Phoenix, Arizona (CNN) -- Jairo Tellez's seafood distribution business is a family affair. In the industrial warehouse that houses J and V Mariscos on the west side of Phoenix, his wife, Vicki, and four of his seven children load trucks, take phone calls, enter data and help care for his infant grandson, who has a playpen in Tellez's office.
But with portions of Arizona's controversial immigration enforcement law set to take effect Thursday, the business is in limbo.
Most of their clients cater to the Latino community, which has effectively gone into hiding amid concerns that they may have to leave the state as soon as the bill becomes law, Cisneros said.
A key part of Arizona's immigration law was temporarily blocked by a judge Wednesday. This means police won't be required to ask people about their immigration status.
Perhaps the toughest decision was to halt lines of credit to customers, even those with good history, she said.
Firm numbers illuminating the economic fallout of SB 1070 are hard to come by as the bill has yet to take effect. Also, summer tends to be slow for business and tourism in Arizona because it's so hot.
But anecdotal evidence from business owners, real estate agents and community leaders indicates the mere specter of the bill has created a culture of fear among Hispanics in Arizona that's slowly paralyzing sectors of the economy. Hispanics make up 30 percent of the state's population.
Traditionally, community groups look to indicators such as the housing market, school enrollment and data from utility companies to track economic fluctuations within a certain group, said Edmundo Hidalgo, president and CEO of Chicanos Por La Causa, a community outreach program in Phoenix.
"People are scared, and they don't want to wait around to find out what's going to happen with SB 1070," said Hidalgo, whose group offers housing, economic and education services to low-income families and individuals, both undocumented and U.S.-born.
"Regardless of their status, people are frustrated with an environment that's not accepting and potentially threatening, and they're fed up with being targeted and singled out by law enforcement. It's driving them out of the state, and not necessarily to better situations."
Some homeowners who purchased property in the past year are looking to unload, according to Saul Pua, a real estate agent who sells residential properties in neighborhoods in Phoenix's Latino communities.
"Most families usually have one person who doesn't have papers, and they don't want to risk being arrested and splitting up the family by staying in Arizona," said Pua, who is married to one of the daughters of Tellez, the owner of J and V Mariscos.
Phoenix's sprawling concrete landscape bears testimony to the abundance of vacant residential and commercial property.
Not only businesses targeting the Latino community are suffering. Economic boycotts adopted by other states and cities have hit Arizona's meeting and convention business.
Summer is typically the low season, she noted, and pointed out that tourism was up 8 percent statewide in June 2010 compared with June 2009, which was one of the "worst summers ever" because of the recession.
It seems that not even fast-food joints are immune to the encroaching economic fallout of SB 1070.
As the four Tellez children stood with their parents in their office Wednesday, recounting tales of friends and relatives who have left town or seen families torn apart, daughter Nikki noted her surprise at seeing a shuttered Burger King.
"I was driving down Camelback with my dad and Burger King was closed, and I was like, when have you seen that? Like Burger King -- everybody goes to Burger King, and that was closed down."
(Adding another snippet I found From The Arizona Republican)
The retail real-estate bloodbath in metro Phoenix continued in the second quarter of 2010 with 211,000 square feet of space added to a staggering inventory of vacant storefronts.
The additional space pushed the overall retail-vacancy rate to 12.2 percent, the highest ever in the area, according to CB Richard Ellis' second-quarter MarketView report. That's double the 6.1 percent retail-vacancy rate in 2007 and up from 10.5 percent a year earlier.
David Josker, a retail specialist at CB Richard Ellis' commercial real-estate brokerage in Phoenix, said there were additional store closures in the quarter, which coupled with new properties online to drive up vacancies.
The hardest-hit have been the "big box" spaces of 10,000 square feet or more. There were 305 such spaces available, totaling more than 8 million square feet, at the end of the quarter, up from 299 three months earlier.
The vacancies put pressure on rents, which fell to $15.95 per square foot per year from $17.61 a year earlier and about $25 in 2006.
The falling rents have caused retail-property values to plummet, and an increasing number of shopping-center owners now have mortgages that are underwater. As a result, Josker and other industry experts expect a wave of retail-center foreclosures.