Around 60 Tatte workers forced to resign amid growing immigration fears

“They know that they’re being watched,” she said.

At Tatte, a spokesperson for the popular restaurant chain said the affected workers had been flagged by the Internal Revenue Service as many as three times over multiple years due to issues with their names and Social Security numbers in government records — a potential sign of problems with their immigration status. At least some of the workers were undocumented, the Globe found in interviews with employees.

The company gave employees flagged by the IRS until this week to provide the necessary paperwork, according to a letter sent by Tatte to a worker and reviewed by the Globe. If employees did not do so, Tatte “will consider you to have voluntarily resigned from your position,” the letter continued.

The move affected employees ranging from head chefs to waitstaff, including a half dozen workers at the chain’s original outpost on Beacon Street in Brookline.

In a statement, Tatte spokesperson Diana Pisciotta said the company — founded by Israeli-born Tzurit Or — “cares deeply about its team members and provides multiple opportunities for our team to correct data that the government has informed us is incorrect.”

“It is particularly disheartening to inform valued, hard-working members of our team that by law they cannot remain with Tatte if they cannot correct the issue,” the statement continued. “While supporting our employees is a priority, we must comply with the law.”

The company added that employees who have left the company were offered the opportunity to consult with an immigration attorney at Tatte’s expense. Tatte also extended up to $4,000 in reimbursements to many workers to cover immigration-related expenses during their employment, including citizenship applications, attorney fees, and renewals for work authorization.

A former front-of-house employee at Tatte, who worked at the Brookline store for six years, said that he was surprised to find out he would be losing his job, since the IRS had flagged him to Tatte before over a year ago — with no consequences. (He declined to share his name due to his immigration status.)

“It’s very sad,” said the employee, who immigrated from Colombia 15 years ago. “I feel like this is a home. I made a lot of friends here. This is not how we have been treated here from the beginning.”

Since opening in 2008, Tatte has become one of the Boston area’s most recognizable businesses, expanding to 27 locations in the state, plus 16 storefronts in and around Washington, D.C., and roughly 2,500 employees in all.

Its moves this month could be a indication that more employers will take notice of “Social Security no-match” letters, which are fairly routine, but sometimes ignored, advocates said.

A fact sheet from the National Immigration Law Center said employers “should not fire a worker based solely upon the employee being named in one or more SSA no-match letters received by the employer.”

But advocates said the letters can be something companies lean on to remove undocumented workers, even if they do not automatically mean immigration issue exists. Discrepancies can also arise based on typos, name changes, and incomplete information on other tax documents, the fact sheet said.

So far, Tatte appears to be the only public example of a company in Massachusetts more closely scrutinizing employment authorization since Trump won the White House race in November. But in New York City, around 100 employees at Tin Building by Jean-Georges — mostly Latino kitchen and custodial workers — were recently terminated after the company performed employment authorization checks due to an internal restructuring, news website Gothamist reported this week.

Altogether, legal and unauthorized immigrants made up nearly a quarter of the nation’s nearly 8.2 million workers in food industries, according to the Pew Research Center.

DaSilva Hughes from the Immigrants’ Assistance Center in New Bedford recalled the 2007 raid of the Michael Bianco textile plant in New Bedford under President George W. Bush, when 361 immigrants were arrested. Companies don’t want to be on the receiving end of that sort of episode, she said.

“The narrative is so anti-immigrant coming from this administration that … there is this constant fear of [people] getting picked up by immigration,” she said.

Alicia Fleming, co-director of Massachusetts Jobs with Justice, said Tatte’s move will likely amplify worries for immigrants, regardless of what powered the company’s decision.

“This fuels the fear that communities that are going to be impacted will be feeling,” she added. “Anytime anything like this happens, it gives people pause.”

Diti Kohli can be reached at diti.kohli@globe.com. Follow her @ditikohli_. Katie Johnston can be reached at katie.johnston@globe.com. Follow her @ktkjohnston.