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Carolina Crespo is a first-generation American, born and raised in Los Angeles. Her parents, who immigrated from Mexico, opened a garment factory in 1968. Nearly 50 years later, Crespo co-founded the apparel brand Everybody.World—a continuation, she says, of her family’s story.
“Their decades of dedication laid the foundation for what Everybody.World stands for today,” Crespo says. “Immigrant workers are the backbone of the American fashion industry. From cutting and sewing to finishing and packing, their hands make the clothes we wear. They bring generations of skill, adaptability, and perseverance, knowledge that isn’t written down, but passed along, practiced, and protected.”
Now, immigrants across Los Angeles are under attack. On Friday June 6, reports emerged of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids throughout L.A., a sanctuary city. (Meaning its laws are designed to protect undocumented immigrants from deportation or persecution). Protests erupted across the city. In response, President Trump deployed 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles without state consent. California Governor Gavin Newsom has since filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, while ICE raids and protests continue.
L.A.’s garment industry is in the crosshairs of chaos. Federal agents were seen going into two offices of the manufacturer Ambience Apparel in Downtown L.A. on June 9, according to NBC Los Angeles. More than 20 workers were reportedly detained. (Ambience did not respond to a request for comment.) Brand owners that are based and/or manufacture in the city report an overwhelming feeling of fear for their workers, some of whom are undocumented. “They’re scared and terrified. I want people to understand who they’re going after is not criminals. These are real people with families,” says one L.A.-based brand owner.
There are still family members of a worker at Ambience Apparel who have not been able to locate one of the workers who was detained, says Daisy Gonzalez, campaigns director at Los Angeles-based nonprofit Garment Worker Center. “We’re demanding transparency about the number of people who have been arrested within Los Angeles, their locations, and demanding that they have access to due process,” she says. “So many attorneys have been trying to gain access to detainees and haven’t had any luck, waiting hours at multiple detention centers. It’s completely unjust.”
Over one third of the more than 300,000 workers producing clothing and shoes in the U.S. are immigrants, according to an analysis by Fwd.us, an immigration reform organisation, while about 30,000 are estimated to be undocumented. These immigrants are hired as sewers, sample makers, pattern cutters, finishers, and packers. Of those who are undocumented, about two thirds nationwide have lived in the U.S. 10 years or longer and have established families and careers, contributing to local communities.
Since Trump’s inauguration, U.S. fashion industry workers have raised concerns about the future of the industry amid attacks on immigrant rights. Now, threats of mass deportations are being realized, targeting communities and families as well as industries that these workers are a part of.
The majority of brands and factories Vogue Business reached out to declined to speak on account of not wanting to put their employees and manufacturing partner workers in more danger.
Some spoke on the condition of anonymity due to these fears. One brand owner has sent workers home and reduced their time in office. Another said they considered paid leave for those who didn’t feel safe coming to work. Other brand and factory owners reported being unable to reach some workers, many of whom they’ve employed for years. Those who did speak are concerned about their workers’ livelihoods, as well as the impact on their own businesses—for those at risk are the people who make the brands run.
Steven Mena, founder and creative director of L.A.-based streetwear brand Menace, says daily operations have halted. “You can’t continue business as usual when things are going down literally in the streets you grew up in,” he says. “I saw a group of men being chased down in my hometown neighborhood that I was in less than 24 hours earlier. You can’t ignore that.” At Menace, the team is all first-generation Latino and Black descendants. “While we may not be immigrants ourselves, this issue is still deeply personal,” he says. Mena has paused all of Menace’s usual operations and closed the brand’s e-commerce site out of respect, he says.
Bo Metz, founder of L.A.-based manufacturer Bomme Studio, says that there’s a “clear sense of fear across the apparel community in L.A.”, with the Fashion District feeling especially tense. “That fear is already affecting both capacity and morale across the board.”
“We’re hearing from our membership about a lot of fear and stress. People’s mental health is really being impacted,” Gonzalez says. “People are afraid to leave their homes. Some people are opting to not go to work and others have no choice. We also need to continue to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads. Workers are really feeling that pressure right now.”
Disrupting a close-knit community
For Everybody.World, it goes beyond business. “Yes, the protests have an impact on business, delayed shipments, logistical disruptions, and the emotional toll on our staff,” Crespo says, “but beyond the immediate challenges, they serve as a powerful reminder of why we do what we do: To build something better. To center people. To prove that fair and local production isn’t just possible, it’s essential.”
2024 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist Sebastien Amisial moved to L.A. 16 years ago for that very purpose: To be close to, and learn about, the design and production process for his brand, Sebastien Ami. “I didn’t have the financial means to produce outside of the country,” he says. “It wasn’t possible for me to look overseas. In Los Angeles, there was a fashion district.”
Amisial went from one building to the next, meeting, establishing relationships and building trust with garment workers. “There are three or four buildings where you can find everything you need. You can find a contractor there that could sew your patterns. The patterns could be made in the same building, the grading can be done, two floors up.” 16 years on, he still produces in Los Angeles.
Mena has worked with many of the same L.A. vendors for over 12 years. “They’re like family now,” he says. “In streetwear, people love to talk about the final product. But behind every hoodie or tee is a long chain of labor and somewhere along that chain, an immigrant hand probably touches your garment.”
In California, you need a social security number to gain employment; as long as workers can provide that, background checks aren’t typical, according to one brand founder on the ground. Employment status is no longer a guarantee, flags Todd Schulte, president of Fwd.us. Many workers who aren’t undocumented but have temporary status are at risk, he says. “These are people who may have a pending green card application, maybe they’re on a guest worker visa. When all of that is under attack, it’s terrible. Many people have U.S. citizen children or U.S. citizen spouses as well.” It also makes running a business untenable, he adds.
There’s no ‘Made in America’ without immigrants
Industry leaders in L.A. are at a loss as to how the administration’s ICE raids on domestic manufacturers align with its tariff policy, which promotes making more goods in the U.S.. A designer who went to pains to produce their goods in Los Angeles says the brand is caught in that conflict, as tariffs on foreign-made goods discourage manufacturing outside of the U.S., but deporting the low-wage workers means factories could be forced to shut down. One Los Angeles factory used by the brand has documented its employees’ legal status. Regardless, its management is fearful of having ICE show up, having seen the chaos that has ensued in other raids. “They have us surrounded,” the designer said. “You can’t be made overseas and you can’t be made in the U.S..”
The ICE raids are coming at an especially tenuous time for the U.S. fashion industry, which, over the last six months (and beyond) has dealt with economic instability, wavering consumer sentiment, tariff uncertainty and, in L.A., devastating wildfires. “I’m heartbroken to see the garment industry being targeted yet again,” Marta Miller, owner of manufacturers Lefty Production Co. in Los Angeles and Stitch Texas in Austin, says. “It feels deeply unfair—especially at a time when tariffs and global instability are pushing us to rebuild and grow manufacturing here in the United States.”
“If they keep doing this, who is going to support the economy? When you factor in wanting to bring manufacturing home, it doesn’t add up,” says one L.A. brand owner.
There is a direct policy conflict between limits on immigration and a desire to increase manufacturing, says Susan Scafidi, founder and director of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham Law School. “It’s something that I’ve been concerned about since the election, and the recent immigration raids in L.A. are spotlighting the issue in a dramatic fashion.”
Garment factories in the U.S. have been staffed by immigrants for generations, she says: Southern and eastern European immigrants in the early 20th century, Latin American and Asian immigrants in the 21st. “Unlike fashion design, garment production jobs are not glamorous positions to which many Americans aspire, but those jobs have long been rungs on the ladder of the American dream,” Scafidi says.
Industry workers are genuinely concerned that, should policy and enactment keep going in this direction, it could very well result in a collapse of the American fashion industry. “Without immigrants, there is a risk that sewing machines will go silent and warehouse doors will remain shut, and the dramatic decline in garment production in the U.S .over the past 50 years will finally reach the point of extinction,” Scafidi says.
The irony is that this will also be a major hit to American jobs, Schulte says. “The fashion industry is a great example of how the ability to attract really talented people from around the world, for a number of different jobs, not only helps grow the economy overall but creates jobs for native born Americans,” he says. He’ll often hear of brands that need to hire skilled craftspeople trained elsewhere, who can come to the U.S. to support the brand. Their work enables the brand to employ more Americans, from trainees, to photographers, to models. “It’s an ecosystem. And if you take some part of the ecosystem away, the whole thing is going to collapse.”
Crespo expects that the U.S. fashion industry would shrink drastically without this labor force. “Most Americans simply don’t have the training or cultural connection to this kind of work, not because they can’t, but because the systems we live in haven’t prioritized preserving it,” she says. Mena, meanwhile, hopes to see more brands speak out. “Culture moves through brands and if you profit from the culture but disappear when it matters most, then you were never really part of it,” he says.
“Without serious change–both in policy and public perception–we risk gutting an industry that should be part of America’s economic and cultural resurgence,” Miller says. “We need to protect and invest in the people who are holding it together, not make it harder for them to work and live here.”
With reporting by Hilary Milnes and Christina Binkley.
