visa,” he stated, “so it was not that demanding for me. It was method simpler than for these guys.”