The arrival of dozens of immigration agents, unleashed to hunt for undocumented migrants, emptied the streets of Pico Rivera, California. In June 2025 residents of this suburb east of Los Angeles began to get used to a scene previously unthinkable: convoys of white trucks with green stripes driving through their avenues again and again. The Border Patrol had set its sights on a sanctuary city for migrants to send a show of force and to foreshadow what would come in other communities across the country. In one of those operations, several agents stopped outside a tire shop near Rosemead Boulevard and tried to detain its workers. Someone livestreamed the raid on Facebook Live and the video went viral immediately. It was the final blow for nearby businesses.
“From there it went down, down, down. We haven’t been able to recover,” laments Roberto Godínez, owner of a convenience store whose sales rely mostly on bottled water, beer and snacks. “We’re surviving as if we were in an economic crisis. From $3,500 in sales a day we now barely reach $1,400. It hardly covers workers’ pay.” Godínez, an immigrant originally from Jalisco, Mexico who has spent most of his 65 years on this side of the border, had hoped the World Cup would give his finances a breather. The tournament, however, took place over 39 days without changing the despondency that settled in the neighborhood after the raids. “People don’t even go out to buy beer,” he says.
What happened to this small business at the start of the Trump administration’s immigration offensive is not an isolated case. Its story sums up that of hundreds of Hispanic-owned businesses in this metropolitan area, hit by the fear sown by the raids. A report from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) concludes that “the June 2025 enforcement surge caused immediate and lasting economic harm” in Latino commercial corridors in the county. In just the first two weeks of June 2025, these establishments recorded 46,000 fewer visits, a drop that translated into estimated accumulated losses of nearly $3.2 million. Even a year later, many owners are still waiting for a recovery that has yet to come.
Blows to wallets and to health
The study focused on 75 Latino entrepreneurs with businesses spread across nine commercial corridors frequented by Hispanic immigrants, including Huntington Park, Whittier, Westlake, Pacoima and the Fashion District. UCLA researchers even documented the impact on foot traffic, which broadly declined in the days after the raids began.
Fifty-nine percent of those interviewed reported income drops greater than 50%, while half said some of their employees stopped coming to work for fear of being detained by immigration agents. As a result, seven out of 10 establishments reduced opening hours or closed temporarily. Many business owners said sales barely covered operating costs and sometimes not even that. This year the outlook has barely changed: 95% acknowledged they were still facing financial difficulties due to the lack of customers. The impact has also been personal. Seventy-six percent of these business owners said they suffered emotional deterioration that ultimately affected their health.
“A year later, many business owners remain in a state of financial vulnerability. Fear, uncertainty and economic pressure continue to erode their health and wellbeing,” said Amada Armenta, co-author of the report and director of UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Initiative (LPPI), in a statement. “The loss of customers affected businesses of different sectors and sizes, regardless of their owners’ immigration status.”
One of the corridors analyzed was Pacific Boulevard in Huntington Park, one of the municipalities with the highest concentration of Mexican immigrants in the United States. Since last summer, “For rent” signs have multiplied in the windows of vacant storefronts. Only Mexico’s national team wins during the World Cup briefly restored the bustle to its streets, like in the most prosperous times. Those were, however, fleeting flashes.
“Small businesses and commercial corridors have been left empty while owners and workers struggle to get by and families suffer,” said Rudy Espinoza, executive director of Inclusive Action, which collaborated on the study. “This research highlights the terrible impact of these policies and gives members of our community a platform to share their truth.”
16,000 detained in Los Angeles
The largest deployment by the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) focused on Los Angeles in the summer of 2025 and continued until January of the following year. For months videos of federal agents chasing day laborers, construction workers, street vendors and gardeners in parking lots, gas stations and streets of Latino neighborhoods became common on social media. Since the start of Trump’s second term, more than 16,000 immigrants have been detained in this metropolitan area, more than triple the number during the final years of the Biden administration, according to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data.
Official figures show that 52% of those detained were born in Mexico and their average age was 41. The vast majority (87%) were men and 39% had no criminal record.
Many were transferred to the Adelanto detention center, a privately run immigration prison located in the Mojave Desert about 150 miles from Los Angeles. The center has long faced allegations of alleged mistreatment, medical neglect, poor food and even supplying detainees with dirty water. Since Trump’s return to the White House, four Mexican nationals have died there. A report published recently by the California Department of Justice, based on inspections of ICE jails in the state, also shows the dramatic rise in the incarcerated population: from just seven people in custody in November 2023 to 1,570 in July 2025.
The Trump administration, however, rejects that its mass deportation strategy harmed the local economy. “Let’s be clear: if there were any correlation between unfettered illegal immigration and a strong economy, Biden would have presided over a booming economy,” DHS said in a written response sent to EL PAÍS. The agency maintains that, in its view, arrests and removals “make communities safer for business owners and their customers.”
“I know there will be a change”
Arturo Aguilar opened El Valle Oaxaqueño restaurant in West Los Angeles in 2000. He thought his business had already weathered the worst storms: the 2008 mortgage crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. He never imagined that a campaign of mass deportations would put his establishment in jeopardy for so many months. “Of course it hit us hard, both in sales and with employees who were afraid to come to work. Customers stopped coming. The restaurant was empty: two or three tables occupied, and only a little busier on weekends,” he recalls.
The entrepreneur attributes this downturn to what he calls a “package” of factors. “Besides the raids, inflation raised product prices, gas costs went up and, since unemployment increased, more street vendors also appeared. That affects all of us. I’m not against them— I started like that more than thirty years ago— but they set up on corners, sometimes in front of businesses. They don’t pay rent, employees, taxes, nothing. In the end they become competition.”
Aguilar, a 64-year-old Oaxacan immigrant who came to the United States in 1990, acknowledges that diversifying his investments has helped cushion the blow. In addition to the restaurant, he owns a market and a bakery. Together, his businesses generate about 90 jobs. While El Valle Oaxaqueño has lost up to 70% of its clientele, his other businesses have kept him afloat. He sums up that strategy with a very Mexican word: “campechanear.” His children have already taken over daily operations and are the ones who now shoulder much of the worries.
Even so, Aguilar does not lose optimism. He trusts that the midterm elections, in which Democrats will seek to reclaim control of the House of Representatives, will mark a turning point. “I have a lot of hope and I know there will be a change,” he says emotionally. “It won’t be long before we see it, both in immigration policy and in the economy.”
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