Carlos\u2019 brother, Jose, 35, was shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles. Carlos watched as agents in Immigration and Customs Enforcement vests led Jose and 13 other garment workers into a waiting white Sprinter van. Carlos hasn\u2019t seen his brother since, though he did confirm that Jose is being held at an immigration detention center in Adelanto.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had just lost our other brother, he died,\u201c said Carlos, whom CalMatters is only identifying by his first name because of his own fears of deportation. \u201cThen, for our family, losing Jose, it was like someone died again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Worksite raids like the one at Ambiance are an attention-grabbing component of the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown, one that it remains committed to despite a brief reversa<\/a>l in mid-June. They\u2019re unfolding across the state, from Los Angeles\u2019s Fashion District to farm fields in the San Joaquin Valley<\/a> and a restaurant in San Diego<\/a>.<\/p>\n While one stated purpose of worksite raids is to remove illegal competition from the labor marketplace, the reality is far messier: Studies have found that immigration raids don\u2019t do much to raise wages \u2013 and actually deflate them<\/a>. Even after a raid, employers are no more likely to use federal immigration verification tools like E-Verify during hiring.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, on the campaign trail, Trump focused on the threat of illegal competition as the political and emotional lynchpin of his deportation plans.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re taking your jobs, they\u2019re taking your jobs,\u201d Trump told a crowd in Wilmington, N.C.<\/a>, on Sept. 21. \u201c Every job produced in this country over the last two years has gone to illegal aliens, every job, think of it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to save you. We\u2019re going to save you. We\u2019re going to save you.\u201d<\/p>\n Every new job between 2022-2024 was not, in fact, filled by undocumented immigrants. Studies show actually deporting workers en masse from industries that rely on undocumented labor does little for U.S. workers. Giovanni Peri, a UC Davis economist who has studied the economic impacts of deportations in the 1930s and during the Obama administration, has found doing so actually reduces job opportunities for American-born workers.<\/p>\n That\u2019s in part because many American workers, even those outside of immigrant-heavy industries, rely on the services generated by low-wage, undocumented labor \u2014 the costs of which would rise with mass deportations.<\/p>\n \u201cLosing some of these workers and jobs that Americans are moving out of, it shrinks the local economy and there\u2019s a reduction in jobs for Americans,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n There is no evidence, Peri said, that in the face of mass deportations, immigrant-heavy industries would raise their wages to hire American workers instead.<\/p>\n \u201cIf there is such a world, it has not been the reality in the U.S. in a long time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n What does tend to happen, according to a study last year by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, is that raids lead to more job turnover while showing little net change in the employment rate.<\/p>\n \u201cActions that target employers \u2013 audits, investigations, fines, and criminal charges \u2013 have larger effects than raids, which target workers,\u201d the study authors wrote.<\/p>\n The impact to the families can be long-term and devastating. Absences, suspensions, expulsions<\/a> and rates of substance abuse and self-harm increased among Latino students in a Tennessee town that was raided, even among students whose families were not directly impacted. Property crime dropped but violent crime<\/a> increased in a small northeast Iowa meatpacking town after a massive 2008 raid. Infants born to Hispanic mothers in that same Iowa town had a 24 percent risk of low birth weight<\/a> compared to the same population one year before the raid.<\/p>\n Federal Bureau of Investigation agents face off against protesters during an ICE raid at Ambiance Apparel in Downtown Los Angeles on June 6, 2025. (Photo by J.W. Hendricks for CalMatters)<\/p>\n \u201cOur mom is devastated, and she\u2019s scared for herself, too,\u201d Carlos said. \u201cA lot of us are from the same (Zapotec Indigenous) community in Mexico, a lot of people kidnapped in the raid, so it\u2019s like a whole bunch of families had a death.\u201d<\/p>\n In his first term, Trump\u2019s worksite raids focused on the South and the Midwest, when more than 1,800<\/a> people were detained, mostly at manufacturing plants and meat and poultry processing facilities. That\u2019s a tiny segment of the estimated 1.5 million people deported<\/a> under Trump from 2017 to 2021, but it played a significant role in another of the administration\u2019s goals: To create enough fear and mistrust among undocumented immigrants<\/a> that they self-deport.<\/p>\n But this time, Trump\u2019s focus is on California.<\/p>\n ‘There’s No Money’ After Raid Ambiance Apparel, through an attorney, denied that the company had any advance warning or involvement with the raid and the company declined to comment further.<\/p>\n The garment industry is a logical target for immigration enforcement because so much of the workforce is undocumented. The same is true of agriculture. Estimates vary, but anywhere from one third to more than one half of California farmworkers are undocumented immigrants.<\/p>\n William Lopez, a University of Michigan public health professor who has written a book on the impact of immigration raids on mixed-status families, said he learned in interviews of people present at six immigration raids in the Midwest and South in 2018 that people \u201chaven\u2019t developed the language\u201d to capture the impact of large-scale immigration raids on a community.<\/p>\n After a raid, \u201cpeople don\u2019t drive, there\u2019s no money because everyone\u2019s paying bond, no one\u2019s going to school anymore,\u201d Lopez said.<\/p>\n He continued, \u201cthe comparisons were, there was hurricanes, there was tornadoes, there was war, some people compared it to a public execution. Some people described it like the death of a grandchild.\u201d<\/p>\n Congress made it illegal to knowingly hire workers who don\u2019t have authorization in 1986, as part of an overhaul of the nation\u2019s immigration system. The overhaul also legalized about 2.7 million undocumented immigrants.<\/p>\n Still, false Social Security numbers have been fairly easy to obtain, and employers are largely able to duck liability with only a cursory review of the documents workers present when they\u2019re hired.<\/p>\n Employers have had little incentive to get stricter, even after the high-profile raids of meat and food processing plants during the second term of the George W. Bush administration. Demand for labor has remained high, fines for those caught have been lax and the use of contractors and subcontractors has proliferated, spreading out the risks of hiring..<\/p>\n \u201cThe number of employers who have been fined or imprisoned under the statute is very low compared to the number of employees who have been rounded up as a result of these (workplace) raids,\u201d said Leticia Saucedo, a professor at the UC Davis School of Law. \u201cThe idea behind all of these was, yes, to target the employers, but employees were collateral damage.\u201d<\/p>\n Saucedo said workplace raids and the deportation of workers highlight tensions between two wings of the Republican Party. Nativist groups want to curb immigration because they believe it displaces American workers, while business interests want access to a stable, legal pool of immigrant workers.<\/p>\n (Farmworkers work in a field outside of Fresno on June 16, 2025. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters\/CatchLight Local)<\/p>\n![\"Adobe](\"https:\/\/erepublic.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/c971a72\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/1536x1025+0+0\/resize\/840x561!\/quality\/90\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ferepublic-brightspot.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2F8f%2Fbd%2F4f3aa3674e59b9d46e029902ad96%2Fadobe-express-file-86.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Employees at Ambiance Apparel told each other that immigration enforcement was likely coming to their garment factory. Employees who did not want to be identified told CalMatters that people in Department of Homeland Security jackets were on site at least twice this year, most recently in April. Those workers say they were told by the company not to worry about a raid.<\/p>\n![\"Adobe](\"https:\/\/erepublic.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/2eeafe2\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/1536x1024+0+0\/resize\/840x560!\/quality\/90\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ferepublic-brightspot.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2F2c%2F35%2F8ab3e39d49a0ae288a71b155c2ac%2Fadobe-express-file-87.jpg\")
<\/p>\n