logo
‘I'm scared to death to leave my house': immigrants are disappearing from the streets – can US cities survive?

‘I'm scared to death to leave my house': immigrants are disappearing from the streets – can US cities survive?

The Guardian23-06-2025
At Hector's Mariscos restaurant in the heavily Latino and immigrant city of Santa Ana, California, sales of Mexican seafood have slid. Seven tables would normally be full, but diners sit at only two this Tuesday afternoon.
'I haven't seen it like this since Covid,' manager Lorena Marin said in Spanish as cumbia music played on loudspeakers. A US citizen, Marin even texted customers she was friendly with, encouraging them to come in.
'No, I'm staying home,' a customer texted back. 'It's really screwed up out there with all of those immigration agents.'
Increasing immigrant arrests in California have begun to gut-punch the economy and wallets of immigrant families and beyond. In some cases, immigrants with legal status and even US citizens have been swept into Donald Trump's dragnet.
The 2004 fantasy film A Day Without a Mexican – chronicling what would happen to California if Mexican immigrants disappeared – is fast becoming a reality, weeks without Mexicans and many other immigrants. The implications are stark for many, both economically and personally.
'We are now seeing a very significant shift toward enforcement at labor sites where people are working,' said Andrew Selee, president of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. 'Not a focus on people with criminal records, but a focus on people who are deeply integrated in the American economy.'
In California, immigrant workers comprise bigger shares of certain industries than they do for the nation overall. Here, the foreign-born make up 62% of agriculture labor and 42% of construction workers, according to the American Immigration Council. About 85% of sewing machine operators in garment factories are foreign-born. Fully 40% of entrepreneurs are foreign-born.
Nationally, about a quarter of workers are foreign-born in agriculture and construction, according to the American Immigration Council. More than half of drywall hangers, plasterers and stucco masons are foreign-born. And in science, technology. engineering and math – the so-called Stem fields – nearly a quarter of workers are foreign-born, said the council.
The current enforcement trend, Selee said, will 'lead to a strategy that will have big economic implications if they continue to go after people who are active in the labor force rather than those who have criminal records'.
In both California and across an ageing nation, about half of the foreign-born are naturalized US citizens – a crucial defense in immigration raids and arrests.
Selee said the current strategy was launched when 'the Trump administration realized they weren't getting large numbers by following traditional approaches to pursuing people who are priority targets for deportation'.
Now the threat and chilling effect from immigration raids can be felt in disparate communities from Dallas to El Paso to rural Wisconsin – among migrants and, in some cases, the employers who hire them.
In the small town of Waumandee in Wisconsin, dairy farmer John Rosenow said he can't find US citizens who can withstand the rigors of dairy work.
'Fact of the matter is if you want to eat or drink milk you are going to need immigrant workers,' he said.
'Yes, we want to get rid of the people who are bad actors,' Rosenow said. 'But the people I know, people who are working in the dairy farms, are just hard-working people, getting things done, doing jobs Americans don't want to do.'
In California's San Joaquin valley, rancher and melon-grower Joe Del Bosque has heard reports of US agents chasing workers in the strawberry fields south of his operation.
The San Joaquin valley, known as the food basket of the world, is heavily dependent upon foreign-born workers, especially at harvest time, Del Bosque said. He currently has 100 people working for him and that number will double as the harvest picks up in the coming weeks.
'They're going to disrupt the harvest and food chain. This will hurt the American consumer,' Del Bosque said. 'These people are hard workers. They come to work, especially if they have families here or in Mexico.'
In a surprise pivot late last week, Trump said there would be an easing of the crackdown in agriculture and the hospitality industries. The New York Times first reported that new guidance from a senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) official called for a 'hold on worksite enforcement investigations/operations' in the agriculture sector and restaurants and hotels. The Ice guidance, issued in an email, also said agents weren't to make arrests of 'noncriminal collaterals', a key point for those who note that many detained immigrants have had no criminal record. However, the Department of Homeland Security told staff it was reversing that guidance on Monday.
Some business leaders and immigrants remain scared and confused.
Raids, or the threat of them, are also taking an emotional toll on families and generating protests in Chicago, Seattle, Spokane, New York, San Antonio, Dallas and elsewhere. Bigger protests are expected in days to come.
In El Paso, protesters flipped the White House script that undocumented immigrants were 'criminals'. They waved mostly US flags and shouted 'No justice, no peace. Shame on Ice.'
Among the protesters was Alejandra, a US citizen and a junior at the University of Texas at El Paso. She asked for partial anonymity for fear of reprisal against her mixed-status family.
Sign up to This Week in Trumpland
A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration
after newsletter promotion
She said she took to this border city's streets to honor the sacrifice of her grandparents who migrated from Ciudad Juárez. 'All it takes is for you to look at who took that first step to bring you the life you have currently,' Alejandra said.
In the Dallas area, a Guatemalan worker said he'd been absent from construction sites for days.
'There's too much fear, too much to risk,' said Gustavo, 34, requesting his surname be withheld because he is undocumented. 'I fear tomorrow, tonight. I may be deported, and who loses? My family back in Guatemala.'
Tough immigration enforcement has been the top-polling issue for Trump. But favor may be slipping. A poll released this week by Quinnipiac University showed Trump had a 43% approval rating on immigration and a 54% disapproval rating. That poll was conducted between 5 and 9 June – after several days of protests.
Meantime, back in Santa Ana, a city of about 316,000 in southern California, shop owner Alexa Vargas said foot traffic has slowed around her store, Vibes Boutique, with sales plummeting about 30% in recent days.
On a recent day, the shop's jeans and glitzy T-shirts remained un-browsed. Metered parking spots on the usually busy street sat empty. A fruit and snow cone vendor whom Vargas usually frequents had been missing for days.
'It shouldn't be this dead right now,' Vargas, 26, said on a Tuesday afternoon. 'People are too scared to go out. Even if you're a citizen but you look a certain way. Some people don't want to risk it.'
Reyna, a restaurant cook, told her boss she didn't feel safe going to work after she heard about the immigration detentions at Home Depot stores in the city.
The 40-year-old, who is in the US without legal status, said she fears becoming an Ice target. Current immigration laws and policies don't provide a way to obtain legal status even though she's been living in the US for more than 20 years.
'I need to work but, honestly, I'm scared to death to leave my house,' she said.
For now her life is on hold, Reyna said.
She canceled a party for her son's high school graduation. She no longer drives her younger children to summer school. She even stopped attending behavioral therapy sessions for her seven-year-old autistic son.
Reyna said she can't sleep. She suffers headaches every day.
Early on Tuesday, she said, immigration agents in an unmarked vehicle swept up her husband's 20-year-old nephew, who is a Mexican national without legal status. The scene unreeled across from her home.
Her autistic son, a US-born citizen, has begged her to allow him to play on the front yard swing set.
'No, honey. We can't go outside,' Reyna told him.
'Why?' he asked.
'The police are taking people away,' she explained. 'They are taking away people who were not born here.'
This story was co-published with Puente News Collaborative, a bilingual non-profit newsroom, convener and funder dedicated to high-quality, fact-based news and information from the US-Mexico border.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Pedro Pascal will not shave for a role unless it's ‘completely necessary'
Pedro Pascal will not shave for a role unless it's ‘completely necessary'

The Independent

time18 minutes ago

  • The Independent

Pedro Pascal will not shave for a role unless it's ‘completely necessary'

Pedro Pascal expressed strong dislike for his clean-shaven appearance as villain Maxwell Lord in the 2020 film Wonder Woman 1984. The actor stated he was 'appalled' by his look in the DC Comics movie and has since vowed not to shave his facial hair unless absolutely essential. Pascal's portrayal of Reed Richards with a mustache in the upcoming Fantastic Four film has drawn mild criticism from some superhero purists. Lindy Hemming, costume designer for Wonder Woman 1984, revealed that Pascal's character's look was partly inspired by Donald Trump's 1980s persona. Director Patty Jenkins confirmed Trump was one of several inspirations for the character, emphasizing that the influence was not intended to be political.

From tech podcasts to policy: Trump's new AI plan leans heavily on Silicon Valley industry ideas
From tech podcasts to policy: Trump's new AI plan leans heavily on Silicon Valley industry ideas

NBC News

time18 minutes ago

  • NBC News

From tech podcasts to policy: Trump's new AI plan leans heavily on Silicon Valley industry ideas

President Donald Trump on Wednesday unveiled a sweeping new plan for America's 'global dominance' in artificial intelligence, proposing to cut back environmental regulations to speed up the construction of AI supercomputers while promoting the sale of U.S.-made AI technologies at home and abroad. The 'AI Action Plan' embraces many of the ideas voiced by tech industry lobbyists and the Silicon Valley investors who backed Trump's election campaign last year. 'America must once again be a country where innovators are rewarded with a green light, not strangled with red tape,' Trump said at an unveiling event that was co-hosted by the bipartisan Hill and Valley Forum and the 'All-In' podcast, a business and technology show hosted by four tech investors and entrepreneurs, which includes Trump's AI czar, David Sacks. The plan includes some familiar tech lobby pitches. That includes accelerating the sale of AI technology abroad and making it easier to construct the energy-hungry data center buildings that are needed to form and run AI products. It also includes some AI culture war preoccupations of the circle of venture capitalists who endorsed Trump last year. Trump signed three executive orders Wednesday to deliver on the plan. They seek to fast-track permitting of AI construction projects, expand U.S. tech exports and get rid of 'woke' in AI. Trump had given his tech advisers six months to come up with new AI policies after revoking President Joe Biden's signature AI guardrails on his first day in office. Trump's AI plan: global dominance, cutting regulations The plan prioritizes AI innovation and adoption, urging the removal of any barriers that could slow down adoption across industries and government. The nation's policy, Trump said, will be to do 'whatever it takes to lead the world in artificial intelligence.' Yet it also seeks to guide the industry's growth to address a longtime rallying point for the tech industry's loudest Trump backers: countering the liberal bias they see in AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Google's Gemini. Trump's plan aims to block the government from contracting with tech companies unless they 'ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.' The plan says the nation's leading AI models should protect free speech and be 'founded on American values,' though it doesn't define which values those should include. Sacks, a former PayPal executive and now Trump's top AI adviser, has been criticizing 'woke AI' for more than a year, fueled by Google's February 2024 rollout of an AI image generator. When asked to show an American Founding Father, it created pictures of Black, Asian, and Native American men. Google quickly fixed its tool, but the 'Black George Washington' moment remained a parable for the problem of AI's perceived political bias, taken up by X owner Elon Musk, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Vice President JD Vance and Republican lawmakers. Streamlining AI data center permits to speed up supercomputer construction Chief among the plan's goals is to speed up permitting and loosen environmental regulation to accelerate construction on new data centers and factories. It condemns 'radical climate dogma' and recommends lifting environmental restrictions, including clean air and water laws. Trump has previously paired AI's need for huge amounts of electricity with his own push to tap into U.S. energy sources, including gas, coal and nuclear. 'We will be adding at least as much electric capacity as China,' Trump said at the Wednesday event. 'Every company will be given the right to build their own power plant.' Many tech giants are already well on their way toward building new data centers in the U.S. and around the world. OpenAI announced this week that it has switched on the first phase of a massive data center complex in Abilene, Texas, part of an Oracle-backed project known as Stargate that Trump promoted earlier this year. Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and xAI also have major projects underway. The tech industry has pushed for easier permitting rules to get its computing facilities connected to power, but the AI building boom has also contributed to spiking demand for fossil fuel production, which contributes to global warming. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday called on the world's major tech firms to power data centers completely with renewables by 2030. The plan includes a strategy to disincentivize states from aggressively regulating AI technology, calling on federal agencies not to provide funding to states with burdensome regulations. 'We need one common sense federal standard that supersedes all states, supersedes everybody,' Trump said, 'so you don't end up in litigation with 43 states at one time.' Who benefits from Trump's AI action plan? There are sharp debates on how to regulate AI, even among the influential venture capitalists who have been debating it on their favorite medium: the podcast. While some Trump backers, particularly Andreessen, have advocated an 'accelerationist' approach that aims to speed up AI advancement with minimal regulation, Sacks has described himself as taking a middle road of techno-realism. 'Technology is going to happen. Trying to stop it is like ordering the tides to stop. If we don't do it, somebody else will,' Sacks said on the 'All-In' podcast. On Tuesday, more than 100 groups, including labor unions, parent groups, environmental justice organizations and privacy advocates, signed a resolution opposing Trump's embrace of industry-driven AI policy and calling for a 'People's AI Action Plan' that would 'deliver first and foremost for the American people.' J.B. Branch, Big Tech accountability advocate at the watchdog group Public Citizen, which signed the resolution, called the plan a 'sellout.' 'Under this plan, tech giants get sweetheart deals while everyday Americans will see their electricity bills rise to subsidize discounted power for massive AI data centers,' Branch said in a statement Wednesday. 'Americans deserve an AI future rooted in safety, fairness, and accountability — not a handout to billionaires.'

Southwest Airlines earnings hit by weak US travel demand
Southwest Airlines earnings hit by weak US travel demand

Reuters

time18 minutes ago

  • Reuters

Southwest Airlines earnings hit by weak US travel demand

CHICAGO, July 23 (Reuters) - Southwest Airlines (LUV.N), opens new tab reported lower-than-expected quarterly profit and revenue on Wednesday, hurt by tepid demand from U.S. consumers for travel. Lingering uncertainty about the broader economy due to President Donald Trump's trade war and rising living costs has hurt carriers that primarily service the U.S. domestic market and price-sensitive customers. To stimulate demand, they have been leaning on fare discounts. The Texas-based airline said domestic leisure travel demand stabilized after a slump in March and April and was showing signs of improvement. But underscoring the uncertainty, it forecast its unit revenue, or revenue per seat, in the third quarter to range from down 2% to up 2% from a year ago. For the second quarter, Southwest reported an adjusted profit per share of 43 cents, compared with analysts' average expectations of 51 cents, according to data compiled by LSEG. It reported operating revenue of $7.24 billion in the quarter, compared with $7.29 billion expected by analysts. Like most U.S. airlines, Southwest pulled its full-year financial forecast in April as the trade war made it difficult to project its business. On Wednesday, the company provided a new target for 2025 of $600 million to $800 million in earnings before interest and taxes. That compares with its previous forecast of $1.7 billion. Southwest has been struggling to find its footing after the COVID-19 pandemic. Its lackluster earnings have fueled pressure to revamp its business model. In the second quarter, it began charging customers for checked bags, ending a unique free policy. It also rolled out a new basic economy fare. The company said the bag fee revenue thus far exceeded its expectations. But sales of basic economy fares on its website suffered a hit after their launch in May, hurting its unit revenue in the second quarter. Southwest expects an impact on its third-quarter unit revenue as well. Meanwhile, its non-fuel operating costs were estimated to increase by as much as 5.5% in the third quarter from a year ago. Summer, typically the peak money-making season for airlines, is falling short this year as sluggish demand for standard economy seats forces carriers to cut fares, undermining their pricing power. Delta Air Lines (DAL.N), opens new tab and United Airlines (UAL.O), opens new tab have seen strong revenue gains from premium cabins, buoyed by affluent travelers willing to pay for upgrades. By contrast, low-fare carriers such as Southwest are under pressure to maintain profitability as price-sensitive travelers remain cautious with discretionary spending. The airline, however, held out hopes for the second half of the year to be stronger, citing stronger demand as well as the industry's efforts to limit seat supply and fend off discounting pressure. "While early, recent industry demand shows signs of improvement off of depressed second quarter 2025 levels," the company said. Other airlines including United and Alaska(ALK.N), opens new tab have also reported a recovery in bookings in recent weeks. But the industry's pricing power remains weak, particularly in the domestic market. Southwest, the largest U.S. domestic carrier, saw a 3% year-on-year decline in its unit revenue in the second quarter. Its overall passenger revenue was also down from a year ago, with a sharp drop in passenger volumes. The company said its capacity, or seats on its flights, was expected to be flat in the third quarter from a year ago. The company will discuss its earnings with analysts on Thursday.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store