11 hours ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Gardeners on ICE raids: ‘People are afraid, but they still have to work'
They're known as the 'mow and blow' guys — the legion of predominately Latino gardeners driving pickup trucks and trailers bristling with lawn mowers, weed whackers and other yard-care equipment as they tend the yards of Southern California's suburban neighborhoods.
But Daniel, a gardener who has lived undocumented in the U.S. for 20 years, doesn't think of himself that way. He does a lot more for his clients — trimming plants, fertilizing and weeding too. In fact, some of his clients have only tiny lawns, or no lawns at all these days, but they still need his services.
And he still needs to work, despite immigration raids taking place in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties; the latter is where he has run his yard-care business for 11 years.
Reflecting on his precarious position, he quieted his leaf blower and took off his sunglasses, giving only his first name for safety's sake.
'These times are really hard and everybody is afraid,' he said, referring to Latinos broadly — regardless of immigration status. 'It's really not normal, and we're always being careful, but you know, we need to work. We need to pay our bills because the bills are always coming and they don't stop.'
On this June morning, his 15-year-old daughter joined him on his rounds through a Ventura neighborhood. She and her sisters — 10 and 18 — were born in the United States, but her parents were born in Mexico. The daughter was friendly with a welcoming smile, but when the discussion turned to whether she and her family have discussed what will happen if her parents are detained by immigration, she became as serious as her father.
Criticisms about immigrants, worry about her parents' status — 'that's always been part of our experience, but now it's much worse,' she said quietly. 'It feels like a lack of empathy.'
An estimated 1.2 million people work in landscaping and groundskeeping in the United States, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and in California, 88% of those workers are Latino and 68% are immigrants, according to a 2024 report by the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank. How many of those immigrants are undocumented is unclear.
President Trump promised during his campaign that he would crack down on illegal immigration, and five months into his term, immigration raids have escalated around so-called sanctuary cities in the Greater Los Angeles area, including agricultural areas such as Ventura and Oxnard.
Earlier that morning, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had been spotted around Ventura and in the Ventura Police Department's front parking lot. The police department posted on social media that its officers were not involved, declaring on Instagram: 'Our commitment: Safety for all regardless of status.' Meanwhile, the Ventura College Foundation canceled its popular Weekend Marketplace, which draws 2,000 to 5,000 mostly Latino vendors and customers every weekend to the college's parking lot, due to concerns about ICE activity, according to a recorded message on its phone.
Less than three miles away from the police parking lot, a landscape crew of five Latinos was working in a front yard, building an intricate walkway from multi-shaped pavers. The boss said he was pretty sure his workers had their papers, but no one wanted to talk because even citizens who are Latino were getting swept up in enforcement actions. 'People are afraid, but they still have to work,' he said. 'So we come to work and see what happens.'
A few miles away, a Latino landscaper with a shaggy salt-and-pepper beard waited in his truck while his crew loaded wheelbarrows and other equipment outside a newly landscaped hillside home with a sweeping view of the Ventura coast. He came to the U.S. from Mexico 30 years ago, he said, and has been working in landscaping in Ventura for 25 years. He's single, works with family members and 'up until two weeks ago, I had no worry about anything,' he said. 'Now it [detention] is something you worry about every day.'
He'd planned to gas up his truck that morning but drove past the station when he saw 'law enforcement' vehicles at the pumps, because he was afraid they were ICE officials. 'I took some precautions,' he said. 'They haven't come up here yet; they've just been on the main streets. But I pay taxes every year. I work. As long as we are here working and contributing ...,' he trailed off and shook his head.
Daniel came to the U.S from Mexico some 20 years ago, he said. 'Things were so hard in Mexico everybody was jumping [to the U.S.] looking for a better life.' At first he worked every job he could find, roofing, building homes and working in a machine shop until 2014, 'when I see this opportunity [to be a gardener] and I take it.' Now, he works five days a week, he said, visiting eight to 10 yards a day and charging his clients, on average, about $150 a month. His only advertising is word of mouth.
If he and his wife are detained, Daniel said, they have family nearby who could help his daughters or 'maybe we could take the girls to Mexico, but they want to be here and stay in school.'
Their eldest, he said, is studying to become an anesthesiologist at a nearby university. His daughters are hard workers, 'good kids,' so leaving would affect them 'really bad.' He glanced at his 15-year-old, who wants to be an orthodontist, and was listening intently.
'I'm always looking for a better life,' he said, 'but when you have a family, what we think about most is the kids. I think this is the point for all the parents — we have our kids here so absolutely they have a better life than us.'
The fear and frustration are prevalent throughout the horticulture world. Terremoto Landscape, a landscaping firm with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco, posted information about immigrant rights prominently on its website and on Instagram.
'Landscape construction, maintenance and the entire labor engine of California would not be possible without immigrant labor,' said the Instagram post, which was accompanied by multiple photos of landscape workers with their faces covered by black boxes.
'But more importantly than that, immigrants are our friends, family and neighbors — our communities and lives are infinitely better for their presence in Los Angeles, the Bay Area and across America. The actions of ICE and the National Guard — aided and abetted by the LAPD — over the last few days have made clear the xenophobic, vile and violent aims and obvious mal-intent of the current administration.'
The principals of the company declined to be interviewed, writing in a text that they want to be sensitive to nongovernmental organizations supporting immigrant communities.
Independent gardening work has long attracted people excluded from other jobs, said landscape contractor Mike Garcia, owner of Enviroscape LA in Redondo Beach. After World War II, for instance, many Japanese Americans who had been held in incarceration camps during the war moved into gardening work because 'no one would hire them for other jobs,' he said.
There were so many Japanese gardeners around L.A. in the 1950s that the California Landscape Contractors Assn. created a special 'Pacific Coast chapter for members of Asian heritage.' Membership waned over the years as Japanese families moved away from gardening and the chapter was recently disbanded, said Garcia, who sits on the board of the association's Los Angeles/San Gabriel Valley chapter.
As Japanese gardeners pulled away from the field, Latino immigrants filled the void, Garcia said.
'If you're new to this country, a Latino looking for a better life and you can't find a job because you don't have any papers, you can pick up a lawnmower and start mowing lawns,' said Garcia. 'Latinos who couldn't speak English could still mow a lawn and write out an invoice, and they eventually took over the gardening trade.'
Many Latino immigrants have to go into debt to travel to the U.S., so they feel compelled to find work quickly, said Manuel Vicente, director and producer of Radio Jornalera, the digital communication arm of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which provides information, support and recognition to immigrant workers who have limited options for work. Gardeners and landscapers are in high demand around L.A., he said, and the work doesn't require advertising or even English fluency.
'They see it as an opportunity and they're proud of the work they do,' Vicente said. 'You can see when there's a yard nobody is taking care of, and the workers come and convert that yard into something beautiful, that's gratifying for them.' And good work helps drum up more business.
'In Spanish we have a saying, 'El sol sale para todos,' or the sun rises for everybody. It means everybody has the opportunity to take a job,' Vicente said.
'Obviously there are certain jobs some people are not willing to do ... because of the wages or the difficulty, and others who are willing to take it. I don't see that as stealing jobs. For many immigrants it's the only place where they can work to make a living and survive.'
Vicente helped the National Day Laborer Organizing Network start Radio Jornalera in Pasadena in 2019 during Trump's first term to help Spanish-speaking immigrants understand their rights.
'I'm a proud migrant, and I think we should change the narrative,' Vicente said. 'People think everything wrong with this country is because of migrants, and that's not true. I think migrants are part of the solution for this country and why California has one of the biggest economies in the world.'
Immigrants like Daniel are working and sending their children to college, Vicente said. 'They came for a better life and they're building a better nation here, but they're also sending money to their families in their former country, so they're building two nations. We should recognize that.'
The ICE raids happening now feel like racial persecution, he said. 'We are aware that they've already stopped multiple citizens, people who were born here, because they are brown and fit the profile, so I think no one is safe. Everyone who looks Latino — and I don't know what that is in that profile, but maybe it's just a brown person — so everybody in our Black and brown communities is under attack.'
Over the weekend, Trump said he had asked ICE to stop raids at big farms and hotels, but on Sunday he announced plans to expand immigration enforcement actions in major 'Democrat-controlled' cities, including Los Angeles.
It's hard for independent gardeners such as Daniel to do their work unnoticed. Their trucks and trailers visibly carry the tools of their trade. But the work is waiting, as are their bills.
What's most galling, Vicente said, is that 'the people who don't want us here are benefactors of our work. Maybe we take care of their parents or their children; cook their food or clean their houses, do their yards or build their homes. They want our labor, but they don't want to recognize our humanity.'
