Workers and large chunks of local economies are being caught in the fray of a president that has teetered back-and-forth on his immigration enforcement stance in less than a week’s time.
After U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested 14 workers at apparel importer Ambiance Apparel in downtown Los Angeles’ Fashion District on June 6, the raids that followed on various workplaces cast a heavy pall on the city’s broader garment industry.
About 83 percent of the state and 83 percent of the country’s cut-and-sew work is done in Los Angeles with the city’s garment workers responsible for $15 billion in products annually, according to a letter written by former Assemblymember Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer Senior in 2023 in relation to proposed zoning changes in downtown.
Now, the impact of the raids is leaving some to wonder what this means for the local garment workforce.
The fashion industry in Los Angeles employs over 40,000 people of which more than 1,400 are in the Fashion District. An exact number on how many of those positions are filled by undocumented workers is hard to come by, but human rights group Remake offered that the majority of those in L.A. factories are undocumented with most immigrants coming from Latin America or Asia.
Trump Immigration Policy Swings
On Thursday, President’s Trump’s stance on immigration enforcement appeared to be creeping toward a solution for undocumented workers that are contributing to the economy.
That was when he posted on Truth Social consideration of a solution that would take into account undocumented workers in the hospitality and farming industries.
“Our great farmers and people in the hotel and leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long-time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump wrote in his post.
He ended his thought saying, “Changes are coming,” but didn’t elaborate.
He recognized the plight many businesses, not just hotels and farms, are reeling from in relation to the threat of raids saying that same day of his Truth Social post during a bill-signing event that farmers are “being hurt badly” from the raids, Axios reported.
The president added, “They have very good workers. They’ve worked for them for 20 years; they’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be … great, and we’re going to have to do something about that.”
He reversed course a few days later saying on Sunday ICE officers are charged with achieving the “single largest mass deportation program in history.”
Trump said the focus would be on the country’s largest cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. He characterized those cities as harbors of “millions upon millions of illegal aliens.”
“These and other such cities, are the core of the Democrat power center, where they use illegal aliens to expand their voter base, cheat in elections and grow the welfare state, robbing good paying jobs and benefits from hardworking American citizens,” Trump said in his post.
ICE Raids Cost Implications for LA
The late Sunday post came after a weekend of protests and, in downtown Los Angeles, 10 straight days of demonstrations.
Those gatherings culminated in a massive protest that drew more than 30,000 to downtown, in addition to thousands more throughout Southern California and the rest of the country.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass also rolled out a curfew in downtown beginning June 10 that ran from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. until its end was announced on Tuesday.
The curfew impacted business owners in the area, some of whom have scaled back their operating hours.
More broadly, the events of the past week have had a chilling effect on businesses downtown. In fact, most restaurants and retailers made the decision to board up their doors and remain closed over the weekend.
The city’s response was Zoom workshops, starting Friday and aimed at providing business owners with information on clean-up assistance and state and federal aid.
As of late Friday afternoon, the city spent $11.5 million in response to the protests this month against ICE, according to Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia. The majority of that was for the Los Angeles Police Department ($9 million) followed by the fire department ($1.2 million) and the rest on clean-up and damages, according to Mejia.
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