Business
More L.A. car washes targeted in immigration raids, some closed amid fears of further sweeps
These days, Alejandro Cabrera doesn’t do much work in his office. The manager of Touch and Glow Car Wash in Whittier instead stays outside, where his workers are, keeping his eyes peeled for approaching vehicles.
If he glimpses a white Ford F-150, the type of vehicle federal law enforcement agents often use, or a gray Suburban — or any car with tinted windows — his heart begins to pound.
Cabrera has been on edge ever since June 9, when immigration agents raided the car wash and took three workers, although he said one was later released. His fears were confirmed when agents returned five days later and snatched another worker.
“All the time, I’m always looking for those cars,” Cabrera said.
The rash of immigration raids at local car washes has created stressful environments at the businesses that have been targeted and forced others to temporarily close out of fear of future raids.
Two dozen car washes in the Los Angeles and Orange County areas have been the sites of immigration sweeps this month, according to CLEAN Carwash Worker Center, a labor advocacy nonprofit that said it has been able to verify these raids through community reports and video on social media.
Some car washes that have been targeted, such as the one that Cabrera supervises, have remained open. Others have lost enough workers — either because they were detained by immigration officials or because they’re staying home, fearing future raids — that they have been forced to shut down.
Hand Car Wash on Friday in Montebello.
(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)
Misael, the owner of a car wash in Marina del Rey, said he had to close his doors for four days straight because his employees weren’t coming in. He opened the business seven years ago to pursue the American dream, he said.
Misael, who declined to share his last name and asked The Times not to name his car wash out of fear for his employees’ safety, is a legal immigrant from Mexico, but many of his workers don’t have legal status.
“Everybody’s scared. I’m scared too. But what can I do?” he said. “I have to pay the bills, I have to pay the rent.”
Misael said on Wednesday that business has been particularly slow after the raids, which could be because customers at car wash locations have also been detained by immigration officials in prior hits.
Car washes are nearly ubiquitous in the car-dependent Los Angeles, with CLEAN estimating that there are roughly 500 businesses in Los Angeles County employing about 10,000 people. The economic fallout of some of these businesses closing, even temporarily, is likely to have ripple effects.
1. Owner of Hand Car Wash Gerardo Quiroz (left) and manager Nestor Castillo (right) look over security footage from an ICE raid that took place at the business last Thursday, at Hand Car Wash on Friday in Montebello (Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times) 2. After having wokers detain by immigration officers, Westchester Hand Wash is open for business Friday. Signs for the detained workers hang on a fence just outside the car wash. (Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times) 3. A wash rag rests on a gate at Hand Car Wash on Friday in Montebello. Business has been particularly slow after the raids, which could be due to the fact that customers at car wash locations have also been detained by immigration officials in prior hits. (Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times) 4. An employee of the Westchester Hand Wash stands at the car wash closed due to a recent ICE raid at the business on June 11, 2025. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
“This is going to affect us all,” said Flor Melendrez, executive director of CLEAN. “Because our restaurants are not full, our stores are not full, our car washes are not full, that means the workers in our communities who are not going to work, they’re also not going to be spending. Those businesses that usually make a profit are not going to make a profit.”
Westchester Hand Wash, which was hit by raids on consecutive days earlier this month, was closed for more than a week.
Mehmet Aydogan, the car wash’s owner, said of the seven workers who were picked up by immigration agents earlier this month, five have already been deported.
Other workers are lying low, and several quit outright, said Aydogan, who took over the business two years ago.
“Everyone is really afraid to come back to work,” Aydogan said. “They want to go back to Mexico, they told me. They don’t even go outside the house. They are waiting until things calm down to leave.”
Hand Car Wash on Friday in Montebello. Car washes are nearly ubiquitous in the car-dependent Los Angeles.
(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)
Aydogan said he worries the federal government crackdown will drive away workers and customers — especially if the enforcement actions continue for weeks or months.
“This will be very bad. I will lose all the guys, and no one will come to the business as customer or employee. And everyone will think something is wrong with this car wash,” he said. “It’s destroying the business.”
On Friday, Aydogan said he was finally able to reopen, but he had only two to three workers. The car wash is operating on limited hours, closing at noon because it is short-staffed.
But early Thursday morning, before the business was reopened, several potential customers drove up to the lot where Westchester Hand Wash sits. About six cars pulled up to the normally bustling location, confused as to why their regular spot wasn’t attracting a long line of sap-covered cars, as it usually would on a spring morning.
Cynthia Bell, a 59-year-old resident of Playa Vista and regular customer, got out of her car to take a closer look at the sign that read, “Sorry, we are now closed.”
“My car needs a good wash and they’ll clean your mats and everything, but just looking at it, it looks kind of deserted,” Bell said. “I’ve never seen it like this.”
A small crowd of customers began to gather around 8:45 a.m., and Bell said she wondered whether they’d be open at 9 a.m. “They’re always open early,” another said.
On Friday, Aydogan said he was relieved to be back in business, but concerned about the uncertainty that lies ahead.
“I hope we can make it to survive this month,” he said. “And then next month, I don’t know what will happen.”
Business
Nike to Cut 1,400 Jobs as Part of Its Turnaround Plan
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
Business
Senate committee kills bill mandating insurance coverage for wildfire safe homes
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
Business
How We Cover the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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