Over the last two weeks, as videos of ICE agents tackling people at bus stops or handcuffing fruit vendors on street corners spread across the internet, the food landscape in Los Angeles has been terrorized by fear. Families are too frightened to leave their house for groceries. Taqueros are scared to go to work. Restaurant and bakery owners are prepping employees on what to do if ICE shows up at their workplace.
Los Angeles has always been a city of immigrants. We wear it like a badge of honor. Here on Good Food, we celebrate our diversity through the lens of food, and the people who grow and prepare that food.
We taped this segment five days before it was set to air, and while a lot can change in a few days, one thing won’t. Our LA food community is suffering. In order to understand how immigration raids are impacting local businesses, we turn to Memo Torres of LA TACO.
Evan Kleiman: LA TACO reported that Jason's Tacos, a food truck in East Los Angeles, was raided by ICE last Thursday, and two taquerias and four customers were taken by officers. What other details do you have surrounding that raid?
Memo Torres: Well, I mean, it's crazy. I think one of the craziest things about how that raid went down is that the owner, Jason, said that it took less than two minutes. They came down, they swooped up the customers, and then when they took the customers, that the taqueros ran, and when the taqueros ran, they chased after them. And you know, a bit of their tactics. It was interesting, they'll roll about 10 to 15 vehicles deep. ICE will roll about 10 to 15 vehicles deep, then they'll park around the block so that if somebody runs, there's already agents around to grab them and wait for them to run towards them.
Just to speak to how suddenly it happened and was over, there's a haunting video showing carne asada still sizzling on the grill.
Yeah, they don't care about any, they just, they just… people are leaving their cars. I had a friend whose cousin was taken from a gas station while the gas car was still getting gas pumped. I'm hearing horrific stories from everywhere.
Do we know where, for example, the employees and customers who were abducted in this immigration sweep at Jason's Tacos are being held? Do their loved ones know where they are?
He said in a recent post, which is on LA TACO, he collaborated on with us, he says, finally, after two days, we were able to locate our friend and are looking for an immigration attorney that can help. So it took him two days to find him.
It seems that part of what is triggering so much fear, aside from the impact of the raids themselves, is the fact that these officials often are not presenting in a standardized way. When you talk to people who have been impacted, is there any pattern to how these raids occur or does it feel completely random?
It honestly feels very random and you know, as I run through LA TACO socials and look at tips that are coming in through our DMs, there's constant tips of reports that ICE is going to be in this location or they're going to be at that location tomorrow or they're going to be going through Centinela and Culver City restaurants, and this and that. And none of those have actually planned out. So there's a lot of misinformation out there.
How do you go about corroborating these tips and do your job amid all of this misinformation?
I think one of the benefits of over the years as a local publication, we've built a lot of ties with lots of restaurants, lot of community organizations, people around LA, members, and we've been able to reach out to different people in different areas who can help us corroborate information.
For example, one tip that didn't pan out: We were hearing that the ICE was at Montalban restaurant in Santa Monica or just outside of Santa Monica in the Sawtelle area. It was starting to go viral and we looked into it. A restaurant owner that we know had also sent us a tip and she knew the owner, so I asked her to reach out, and the owner was like, "I have no idea where this is coming from. Then, ICE is not here. They haven't shown up."
So it seems like that there can be a lot of fear and people anxious to get information out to try to protect other people will share that we spotted them here at this intersection, we spotted them over there, or they're going this way, and then, you know, out of fear, creates more fear, which creates more chaos, which in turn, helps ICE in a certain way. I think that's one of their intentions in California, to spread this chaos and fear, which is really hurting us economically and financially, especially these businesses.
Have other taqueros and street food vendors been raided here in LA County?
Yes. So we've gotten reports of hundreds. They found a couple stands that were just empty. Same thing, meat on the grill. Still, we've had reports of fruteros in Westchester, just the fruit stand, just standing there alone. Yeah, these reports are coming in.
How has the fear incited by these raids impacted all of the people who work in street food? Are these food businesses closing early? Closing brick and mortars? Are they closing altogether?
A lot of taquerias, taco stands out on the streets, closed when they heard the news about Jason's Tacos. We have a list of about 12 or something like that that Janet villafano compiled on L.A TACO. But they can only close for so long. Some of them I've seen, like brothers, cousins, for example, close, but then he came back open. Some other ones that have remained closed.
Everybody's been super cautious but the reality is that they can't afford to stay closed. They're stuck between not feeding their families or risking getting picked up by ICE. Speaking of Jason's tacos, those two employees he had, they had stopped working, and they needed the money, and they're like, "Okay, we need to work." So Jason put them back out there, and they risked it and literally got picked up by ICE. It's a tough position for a lot of these employees.
For me, it's especially heartbreaking, because it's been noted that earlier this year, many of these vendors were feeding families impacted by the LA wildfires.
Yeah, these taqueros, they did so much during the LA fires, which was just a few months ago. I think one of the biggest storylines was how taqueros have stepped up to feed the firefighters, to feed the police, to feed the people who lost their homes. Who knows the hundreds of thousands of tacos and burritos that they sold out? They're good people. They're people that love LA loves them. There's a very symbiotic, unified relationship. You can't think of LA without thinking of the street vendors, the taqueros. And I think LA has really been affected by the fact of, these are our people — these are the car wash people, the people at Home Depot, the people who sell our food, who bring the culture, who stand up for LA when LA needs them.
We've been talking about taqueros and other Latino food service workers but there are other food service workers who are also being hit really hard. I'm thinking about all of the less visible food workers who are just the fabric of Los Angeles.
It's funny, just this morning, I was getting my coffee from my usual place. It's a panaderia bakery. And I was asking, "How are you guys? How are you guys doing?" I think almost every business I've talked to is down about 50% in sales right now. That's the common figure out here, 40-50%. Apart from that, they're having to cut hours for short-term employees. So employees are working a lot less because there's less business.
Apart from that, it's not even the fear of ICE going into the restaurant that's impacting them morally, it's the stories from their customers. So I've been hearing from these restaurant owners, some of their clients work at the hotels, and they're saying that tourism is down. There's nobody checking into hotels, so their hours are getting cut short.
I'm hearing how people are just traumatized by the people that interact with their customers, hearing the stories about, yeah, my cousin was picked up. My mom was picked up. So what are a lot of these customers doing? They're ordering food and instead of staying in the restaurants, they're picking it up and running back home because they're afraid to be out. It's really affecting us heavily in almost all aspects — social, economic, culturally, business. It's really dampening down the city.
How does it feel for you, Memo, and your colleagues to be seeing this happen to the community that you've been reporting on for so long?
Like everybody in LA, it's devastating. We all try to learn how to deal with the emotional stress of this, because, I'm here, I'm looking at devastating, heartbreaking stuff, kids and families getting pulled apart. Then thousands of messages that we get through our social media and emails of support and that's really touching to us, too. It really affects us emotionally.
If our listeners want to support these food businesses that have been affected, what are some of the best ways they can help?
Shop local. I mean, it's the old and tried for message: Shop local. Go to your local businesses. Go out in the street, anything that's around you. Always support local. Small mom and pops. Order food from there. If there's a business you've been curious about, go shop at their business. Go buy from them. If you see a taqueria, go buy tacos.