Over two dozen former employees of Delia’s Tamales are suing the company over allegations of wage theft. Last week, a judge ruled they will not be allowed to name the company’s founder, Delia Garza, as a defendant in the litigation.
A federal magistrate judge ruled that it’s too late for the over 30 plaintiffs to amend the lawsuit against the restaurant chain, which has locations in the Rio Grande Valley and in San Antonio, as well as lots of customer loyalty.
So where does this leave this lawsuit?
Dina Arévalo, who’s been reporting on this issue for the Monitor and MyRGV.com, originally broke news of the lawsuit last summer. She said the former workers, who were mostly of retirement age, claimed that the company participated in wage theft and threatened them – most of whom were undocumented migrants – with immigration enforcement and deportation if they tried to speak up.
“In the original lawsuit, they never named Delia Garza herself as a defendant,” Arévalo said. “And once the case went to federal court, those allegations of immigration threats and some of those more salacious allegations were taken out of that federal portion of the lawsuit.”
Then, a year later in August 2024, the former employees decided they wanted to name Garza directly and bring back the additional allegations to the suit. However, the judge denied the request.
“This lawsuit has changed iterations many times since it was originally filed last fall. And we’ve got now a Houston magistrate judge who’s presiding over this case. He’s very set on timelines and deadlines. And the deadline to make any changes to the lawsuit was back in January,” Arévalo said. “The judge openly wondered in his three-page order why the plaintiffs didn’t try to amend this lawsuit earlier.”
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There is also disagreement about whether the lawsuit should be a collective action, since currently each former employee’s complaint stands alone, even though they are bundled into one court case, Arévalo said.
The case has been getting a lot of attention, in part because Delia’s Tamales is a very popular restaurant in the Rio Grande Valley.
“Delia Garza herself has been a rags-to-riches success story. She’s from the Valley. She started selling tamales door-to-door. And now she’s reached this peak of accomplishment,” Arévalo said. “Governor Greg Abbott has previously tweeted photos of himself ordering tamales from the company when he hosts Thanksgiving events down here to feed members of Operation Lone Star.”
FBI and IRS Criminal Investigators walked out from Delia’s Tamales and guarded the door in July.
Samuel Rocha IV / Texas Public Radio
The lawsuit isn’t the company’s only legal problem; there is also an ongoing criminal investigation. On July 24, the FBI conducted simultaneous raids at all the restaurants in the Valley and the San Antonio location.
“Federal investigators obviously keep their cases close to the vest,” Arévalo said. “But from what we could see of the agents going in, it looks like there were not only FBI agents, but also agents with the IRS Criminal Investigations division. So maybe some sort of something to do with taxes.”
In the meantime, Arévalo said Delia’s remains popular — and the litigation continues.
“There’s one final deadline in about a month,” she said. “And then the judge set the next court hearing for next February.”
