{"id":57085,"date":"2025-11-17T17:50:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/57085\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T17:50:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:50:08","slug":"how-ice-raids-and-industry-pressures-are-shaking-los-angeles-garment-sector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/57085\/","title":{"rendered":"How ICE Raids and Industry Pressures Are Shaking Los Angeles\u2019 Garment Sector"},"content":{"rendered":"

ICE raids<\/a> across Los Angeles County\u2019s garment ecosystem have created an atmosphere of fear and turmoil for the workers who sustain the region\u2019s sizeable and long-standing manufacturing industry, according to Marissa Nuncio, the executive director of the Garment Worker Center.<\/p>\n

The Garment Worker Center, which represents more than 300 members and reaches upwards to 10,000 workers a year through outreach efforts, has a close pulse on how garment workers are being affected by ICE raids across the city. At Sourcing Journal\u2019s LA Sustainability Summit<\/a> in Los Angeles last week, the Garment Center\u2019s Marissa Nuncio and Lindsay Medoff, the founder and CEO of Suay Sew Shop, joined Jasmin Malik Chua, climate and labor editor at Sourcing Journal, in a discussion about the state of the city\u2019s manufacturing sector.<\/p>\n

More from Sourcing Journal<\/p>\n

Nuncio said members are going out less, some are refraining from going to work, and others have lost their jobs. They\u2019re also experiencing food and housing insecurity. \u201cBut let\u2019s be clear that regardless of your immigrant status, you can be picked up. There\u2019s absolutely racial profiling happening at the hands of these agencies. We\u2019ve seen [several] citizens and documented people picked up in snatch-and-grabs and in raids,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Though LA County is often overshadowed by major production hubs such as Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia, Nuncio said the region employs more than 30,000 apparel workers in Los Angeles County alone, with roughly 20,000 working in the city\u2019s Fashion District<\/a>. Fashion is the county\u2019s second-largest creative sector and its second-largest manufacturing industry. It is also a deeply skilled workforce. A recent survey of Garment Worker Center members shows that they have an average of 21 years of industry experience, and nearly 70 percent identify as experts in their craft.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe workers are primarily women, and they\u2019re primarily from Mexico and Central America. About 85 percent of the workforce is from Mexico and Central America, and about 15 percent of the workforce is Chinese workers, primarily in San Gabriel Valley,\u201d Nuncio said.<\/p>\n

A perfect storm of worker-safety challenges, tariffs and declining consumer spending has turned 2025 into what Medoff describes as a \u201cdumpster fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall, people don\u2019t really care about garment workers. The entire fashion industry is based off profitability, which is the extraction of humans or materials,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Still, the L.A.-based visionary stands behind her choice to run a worker-centered upcycling business that pays fair wages.<\/p>\n

Within L.A.\u2019s retail scene, Medoff noted that the closed-loop recycling model largely stands alone. She described Suay as a movement centered on \u201cworker power and cutting up old things and sewing them back together,\u201d paired with a willingness to rethink how products are sold\u2014an approach that traditional brands often find difficult to back.<\/p>\n

While many brands publicly champion \u201cresponsible\u201d or \u201csustainable\u201d manufacturing, Medoff said the conversation often stops at superficial terms like \u201cfair wages,\u201d without addressing the deeper issue: valuing garment workers\u2019 skills the same way other industries value cumulative experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have stopped worrying about trying to get businesses on board with caring about worker power. We try our very best, but we found that when it comes to profitability, they\u2019re less likely to want to engage when they tell them what it takes to buy something from Suay if worker power is involved,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Instead, Suay<\/a> is focused on getting the consumer to buy into worker power. \u201cWe\u2019re working on cutting off the blood supply that\u2019s going to these brands that are not focused on worker power, and we\u2019re directly communicating to the consumer to get them on board and try to get them to convert\u2014to show up for worker power and for true sustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Partnerships between organizations like Suay<\/a> and the Garment Worker Center are essential to keeping the L.A. garment industry from dwindling.\u00a0In 2024, the Garment Worker Center created the Alliance for Responsible Apparel Manufacturing and Purchasing (ARAMP) to incentivize fair labor practices, environmental sustainability, and community well-being by harnessing the purchasing power of large organizations. Nuncio said factory owners need anchor clients, but they don\u2019t want to take large contracts if it means driving down wages to meet their demands.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur idea is to partner these factories with institutional purchasers like cities, universities, high schools, unions and hospitals so that we can give them that volume of production. However, the supplier factories must commit to a robust set of labor standards, including having the Garment Worker Center be able to have inroads and communication with workers so that they know what those labor standards are, and they can communicate back if there are concerns or violations,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n

The vision for ARAMP is progress, not perfection. Nuncio emphasized that meeting all the various labor standards and industry compliance requirements in California can be challenging, especially without government support. This is where the Garment Worker Center is using its advocacy muscle <\/a>as a community organization to encourage the city to invest in worker training and affordable rent.<\/p>\n

One example of this advocacy was the successful campaign for SB62\u2014the Garment Worker Protection Act\u2014which passed in 2022 and eliminated the exploitative piece-rate wage system. \u201cFor the first time ever, we\u2019re also seeing that workers who sewed a brand\u2019s clothes can bring that brand to the negotiating table when they experience wage theft,\u201d Nuncio said.<\/p>\n

She added that seeing SB62 <\/a>pass was a \u201cgalvanizing moment\u201d for L.A.\u2019s garment workers to organize and put forth their demands and a milestone for the Garment Worker Center, as it was the first time the organization came together with local businesses that share common interests, including Suay. \u201cThere are folks that want this industry to be better, but we\u2019ve got to demand it, right? And so, I think that is movement\u2026 you have to have the vision and the hope to keep chipping away,\u201d Nuncio said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ICE raids across Los Angeles County\u2019s garment ecosystem have created an atmosphere of fear and turmoil for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[35152,3531,48,52,51,35151,47,137,50,49,35150,35155,35153,35154],"class_list":{"0":"post-57085","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-garment-workers","9":"tag-ice-raids","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-la-headlines","12":"tag-la-news","13":"tag-lindsay-medoff","14":"tag-los-angeles","15":"tag-los-angeles-county","16":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","17":"tag-los-angeles-news","18":"tag-manufacturing-industry","19":"tag-manufacturing-sector","20":"tag-nuncio","21":"tag-worker-center"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}