Federal immigration agents targeted at least one business here<\/a>, arresting more than 40 immigrant workers and triggering civil unrest<\/a> as they carried out sweeps across Southern California. <\/p>\n Joel Galvez reviews sales numbers in a spiral notebook at the top of which he wrote\u201cDios bendiga este dia Doming 22 de Marzo. Amen!!!\u201d (God bless this day, Sunday March 22, 2026. Amen!!!)<\/p>\n The effect on Joel\u2019s store, and others owned by members of the Galvez family, was immediate. The stores sell dresses for proms, special occasions and quincea\u00f1eras, a Latin American rite of passage celebrating a young girl\u2019s 15th birthday and her transition to adulthood.<\/p>\n Joel, 41, owns two stores that cater to women. His wife, Leonor Torres, 56, has a shop that specializes in quincea\u00f1era dresses and, with Joel, she co-owns a second quincea\u00f1era shop.<\/p>\n After the raids, the quincea\u00f1era shops, normally packed with girls and doting mothers on weekends, often sat empty. Customers called to cancel ball gown orders.<\/p>\n Saturdays were once the busiest days, and Joel\u2019s two shops would each sell 50 dresses or more. Now they might sell 10 each. Leonor went from selling 20 dresses a week to around three, maybe more on good days.<\/p>\n The raids also affected small businesses orbiting around quincea\u00f1eras: makers of embossed invitations, sellers of tiaras and crowns, choreographers, caterers, florists and more.<\/p>\n Leonor said her sister and brother, who co-own a banquet hall in the city of Commerce, soon lost a year\u2019s worth of bookings. Along with his men\u2019s store, her brother also owns a limousine business. That saw cancellations too.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t help that a month before the June raids, Joel and Leonor had opened the second quincea\u00f1era shop. The monthly rent hovers around $11,000.<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s been a real struggle\u2019<\/p>\n The Fashion District, frequented by nearly 2 million people a year, has deep ties to L.A.\u2019s immigrant communities. It is a sprawling network of independent retail and wholesale businesses, including a cluster of 150 shops that make up its main attraction, Santee Alley<\/a>.<\/p>\n Latinos account for more than 60% of the shoppers, according to the L.A. Fashion District Business Improvement District\u2019s annual report<\/a>. In all, the raids caused a nearly 13% decline in annual visits, the report found.<\/p>\n Fewer shoppers means the Galvezes now have a surplus of quincea\u00f1era ball gowns. Their debt, they say, has jumped from $20,000 to about $150,000.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been a real struggle,\u201d Joel said.<\/p>\n So on the last week of prom one recent Saturday morning, the pair were praying for a good day. <\/p>\n \u201cHopefully, we\u2019ll make some sales today.\u201d<\/p>\n Leanor Torres, right, expresses her frustration and fear to her husband, Joel Galvez, left, in the midst of a very slow day as the couple try to keep their business afloat. Rent is soon due and they can afford to make only a partial payment. \u201cI don\u2019t want to stress too much,\u201d Leonor said. \u201cSix months without sales. It drains you.\u201d<\/p>\n 1 <\/p>\n 2 <\/p>\n 1.<\/strong> Joel Galvez, right, heads to his warehouse with an assistant to collect dresses for delivery. 2.<\/strong> Leonor Torres hoists a dress as she closes shop after another slow day of sales. <\/p>\n Leonor hoped for the same. A few days before, thieves had broken into her store at night, stealing about $8,000 in cash that included the store\u2019s monthly $5,500 rent. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re in survival mode,\u201d she said. \u201cIf we can sell enough to pay rent, I\u2019ll be happy.\u201d<\/p>\n The uncertainty unleashed by the immigration raids threatened more than weekly sales. It was trying to unravel years of sacrifice that the couple had made since immigrating to the United States from El Salvador.<\/p>\n It was also threatening to split them apart.<\/p>\n \u2018I don\u2019t want to bury you\u2019<\/p>\n Joel had no desire to come to the United States.<\/p>\n He was born into a middle-class family in El Salvador and attended a school that emphasized discipline. He planned to attend the University of El Salvador and study electrical engineering.<\/p>\n But in the 1990s, under the Clinton administration, the U.S. began deporting a record number of Salvadorans back to the country, which had not recovered from its bloody civil war that claimed an estimated 75,000 lives, if not more<\/a>.<\/p>\n An untold number of those deportees were convicted criminals and members of Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. Salvadoran refugees had formed the gang in response to the violence they faced from street gangs in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n But the deportations backfired on the U.S.<\/a> The street gang flourished and expanded throughout Central America, contributing to decades of violence<\/a>, extortion and insecurity that triggered waves of migration to the U.S.<\/p>\n Joel said gang members use death threats to force young people to join. It wasn\u2019t long before they came for him too.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t join us, then you\u2019re a rival, and we\u2019ll have to kill you,\u201d they told him.<\/p>\n Joel refused, putting his life at risk.<\/p>\n Joel Galvez scrambles to load a pile of mannequins into his truck he purchased from another business that recently closed. Despite the recent slowdown, he is looking to expand his businesses.<\/p>\n His mother, fearful for her youngest son, pleaded with him to flee the country.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to bury you,\u201d he recalled her saying. <\/p>\n His sister already lived in the United States and, at her behest, he joined her in November 2005, entering the U.S. illegally and settling in Los Angeles. He got a job as a dishwasher at an Indian restaurant in Beverly Hills.<\/p>\n Almost immediately, he wanted to become a cook. He bought an Indian cuisine book in MacArthur Park and studied it. He\u2019d force himself into the kitchen, cooking orders before he was shooed away. But he was undeterred.<\/p>\n \u201cLittle by little, they let me stay in the kitchen longer and longer,\u201d Joel said. \u201cIt got to the point that they were calling me in to help cook on busy days.\u201d<\/p>\n In March 2016, when the owners closed the restaurant, Joel decided to turn a setback into an opportunity.<\/p>\n Working in Beverly Hills had shaped the future he envisioned for himself, and he dreamed of becoming as successful as the homeowners on Hillcrest Road. He resolved to open a business, to be his own boss.<\/p>\n Joel Galvez pays a temporary employee after tallying the week\u2019s receipts at the store.<\/p>\n One day he wandered into the Fashion District and bumped into a childhood friend who told him there was money to be made selling dresses. Using $25,000 he had saved as a cook, he opened Galvez Fashion. <\/p>\n Joel said he was mostly breaking even and barely had enough money for food. At lunch, he could afford only corn on a stick. He chuckled at the thought.<\/p>\n \u201cI would devour them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n From across the street, Leonor watched with amusement.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was eating it like, \u2018Wow, this is the best corn I ever had,\u2019\u201d she said, laughing. \u201cLittle did I know that this dude was hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n Leonor learned from others that the man she always saw eating corn was also from El Salvador. One day, he crossed the street and they began talking. She and her staff offered to help him. If someone bought a quincea\u00f1era dress at her store, they would tell the mothers to shop for their gowns at his store.<\/p>\n Leonor had not seen herself owning a quincea\u00f1era business but was thrust into it. She was serving as a case manager for disabled students for the Montebello Unified School District when she was let go due to budget cuts. She was 25 at the time.<\/p>\n Leonor Torres, right, assists Kailey Gutierrez of Riverside with a prom dress in her store.<\/p>\n Her brother opened a quincea\u00f1era shop in East Los Angeles and told her it was hers to operate. She moved the store to downtown Los Angeles, then the Fashion District, where she\u2019s been for 11 years.<\/p>\n It would years before Leonor and Joel would marry, but as their relationship grew, so did their businesses. Then came COVID-19.<\/p>\n Thanks to rent forgiveness and government help, their businesses survived, and when the pandemic abated,<\/b> business began to pick up. Then came President Trump.<\/p>\n \u2018I can\u2019t give up\u2019<\/p>\n The Galvezes were unfazed by Trump\u2019s promise to carry out mass deportations. They figured he would target only immigrants with criminal convictions.<\/p>\n Then came the June 6 raids<\/a>. One unfolded a few blocks from the couple\u2019s stores. Customers stopped coming.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was dead here,\u201d Joel recalled. \u201cThat\u2019s when our struggle began.\u201d<\/p>\n For months, federal immigration agents had carried out rolling patrols, targeting mostly Latinos, regardless of their immigration status. Immigrants and U.S.-born Latinos<\/a> were detained on the street, at work sites, swap meets<\/a> and parking lots of Home Depot<\/a>.<\/p>\n Shoppers stroll past Mimi\u2019s Fashion, a dress shop recently open for business in the Fashion District on a Sunday in March. A store that Joel and Leonor opened together has a monthly rent of around $11,000.<\/p>\n Joel feared he would be detained and deported even though he had a pending immigration case as he sought to obtain a green card.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t want to go out,\u201d he said. \u201cThe fear was that if they stop me, they\u2019ll ask if I\u2019m a U.S. citizen and my answer is going to be no and they\u2019re going to take me, rather than listen to me about my pending case.\u201d<\/p>\n The Galvezes said they stopped eating out and ended their monthly trips to the Morongo Casino. If Joel needed to run to Home Depot or fill his car up with gas, he\u2019d go at night, when it seemed raids weren\u2019t going on.<\/p>\n Leonor debated whether to carry documentation, even though she is a U.S. citizen.<\/p>\n As sales slumped, the couple fell behind on rent and had to cut staff by half, from four to two in some cases.<\/p>\n The financial stress created additional pressure on their relationship. They got into small arguments about how to improve sales. Sometimes, Leonor said, she went to her mother\u2019s house to avoid arguing with her husband, especially when he sat in silence, thinking.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes when I\u2019m alone, I cry,\u201d Joel said. \u201cBut you have to keep faith.\u201d<\/p>\n He tries to remind himself that the raids will someday end. <\/p>\n \u201cEverything is going to be OK, these moments don\u2019t last forever,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Leonor agreed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been through a lot, but we survived,\u201d she said. \u201cI can\u2019t give up.\u201d<\/p>\n Mimi\u2019s Fashion is busy with customers seeking prom dresses after many slow months.<\/p>\n \u2018I know I\u2019m going to make it\u2019<\/p>\n The couple said the raids eased after federal immigration agents killed Renee Good<\/a> and Alex Pretti<\/a> in Minnesota. Their deaths set off nationwide protests and led to the removal of Kristi Noem as secretary of Homeland Security, as well as Greg Bovino, then-commander at large of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.<\/p>\n Facing an uncertain future, Joel Galvez drives along Maple Avenue in Los Angeles\u2019 Fashion District, where his once-thriving businesses are fighting economic and social headwinds.<\/p>\n But not long after, federal immigration agents returned to the Fashion District. <\/a>No one appeared to have been taken, but the presence of federal agents drove off customers again.<\/p>\n![\"Joel](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780828521_220_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Leanor](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780828522_749_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Joel](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780828523_395_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Leonor](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780828524_472_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Joel](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780828525_366_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Joel](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780828526_346_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780828527_238_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Shoppers](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780828528_373_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Mimi's](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780828530_348_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Joel](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780828530_471_.jpeg\")
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![\"Leonor](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780828532_182_.jpeg\")
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