On June 18, I stood in the parking lot of a popular swap meet and shopper’s mall in South L.A. Normally, the parking lot would be packed with cars, shoppers and employees coming and going in a steady stream through the multiple entrances. That wasn’t the case this day.
The parking lot was almost empty. While I was there, I saw almost no customers, let alone employees, coming and going. The reason was obvious.
Fear. The overwhelming majority of the customers and employees were Black and Hispanic. Nearly all of the vendors were Black and Hispanic. But not on this day.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had purposely made much of its raids and sweeps of businesses in South and East L.A. and surrounding communities in the weeks before I stood in the mall parking lot. While ICE operatives were confronted every step of the way by mass protests, demonstrators, and face offs, the brutal reality was that it had done its job, in an ugly, infuriating way.
They were instilling fear, intimidation, and a degree of uncertainty and panic among many residents, workers and consumers.
The proof of this wasn’t just a nearly empty mall and swap meet. Restaurant owners, retail store owners, sidewalk vendors, day laborers, regular employees, even motorists and pedestrians all reported that fear had caused them to abandon jobs, shopping and hustling for work outside venues such as Home Depots.
The risk was simply too great. Meanwhile, the economic loss to these businesses steadily mounted.
The raw numbers told the tale of economic disaster. Immigrants, legal or otherwise, make up more than one-third of California’s work force, and more than 40% of the state’s business owners. Most of them operate small to medium sized service and retail businesses.
And most of them are located in South and East L.A., and in surrounding communities that are predominantly Black and Hispanic. They provide jobs and income for many of the locals. They also provide much needed goods and services in locations that are readily accessible to the residents of the areas.
One of the crucial areas that has drawn much attention in the backwash of the ICE raids is the farm industry. Farm owners have screamed that their field workers, almost all undocumented workers, have fled the field in droves. The result: agricultural products are literally rotting on the vine.
The few attempts to recruit card-carrying native-born workers have been dismal failures. As one grower wailed, “they quit within a few hours.” The fall off in labor in the fields has predictably resulted in food shortages and yet another surge in already high food prices at grocery stores.
President Donald Trump and ICE officials repeatedly scream that the raids and sweeps are aimed at violent criminals, gang members and even rapists that supposedly have flooded the country. This is yet another blatant Trump falsehood.
Surveys of just who ICE is targeting found that many of those whom have been nabbed did not have criminal records and had exemplary work records. The arrest and detention of those individuals also had a crushing effect on the economy both locally and statewide.
The Public Policy Institute of California found that immigrants contribute significantly to various sectors, including agriculture, technology and small businesses. They contribute billions of dollars to the state’s economy yearly. Without this revenue, the state would not be just facing a sharp deficit in revenue. It would go broke.
Then there is a potential plunge in vital tax revenues. A New American Economy report noted that immigrants pumped a staggering $140 billion in tax revenue into the state’s coffers in 2024. Again, without that tax revenue, the state would collapse.
With Trump continuing to make bellicose threats to cut off federal funding for a myriad of projects, services and programs in the state as part of his punitive expedition against so called far left, Marxist radical California Democrats, there is no guarantee that the feds will make up any revenue shortfalls from the ICE assaults.
The long-term economic prognosis is that the raids, even after they officially end in Los Angeles, will continue to have a negative economic ripple effect.
Shoppers will be more cautious, even wary about patronizing many local businesses. Employees and day laborers will be even more cautious on the job and in their job searches.
Immigration rights groups will be in continual fund-raising mode in an effort to find cash to help with legal assistance, advocacy and support services to immigrants facing arrest and deportation. The cost of policing demonstrations and protests will further drain city and county budgets.
There will be a chilling effect on minority business start-ups, not to mention the higher costs of new business start-ups.
That’s all to say, that my lonely venture that day in the parking lot of the mall and swap meet was no fluke. It was yet another horrid example of the ICE effect in South L.A, and elsewhere.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the host of the weekly The Hutchinson Report on Facebook Livestream.
