GONE COLD

L.A.’s food culture, transformed by immigration raids.

- HANNAH GOLDFIELD

Business has slowed across the city, including at the beloved paletería Los Alpes.

In early July, while shopping at a farmers' market on the east side of Los Angeles, where I live, I bought a few packages of raw chicken thighs from Jose David Ruelas, of Garcia Ruelas Farms. As Ruelas, who is known for telling customers to “have an eggcellent day,”bagged my purchase, he asked, “Would you like some frozen water with that?” I stared at him blankly until he gave me a conspiratorial wink, and I realized what he was refusing to say.

Barely a month had passed since ICE had launched its vicious campaign against L.A.’s immigrants, particularly those from Latin America, with masked agents snatching unsuspecting people from Home Depot parking lots, hotels, and local farms. Nowhere seemed out of bounds: one day as I was leaving my daughter's preschool, a van presumed to be dispatched by ICE (its occupants identified themselves as law enforcement but didn't specify their division) pulled up to the entrance. Later, one of the school’s administrators, who had turned them away without incident, theorized that they'd been broadly targeting caretakers.

The terror felt existential in the city’s food industry, which depends almost entirely on immigrant labor. In heavily Latino areas, many business owners, and their employees and patrons, were afraid to leave their homes, turning some commercial corridors into ghost towns. Perhaps no one seemed so vulnerable as the city’s many streetfood venders: on June 12th, a popular truck in East L.A., Jason’s Tacos, was abandoned, slivers of carne asada still smoking on the grill, after ICE detained several of its workers and customers, according to the owner.