DJ: Houston has an active, creative group of plaintiffs' attorneys that look to vulnerable industries, and they - and the government - recognize that the restaurant industry is particularly vulnerable. Because Houston has a large number of restaurants and a huge immigrant population, there's the sense that it's easy for restaurants to exploit that population [by, for instance, imposing illegal wage or tip-pooling procedures that the employees wouldn't know are illegal or wouldn't feel they could challenge].

EOW: How big an issue is illegal immigration in the restaurant world? For instance, what would happen if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided every restaurant in Houston tomorrow, and anyone who wasn't a legal worker no longer had a job?

DJ: It's so hard to say. I don't think we ought to assert that the large part of the workforce in Houston is unauthorized. I don't know that anyone could predict who would be left. In my opinion, most restaurants do their best to comply with the law, and it isn't easy with competing imperatives from federal agencies. ICE is critical of restaurants that have undocumented workers, but other federal agencies, especially the EEOC, continually remind restaurants that once an employee presents the documents required for the I-9 and those documents look authentic, restaurants cannot do more to investigate the employee's immigration status.

Meanwhile, workers have become quite adept at concealing their immigration status through fake documents. I hear people saying that a large percentage of our workforce is unauthorized, and others saying that it's mostly authorized. But I don't know how anyone could know - nobody has access to that kind of information. You hear about it on the news, but I think that's just sensationalized.

[In 2009, the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that during the previous year, approximately 12 percent of all food prep and service workers in the United States were undocumented.]

EOW: What is your favorite restaurant in Houston?

DJ: Oh, that's not a fair question! Right now, it's The Counter. But my family's a big fan of Berryhill. Basically, anywhere that lets my two-year-old and five-year-old play is great.