ICE agents were seen blocks from my home. Hours later, street vendors vanished. All that remained were a few plastic chairs — and a silence that still hasn’t left me.
By Nick Valencia
EAGLE ROCK, LOS ANGELES —
I was at the park with my kids when the message came in.
A viewer told me they’d seen what looked like federal agents walking through their backyard — not a metaphor, not a mile away. Their actual backyard.
In broad daylight.
The men weren’t marked, but their presence was unmistakable. They moved with intent. A few minutes later, my phone filled with images and video: the men climbing into a car, casually but efficiently, as if leaving a job site. Then they were gone.
A few hours later, the internet told the rest of the story. Street vendors had vanished. A video showed the sidewalk on Figueroa, just off the 134. A stretch that’s usually alive with vendors — taco stands, tamaleros — was empty. Coolers left cracked open. Carts slightly tipped. The kind of stillness that only happens when something ends too fast.
A few blocks up, near the Vons where I used to shop as a kid — where I still shop — it was the same. The al pastor vendors. The eloteros. The people whose presence I never questioned because they were always in the neighborhood. They were gone.
Later that evening, I traced the route I imagined the agents must’ve taken. I ended up at a spot I’d seen earlier in a video posted online. The scene was stripped bare. No people. No carts. Just two or three plastic chairs left behind on the sidewalk — as if the vendors had disappeared mid-conversation. The chairs sat there like ghost memories, indifferent to whether anyone would come back for them.
Lately, we talk a lot about raids. About policies. About border crackdowns and operations. But there’s something different about it when the crackdown happens blocks from where you live, where your kids play, where your neighbors sell fruit.
At dinner with my wife tonight, we drove past familiar corners that usually pop with music and color — taco trucks lit up, people laughing and eating under the hum of streetlights. Tonight? Nothing. The one truck I did see was tucked away in a small parking lot. Literally in the shadows.
And somewhere, there’s a family wondering if their loved one is ever coming back.
ICE didn’t just clear the block. They left a silence we can’t stop hearing.
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