Lizzie Osorio remembers customers flooding Lion Boots in early May, browsing embroidered shoes and tasseled suede dresses.
Beyoncé had four concerts scheduled in Los Angeles at SoFi Stadium for her Cowboy Carter tour. So the store tucked in Santee Alley where 24-year-old Osorio works selling cowboy boots and other Western-style clothing was the perfect stop for fans.
Osorio expected, or perhaps hoped, the store would see similar traffic at the start of the Thanksgiving holiday week.
After the tumult of President Trump’s immigration crackdown, that remains to be seen. Over the summer, several raids in the neighborhood sparked protests. But the mass arrests and fears of deportation turned the Fashion District into a ghost town for several weeks after, with storefronts shuttered and frightened workers staying home.
The story was the same at other business districts that cater to immigrants. Although conditions have improved in recent months, merchants are still feeling the pain and in desperate need of a holiday retail miracle.
Local officials and activists are encouraging people to shop on Black Friday and beyond, including holding a festival over the weekend. But it remains unclear how many will feel safe enough to come out.
Some merchants are “living sale to sale, customer to customer,” said Anthony Rodriguez, president of the Fashion District’s business improvement district, a private group of property owners in the area.
“These aren’t big-box stores. These are family-owned and, in some cases, generational businesses that more than ever need L.A.’s support. If people can come down and just spend $10 to $15 … that’s how we can make a difference.”
On Monday, Osorio said she made just one sale: a pair of utility boots.
She opened the store at 9:30 a.m. and sold the boots around 2 p.m. They’d been marked down $30 from their typical price of $160 because customers have been so reluctant to spend money, she said.
“We are waiting for the good times,” Osorio said. “Honestly, I felt like it was going to be better this week, but it’s been really, really slow. We just pray and keep the faith. Let’s see what happens.”
Small businesses in the area — which includes the historically vibrant, bustling open-air shopping corridor Santee Alley known for bargain prices — are looking for ways to recoup some of their losses through holiday sales.
Foot traffic in the area is back at levels seen before federal immigration raids began in Los Angeles in early June, according to the business improvement district.
But Rodriguez said traffic fluctuates day-to-day and is “at the mercy” of rumors, at times false, of federal enforcement operations circulated among group chats of merchants and community members.
Such alerts prompt businesses to shut down at a moment’s notice with “people literally running from their stores,” Rodriguez said. He said that, one day, agents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were conducting an investigation in the area and were confused for Customs and Border Protection officers.
Rodriguez said there are “very valid reasons” to pay attention to alerts but that minimizing their harmful effects is crucial for economic recovery.
Visitors to stores and businesses in the Fashion District dropped dramatically in the week or so after the initial raids on June 6. Foot traffic in the Fashion District dropped 33% while visitors to Santee Alley specifically dropped by 50%, according to the business improvement district.
Rodriguez said it took at least three weeks to recover foot traffic, and even so, vendors are struggling because “people are not spending like they used to.”
And the typical holiday boost has yet to make an appearance, Rodriguez said.
“As of right now, we are not seeing the holiday spike we have seen in previous years,” he said.
In May, the fashion district saw some 1.98 million visits, while in June that number dropped to 1.2 million, according to the group. In September, the district saw 1.3 million visitors, far below the the 1.5 million the area saw in the the same period last year.
Pop music blared from open doors on Monday afternoon on Santee Street as the light faded. A smattering of storefronts were closed, but most were open, ready to welcome tourists and local families doing their holiday shopping. Clumps of customers gathered. The alley was lively compared to the weeks after the first summer raids.
Maria Fuertes, 43, and her daughter had prowled the area for more than seven hours, since 9 a.m., shopping for outfits for a December wedding. They’d made the more than hourlong trek from Eastvale in Riverside County to look for formal dresses and shoes. Fuertes said she often shops in the area around the holidays and that it “feels empty” compared to years past.
“It’s kind of creepy and lonely,” Fuertes said.
More than half a dozen businesses in the alley and on Santee Street told The Times their sales remained down after the onslaught of federal immigration raids, with some doing better than others. A lingerie shop saw a dip but not a severe one, with online sales remaining strong. The owner of an accessories store said business was down 30%, while an employee at a jewelry store said business was down 70%.
A local merchants association known as Somos los Callejones and the Los Angeles Tenants Union partnered with Councilmember Ysabel Jurado to host a street festival Saturday in an effort to attract customers in the lead-up to Black Friday.
According to Jurado’s office, the festival drew some 500 attendees. Vendors set up booths and racks of clothing along Olympic Boulevard between Santee Street and Maple Avenue, which was closed to vehicle traffic. The event featured live music, and organizers raffled off 10 turkeys.
The raffling of turkeys highlighted the food insecurity many families in the area are facing, Jurado said in an interview. Some have lost their primary breadwinners to the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, and children have begun to skip school to keep their households afloat.
“Some were so excited to win [turkeys],” Jurado said, adding that the food insecurity”has been really sobering.”
“These are the realities that people are continuing to grapple with,” she said, “as their loved ones have been taken.”
Businesses said they were marketing deals when possible — and emphasizing customer service.
The California Mirage Jewelry Design Center, which is on prime real estate at the entrance to Santee Alley and has been in operation since the 1990s, has been offering 30% off on all items since last week, a promotion that will last through Black Friday.
Carolina Medrano, 38, a store employee who on Monday evening rearranged twinkling gold chains, said that even with the discount, business had still been “super slow.”
“I believe everybody is struggling,” said Jessica Morales, 40, an employee at a nearby dress retailer who asked that the store not be named, since she didn’t have permission from her supervisor.
As she used a long pole with a hook to hang a glittery pink dress on a high rack, Morales noted that some customers had become more aggressive in trying to negotiate a lower price, threatening to go to other vendors.
She tries to emphasize the quality and variety of the store’s dresses, and that some other nearby retailers are no longer able to afford to keep their inventory well-stocked.
Some customers talk of quinceañeras being canceled, or their husbands telling them to stay home from parties for fears of raids, Morales said.
“People are trying to save their money. Everyone’s scared to come out,” Morales said. “You have to find a way to connect with customers.”
The hit to sales in the aftermath of immigration raids comes as the local economy is already suffering, weakened by the rise of e-commerce, tourism disruptions from COVID-19 lockdowns and inflationary and other economic pressures pushing consumers to spend less.
Ilse Metchek, a former president of the California Fashion Assn. who has worked in the industry since the 1950s, said the merchandise sold in Santee Alley had changed in recent years. It shifted from the good-quality excess products of local brands — which were then sold at bargain prices — to imitation or cheap goods often imported from abroad.
Famously, Richard Riordan, who served as mayor of Los Angeles from 1993 to 2001,”took a very publicized walk [through Santee Alley] where he paid $10 for a silk shirt and made a whole big to-do about it,” Metchek said.
The move by then-President Reagan to grant amnesty, giving legal status and a path to citizenship to many immigrants lacking authorization, helped pave the way for a booming fashion economy, she said.
Immigration crackdowns in recent years, regulations that have grown the costs of labor, and China’s manufacturing boom in the early 2000s have created a difficult economy for California fashion brands and workers.
“It’s a pity,” Metchek said. “There’s a clear pattern of why and what has happened here. This is not nuclear physics.”
Gloria Andrade, 53, owns a business selling makeup, accessories and miscellaneous electronics in the Maple Alley Fashion Center in downtown L.A. that’s operated for some 25 years. In May, her family opened up a second storefront nearby in Santee Alley, without anticipating the raids and resulting downturn.
Andrade said the rent for her new location is about $4,500 and that she’s two months behind. Many neighboring businesses are in a similar situation, she said.
“It’s the first day of vacation and nobody came,” she said of the Thanksgiving holiday. “We’ll wait for Christmas to see how it goes.”
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