More than 80 immigration raids have been conducted at car washes throughout Southern California in recent weeks, with approximately 250 workers detained, a coalition of carwash workers and their families announced Thursday. Car wash operators had best be ready for more, they added.
On the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court defending the use of “roving patrols” for such actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, members of the CLEAN Carwash Worker Center assembled Thursday, Sept. 11, to voice concerns and rally support at the La Cienega Car Wash.
The West L.A. business, in operation for more than 50 years, has been closed since an immigration raid occurred on the site on Aug. 21. Other frequent targets for increased immigration enforcement, part of President Trump’s have included big-box home-improvement stores such as Home Depot, the bustling MacArthur Park neighborhood in Westlake plus myriad open-air markets.
And it’s clear, with this week’s Supreme Court ruling paving the way, there will likely be more such raids in the weeks and months ahead. The court’s 6-3 decision means that ICE can continue the raids and aggressive street sweeps based primarily on perceived race or ethnicity that began in June to comply with President Donald Trump’s mass deportation order. The legal push was set in motion in the weeks following June 18, when a handful of men, including Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, Carlos Alexander Osorto and Isaac Villegas Molina, were detained at a bus stop near Orange Grove Boulevard and Los Robles Avenue in Pasadena.
Trump campaigned on a promise to deport millions of immigrants working in the U.S. illegally. He has said he is focusing deportation efforts on “dangerous criminals,” but most people detained by ICE have no criminal convictions, according to government documentation. At the same time, the number of illegal border crossings has plunged under his policies.
In anticipation of more such actions, CLEAN leaders presented a preparedness checklist for car wash operators, including keeping emergency contact information for all workers stored in a safe place, modes of alerting workers about a raid, such as sirens or whistles, and creating an advance plan if a raid were to happen.
Trump and his administration have long argued that the nation is witnessing an “invasion” of immigrants, with particular ire toward the Biden administration, which reversed many of the tough immigration policies of Trump’s first term.
CLEAN members and others who gathered at Thursday, however, said that the raids are breaking up families, creating health risks for many working people and unfairly detaining many more people without criminal records.
“I was detained at a car wash in Torrance, California, on June 22, 2025,” said a man who identified himself as Hans, speaking in Spanish via an interpreter.
“I did my best to endure many things, like inhumane conditions, when I was detained for over two months in (ICE processing center in) Adelanto,” he said. “It’s very easy to fall into depression under those conditions, but I knew I had to endure.”
“There are many car wash workers who are detained, who were taken, like me, for going out to earn a living,” he said. “We go out to work out of necessity and we have to face this very difficult situation.”
Mariana Lemus of Ontario is distraught over her aunt being held while she struggles with poor health.
“Basically she’s fighting cancer and diabetes,” she said. “They didn’t allow her to get her medications at all. Right now, she’s currently having some health issues and we’re just trying to get her out as fast as possible.”
“For 18 years we have organized alongside carwash workers to fight exploitation, to build leadership and create worker power,” said Flor Melendrez, executive director of CLEAN.
“The car wash industry is built on the hard labor of immigrant workers,” she said. “For decades, car wash workers have endured long hours, low wages, unsafe conditions and exploitation, but despite those challenges, they have built families, they have built community.”
As part of their efforts, CLEAN is encouraging interested community members to get trained and connect with local businesses, to help aid workers before and during raids.
The Department of Homeland Security said earlier this month that more than 5,000 immigration arrests have been made since June 6.
ICE and Border Patrol officials dismiss allegations of profiling. In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Gregory Bovino, chief patrol agent of the U.S. Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector, said he identifies targets based on intelligence, and he defended the optional use of masks for agents who fear that being identified may jeopardize their personal safety.
“The officers are instructed to find reasonable suspicion before an arrest,” U.S. Department of Justice Attorney Jacob Roth testified in oral arguments in front of the 9th Circuit court in August.
Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said immigrants need to continue to stand strong amid intensified immigration enforcement. “We’ve got to stand up with our community, so that we can fight back together,” he said.
Alvarado said that public concern is growing.
“Public opinion is shifting around immigration,” he said, “and the reason why it’s shifting is not because the political opposition is fighting back, it’s because decent Americans — people with consciences — are actually documenting the cruelty, the civil and human rights violations taking place.”
“We’re showing the country its ugly side,” he said.
“We want to believe that most Americans disagree with what is happening,” Alvarado said. “Most Americans don’t like to see men in masks with big guns, like they were going to a conventional war, in armored vehicles, coming into our neighborhoods.”
Jarret Liotta is a Los Angeles-based writer and photographer.
Staff writer Madeline Armstrong and the Associated Press contributed to this report.