Huntington Park, California, a working-class community of more than 50,000 people, has recently felt like it has a bullseye on its back because of ramped-up raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The town is 95.6% Latino, and as many as 45% of the residents are undocumented, according to the city.
City Council member Jonathan Sanabria, who grew up in Huntington Park, says the local community is scared.
“We are a target for them because we know that they are stereotyping and they’re racially profiling us. And they’re targeting folks that look like me,” he said.
Sanabria took a CBS News crew to Pacific Boulevard, the city’s main commercial thoroughfare. The once-vibrant city center was eerily quiet.
“I remember Pacific Boulevard was always packed, but since the raids have been going on, it’s a ghost town,” said longtime resident Jose Lomeli. “I don’t even know how these places are surviving.”
Some business owners are trying to provide a sense of safety to bring customers back to their stores.
“There’s people inside conducting business, but they now have their doors locked. They’re saying, ‘Hey, knock, let us know that you’re here so we can open the door, provide the service for you,'” Sanabria said of one store.
ICE agents would need a warrant to enter.
“We see stores that are open, but they remain with the gates locked. So this is another way of the stores protecting themselves and their customers from unwanted interactions with ICE,” Sanabria said.
A woman who runs a bridal shop, which is keeping its doors locked, told CBS News that business was “very bad.”
“The reality is that folks are scared of coming in. That folks are scared of being taken,” Sanabria said. “Some folks that are coming, they do feel that with it being locked, that the business owner is doing what they can to protect them.”
Asked what impact this was having on the economy, Sanabria said, “It’s very obvious that our sales tax numbers are gonna be a lot lower than they were, which means it’s gonna be less money to provide services for our community.”
According to the latest CBS News poll, fewer people overall approve of the Trump administration’s deportation program, compared to earlier this year. But approval among Republicans remains high. Many of them say immigrants who have entered the country illegally should be deported. Sanabria disagrees.
“When we look at a lot of different sectors of our economy, the reason we are able to keep it (prices) at a lower rate is because of the undocumented,” he said.
“I think the community, seeing that we are behind them, that’s making them feel safer,” Sanabria added.
