As Ice infiltrates LA, neighborhoods fall quiet: ‘We can't even go out for a walk'
It has been eerily easy to find street parking in Los Angeles's fashion district this week. In the nearby flower district, longtime vendors have locked up stalls. And in East LA, popular taquerías have temporarily closed.
Neighborhoods across LA and southern California have gone quiet since the Trump administration ramped up immigration raids in the region two weeks ago.
The aggressive arrests by federal agents have ignited roaring protests which the administration tried to quell by mobilizing thousands of national guard troops. Last weekend, Americans protested the raids and other administration policies in one of the biggest ever single-day demonstrations in US history. But immigration enforcement in LA has only intensified.
In downtown Los Angeles, Lindsay Toczylowski, the executive director of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef) was alerted on Wednesday morning that federal agents in masks and bulletproof vests had ambushed a man who was biking down the street, not far from her office, and had arrested him.
She and a colleague rushed outside, to see if the agents were targeting anyone else. Later, they puzzled over how and why agents had decided to target this man. Did they have a warrant? Did they even know who he was? Or was it just that he looked like he could be an immigrant.
'It feels so invasive. They're everywhere,' she said.
It was the type of arrest that has immigrants across the region weighing if, and when, it will be safe to go outside.
In LA's Koreatown, a dense, immigrant neighborhood just west of downtown, children were playing at Seoul international park, but not as many as usual. Outside Jon's grocery, there were only a few street vendors who had set up shop – where normally there would be a dozen or more.
Guillermo, 61, had come out, with his wife, to set up their small stall selling medications, vitamins and toiletries. 'To be honest, we're scared,' he said, nervously raking his fingers through his tightly coiled hair. They'd stayed home, stayed away, for days – but this week, they found out that their landlord would be increasing their rent by $400 starting next month. 'We need to make money.'
Then again, he wondered if it was worth the risk to come out. There was hardly any foot traffic. No customers. 'They're all Latino,' he said, shaking his head. 'They're all scared to come out.'
In normal times, Lorena would be selling tamales nearby – at least until about 5pm. Fifty years old, with with slick black hair, she could pass for quite a bit younger. She'd spend the afternoon chatting with the other vendors – the frutero down the block, and the woman who sells candies and nuts.
Sometimes, she'd chat with the young unhoused men who camp out on the street and offer them some tamales. 'They've had some bad luck, some [have] taken some bad steps,' she said. She's known some of them since they were children – she used to sell tamales outside Hobart Elementary a few blocks away.
She's been selling tamales in K-town for decades. The neighborhood has changed a lot since she first came here from Oaxaca, aged 20, she said. Still, most faces are familiar; she's been selling tamales to generations of people out here.
In the evenings, she'd head home, get changed and head to the park for a walk. On summer days like these when her grandchildren are off school, she'd bring them to the playground, or maybe take them out to the movies, as a treat.
'Not this week,' she said. She has barely stepped outside her home in days. Neither has her husband, who normally works as a day laborer – soliciting short-term construction jobs outside of the nearby Home Depot. On the day agents flooded the megastore's parking lot, indiscriminately cuffing laborers and vendors, a friend of her son had warned them not to come out, she said.
This week has felt a bit like the first few weeks of the pandemic, like the lockdown. 'Well, now this is worse than the pandemic,' she shrugged. 'Because we can't even go out for a walk.' She can't even put on a face mask and head to the grocery store – her kids, who have legal immigration status, have been going to the market and running errands for her and her husband.
'We're not really doing anything right now,' she said. It has meant that she hasn't been able to send as much money to her mother in Mexico, and to her brother, whose health has been deteriorating rapidly because of liver cancer.
'I know he's suffering. He's suffering a lot,' she said. She cried as she tried to explain to him and her mother why she cannot send home any money this month. 'It's so hard, it's so hard,' she said. She thinks about returning to work, but it's too risky. 'If they catch me, if they deport me, that's not going to help them, is it?'
For now, Lorena and her husband are staying afloat thanks to a grant from Ktown for All, a non-profit that has been raising funds to help street vendors who fear arrest and deportation. 'At least the rent is covered,' she said. 'I am so thankful. There is nothing more to do than be grateful. And hope all this will pass soon.' '
The flower district – the largest wholesale flower market in the US – has emptied out as well. On Wednesday, vendors and customers alike locked up their stalls, and headed home, following rumors that raids were coming.
In downtown LA's garment district, where the surge immigration enforcement began almost two weeks ago, tailor shops, which normally would be bustling with clients adjusting the fits on their graduation and quinceañera outfits, were generally quiet.
At Fernando Tailorshop, which has been operating in the neighborhood for 54 years, owner Renato Cifuentes said he had never seen anything like the recent raids. 'I see this as a persecution of the Latino more than anything else,' he said. 'If you look like a Latino, the agents go after you – that's not right.'
Most of his workers are afraid to come into the shop. His customers – citizens and immigrants alike – have been staying away as well.
Business is down by more than 50%, he said. 'Most of my customers are Latin, and they are afraid. Some of my customers are Iranian – and they are worried about war,' he said, 'It hurts me a lot. Everything, everything is affected.'
Meanwhile, families of those arrested in the first rush of raids earlier this month, including at clothing warehouses and wholesalers in the district, have been grappling with the aftermath.
'We had to change how we eat, how we sleep, how we live, everything,' said Yurien, whose father Mario Romero was arrested in a raid at Ambiance Apparel. 'We've had to change everything.'
Two weeks ago, Romero had texted her, his eldest daughter, that agents had arrived at his workplace, and that he loved her. Yurien had rushed over, and watched as agents shackled her father, and shoved him into a van. Several other family members worked at Ambiance – and were arrested as well.
Normally, on weekends,Romero would bring home a huge haul of Mexican candy, brew up a big batch of agua de jamaica, and pick a classic movie for the whole family to watch. But last weekend, Yurien spent hours refreshing her search in the Ice online detainee locator system, hoping it would tell her where her father had been taken. 'We went days without knowing, without any idea what had happened to him,' she said.
Later, she learned that agents had kept them in a van for more than eight hours, without food or water, or access to a restroom. Then Ice transferred them to the Adelanto detention center, in California's high desert.
Local Zapotec community organizers were able to help her find him – and more than a week after his arrest, Yurien was able to put funds into his commissary, so he could call her from the detention center. 'He sounded so sad, he was crying,' she said.
Yurien hasn't really felt hungry since then. She had planned to matriculate at Los Angeles Trade-Technical college, but she deferred her plans so she could take over her father's responsibilities – including the care of her four-year-old brother, who has a disability that requires close monitoring and regular doctors visits.
'It's been so hard. I've always been a daddy's girl,' she said. 'But I can't really show my emotions, because I have to stay strong for my mom, for my siblings.'
Lucero Garcia, 35, said she could relate. 'I'm so overwhelmed, I'm so stressed,' she said. 'I still wake up every day and act like nothing ever happened, because I feel like I'm the main person in our family that kind of keeps it together.'
Nothing has been the same for her family since her 61-year-old uncle, Candido, was arrested while working at his job at Magnolia Car Wash in Orange county, just south of LA. It was one of more than two dozen car washes in the region that have been visited by immigration agents, according to the Clean Carwash Worker Center.
Before her evening shift at work on Tuesday, Garcia put on her professional black trousers and white knit top, and drove more than 90 minutes north to the Adelanto detention center, and met with congress members who were seeking to meet with constituents who had been transferred there, to investigate reports of unsanitary and unsafe conditions inside. After local representatives confirmed that detainees had been denied clean clothes and underwear for days, she stood outside in the searing desert heat and shared some words about her uncle – who had lived with her family for years and has been like another father to her.
'This is just crazy,' she said. 'I've never talked to the press before, to give speeches like this.'
She had to rush back home right after to wrap up errands, and head to work.
Garcia has her green card, and her sister has citizenship – so the two of them have taken shifts running errands for their entire family – picking up groceries and prescriptions, getting kids to and from playdates and activities – so that those without documentation don't have to risk stepping outside.
At home, the conversations have been heavy. Some of her family members are meeting with notaries to arrange paperwork, so that she can take custody of their children, should they get arrested or deported. 'I'm so glad it's summer vacation, that none of our kids are in school right now,' she said. 'At least we don't have to worry something will happen while they're at school.'
Out in her neighborhood, restaurants sit half empty, and there's no more lines at the gas station. Inside her house, it's been oddly quiet, too. Most all of Garcia's family lives in Orange county – within 5 or 10 minutes from her – and most days a cousin or an uncle would swing by, unannounced, bringing a dish or even just ingredients to cook up. Garcia is famous for her beef birria and pozole.
These days everyone is staying confined to their own homes. Last weekend, they nearly forgot it was father's day. 'The vibe is not there to be celebrating,' she said. 'And even with the smallest gathering, there's a risk to leaving the house.'
And there's guilt. 'Like, how can you be having dinner when others are in detention without enough food? The guilt doesn't let you move forward.'
The Guardian is not using the full names of some people in this article to protect them and their families.
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