Every morning, a street vendor near MacArthur Park sets up her stand, hoping the foot traffic will come.
For years, the Salvadoran vendor has sold everything from creams and shampoos to vitamins and coffee beans, whatever she can carry and turn a profit on. She arrives around 8:40 a.m., lays out her products, organizes them by category and starts her day.
“I work every day. I don’t take any days off,” she said. “You try to sell what you can.”
She has been in the United States for more than two decades. The LA Local is not naming this vendor to protect her identity due to her immigration status.
She has more than 100 goods, and she buys everything in downtown Los Angeles, from wholesalers who sell products in bulk. She sometimes also orders items, and the wholesalers will bring them to her stand.
A bottle of Head & Shoulders shampoo might cost her around $6.50. She will try to sell it for $10, but at minimum she says $9. A Ponds cream she can find for $4 or $5 and resell for $8 to $10. Nothing is fixed.
“You can’t buy things at such a high price, when you know that your prices are negotiable. Everything is negotiable,” she said. “You can’t have a standard price, you have to be flexible to sell here. But you have to always try and earn something.”
On the street, prices shift depending on the customer, the day and how much inventory she has left. Still, she never sells below what she paid for each item.
Across MacArthur Park, street vendors like her say the economic fallout of the pandemic has been compounded by renewed immigration enforcement that has emptied sidewalks and reduced foot traffic. For many the result is not only a significant drop in income but also a daily routine shaped by uncertainty. Still, she said she must keep working to survive.
She once had a brick-and-mortar shop in the same corner where she now vends.
Starting in 2017, she ran a small storefront on the lower level of a building, selling Mexican candy, chips and drinks. But that changed when the pandemic hit.
“When everything shut down, everything fell apart, there was no business,” she said, adding that foot traffic almost disappeared overnight.
She started selling her wares on the street corner after she closed the shop in 2020 during the COVID lockdowns.
By the time the city reopened, rent had gone up, and her customers hadn’t returned to the same levels, so she continued selling on the street.
On top of that, for years one of her biggest challenges has been police enforcement.
She has permits, but even with them, she says police officers often tell her to pack up and leave.
“You tell them you have a permit, and they tell you, ‘No, it’s not valid, it’s expired.’ So if they tell you to move, you have to move,” she said. “You can’t argue. At the end of the day, they have the authority, and you’ll lose if you don’t do what they say. They’ll arrest you.”
She said officers have intimidated her by warning they could give her a citation.
The frustration isn’t just about being told to leave. It’s about what that disruption means.
“This is how we bring food to the table, how we pay our rent, bills” she said. “I respect authority, but they don’t understand that. They have a salary.”
In response to her experiences, Capt. Ben Fernandes, commanding officer of LAPD’s Rampart Division, said officers “are constantly patrolling the area surrounding MacArthur Park and the Alvarado Corridor and issue citations.”
“The violations are generally due to issues of blocking the sidewalk, being too close to a storefront, or blocking a driveway,” he said, adding that these have been “chronic community complaints.” Fernandes said officers also hold regular meetings with vendors about these issues.
In a statement to The LA Local, Mayor Karen Bass’s office said street vendors are “a vital part of Los Angeles’ economy and culture” and emphasized that the city is “committed to supporting them as small business owners.”
“At the same time, the City must ensure public spaces are safe and compliant with health and safety standards,” they added. “We utilize education, outreach, and permit assistance to help vendors come into compliance.”
In June 2025, came another blow for the MacArthur Park vendor.
Immigration raids that began ramping up once again emptied the streets.
Business dropped sharply.
Before, a good week could bring in $500 to $600. Now, she says, a good week brings in between $200 and $300. On the whole, she says her business has faced an estimated 80% drop.
“Not every day is the same,” she said. “A good day for me now used to be a bad day for me years prior.”
Instead of restocking weekly, she now stretches what she has, only buying more when inventory runs really low.
The impact goes beyond money.
She says she now works in fear, constantly watching her surroundings and checking the news for reports of enforcement.
“Immigration enforcement has not been an easy issue for our community,” she said. “I live with fear and uncertainty. As you know, they don’t respect anyone, no matter your status. To them, if you look like a Latino, you’re a criminal. No one is safe.”
The anxiety affects her throughout the day, she said, especially as someone responsible for her family, including a niece she raised as her own daughter.
“You think, will I come back home?” she said. “That’s the fear.”
She added that just last week, her anxiety spiked again after learning that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had detained people near where she sells.
The environment around MacArthur Park, she says, has also changed.
“There’s more theft, more people doing drugs, more homelessness,” she said. “It feels more dangerous than before. It’s not safe for children. I don’t cross the street towards MacArthur Park.”
She said support from nonprofits like Homies Unidos, which provides services to reduce violence in communities impacted by gangs, and other vendor networks, has helped. Through organizing and community connections, vendors have found ways to share information, access resources and advocate for themselves.
After the raids intensified, one of her regular customers stepped in to help — offering to drive her to and from MacArthur Park. The two have now been working together for nine months, though they’ve known each other since 2017, when the señora still had her shop. He said he used to stop by to buy hand creams from her.
“The situation came up with the raids, and the man who used to help her stopped coming for those reasons. So I told her that if she needed help, I could lend a hand — and since then, I’ve stayed,” said Jose Alfredo Repreza, a 69-year-old Koreatown retiree from El Salvador. “Thank God, I’ve been feeling well, emotionally and psychologically. I arrived at the best moment to help with her sales and also to help myself.”
Repreza said that at the time, he was also going through a separation with his wife, so helping the señora also became a kind of distraction.
He said the customer service she provides is what keeps people coming back.
“It all depends on each of us. There are people who don’t know how to treat a customer, so people come once and don’t return,” Repreza said. “You have to treat people with kindness and respect. When it’s time to sell something, I thank people.”
Like many vendors, she has also had to scale back in her day-to-day life.
Now she thinks carefully about everything she buys at the grocery store, and she’s not shopping as often. Going out to restaurants, spending time with her niece and family, even small moments of leisure, like dancing with her loved ones—things she once enjoyed — have been put on hold.
She also doesn’t see herself returning to a storefront anytime soon with how the economy is right now.
“Thank God, I’m the kind of person who doesn’t complain, but in my head, inside, I’m not okay. I think, where am I going to get to in life with a business like this?” she said.
Looking ahead, she says what she wants most is change at the policy level, specifically when it comes to immigration reform.
“You can’t live your whole life in fear. They said they were going after criminals, but they’ve gone after hardworking people,” she said. “People like us, who work and contribute, should have a path.”
She also wants more direct financial support for vendors, not loans, but aid that doesn’t have to be repaid.
Recently, she was approved for a small business relief grant from Los Angeles County of about $2,500 — money she says will help supplement her income and allow her to invest in more inventory.
“It means a lot,” she said with a grin.
Despite everything, the pandemic, the raids, the declining sales, she keeps going, returning home around 6:30 p.m. on most days.
“I have the mindset that tomorrow could be better. Tomorrow is another day,” she said.
But the uncertainty remains.
“Sometimes you think, ‘How long can this continue?’” she said. “Or do you just throw in the towel and give up?”
For now, she hasn’t. Every morning, she returns to the street, sets up her stand and waits for customers to pass by.
