Trump Targets Workplaces as Immigration Crackdown Widens
Many industries have become dependent on immigrant labor. Some workplace raids have been met with protest.
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Federal agents formed a barrier to block protesters after performing a raid on Friday in Los Angeles.Credit...Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times, via Getty Images
By Lydia DePillis and Ernesto Londoño
June 7, 2025
The chaos that engulfed Los Angeles on Saturday began a day earlier when camouflage-clad federal agents rolled through the garment district in search of workers who they suspected of being undocumented immigrants. They were met with protesters, who chanted and threw eggs before being dispersed with pepper spray and nonlethal bullets.
The enforcement operation turned into one of the most volatile scenes of President Trump’s immigration crackdown so far, but it was not an isolated incident.
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Law enforcement during a protest in California on Saturday.Credit...Eric Thayer/Associated Press
Last week, at a student housing complex under construction in Tallahassee, Fla., masked immigration agents loaded dozens of migrants into buses headed to detention centers. In New Orleans, 15 people working on a flood control project were detained. And raids in San Diego and Massachusetts — in Martha’s Vineyard and the Berkshires — led to standoffs in recent days as bystanders angrily confronted federal agents who were taking workers into custody.
The high-profile raids appeared to mark a new phase of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, in which officials say they will increasingly focus on workplaces — taking aim at the reason millions of people have illegally crossed the border for decades. That is an expansion from plans early in the administration to prioritize detaining hardened criminals and later to focus on hundreds of international students.
“You’re going to see more work site enforcement than you’ve ever seen in the history of this nation,” Thomas D. Homan, the White House border czar told reporters recently. “We’re going to flood the zone.”

Thomas D. Homan, the White House border czar, at a news conference last month.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times
It remains to be seen how aggressively Mr. Trump will pursue sectors like construction, food production and hospitality. Raids are sometimes directed based on tips, but otherwise appear to be distributed without a clear pattern, hitting establishments large and small.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to an email seeking details about the government’s plans, including an explanation about why the administration is ramping up work-site arrests now.
Over the past month, though, the White House has pressured immigration officials to increase deportations, which have fallen short of the administration’s goals.
The number of arrests has risen sharply in the past week, according to figures provided by the Department of Homeland Security.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for Homeland Security, said 2,000 immigrants per day were arrested over the last week, up from 600 earlier in the administration. It was not clear how many of those arrests were made at raids of work sites.
More than 4 percent of the nation’s 170 million person work force was made up of undocumented immigrants in 2023, according to estimates from Goldman Sachs, making job sites a prime setting for agents to find people.
The number of immigrants who could be subject to such sweeps increased by at least 500,000 at the end of May, as the Supreme Court allowed the administration to revoke the temporary status that had allowed many Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans to work.
Workplace raids require significant planning, can be costly and draw on large teams of agents, but they can yield more arrests than pursuing individual targets. The raids may have become feasible in recent weeks, experts said, as personnel from the F.B.I. and other law enforcement agencies have been enlisted on immigration operations.
“Goosing the numbers is a big part of this because it’s so much more efficient in manpower to raid a warehouse and arrest 100 illegal aliens than it is to send five guys after one criminal,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates less immigration.
Workplace raids also send a warning to a far broader group of undocumented people, most of whom have not committed crimes. “If you want to get people packing up and leaving, that isn’t going to happen if you’re just focusing on the criminals,” Mr. Krikorian said.
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A crowd formed at the back gate of Ambiance Apparel in Los Angeles on Friday after federal immigration agents gathered at the company.Credit...Alex Welsh for The New York Times
In interviews, migrants and employers expressed alarm about the toll a sustained crackdown could take on the work force. Undocumented immigrants are concentrated in a few American industries, making up 19 percent of landscaping workers, 17 percent of farm workers and 13 percent of construction workers, according to the estimates from Goldman Sachs.
Gus Hoyas, a Republican who runs a construction firm in Cleveland, said his industry has long leaned heavily on people with valuable skills who are in the country without permission.
“They’re undocumented, but we’ve got to do something, because these people are tradesmen — they’re pros in the field,” said Mr. Hoyas, a naturalized immigrant from Colombia. “You get rid of these folks, and it’s going to kill us in the construction arena.”