Orange County officials continue raising concerns that ICE raids are impacting the local economy as people fear going to work and others shy away from popular venues like the Disneyland Resort and surrounding hotels.
The fallout is also hitting neighborhood mainstays like car washes, swap meets, grocery stores and Downtown Santa Ana.
“Whatever data out there that says there has been little or no impact is not true,” said State Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva in an interview Wednesday. “The Anaheim City Manager told me (hotel tax revenue) is way down.”
Quirk-Silva and her colleague, State Assemblyman Avelino Valencia joined State Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and a host of local community organizations for a roundtable discussion Wednesday morning in Santa Ana, where community leaders pitched ideas on how to best address the immigration raids.
Many community leaders told legislators they need more direct resources from the state to help with things like legal representation for immigrants and to help maintain the local mutual aid network aimed at helping families impacted by the deportation sweeps.
[Read: ICE Raids Spur Aid Network in Orange County]
OC Labor Federation Director Gloria Alvarado said local organizations like hers are currently working at maximum capacity to help bring aid to impacted communities and could use state resources.
“That’s really what we need,” said Alvarado in an interview after the roundtable. “We have amazing volunteers who are stepping up.”
Immigration Sweeps Impact Local Economy
Speaking to the local press corps, Valencia said hotels near Disneyland aren’t getting as many bookings than last year.
“Occupancy rates are down about 8 to 10% in the Happiest Place on Earth,” Valencia said.
He also said local businesses are feeling the impact.
“There’s a local ice cream shop in Anaheim who for the last five years – despite COVID – had seen an uptick in growth,” Valencia said. “This year since this immigration enforcement has taken place, they’ve seen the first decline in five years.”
In cities like Anaheim, the Disneyland Resort’s hotels and other tourism-based businesses help make up a large swath of the general fund – the most flexible pool of money available to local city officials.
It comes after officials in OC’s largest city balanced their budget by using one-time revenues to fill an over $60 million budget gap after bringing less hotel tax revenue than expected.
[Read: Orange County Cities Scramble to Patch Budget Gaps]
Quirk-Silva also said those impacts can be seen in Santa Ana – OC’s only Sanctuary City – whose streets and downtown area are less busy and that Disney has reported lower attendance at their iconic theme park.
“We can see that Santa Ana, the bustling vendors and streets, are quieted,” she said.
Downtown Santa Ana business owners have told Voice of OC that foot traffic and sales have severely dropped since the deportation raids began early June.
Those impacts are also being felt at local swapmeets, which are frequented by working class, immigrant communities.
[Read: Will ICE Raids be the Death of Local Swap Meets in Orange County?]
Mike Lyster, spokesman for the City of Anaheim, said that hotel tax revenue is down from last year by 2% and there have been fewer international visitors this summer due to exchange rates and global tariffs.
“Federal immigration enforcement is having a real economic impact on our city, not through tourism but on an everyday basis with stores, restaurants, car washes and other businesses,” he wrote in a Wednesday email.
Lyster added officials have not seen immigration enforcement sweeps near Disneyland or resort hotels
“Where we have seen impacts — anecdotal at this point but real — is in our everyday economy,” he wrote.
“Grocery stores, restaurants and other businesses have seen less business as families fear going out, have lost work and are using food pantries and other aid services.”
Lyster also said car washes have lost days of business after raids and because employees are afraid to show up to work.
He also said city community programs have seen a drop in participation.
Meanwhile, Quirk-Silva said the economic impacts will only get worse.
“It is devastating to families that can’t go to work and we’re just at the tip of the iceberg,” Quirk-Silva said.
She also said Reuben Franco, the CEO of the Orange County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, told her that their members have had to weather the economic fallout that came with government mandated shutdowns a few years ago – but this is worse.
“They’re not sure they’ll survive,” Quirk-Silva said Franco told her about some of the chamber’s members.
Last month, Orange County Assemblywomen Laurie Davies and Diane Dixon signed onto a letter with four other Republican state legislators calling on President Donald Trump to refocus the deportation efforts on criminals.
[Read: Two OC Republican State Legislators Join Effort to Refocus ICE on Criminals]
In the letter, Republican legislators noted that the raids were impacting local businesses and the economy.
It’s not just Orange County feeling the economic fallout.
Assembly Speaker Rivas told the roundtable that the financial impacts are being felt across a state that is the global’s fourth largest economy and where a significant portion of workers are undocumented.
Rivas pointed to a study by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute published in June that found that mass deportation could cost California over $275 billion in wages and other economic activity significantly disrupt the state’s agricultural and construction industries.
The economic institute’s study found that without undocumented workers, the state would lose $278 billion when accounting for wages, labor contributions, supply chain disruptions, household spending and other economic factors.
Without undocumented labor, the construction industry would shrink by 16% amidst a statewide housing affordability crisis and the agriculture industry would shrink by 14%, according to the study.
Undocumented workers make up roughly 8% of California’s workforce and contribute over $23 billion annually in local, state and federal taxes, the study found.
A Push for Oversight
During Wednesday’s roundtable, Marisol Ramirez – executive director of Orange County Communities for Responsible Development – pitched the idea of a state oversight committee that can collect data on immigration arrests, including who’s being targeted and where.
Ramirez said that data could help in court cases against the federal government, like the ongoing ACLU case stemming from Los Angeles County.
In that case, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order barring roving deportation sweeps based on race, language, occupation and employment location.
Since the injunction hit last month, the highly visible raids have slowed down a bit – although deportation sweeps are still happening in places like immigration courts, according to Sandra De Anda, program director for OC Rapid Response.
Officials in Santa Ana, Anaheim, Costa Mesa and Fullerton have either voted to join the lawsuit or are expected to consider signing on to the legal challenge.
On Tuesday, Irvine City Council members voted to direct staff to prepare a court document called an amicus brief to support the lawsuit while OC Supervisor opted not to involve themselves in the lawsuit.
[Read: Irvine Looks to Support Lawsuit Challenging ICE Sweeps; OC Supervisors Take No Action]
Quirk-Silva said California should join the lawsuit.
“I think anything we can do as a state that covers more jurisdictions,” she said. “Here in Orange County, we have I believe two cities that are moving forward and we have 34 cities. So when we leave it up to individual cities, we’re going to get quite a few cities who stay out of it.”
Ramirez said she would also like to see some kind of subpoena power to go along with the state oversight committee.
She said state officials should consider using surveillance tools on federal agents to help document what’s happening at the street level.
“Why don’t we use that surveillance on the Department of Homeland Security,” Ramirez said. “It’ll help demonstrate what this administration is saying and what is actually happening.”
Rivas hinted at helping create an oversight committee.
“We’re willing to introduce other legislation to address many of the concerns that were raised here,” the Assembly Speaker said in an interview after the roundtable.
He acknowledged that it’s difficult to track deportation sweeps across the state.
“We’re working with a federal administration that refuses to work with California,” Rivas said. “We’re so dependent on so many of the organizations here this morning.”
In a Thursday morning text message, Valencia also hinted at his support for an oversight committee.
“It’s incumbent upon us to explore every viable option and idea that is within our jurisdiction in order to minimize the impact that President Trump’s tyrannical immigration agenda is having on our communities,” he said.
Quirk-Silva said they need some way to collect the data.
“So whatever we can do as a state, whether it’s an independent commission to gather data, to find out how many have been arrested, where are they being arrested, where are they being sent,” she said in an interview.
“We don’t have this information and we need it.”
She said the country’s becoming a police state, driving away tourism and impacting the economy.
“We know that other countries are saying we don’t want to come to the United States. We don’t like what we’re seeing. Just as recently as what’s happening in Washington DC, we are becoming a police state. We are becoming a state where people aren’t feeling confident and that of course affects our economy.”
Spencer Custodio is the civic editor. You can reach him at scustodio@voiceofoc.org. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerCustodio.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.