Luis was told by others that #ICE officers had just been there.

He & other vendors without legal #immigration status quickly left, he said.

"This has all been psychologically exhausting," he said. "I have to work to survive, but the rest of the time I stay inside."

"The more #immigration enforcement is indiscriminate & broad, rather than targeted, the more it disrupts the American #economy in very real ways."

Across #LosAngeles, #immigrants described hunkering down, some even skipping work, to avoid ICE.

Luis, 45, a Guatemalan hot dog vendor who asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of being targeted by #ICE, said this weekend he went to the Santa Fe Springs swap meet - a flea market & music event.

Andrew Selee, president of the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute, said the #Trump admin [supposedly] began its #immigration crackdown by focusing on people with #criminal convictions. But that has shifted to #workplace raids in the past 2 weeks, he said.

"They are targeting the hard working #immigrants who are most integrated in American society," Selee said.

Jimenez, who crossed into the US illegally but received #citizenship in 1987 after Republican President Reagan signed legislation granting #amnesty to many #immigrants without legal status, said he's taking in $7,000 a week less than he was 2 weeks ago.

Last Friday & Saturday he closed at 5PM, rather than 9PM, because his #restaurant was empty.

"This is really hurting everybody's business," he said. "It's terrible. It's worse than COVID."

The recent [very brief] shift in focus by #Trump & #ICE has been no help for Pedro Jimenez, 62, who has run & owned a Mexican #restaurant in a largely working class, Hispanic [Latin] neighborhood in #LosAngeles for 24 years.

Many in his community are so scared of ICE they are staying home & have stopped frequenting his restaurant.

…[Predictably] Abigail Jackson, a White House spox, said [it was the] *violent* #protesters in #LosAngeles [who] had created an unsafe environment for local businesses. "It’s the *Democrat* *riots* - not enforcement of federal immigration law - that is hurting small businesses," Jackson told Reuters.

[right, because the #protests are taking place in the produce market ]

…For the first time since the #ICE raids began, Ibarra was forced to throw out rotten fruit. He has to pay a garbage company $70 a pallet to do that.

"It's pretty much a ghost town. It's almost COVID-like. People are scared. We can only last so long like this - a couple of months maybe."

Ibarra, 32, who was born in the US to Mexican parents & is a #US #citizen, is not alone in seeing #Trump's crackdown on #immigrants devastate his #SmallBusiness.

His street vendor customers are at home in hiding, while #restaurant workers are too scared to travel to the market to pick up supplies. The market's workers who are in the US illegally have stopped showing up.

Ibarra, who pays $8,500 a month in rent for his outlet, which sells grapes, pineapples, melons, peaches, tomatoes & corn, usually takes in about $2,000 on a normal day. Now it's $300, if he's lucky.