LOS ANGELES — Corissa Hernandez still recalls how quickly business shifted at Nativo, her bar and restaurant in the Highland Park neighborhood, as federal immigration agents ramped up enforcement operations across the city last June and caused uncertainty among her staff and customers. 

She wasn’t alone. A newly published report from the Latino Policy and Politics Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles suggests that there were colossal economic repercussions for small businesses across Los Angeles County, finding that establishments across nine enforcement sites experienced about 46,000 fewer visits and approximately $3.16 million in losses within two weeks of enforcement activities. 

“It felt like a lot of us were very vigilant at the front door, and a lot of our community members and team were coming in here distressed, whether it was fear for their family, their friends,” Hernandez told MS NOW. She estimates that her sales dipped by as much as 40%, in part because potential customers were hesitant to leave their homes amid heightened Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in their communities. 

Hernandez described the ICE raids as particularly frustrating considering how reliant the restaurant industry is on immigrant labor.

“Restaurants and bars cannot exist without immigrants,” she said. “It’s in every aspect of what we do, from the people who are out in the fields picking the food that we’re eating, to the people preparing our food, to the people serving it, to the people owning these spaces.”

Patrons have slowly returned for cocktails and fresh Mexican fare, and the World Cup gave her a much-needed boost. But still, Hernandez remains on edge.

“I can’t say that we’re 100% prepared,” she said. “I don’t think anyone ever is when something so traumatic happens, but we strive to ensure that we’re still maintaining as safe of a space as possible.”

The UCLA study also found that 95% of Latino business owners reported continued financial stress almost a year after Trump’s aggressive national crackdown began, a long-term impact that surprised the report’s lead author, Amada Armenta, also the director of the Latino Policy and Politics Institute.

“I think what became very clear was that there has just been a series of what our respondents called ‘disasters’ or ‘emergencies,’ from Covid to the fires to the ICE raids, and that not only did they feel like it was more difficult to recover [than] in the past, but also almost like their reserves had been exhausted,” Armenta told MS NOW. “So many people talked about draining their savings accounts to stay afloat, taking on additional business debt, and then I think what was most surprising to us was also the amount of emotional stress and health problems that people reported, chronic health conditions that used to be under control that were no longer under control.”

Additional research from business professor Exequiel Hernandez at the Wharton School suggests similar downturns could be playing out at shops nationwide. In his report, titled “ICE-ing the Economy: Immigration Enforcement Under Trump 2.0 and Local Economic Activity,” Hernandez analyzed foot-traffic and spending data for 5.4 million businesses across the country between January 2024 and February 2026; he found 8.1 billion fewer visits to businesses and as much as a $14 billion decrease in retail spending across metropolitan areas targeted by federal immigration enforcement operations. 

In Los Angeles’ Fashion District, where federal agents raided a clothing business last June, City Council member Ysabel Jurado says vendors are still struggling to rebuild both their businesses and their sense of safety. 

“During the Fourth of July weekend that year, one of the vendors said they only made $3 the whole weekend, and that Fourth of July weekend is usually when they would make so much money that would last them the summer, and now they’re trying to subsist out of $3,” Jurado said. “How is that going to be sustainable for anybody? And so, it was just so devastating. And recovering from that is something that’s going to take years to do.”

Jurado compared Los Angeles’ ICE raids to a period of martial law in the Philippines that drove her parents to flee to the United States.

“I live at home with my dad, and I was just thinking about the irony of the fact that that was what my parents left, and now it’s at my doorstep as the first time ever being a council member, and I think within the first six months of my tenure,” she said.

Asked about the economic impact of immigration enforcement activity on Latino-owned small businesses, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told MS NOW, “Let’s be clear, if there was any correlation between rampant illegal immigration and a good economy, [Joe] Biden would have had a booming economy. Removing these criminals from the streets makes communities safer for business owners and customers.”

The spokesperson also touted the administration’s deportation totals. 

“In President Trump’s first year back in office, more than 3 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations. As of Aug. 4, we have now deported over 1 million illegal aliens and arrested over 1 million illegal aliens.”

In Highland Park, a neighborhood dotted with restaurants and coffee shops, City Council member Eunisses Hernandez painted a different picture of the community she grew up in, which she says is still on its toes more than a year after the initial surge.

“They’re not going after the worst of the worst. That is a distraction,” Eunisses Hernandez said. “They’re going after anybody that looks brown. That’s what we’ve seen in our district. That’s what we’ve seen in this city.”

As the businesses in her district work to recover, Eunisses Hernandez said the enforcement activity was enough to push some already struggling local shops over the edge. 

“What we’ve also seen is that many of the businesses that have been impacted by the federal immigration raids haven’t been able to open up again,” she said. “They’ve lost employees. Their customer base is gone, and they’ve just shuttered.”

At El Mercadito, a long-standing Mexican market with traditional restaurants, clothing stalls and a range of other vendors, shop owners said trepidation surrounding immigration activity has frightened customers away and turned the once busy hallways into a quieter affair.

Leather shoes and belts line the walls of Ricardo Nuñez González’s small shop, but now there seem to be fewer people coming in to buy them. He immigrated here from Sahuayo, in the Mexican state of Michoacán; inherited the store from his mother; and has been working there for more than 30 years. 

He says business was down about 80% last June and has since improved, but it’s still not where it used to be. Many potential customers, he said, have turned to online shopping. In other cases, he fears they are preparing for the worst. 

“A lot of people, what they do is saving money, like we say in Spanish, just in case,” Nuñez González said. “If we got deported, just in case we’re gonna have some money saved.”

When business is slow, he said he is forced to cut his workers’ hours, but he does not want to let any of them go. 

“At least I’m going to try to do my best as long as I can,” he said.

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From MS Now.