It’s been a year since President Trump fully expanded Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in America, and California is one of its hotbeds, showcasing the extent of those operations. Due to the surge in ICE activity, immigrant businesses, especially Latino ones, have taken a huge hit due to their presence.
A UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute (LPPI) report found that 989 formal businesses within a half-mile of nine immigration enforcement sites in Los Angeles County recorded 46,000 fewer visits and an estimated $3.16 million in lost revenue in the two weeks alone following operations in June 2025.
“We know that there were hundreds of arrests in June 2025. The arrests continue across Los Angeles and haven’t stopped,” said Amada Armenta, director of LPPI and an associate professor of urban planning at UCLA, in the webinar. “This figure doesn’t even count the 50,000 vendors I know who live and work around Los Angeles, so the economic losses are far larger.”
Of the business owners surveyed, every respondent reported an instant drop in customers and sales; 59 percent reported declines exceeding 50 percent, while another 20 percent reported declines between 26 percent and 50 percent.
Sixty-eight percent of business owners temporarily closed or cut their hours, and 51 percent said staff missed work due to fears surrounding enforcement.
A one percent drop in foot traffic resulted in $114 million in revenue losses across LA County over a month.
“Fear in our communities shows up as red ink in our economy,” said Armenta, adding that many businesses “started operating behind locked doors, screening their clients.”
Other businesses have lost over 200,000 dollars due to the cancellation of graduations, quinceañeras, weddings, baptisms, festivals and other summer events.
For Gonzalo Monti, who has owned his Inglewood furniture store X-Elence for eight years, the drop in customers forced him to cut staff and take on work that two or three employees had previously done.
“My sales were reduced, but also we had to remove individuals from our business because we didn’t have any sales,” Monti said through an English interpreter during the briefing with American Community Media. “Several clients called us that their husband or wife were deported, or they were captured,” leaving some families unable to continue paying for furniture they had bought.
“We are not talking about only money,” he continued. “We are talking about human love. It’s very important for the development of any business, human contact.”
​Rudy Espinoza, president and CEO of Inclusive Action for the City, said persisting losses partly owe to how quickly emergency support disappeared after the raids receded from public attention.
“These raids did not simply impact undocumented people. These raids were an attack on all of us, and they attacked our entire economy,” he said, adding that fears among business owners around going outside also affected the frontline organizations that helped these owners: “Our staff are impacted directly by what’s taking place in these threats. We have seen funders step back because they’re afraid of also being targeted.”
