How ICE raids turned parts of Los Angeles into ghost towns

CNN

2 days ago

Santee Alley is known for its bargains and its crowds. Shoppers flock to the heart of Los Angeles' Fashion District to see what's on sale and get the latest styles from wholesalers and entrepreneurs, whose colorful goods spread out from the squat, industrial-looking stores. Music assails the senses, as do aromas from food vendors cooking up snacks for the visitors.
Or that's what it used to be like. A visit late last month found a very different Santee Alley. Metal shutters were rolled down and padlocked shut, even on a mild Southern California day. Instead of people jostling around each other in the hubbub, the street was all but empty. Even the mannequins showing off clothes to buy were absent.
Santee Alley is one of the places where immigration enforcement action by the Trump administration is having a visible and costly impact — turning parts of the US's second biggest city into ghost towns.
'This is something that's unprecedented,' said Anthony Rodriguez, the president and CEO of the LA Fashion District Business Improvement District. 'I personally think that the impact of this is more significant than that of the pandemic when we were in the lockdown phases.'
The Fashion District, south of Downtown LA, had some of the first workplace immigration operations by federal agents early in June. CNN affiliate KTLA reported dozens of people were taken away from a clothing store. The raids, the protests that followed, the deployment of the National Guard and now a lawsuit by the Trump administration against Los Angeles for its sanctuary policy have all sent chills through this city of immigrants, documented and undocumented.
'The sense of fear is overwhelming,' Rodriguez said. 'This is largely an immigrant business community here, for the business owners, the consumers and the employees.'
Visitors are down 45%, Rodriguez said, meaning 10,000 or 12,000 fewer shoppers a day and massive losses in revenue for what he said was one of the economic drivers of Los Angeles.
Christopher Perez said his fashion store — where he said he and all his workers are citizens or in the country legally — has seen a 50% drop in sales, even though they are open.
'A lot of people are scared to come out,' he said.
Even a whisper of a potential operation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the neighborhood can have an impact, Rodriguez said.
'Even when there isn't actual activity … someone thinks they hear something and that alone will shut down the entire area,' he said.
From June 1 through June 10 this year, ICE apprehended 722 people in the Los Angeles area, according to government figures obtained and shared by the Deportation Data Project, a group of academics and lawyers. More than half of the cases — 417 — were classified as immigration violations. Some 221 people — or about 30% of the 722 apprehended — were convicted criminals.
That compares with 103 apprehensions in the same period in 2024, when more than two-thirds of the people rounded up were convicted criminals, the statistics show.
Santee Alley and the Fashion District are heavily Latino, as is Olvera Street a few miles away, one of the oldest streets in the city and considered its birthplace. It commemorates the founding of the community named 'El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula' by settlers in 1781. As the town grew, first as part of Spain, then Mexico and finally the United States, its name shrank to Los Angeles.
Here too, the word on the street seems to be 'fear.'
'Everyone's afraid,' said Vilma Medina, who sells jewelry from her kiosk. 'People who we know are citizens, they're still afraid of being picked up even though they're … carrying around their documents.'
It's putting a damper on what should be a good time of year for business, she added.
'We've all been waiting for this time because it's summer break, so you get the families coming in,' she said. But instead of the expected boom, there are no crowds and little trade. Medina said her sales have plummeted 80% since early June.
'There'll be days I've sold $10 the whole day. That's how bad it's gotten,' she said. 'And that's even with most of the kiosks not even opening, so you would think that would increase my sales.'
She said she was tapping into her savings, hoping to keep going as she had through Covid and then the wildfires that devastated parts of her city earlier this year.
For one 63-year-old man, keeping going means firing up his taco truck on the streets even if he has no papers to show ICE agents if they come to him.
Urbano, who did not want to give his full name, told CNN he immigrated from Mexico 43 years ago and has lived undocumented in Los Angeles ever since.
'We have to go out to work because if not, who's going to pay our rent? To pay our bills?' he asked. 'Who's going to pay our taxes? Like I'm paying taxes. Can you imagine?'
His story is far from unique, and the contributions of undocumented workers is acknowledged and applauded by state leaders. Lt. Gov Eleni Kounalakis highlighted the findings of a recent report from the Bay Area Council Economic Institute stating that California's undocumented immigrants contribute more than $23 billion in local, state and federal taxes.
And if all 2.3 million undocumented people in California were deported, the report said the state's gross domestic product would decline by $278 billion.
'That's 9% of our GDP. That GDP value is larger than the entire state of Nevada, than the entire state of Oregon. These are not small outputs,' said Abby Raisz, the group's research director. 'These workers are really contributing to an entire economic engine that when one part of it crumbles, when we remove these workers who comprise 8% of the labor force, it has ripple effects that go way beyond just that one worker getting deported.'
Rodriguez said his Fashion District organization is trying to get assistance for vendors in financial trouble, but he acknowledged some might not survive the slump.
Even so, he insisted Santee Alley would endure.
'This is a resilient area. We're going to bounce back from this,' he said against a backdrop of shuttered storefronts. 'It'll be challenging, it'll be difficult — but we're absolutely going to persevere.'
CNN's Kate Carroll contributed to this story.