They designed clothes: A hoodie with hands breaking free of shackles. T-shirts that said ‘Fight Ignorance, not Immigrants.’ Graphics imbued with the colors of Latin American flags.
But the profits didn’t go into their pockets. The money went to organizations that support immigrants.
These designers, who call LA home, couldn’t ignore the impact of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan — a central promise in his campaign for a second term — on their community.
The administration has highlighted immigration enforcement activity targeting hardened criminals, but data from NBC News’ U.S. deportation tracker, only 29.1% of the 56,579 people arrested by ICE as of Aug. 1, 2025 in the U.S. had criminal convictions.
“It doesn’t feel like what’s going on follows any of those common dignities of the world,” said Steven Mena, founder of streetwear brand MENACE. “Walking down southeast LA where I grew up, when ICE is in town, it’s palpable. It’s different. … It feels like an occupation.”
LA brand Born X Raised collaborated with 15 other brands to design a “Protect Los Angeles” hoodie and t-shirt, bringing in about $150,000 in profits to donate to CHIRLA (The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights).
MENACE, which was part of the collaboration, individually sold their own designs and donated $10,000 to Immigrants Defenders Law Center, Union Del Barrio, CARECEN Central American Resource Center, and to a friend whose family was directly impacted by the immigration enforcement raids.
Mena runs his business out of a warehouse in South El Monte, where racks are filled with a rainbow of leather jackets and his designs on his favorite medium: “the humble t-shirt.”
He pointed to the working class roots of the fashion industry – and how important undocumented labor is to it.
“If you dabble in streetwear and fashion, it is literally impossible for you to be ignorant to the issue,” Mena said.
The working class within the fashion industry is hardly lost on brothers Ricardo and Eric Cachua, who founded the luxury streetwear brand Decierto.
With a social media following just shy of 1,000 on Instagram, they still work other full time jobs to stay afloat. Their parents are from Guadalajara, Jalisco and immigrated to Santa Ana, Ricardo said. In a household of seven people, their mother always found a way to give back to an organization even if they were struggling to make ends meet.
“You don’t have to be completely thriving to help other people,” Ricardo said. “That carried into the way we grew up and saw the world.”
They were able to donate $3,000 in profits to CHIRLA. Whether it’s the colors of the Mexican flag, or dropping the ‘A’ on ‘USA’ to just read ‘US’, they make their own presence shine through their clothes.
“The counterculture, the protest, the speaking up when no one else wants to speak up, that’s in the DNA from the very start of what streetwear is,” Mena said.