As Mario Ramos pushes his ice cream cart through the city, worries course through his mind.
A street vendor in Los Angeles for 20 years, Ramos now carries with him a small red card outlining his constitutional rights in case immigration officers approach him as part of President Trump’s vow to carry out mass deportations. He scours the news for information on enforcement operations and has even cut back the hours he spends on the streets to limit his exposure.
“The street vending community is shaking,” Ramos said. “This is the era of fear for us.”
Ramos, 52, who is in the U.S. illegally, is among the hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the region who lack official work authorization and instead find jobs in the vast informal economy. Often working for cash and well below the minimum wage, their labor has become an economic linchpin, encompassing work in vital industries and including jobs such as child care, caregiving for the elderly, construction and harvesting, preparing and selling food.
“People forget how significant the undocumented labor force is in our state’s economy,” said Manuel Pastor, director of the Equity Research Institute at USC, who has long researched immigrant labor.
“What part of your daily life doesn’t involve contact with someone who is undocumented, whether you know it or not?” Pastor asked. “Did you get food today? Did your house cleaner come?”
The labor and financial implications are particularly pronounced in L.A. County, where undocumented immigrants contributed close to $18 billion to the economy in local, state and federal taxes, as well as spending power in 2021, according to the most recent data from the California Immigrant Data Portal, a project of USC’s Equity Research Institute.
If Trump does carry out large-scale deportations, Pastor said, it would drastically rewire the social fabric of a region where nearly 1 in 5 people is either undocumented or living with a family member who is. It would also create significant disruptions in industries such as construction and food preparation and service, he said, and ultimately lead to higher costs for consumers.
“It’s going to be a lot harder to rebuild from the Eaton Canyon and Palisades fires,” he said. “Your prices are going to rise at the grocery store. It’s going to be the opposite of cheaper eggs.”
And the broader economic ripple effects, Pastor said, would be far reaching.
“Behind every software engineer or entertainment industry lawyer is an army of nannies and food services workers and gardeners,” Pastor said. “They may not see their mutual dependence, but it is a fact of life in our economy.”
Although the true scale of deportations remains to be seen, particularly in so-called sanctuary cities such as L.A., which forbids city employees or resources from going toward federal immigration enforcement, the Trump administration has already taken an aggressive stance, including rescinding a policy that prohibited immigration agents from making arrests in hospitals, schools and churches.
And the chilling effect has already begun.
Rodrigo, a construction worker who asked to be identified only by his first name because he is in the country illegally, said fellow workers have started swapping messages of caution, including specific urges to look for ICE immigration agents outside Home Depot locations.
“The fear has been sown,” he said.
The 64-year-old, who arrived in the U.S. nearly four decades ago, runs a small construction company that does electrical, plumbing and carpentry work. In recent weeks, he said, his six employees, undocumented workers from Guatemala, Mexico and El Salvador, who all arrived in recent years, have told him they’re fearful of traveling to certain areas for jobs.
“We’re going to San Clemente today,” he recalled telling the workers recently.
“I’m not going there,” one worker told him. “There is too much immigration.”
He tries to calm their nerves but also reminds them to behave cautiously in public — if you’re going to drink, Rodrigo tells them, do it at home. He warns them that even if they’re doing nothing wrong, a drunk guy at the bar might throw punches, drawing the police to the location, and he worries that anyone detained for any reason could be swiftly deported.
For now, Rodrigo said, he isn’t personally too scared — he’s taking a wait-and-see approach. But to be cautious, he said, he will avoid traveling to either Texas or Arizona, states where he said he expects more harsh crackdowns.
“But with work, I don’t really have time to travel anyway,” he said, noting that he expects business to pick up soon with requests to rebuild after the wildfires.
Kimberly Tapia, who along with her mother, Maria Ponce, started the Food Truck Group, an L.A. company that rents out food trucks and helps street vendors get permits, said fears about deportations have already begun to shift demands at the company.
The business has recently seen an influx of new clients looking to get permits in hopes of avoiding attention from immigration agents, as well as more inquiries from current clients who want to trade in their food carts for trucks so there is a physical barrier in case agents approach them.
Those with permits “want the ability to lock the door, close up and not feel vulnerable to being taken away,” Tapia said. “They’re worried that because of the color of their skin, someone is going to swing by and say I don’t care if you’re permitted or not.”
Ramos, the ice cream vendor, said a creeping sense of unease has become a constant for him and fellow vendors. The start of Trump’s second term feels different than his first, Ramos said, especially with Republicans now in control of both the House and the Senate.
“There’s a lot of fear of not returning home and knowing that my children will ask, ‘Where is Dad? He never came back,’” he said. “I want people to know it will be four years of fear, four years of uncertainty, four years of sadness.”
It has put a painful damper on a job that has brought Ramos years of fulfillment.
He started selling ice cream years ago, seeing it as a way to bring the flavors of his first home in Puebla, Mexico, to his new one in L.A. And like many other vendors, he is proud to be an entrepreneur.
“We’re not waiting for jobs. We start our businesses and pay our taxes,” he said. “They don’t see how much we contribute to the economy or the taxes we pay.
“If we’re not acknowledged, at least our children who are citizens, they will always know that we were good for this country.”
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