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.

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.

“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)

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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.”

When ICE agents raided the construction site of a burned property in Altadena earlier this month, they made no arrests. The man they were after was not there. But the mere specter of them returning spooked the workers enough to bring the project to a temporary halt.

The next day, half of the 12-man team stayed home. The crew returned to full strength by the end of the week, but they now work in fear, according to Brock Harris, a real estate agent representing the developer of the property. “It had a chilling effect,” he said. “They’re instilling fear in the workers trying to rebuild L.A.”

Harris said another developer in the area started camouflaging his construction sites: hiding Porta Potties, removing construction fences and having workers park far away and carpool to the site so as not to attract attention.

The potential of widespread immigration raids at construction sites looms ominously over Los Angeles County’s prospects of rebuilding after the two most destructive fires in its history.

A new report by the UCLA Anderson Forecast said that roundups could hamstring the colossal undertaking to reconstruct the 13,000 homes that were wiped away in Altadena and Pacific Palisades on Jan. 7 — and exacerbate the housing crisis by stymieing new construction statewide.

“Deportations will deplete the construction workforce,” the report said. “The loss of workers installing drywall, flooring, roofing and the like will directly diminish the level of production.”

The consequences will spread far beyond those who are deported, the report said. Many of the undocumented workers who manage to avoid ICE will be forced to withdraw from the labor force. Their specialties are often crucial to getting projects completed, potentially harming the fortunes of remaining workers who can’t finish jobs without their help.

“The productive activities of the undocumented and the rest of the labor force are often complementary,” the report said. “For example, home building could be delayed because of a reduction in specific skills” resulting in “a consequent increase in unemployment for the remaining workforce.”

Jerry Nickelsburg, the director of the Anderson Forecast and author of the quarterly California report released Wednesday, said the “confusion and uncertainty” about the rollout of both immigration and trade policies “has a negative economic impact on California.”

Contractors want to hire Americans but have a hard time finding enough of them with proper abilities, said Brian Turmail, a spokesperson for the Associated General Contractors of America trade group.

“Most of them are kind of in the Lee Greenwood crowd,” he said, referring to a county music singer known for performing patriotic songs. “They’d rather be hiring young men and women from the United States. They’re just not there.”

“Construction firms don’t start off with a business plan of, ‘Let’s hire undocumented workers,’” Turmail said. “They start with a business plan of, ‘Let’s find qualified people.’ It’s been relatively easy for undocumented workers to get into the country, so let’s not be surprised there are undocumented workers working in, among other things, industries in construction.”

The contractors’ trade group said government policies are partly to blame for the labor shortage. About 80% of federal funds spent on workforce development go to encouraging students to pursue four-year degrees, even though less than 40% of Americans complete college, Turmail said.

“Exposing future workers to fields like construction and teaching them the skills they need is woefully lacking,” he said. “Complicating that, we don’t really offer many lawful pathways for people born outside the United States to come into the country and work in construction.”

A home under construction in Altadena, where immigration agents visited earlier this month.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

The recently raided Altadena project had plenty of momentum before the raid, Harris said. The original house burned in the Eaton fire, but the foundation survived, so the developer, who requested anonymity for fear of ICE retribution, purchased the lot with plans to rebuild the exact house that was there.

Permits were quickly secured, and the developer hoped to finish the home by December. But as immigration raids continue across L.A., that timeline could be in jeopardy.

“It’s insane to me that in the wake of a natural disaster, they’re choosing to create trouble and fear for those rebuilding,” Harris said. “There’s a terrible housing shortage, and they’re throwing a wrench into development plans.”

Los Angeles real estate developer Clare De Briere called raids “fearmongering.”

“It’s the anticipation of the possibility of being taken, even if you are fully legal and you have your papers and everything’s in order,” she said. “It’s an anticipation that you’re going to be taken and harassed because of how you look, and you’re going to lose a day’s work or potentially longer than that.”

De Briere helped oversee Project Recovery, a group of public and private real estate experts who compiled a report in March on what steps can be taken to speed the revival of the Palisades and Altadena as displaced residents weigh their options to return to fire-affected neighborhoods.

The prospect of raids and increased tariffs has increased uncertainty about how much it will cost to rebuild homes and commercial structures, she said. “Any time there is unpredictability, the market is going to reflect that by increasing costs.”

The disappearance of undocumented workers stands to exacerbate the labor shortage that has grown more pronounced in recent years as construction has been slowed by high interest rates and the rising cost of materials that could get even more expensive due to new tariffs.

“In general, costs have risen in the last seven years for all sorts of construction” including houses and apartments, said Devang Shah, a principal at Genesis Builders, a firm focused on rebuilding homes in Altadena for people who were displaced by the fire. “We’re not seeing much construction work going on.”

The slowdown has left a shortage of workers as many contractors consolidated or got out of the business because they couldn’t find enough work, Shah said.

“When you start thinking about Altadena and the Palisades,” he said, “limited subcontractors can create headwinds.”

The annual reports of the Social Security and Medicare trustees provide yearly opportunities for misunderstandings by politicians, the media, and the general public about the health of these programs. This year is no exception.

A case in point is the response by House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Tex.) to the Social Security and Medicare trustees’ projections about the depletion of the programs’ reserves: “Doing nothing to address the solvency of these programs will result in an immediate, automatic, and catastrophic cut to benefits for the nearly 70 million seniors who rely on them.”

The reports say nothing about an “immediate” cut to benefits. They talk about cuts that might happen in 2034 and 2033, when there still would be enough money coming in to pay 89% of scheduled Medicare benefits and 81% of scheduled Social Security benefits.

House Ways and Means Committee chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) used the release of the reports to plump for the budget resolution that the House narrowly passed on orders from President Trump and that is currently being masticated by several Senate committees.

The reports, Smith said, make clear “how much we need pro-growth tax and economic policies that unleash our nation’s growth, increase wages, and create new jobs.” The budget bill “would do just that,” he said.

Neither Arrington nor Smith mentioned the leading threats to the programs coming from the White House. In Social Security’s case, that’s Trump’s immigration, taxation and tariff policies, which work directly against the program’s solvency. For Medicare, the major threat is a rise in healthcare costs.

But those have flattened out as a percentage of gross domestic product since 2010, when the enactment of the Affordable Care Act brought better access to medical care to millions of Americans.

That trend is jeopardized by Republican healthcare proposals, which encompass throwing millions of Americans off Medicaid. Policy proposals by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. such as discouraging vaccinations can only drive healthcare costs higher.

Let’s take a closer look. (The Social Security trustees are Kennedy, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and newly confirmed Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano, all of whom serve ex officio; two seats for public trustees are vacant. The Medicare trustees are the same, plus Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.)

The trust funds are built up from payroll taxes paid by workers and employers, along with interest paid on the treasury bonds the programs hold.

At the end of this year, the Medicare trust fund will hold about $245 billion, and the Social Security fund — actually two funds, consisting of reserves for the old-age and disability programs, but typically considered as one — more than $2.3 trillion.

Trump has consistently promised that he won’t touch Social Security and Medicare, but actions speak louder than words. “Trump’s tariffs and mass deportation program will accelerate the depletion of the trust fund,” Kathleen Romig of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities observed after the release of the trustees’ reports this week. “The Trump administration’s actions are weakening the country’s economic outlook and Social Security’s financial footing.”

Immigration benefits the program in several ways. Because “benefits paid out today are funded from payroll taxes collected from today’s workers,” notes CBPP’s Kiran Rachamallu, “more workers paying into the system benefits the program’s finances.” In the U.S., he writes, “immigrants are more likely to be of working age and have higher rates of labor force participation, compared to U.S.-born individuals.”

The Social Security trustees’ fiscal projections are based on average net immigration of about 1.2 million people per year. Higher immigration will help build the trust fund balances, and immigration lower than that will “increase the funding shortfall.” All told, “the Trump administration’s plans to drastically cut immigration and increase deportations would significantly worsen Social Security’s financial outlook.”

A less uplifting aspect of immigration involves undocumented workers. To get jobs, they often submit false Social Security numbers to employers — so payroll taxes are deducted from their paychecks, but they’re unlikely ever to be able to collect benefits. In 2022, Rachamallu noted, undocumented workers paid about $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes.

Trump’s tariffs, meanwhile, could affect Social Security by generating inflation and slowing the economy. Higher inflation means larger annual cost-of-living increases on benefits, raising the program’s costs. If they provoke a recession, that would weigh further on Social Security’s fiscal condition.

Trump also has talked about eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits. But since at least half of those tax revenues flow directly into Social Security’s reserves, they would need to be replaced somehow. Trump has never stated where the substitute revenues could be found.

Major news organizations tend to focus on the depletion date of the trust funds without delving too deeply into their significance or, more important, their cause. It’s not unusual for otherwise responsible news organizations to parrot right-wing tropes about Social Security running out of money or “going broke” in the near future, which is untrue but can unnecessarily unnerve workers and retirees.

The question raised but largely unaddressed by the trustee reports is how to reduce the shortfall. The Republican answer generally involves cutting benefits, either by outright reductions or such options as raising the full retirement age, which is currently set between 66 and 67 for those born in 1952-1959 and 67 for everyone born in 1960 or later.

As I’ve reported, raising the retirement age is a benefit cut by another name. It’s also discriminatory, for average life expectancy is lower for some racial and ethnic groups than for others.

For all Americans, average life expectancy at age 65 has risen since the 1930s by about 6.6 years, to about 84 and a half. The increase has been about the same for white workers. But for Black people in general, the gain is just over five years, to an average of a bit over 83, and for Black men it’s less than four years and two months, to an average of about 81 and four months.

Life expectancy is also related to income: Better-paid workers have longer average lifespans than lower-income workers.

The other option, obviously, is to leave benefits alone but increase the programs’ revenues. This is almost invariably dismissed by the GOP, but its power is compelling.

The revenue shortfall experienced by Social Security is almost entirely the product of rising economic inequality in the U.S. At Social Security’s inception, the payroll tax was set at a rate that would cover about 92% of taxable wage earnings. Today, rising income among the rich has reduced that ratio to only about 82%. That could mean hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenues.

The payroll tax is highly regressive. Those earning up to $176,100 this year pay the full tax of 12.4% on wage earnings (half deducted directly from their paychecks and half paid by their employers).

Those earning more than that sum in wages pay nothing on the excess. To put it in perspective, the payroll tax bite on someone earning $500,000 in wages this year would pay not 12.4% in payroll tax (counting both halves of the levy), but about 4.4%.

Eliminating the cap on wages, according to the Social Security actuaries, would eliminate half to three-quarters of the expected shortfall in revenues over the next 75 years, depending on whether benefits were raised for the highest earners. Taxing investment income — the source of at least half the income collected by the wealthiest Americans — at the 12.4% level rather than leaving it entirely untaxed for Social Security would reduce the shortfall by an additional 38%. Combining these two options would eliminate the entire shortfall.

Social Security has already been hobbled by the Trump administration, Trump’s promises notwithstanding. Elon Musk’s DOGE vandals ran roughshod through the program, cutting staff and closing field offices, and generally instilling fears among workers and retirees that the program might not be around long enough to serve them. In moral terms, that’s a crime.

Those are the choices facing America: Cutting benefits is a dagger pointed directly at the neediest Americans. Social Security benefits account for 50% or more of the income nearly 42% of all beneficiaries, and 90% or more of the income of nearly 15% of beneficiaries.

The wealthiest Americans, on the other hand, have been coasting along without paying their fair share of the program. Could the equities be any clearer than that?