ICE didn't just raid this Calif. neighborhood. It dismantled its economy.

At only 20 feet wide and three blocks long, downtown Los Angeles’ Santee Alley is, on good days, a tight corridor filled with color, noise and high energy. Longstanding food vendors like The Alley Dog serve bacon-wrapped street dogs to customers wading through deep, narrow storefronts filled with everything from soccer jerseys to shapewear to jewelry. 

Nearby, professional florists, business owners and casual flora fans stroll the cavernous Los Angeles Flower Market. A few blocks west, customers line up for the exquisite flour tortillas at local darling Sonoratown.

But lately, there’s been a fear lingering in the air.

The Fashion District, a sub-neighborhood of Downtown LA that envelops Santee Alley, has long been home to thousands of family-owned retail shops (some of which operate as wholesale only) and more than 70 restaurants that include everything from casual taquerias to Middle Eastern spots to an acclaimed Hawaii restaurant to high-end options like Italian stunner Rossoblu. Many of the businesses are immigrant-, Latino- and Asian-owned. 

Until recently, throngs of shoppers would crowd the alley on weekdays and weekends alike. But in the past year, the area has felt much more muted, and at times even deserted, due at least in part to a series of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that have left business owners and customers shaken, stunned and in fear.

On June 6, 2025, ICE agents raided well-known businesses like fast-fashion shop Ambiance Apparel, resulting in the arrest of more than 40 people from Ambiance alone. The raids sparked local outrage and helped propel months of protests across the city. On Jan. 15 of this year, armed agents once again swarmed the area near Maple Avenue and 11th Street, a corner flush with Latino-owned businesses, to make arrests.

In January, the Los Angeles Times reported that some local businesses were seeing up to an 80% decline in sales, mostly due to a major drop in foot traffic, as both workers and customers feared being detained — or worse, deported. Nearly five months later, restaurant owners in and around Santee Alley say that business still hasn’t bounced back.

“The alley right now is not the alley as you know it,” says Kwini Reed, whose restaurant Poppy + Rose has been serving buttermilk chicken and waffles and other California-inspired brunch fare in the same building as the Flower Market for more than a decade. “Trauma is trauma. When a person has been traumatized, why would you tell them to go back to the area where it happened?”

She adds, “There are years upon years of lasting ramifications out of what happened last summer.”

Reed, who co-owns the restaurant with her husband Michael, reports that Poppy + Rose’s business was already down “at least 25%” due to last January’s devastating wildfires (which slowed business for restaurants across the city) when last summer’s ICE raids shook the area.

“The ICE raids were just another punch to the gut,” Reed says. “Where we are, there are a lot of people who ‘fit the profile’ of being an ‘illegal alien,’” she adds, pointedly echoing terms that have been used against LA’s immigrant community by the Trump administration and others in recent times. “The traffic in the Flower Market just stopped. People were scared.”

Reed adds, “Then we had to do protocols and figure out what happens if ICE comes through the door. We weren’t trained for any of that, just like we weren’t trained for COVID.”

Reed isn’t the only one with concerns. Multiple other business owners declined to even speak to SFGATE on the record for this story, citing fear, exhaustion and uncertainty around what’s happening in the neighborhood right now.

“The foot traffic is worse than COVID. Back then, you could put a mask on and go out and do your thing. Now, things are so uncertain that you don’t want to go out because you’re not sure you’ll go home again,” says Nayomie Mendoza, the second-generation owner of her family’s Fashion District Mexican restaurant, Cuernavaca’s Grill, which celebrates its 21st anniversary in May.

Mendoza’s parents, Maria and Marcos, both born in Mexico, opened the restaurant serving homestyle fare like tortas and tacos as a way to provide for their family. Mendoza recalls a visit last July from Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“When Gov. Newsom came to see us, we told him we needed funding. We were down 80% in sales,” Mendoza says. “I took him to the cash register and showed him that we’d only had two sales that day.”

She adds that the January raids were particularly devastating for businesses, many of which were preparing for the Valentine’s Day holiday.

“It caught everyone by surprise, because it’s usually a slower month,” she says. “Around 60% of the businesses shut down for 72 hours that weekend” due to the raids, she adds.

Juan Alfaro has been operating his cozy, bustling Peruvian Mexican restaurant Mex Peru Gipsy a block away from Santee Alley since 1982. He’s seen many sweeping changes in the neighborhood over the decades, especially since last summer.

“Nowadays, the neighborhood is very slow. I’ve been part of this community for a long time, and I understand what they’re going through,” Alfaro says. “People don’t want to come for security reasons.”

According to LA Fashion District Business Improvement District President Anthony Rodriguez, these stories aren’t just anecdotal. The BID has seen “a clear impact, particularly on small, family-owned businesses, many of which are immigrant-owned.”

“We are still hearing from business owners that sales remain below previous levels. While it varies by business, many are reporting declines anywhere from 10% to 30%, depending on location and customer type,” Rodriguez tells SFGATE in a statement. “The recovery has not been linear, and external factors, such as enforcement activity, tend to slow progress.”

James Beard Award-winning writer Bill Esparza, who has covered Mexican and Mexican American culinary traditions in LA and beyond for decades, says the ICE raids in the Fashion District aren’t necessarily new, though they are no less devastating because of their frequency.

“You’re talking about a community that has had psychological torment and stress since before the pandemic,” Esparza says. “I’ve been covering the vendors at the Mercado Olympic in the [nearby] Piñata District for years. All of those vendors are dealing with the constant stress of the health department. I witnessed a garbage truck with a bunch of officers grabbing people’s rigs. They were just throwing them in the trash compactor.”

Esparza adds, “The ICE raids have just killed everybody’s will to go out. Once an area has become dead, it’s really hard for it to come back.”

For those restaurants still operating in the Fashion District, the drop in business has meant cutting staff or reducing hours. Reed, for one, had to downsize the team at Poppy + Rose.

“On top of that, the economy is all wacko, and now our food costs are going up,” Reed says. “We’re having to do a lot more with less, if that makes any sense.”

Esparza notes that cutting workers affects all of the businesses in the area, from top to bottom.

“In LA, there’s not a trickle-down economy, but there’s a trickle-up economy,” he says. “If you’re cutting the workers, they’re not going to grab a hot dog or a taco or a pupusa for lunch, and that affects everyone.” He adds, “LA built an economy with undocumented workers that pay taxes but don’t get benefits. It’s a great deal for everyone except for them. They really fueled this restaurant boom that started in 2008. You had a labor force that made money and could afford to eat out.”

Given the way that things have gone over the past 10 months, restaurant owners aren’t all that hopeful that business will bounce back soon.

“We thought we would have a bigger crowd for Coachella, because people usually come to the alley to shop for costumes, but that didn’t happen,” Mendoza says. “I would’ve thought by now numbers would have picked up, but the community is trying to stay away from predominantly Latino areas because you don’t know what might happen.”

Reed adds, “The neighborhood doesn’t feel right. The air feels icky. Hopefully, the government will do something. You can’t plan for something like this.”

“ICE continues to change tactics and evolve. They’re trying to keep a lower profile after full-on street battles with citizens in LA and Minneapolis, but they’re still quietly doing the same thing, and our community knows it,” Esparza says. “There isn’t a day where we don’t have unlawful arrests — and the people who have been living this, week after week, aren’t going out and spending money.”

He adds, “It’s not just Santee Alley. It’s all of the Mexican communities, from Huntington Park to Bell to East LA to Pacoima.”