LA needs construction, landscape workers as illegal immigrants stop showing up for work amid ICE enforcement

In Los Angeles, landscapers as well as framers are not showing up to job sites as President Donald Trump is carrying out his agenda and crack down on illegal immigration in cities around the nation.

According to Bloomberg, LA, which erupted in riots against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) earlier last month after ICE was conducting operations in the city, has been seeing low staffing in some industries that have relied on immigrant labor such as construction and landscaping.

“We don’t have enough people to staff the work and we’re scrambling to figure it out,” said Arturo Sneider, the CEO at Primestor, a real major estate management company in California and two other states. “It’s triggering delays."

Between June 6 and 22, ICE agents have detained over 1,600 people in the LA region, many of those arrests have taken place during worksite enforcement operations at, where ICE will arrest those in the country illegally at different workplaces.

The arrests have taken place at construction sites, car washes, and other places of work.

Earlier last month, when riots broke out in LA over the ICE raids, Trump federalized the National Guard in order to quell the violence taking place. In response, California Governor Gavin Newsom sued the federal government over the move.

Since then, the Trump administration has also sued LA for its sanctuary city policies, which make it so that law enforcement does not coordinate well with ICE in order to detain illegal immigrants in the city. On Monday, LA Mayor Karen Bass confronted ICE agents in MacArthur Park during an apparent immigration raid.