The Forgotten Victims in the Immigration Debate

I grew up in Echo Park when it wasn’t trendy or safe. The same park that now draws joggers and families once drew gang lookouts. Some of my neighborhood friends got out. Some didn’t. What I learned back then is that fear doesn’t ask for a political party; it just settles into a neighborhood. There were days when my friends and I couldn’t walk across the park without being stopped by the LAPD and asked for our names, affiliations, and where we were going. That was life then. This place has changed a lot, but for too many communities like it, the struggle hasn’t.

The immigration debate has become a political circus with mayors and governors fighting with the president, as the cameras roll when federal agents show up on the streets, and the protests follow. But lost in the shouting is a truth too many of us in working-class, immigrant neighborhoods live with every day: it is the criminals who have always been prey within our own communities.

I’m not talking about people trying to build a better life. I’m talking about those who build their lives by destroying others. The ones who charge “rent” to local food trucks, who threaten business owners, who use families and storefronts to launder money for cartels. The ones who turn our streets into open-air drug markets and our teenagers into recruits.

The headlines don’t tell this story often enough. Just this year, a Los Angeles apparel wholesaler, C’est Toi Jeans Inc., and its executives were convicted for evading $8 million in customs duties and laundering over $17 million in narcotics proceeds. A Guatemalan business owner in Oregon pleaded guilty to laundering drug money through her chain of “La Popular” stores, wiring more than $4 million to Mexico. And eight members of MS-13, a gang that took root among Salvadoran refugees in Los Angeles, pleaded guilty to brutal murders and racketeering tied to transnational networks stretching from Houston to El Salvador.

These aren’t isolated cases. They represent a shadow economy that bleeds immigrant neighborhoods first. When food truck vendors are forced to pay rent to MS-13 to operate on “their turf,” when store owners are too scared to call police, when parents fear being branded as snitches and traitors for reporting crimes, the community loses twice. Once to the criminals. And again, to silence.

When ICE, DEA, or local police show up in these neighborhoods, the response has become instantly political. We’ve lost the ability to tell the difference between overreach and protection.

Yes, law enforcement must be held accountable. But they also deserve our recognition for removing predators from our streets. To label every operation as “anti-immigrant” is to leave the most vulnerable among us defenseless.

Protecting immigrant communities should mean exactly that. Protect them from everyone who preys on them. From gangs. From traffickers. From corrupt business owners.

If we can’t say that out loud because it makes some people uncomfortable, then we’re not protecting anyone at all.

I still believe in the neighborhoods that raised me. But belief without honesty won’t keep our kids safe. It’s time we stop letting politics blind us to the truth: the fight for justice in our immigrant communities isn’t about left or right, it’s about right and wrong.

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Hector Barajas is the founder of Amplify360 Inc., a public affairs and strategic communications firm with offices in Sacramento and Los Angeles, advising companies and associations on legislative, regulatory, and political issues across California.

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