Can this L.A. car wash survive Trump’s deportation campaign?

The car wash wasn’t open yet for the day, but the owner was already nervous.

He scanned the street for law enforcement vehicles and hit refresh on the crowdsourced map showing the latest immigration sweeps.

“They were busy in our area yesterday,” he warned his employees. “Being careful.”

But the workers, most of whom were Mexican men, had few precautions they could take other than staying at home.

The business is located on one of the busiest streets in Los Angeles. Workers are exposed to the street as they scrub, polish and buff the passing vehicles between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m., seven days a week.

Immigration agents have applied for the job repeatedly this summer as part of a broader campaign against car washes in Los Angeles. Masked men led away a dozen workers, most of whom were quickly deported. The Times does not identify the business, its owner or workers.

The raids frightened the remaining employees and many of them stopped coming to work. Many of the people he hired to replace the owner were other immigrants who showed him Social Security cards that he hoped were legitimate.

Still, it was an open secret that the car wash industry, which paid low wages for backbreaking work, attracted largely people without legal status.

“Americans don’t want to do this job,” the owner said.

After the raids, he was forced to close the business for extended periods during the typically lucrative summer months. He was now operating normally, but sales were down, his credit cards had been maxed out, and he wasn’t sure if his business would survive. Fearing raids, customers stayed away.

“My goal is to pay the rent, pay the insurance and pay the guys,” the owner said to his manager, as they sipped coffee and waited for their first customers in the cool of November in the early hours of the morning. “This is it.”

The manager, himself a Mexican immigrant, nodded. He was balancing his personal concerns with his boss’s concerns. He and his team had witnessed friends, relatives and colleagues disappear during immigration raids. He left home every morning wondering whether he would return in the evening.

The mood at the car wash was once cheerful; employees were joking around as they sprayed water on cars and polished the windows. Now everyone, including the manager, kept one eye on the street while working. “We say we’re fine,” he said. “But we’re all afraid.”

A few minutes before 7 a.m., a BMW sedan pulled up to wash up. The manager turned on the vacuum cleaner and prayed.

“Protect me. Protect my colleagues. And protect where I work.”

The owner was born abroad but moved to Los Angeles after winning the US green card lottery.

He used all his savings to buy the car wash, which seemed like a solid investment at the time. There are approximately 36 million vehicles in California. In Los Angeles, at least for most of the year, people can’t rely on rain to keep themselves clean.

His business already took a major financial hit during this year’s Los Angeles wildfires, which filled the air with smoke and ash. Customers didn’t bother cleaning cars they knew would get dirty again.

Then came President Trump, who vowed to deport record numbers of immigrants.

Previous administrations focused on deporting immigrants who committed crimes. But federal agents, under pressure to meet arrest quotas, have greatly expanded their networks by targeting public and low-paying workplaces.

Street vendors, day laborers, agricultural workers and gardeners, as well as car wash workers, have become low-hanging fruit. At least 340 people have been detained since June in raids on 100 car washes in Southern California, according to the CLEAN Car Wash Workers Center, which advocates for workers in the industry.

The owner was shocked when agents carrying rifles and wearing bulletproof vests first stormed the business, blocked the exits with their vehicles, and handcuffed the employees without displaying a search warrant.

“This was a kidnapping,” he said. “We felt like we were in Afghanistan or Iraq, not in the middle of Los Angeles.”

Some of the men agents dragged away during that raid and its aftermath had been living in the United States for decades. Many were fathers of American children.

The manager was struck by survivors’ guilt. He was from the same small town in Mexico as one of the men who was detained and later deported. Another worker who was kidnapped by the agents the same morning as the raid was hired.

That’s when many employees stopped coming. One stayed home for almost a month, surviving on food that friends and family brought to his home.

But eventually that employee and his brother returned to the car wash. My brother said, “I am not brave.” “I need a job.”

The brother had been in the country for nearly 25 years and had three U.S.-born children; one of them had served as a sailor.

He had been working in car washes all this time; He squatted to scrub tires, stretched to dry roofs, and came home every night with aching heels and knots in his neck. He said less punitive industries are not an option for someone without valid employment documents, especially in the Trump era.

He was at the car wash during one of the raids and was only saved from detention when the owner stood in front of him and demanded that agents talk to him first.

The man said he has made peace with the idea that his time in the United States may be coming to an end. “At least my kids are grown up,” he said.

The two brothers were working on this brisk November day, drying Audis, Mercedes and a classic Porsche by hand. They earned just above minimum wage and kept most of their tips.

Their bosses had told them that if immigration agents returned, workers should consider locking themselves inside the cars they were cleaning. “Don’t run away,” said the manager. “They’ll just chase.”

The cashier at the register watched a website that tracks Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s activities in the area. So far there has been no activity nearby.

He’d been there during the immigration screenings, still angry at himself for not doing more to stop the agents from taking his co-workers. “You think you’re going to stand up to them, but when it happens, it’s different,” he said. “I was like a deer in the headlights.”

A retired history professor was reading a biography of Ulysses S. Grant on a bench while workers cleaned his Toyota Camry. The ICE raids scared some customers, but caused others to express their support. He said he made a point of patronizing the business because he was angry about the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants.

“They’re not taking the worst of the worst, they’re taking the easiest,” he said.

He noted that a U.S.-born Latino friend of his now carries a copy of his birth certificate. Just in case.

“This is not the America I grew up in,” the customer said.

The owner of the car wash was also trying to reconcile the promise of the USA with the reality he lived in.

“I thought Trump was a businessman,” he said. “But it really terrorizes businesses.”

The owner said he paid taxes on his employee’s earnings. So were they. “They were pushing the economy, paying rent, paying insurance, buying things.”

“Okay, take the criminals, take the bad guys,” he continued. “But these are hard-working people. Criminals don’t work at car washes or wait outside Home Depot.”

The owner had recently obtained American citizenship. But the raids were frustrated by Los Angeles’ homelessness crisis and high healthcare costs. He said his wife missed leaving the United States and returning home.

“This is not the American dream,” he said. “This is an American nightmare.”

As the sun began to set on the horizon, the last car of the day pulled out of the car wash; A sparkling clean Tesla.

The manager turned off the vacuum cleaner, pulled back the hoses, and breathed a sigh of relief. He and his crew had survived another day. At least tonight they would go home to their families.