With its stately homes and bustling business districts, Downey has long been known to some as the “Mexican Beverly Hills.”
But the Southeast L.A. County city of more than 110,000 people has been roiled this week by Trump immigration raids in Southern California, sparking both fear and outrage.
Downey Councilman Mario Trujillo said the raids are “creating a culture of fear” that’s prompting people, even with documents, to stay home out of concern they could be targeted by federal agents simply for being Latino.
The downtown Downey area, which had already been hurting amid a tenuous economy, is now a ghost town, Trujillo said. While he understands that immigration agents have a job to do, Trujillo questions the necessity of grabbing workers trying to support their families and people just trying to go about their daily lives.
“We’re supposed to be made to feel safe by this agency because they’re removing bad people,” he said. “That’s what they’re supposed to be doing.”
On Wednesday, masked federal agents detained at least 12 people from businesses in Downey, but community members were able to discourage them from taking one man without proper documents.
Downey has long been a landing spot for upwardly mobile Latinos, who make up 75% of the population. The median income is $97,000, above the California average. The Times reported in December that support for Donald Trump increased during the last election. While Democrats still dominated, The Times found Trump gained 18.8 percentage points in November compared with the 2020 presidential election.
Paula Mejia, a Downey resident in her 50s who immigrated from Mexico to the U.S. more than 45 years ago, said that fewer people have been going to restaurants and to other businesses in Downey ever since the ICE raids began.
“I’ve been scared and I have to carry my passport,” she said. “I have never done before and we are out of words. Even my kids, they were born here. Now, they’re carrying their passports.” Mejia, who was wearing a green jacket with a “Mexico” badge sewn to the front Thursday afternoon, said she’s a U.S. citizen and has been disappointed by the way Mexicans have been treated under the Trump administration.
“They just look at our colors, our nationalities, and they’re just profiling people,” she said. “Colombians, Peruvians, Ecuadorians. They’re just calling them Mexicans. They’re denigrating us and want to use the term ‘Mexicans’ and we’re not backing up. We work very hard in this country and for them to be treating us like criminals, we’re not criminals. We’re hardworking people.”
In a video of the encounter, the unidentified man can be seen sitting on the ground surrounded by masked agents who had chased him down. The man spotted Immigration and Customs Enforcement at his job and rode away on his bicycle, but one of the masked men grabbed his tire, causing him to fall, ABC7 reported.
Melyssa Rivas recorded community members peppering federal agents with questions about why they were chasing the man. It’s unclear what prompted the agents to leave the scene.
“It looked like a full-on kidnapping scene out of a movie; it was scary,” Rivas told the outlet.
Jose, 26, who declined to provide his last name because of safety concerns, is the son of the owner of Galaxy Auto Detail in Downey, which was targeted by federal agents on Wednesday.
Two agents arrived shortly after 9 a.m. and attempted to quickly surround an employee in an apparent attempt to keep him from running away. But the worker saw what was happening and sprinted toward nearby train tracks. He was later detained along with another man. Only one of the individuals was undocumented, Jose told The Times.
Jose said he tried to ask the agents if they had a warrant but was told he was going to be arrested for interfering if he kept asking questions.
With only five workers remaining, the car wash was closed on Thursday and Jose said he doesn’t know when it’ll reopen. Jose’s mother, an immigrant from Mexico, has owned the car wash for 12 years. She and her son said they believe federal agents are targeting businesses owned by Mexicans.
“I have my citizenship,” said Jose, who was born in the U.S. “I feel unsafe, even if I have papers. I just saw them targeting brown people.”
“We’re starting to feel that we’re the only race that’s being targeted because it’s easy pickings because of the color of our skin,” Trujillo said. “That’s what it’s starting to feel like — racial profiling.”
Downey Memorial Church, the site of where a group of armed men wearing face coverings detained and drove off with a Latino man on Wednesday, was completely empty Thursday afternoon. All of the doors were locked and lights shut off.
Estevan Phillipy, 22, works at the Around the World Learning Center, a preschool right next to the church. Phillipy is a teacher and was with the kids when the man was detained Wednesday, but his father, who owns the preschool, saw the entire incident unfold.
“All of a sudden, a bunch of vans and cars pulled up into the parking lot, and they just jumped on him,” he said. “Some people from the church tried to stop it or were saying stuff, but the guy got detained and taken away.”
Phillipy is half white, half Mexican and was born in the U.S., but said his Mexican relatives have been afraid to go outside since the raids began.
“My family’s scared right now,” he said. “We are all documented, but we just look the part. I know there’s a lot of racial profiling going on.”
Alex Cruz, a 43-year-old Downey resident who has worked at Papa John Car Wash for the past year, said the raids have been so unsettling that many have stopped coming to work. Cruz said the seven or eight undocumented workers who were employed at the car wash stopped showing up two weeks ago.
“Everybody is intimidated,” he said. “Everybody is afraid to get out of their house. Everybody is afraid to go to work.”
Cruz, the son of an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador who came to the U.S. in the 1970s, said he’s angered by the federal government’s portrayal that anyone without documents living in the United States is a criminal.
“That’s how they’re categorizing every Hispanic or Latino,” he said. “The president should have a little more humanity. If it wasn’t for immigrants washing their dishes, nobody would do it.”
“This is not right,” he added. “Everyone deserves the opportunity to work and support their families. A lot of these guys are missing out on a paycheck or a salary because of what’s going on right now.”
Some are continuing to work despite the uncertainty they feel leaving their homes each day.
A man who identified himself only as Francisco, because he was undocumented and feared deportation, said he has been working as a taquero on the outskirts of downtown for over a year. He said he has never felt as worried as he does now, in the shadow of this week’s ICE raids.
“We can’t go out to work as much on the streets now,” the 23-year-old said in Spanish. “We’ve heard from some colleagues who work in other positions, and they’ve even arrested a couple of them. We go to work afraid they might arrest us.”
To stay safe, Francisco said he has limited his movement, turning to Uber Delivery for necessities such as groceries and medicine. But he continues to come to work.
“If we don’t go out to work, how do we cover our expenses?” he asked.
Staff writer Karla Marie Sanford contributed to this article.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
