\u201cEvery time I open my Facebook, the video of my husband\u2019s capture seems to come up,\u201d the soft-spoken Mercedes said. She sat in the front passenger seat as Andrea Gutierrez drove. A wrinkled manila folder with her husband\u2019s birth certificate and tax returns was on Mercedes\u2019 lap.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe says, \u2018If they deport me, will you go with me?\u2019\u201d Mercedes continued. \u2018And I tell him, \u2018No, you\u2019re going to fight.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Gutierrez, dressed like the Latina millennial she is with jeans and a streak of blond in her otherwise black hair, finally spoke: \u201cLo que necesiten.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whatever your family needs.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s the deputy director for CLEAN Carwash Worker Center, a nonprofit that has helped the men and women it calls carwasheros fight for better working conditions in Los Angeles for nearly 20 years. They\u2019ve focused on pushing local and state governments to pass workplace protection laws, unionize car washes<\/a> under the United Steel Workers and offer peer-to-peer training so members can trade tips on how to leave vehicles as immaculate as possible.<\/p>\n After Trump\u2019s victory last year, CLEAN began to hold immigrant know-your-rights workshops at their headquarters in an industrial part of L.A.. <\/p>\n \u201cWe did role-playing all winter,\u201d CLEAN executive director Flor Melendrez told me. \u201cWe really thought we had prepared our community. But what we didn\u2019t anticipate is that [immigration agents] would go into car washes.\u201d<\/p>\n Flor Melendrez, executive director of CLEAN Car Wash Center, talks about all the struggles car wash workers are facing and worries over ongoing ICE raids in Los Angeles at the headquarters of CLEAN Carwash Center. The longtime nonprofit has helped to organize car wash workers for 15 years and runs its own school showing workers how to fight for better wages and better working conditions. This year, however, they\u2019ve had to pivot to fight the raids that have swept up hundreds of car wash workers.<\/p>\n (Genaro Molina\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n We sat on a comfy couch in the offices of CLEAN\u2019s headquarters. Posters on the walls from previous campaigns now intermixed with others demanding that ICE leave L.A. Before us were boxes of COVID-19 tests that CLEAN asks anyone who visits them to take \u2014 \u201cWe can\u2019t get sick right now,\u201d Melendrez said.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the early days, [immigration agents] would go in with four to five cars and get maybe five or six people. Now, they\u2019re going in with 10 and getting so many more,\u201d she continued. They now keep a running tab on places hit and workers detained by tracking social media accounts and communicating with the families of those affected. \u201cThe stories are just horrible.\u201d<\/p>\n Melendrez waved to a section of the office covered in black tarps \u2014 they\u2019re turning that section into a room so its volunteers and workers can speak with the families of detained carwasheros in privacy.<\/p>\n I asked Melendrez why she thought immigration agents continuously raid car washes<\/a>. The one near my dad\u2019s house in Anaheim has been hit at least four times \u2014 during one in August, la migra tackled Isaac Dominguez, a U.S. citizen, after he pretended to throw a water bottle at them. They didn\u2019t charge him with anything despite a Homeland Security spokesperson telling The Times<\/a> that Dominguez tried to assault agents.<\/p>\n \u201cCar washes are designed for people to go in and out quickly,\u201d she responded. \u201cThey\u2019re in the open. A lot of carwasheros are older men. Where do they hide? How can they run away? We can do all sorts of training, but that fear \u2014 the body betrays you and you forget it. It\u2019s like an earthquake to your soul.\u201d<\/p>\n Fortunato, a 55-year-old car wash worker whom I spoke to via Zoom at CLEAN\u2019s offices, agreed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re all scared \u2014 why not say it?\u201d the native of Mexico said. A few weeks earlier, la migra got six coworkers on his day off. \u201cOnly luck saved me then. None of us are working comfortably. At any moment they could come.\u201d<\/p>\n CLEAN\u2019s garage, where the organization holds its car-detailing classes and membership meetings, now doubles as a warehouse for food donations. The meetings, which used to happen monthly, now occur weekly and usually include deported members who dial in from their native countries to maintain a sense of belonging with ex-colleagues.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s terrible right now, just terrible,\u201d said Luis, a permanent resident who stopped by CLEAN\u2019s garage after his shift ended. He was supposed to attend a worker\u2019s conference in Chicago this fall but chose not to because of the raids that hit the city<\/a>. \u201cBut we can\u2019t be afraid. We have to keep pushing back.\u201d<\/p>\n The ICE raids are just the latest ignominy in a bad decade for carwasheros, whose numbers CLEAN estimates are at around 10,000 across L.A. County. The pandemic upended their industry \u2014 people still don\u2019t wash their cars as much as they used to. Jobs become scarcer every year as car wash owners invest in touchless technologies \u2014 \u201cWe\u2019ve been way ahead on how automation destroys jobs,\u201d Melendrez said.<\/p>\n The air quality in the aftermath of the Palisades and Eaton fires<\/a> discouraged car owners from taking their vehicles in for a wash since they would get filthy again so quickly. <\/p>\n Melendrez said \u201cthings were starting to get better, then boom: June 6\u201d \u2014 the weekend mass raids hit Southern California<\/a> and the Trump administration called in the National Guard to quell protests<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve never stopped working since.\u201d<\/p>\n The child of Mexican immigrants from the state of Durango, Melendrez originally wanted to become a nurse but entered organizing instead, fueled by memories of sleeping in industrial-sized baskets as a child while her parents sewed into the night at clothing factories in East L.A. \u201cto make next to nothing.\u201d The 40-year-old acknowledged not knowing much about the car wash industry until she began to accompany workers home on bus rides in the mid-2000s as part of the campaign that led to the creation of CLEAN.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were coughing nonstop, their eyes were red and there were all these burn marks on their skin,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you didn\u2019t know they were carwasheros, you\u2019d think they were people who had a problem with alcohol.\u201d<\/p>\n Her work ethic caught the attention of Victor Narro, one of CLEAN\u2019s founders. He recommended Melendrez replace him as executive director in 2016.<\/p>\n \u201cI saw the way workers responded to her,\u201d said Narro, a UCLA labor studies professor who continues to sit on CLEAN\u2019s board of directors. \u201cThey became really loyal to her, and it\u2019s tough to do that as a woman organizer to lead male workers. You just want to be in the fight with her \u2014 and what she\u2019s dealing with right now is massive.\u201d<\/p>\n Members of CLEAN Carwash Campaign, concerned citizens and family members of men detained by ICE agents attend a press conference at Culver City Express Hand Car Wash and Detail on June 11, 2025. <\/p>\n (Genaro Molina\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Longtime funders are telling CLEAN they \u201chave to scale back\u201d on donations, Melendrez said. She, Gutierrez and other volunteers do everything from creating GoFundMe campaigns for detained workers to shopping for groceries for affected families on top of their usual tasks. They\u2019re trying to find lawyers to take on cases pro bono or at a vastly reduced rate CLEAN tries to cover and are making connections with activists in areas where the group historically hasn\u2019t organized in, like Orange County.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery time a carwashero gets deported, it\u2019s like losing a family member,\u201d Melendrez said. \u201cBut every time that we think there\u2019s no light at the end of the tunnel, there\u2019s hope. The carwasheros \u2014 they show up. There\u2019s no other way.\u201d<\/p>\n As we talked, a man named Francisco passed us on his way out. The El Salvador native and U.S. citizen stopped in to discuss the case of his brother, a car wash worker whom ICE detained in September.<\/p>\n Holding a CVS bag that contained his brother\u2019s legal papers, Francisco stopped to tell us his family\u2019s story. How his brother always filed his taxes. How he took pride in making cars \u201cshine like a mirror.\u201d How Francisco tried to hide his brother\u2019s detention from their 86-year-old mother. How the family made regular trips to Adelanto \u2014 but the drive was long and gas prices are expensive.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an injustice what they did to him,\u201d Francisco said in Spanish, sitting across from Melendrez. He requested The Times not share his last name or that of his brother. \u201cThey should get people doing bad things, not those who are trying to earn their daily bread.\u201d<\/p>\n Melendrez told Francisco that CLEAN would accompany his brother through the entire journey, wherever it may lead.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re keeping on. If he wants to fight, we\u2019ll fight with him. There\u2019s no other way,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The September morning that immigration agents grabbed Mercedes\u2019 husband was like a tragic prophecy fulfilled. The El Salvador…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[11418,7,9,8,35698,35695,35696,20475,1431,3138,4264,21225,3979,1555,35694,35697,592,1009],"class_list":["post-58386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-brother","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-car-tunnel","tag-car-wash-worker","tag-carwashero","tag-clean","tag-family","tag-francisco","tag-husband","tag-immigration-agent","tag-immigration-raid","tag-man","tag-melendrez","tag-mercedes","tag-people","tag-southern-california"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58386","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=58386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} <\/p>\n
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