California immigrant communities go quiet amid ICE sweeps

Workers in hoodies bending over rows of green plants

By Kevinisha WalkerMultiplatform Editor, Newsletters

June 16, 2025 6:30 AM PT

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Escalating immigration enforcement in Southern California has sparked protests, vandalism and sporadic clashes with police as President Trump has sent troops to downtown L.A.

In other parts of Greater Los Angeles, undocumented immigrants — and even those who are here legally but fear racial profiling — are exercising extra caution navigating their daily lives.

My colleagues reported that some communities have been unusually quiet, with residents saying they are avoiding going out and attending to routine business for fear of being stopped.

Here are some places where foot traffic is significantly down:

MacArthur Park

On Friday, the area around the longtime hub west of downtown was noticeably quieter than usual. Many of the vendors whose carts once lined South Alvarado Street were gone.

A number had already left earlier this year when the city put up fencing after a gang-related shooting that wounded six people.

“There’s like sadness, maybe grief. I think a lot of fear, a lot of fear is going around these communities. And yeah, people are walking around just very cautious, very cautious,” Cristina Serrano told The Times as she was doing mitt work at Panda Boxing Gym.

The gym’s owner now regularly walks up and down the block looking for signs of trouble and to make sure that people in the gym feel safe, Serrano said.

Downey

With its stately homes and bustling business districts, Downey has long been known to some as the “Mexican Beverly Hills.”

But the Southeast L.A. County city of more than 110,000 people has been roiled by Trump immigration raids, sparking both fear and outrage.

Downey Councilmember Mario Trujillo said the raids are “creating a culture of fear” that’s prompting people, even those with documents, to stay home out of concern they could be targeted by federal agents simply for being Latino.

The downtown Downey area, which had already been hurting amid a tenuous economy, is now a ghost town, Trujillo said.

Last week, masked federal agents detained at least 12 people from businesses in Downey, but community members were able to discourage them from taking one man without proper documents.

Trujillo said he understood that immigration agents have a job to do, but the council member questioned the necessity of grabbing workers who are trying to support their families and people just trying to go about their daily lives.

Oxnard

At farms in Ventura County, workers who would typically be moving up and down the rows of strawberry plants were largely absent. The entry gates to many area farms were shut and locked.

Juvenal Solano, a director with the Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project, told The Times he felt relieved. Silence was better than the chaos that broke out days earlier when immigration agents raided fields in Oxnard and across other communities in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties that grow a considerable portion of the state’s strawberries, avocados and celery.

Community groups told The Times they had confirmed that at least 35 people were detained in the raids.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration appeared to be changing its tune as immigration officers were directed to pause arrests at farms, restaurants and hotels after the president expressed alarm about the effects of his aggressive enforcement, an official said Saturday.

Here’s more coverage of the immigration raids and protests:

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