One Year Later, Immigrant Workers Helping L.A. Rebuild Following Devastating Wildfires Are Now Targets For Mass Deportation
This month marks one year since a series of wildfires devastated the Los Angeles area, killing as many as 440 people, displacing more than 200,000 residents, and causing more than $53 billion dollars in damage. But even in the midst of this catastrophic devastation, there were small glimmers in hope. Just look at the immigrant and Latino community members who gathered buckets and hoses to help try to stop the devastation from spreading, as we noted last year.
Housekeeper Maria Garcia told NPR at the time that she didn’t even live in the neighborhood where a reporter for the outlet took a picture of her hosing down some rubble. Garcia, who is undocumented, said she just couldn’t stop thinking about the devastation hitting the region she calls home and felt like she had to do something.
“She couldn’t sleep Tuesday night knowing houses there were burning. So she got out of bed early Wednesday and said to her children: ‘Let’s go help, if we can,’” the report said. “She called her brothers and some friends and they all gathered buckets and hoses and drove into a part of the Altadena community where houses were ablaze. Then they got to work putting out fires.”
“Our values and our principles come first, that’s what our parents taught us,” she told NPR. “They always used to say, help others without concern for who they are or why they need help.” Juan Carlos Pascual Tolentino, another immigrant volunteer, told NPR that documentation is irrelevant when it comes to helping a neighbor. “When you support someone, you strengthen your union with them,” he said. “When you stop and ask if they could use a hand, they’ll remember that.”
Immigrant workers have historically been critical to disaster recovery efforts. Following Hurricane Michael’s devastation in 2019, immigrant workers “toiled day and night” across Florida’s Bay County “to reopen Panama City’s City Hall, repair the local campus of Florida State University and fix damaged roofs on several churches,” The New York Times reported at the time. In fact, immigrant workers have been so essential to disaster recovery, that a statue in New Orleans honors the Latino workers, many also foreign-born, who helped rebuild the city following Katrina.
“Like farm workers in the fields, immigrants are indispensable to fire, flood and hurricane recovery in the US,” Saket Soni, executive director of disaster response organization Resilience Force, told The Guardian last year. “There is absolutely no rebuilding without them.”
Yet the federal government has impeded recovery efforts by targeting the very workers who are critical to our nation’s ability to rebound from disasters such as the L.A. wildfires. “Day laborers who are helping families rebuild in the Eaton Fire zones are scared to go to work, fearing to encounter federal immigration agents,” NBC 4 Los Angeles reported Jan. 9. “Standing in front of an Altadena home that was burned down in the 2025 wildfire, Jose Madera, director for the Pasadena Community Job Center, said the construction process has been delayed as workers are afraid that they may be targeted in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations.”
“These ICE raids, this hate and terror into our community. Masked men, armed, in unmarked cars are coming into our community. That’s halting the recovery,” Madera said. “That’s halting the rebuilding. That’s halting families to come back to their community.”
Just look at the terrifying mass deportation efforts that have been ongoing at the area’s Home Depot stores, which have long been a hub for immigrant workers and prospective employers specializing in construction. “These same lots have become key targets for immigration enforcement,” the Los Angeles Times reported in November. The administration’s unlawful invasion last summer expanded these dangers beyond the store chain’s parking lots.
The New York Times reported this past summer how one team of day laborers that had been working to decontaminate homes affected by the fires had no choice but to stay home following a nearby raid that made their essential work too risky to carry out that day.
“Sweating in masks and protective suits, they vacuumed toxic soot and ash, wiped down books and framed photos, and disposed of clothes and furniture that could not be salvaged,” the July 2025 report said. “One morning last month, they crammed into a small job center in Pasadena, Calif., ready for more work. But on this day, the situation felt too dangerous.”
This entirely preventable distress resulting from the federal government’s mass deportation agenda has not been unique to L.A., either. This past summer, a trio of economists noted that employment in construction had dropped in the ten states with the highest reliance on unauthorized workers. In Alabama, construction site superintendent Robby Robertson said he lost money after raids in nearby Florida scared off his workers. “Even though nearly two months have passed since then, he said a little more than half of his workforce has come back,” Common Dreams reported in July.
The dangers facing not just immigrant workers but everyone who calls this country home have only become more pronounced as L.A. remains in need of the skilled labor of immigrant workers. While the region “is showing signs of recovery,” “post-traumatic stress and avoidance of public life remain a part of life for many residents,” said the USC Schaeffer Institute for Public Policy & Government Service. “Over 50% of L.A. County residents say they or someone they know has avoided public places, transit, work or school, medical care, or legal/government services due to safety concerns or recent events.”
The workers who are helping L.A. slowly bounce back deserve our thanks and the opportunity to continue thriving here, not to get kicked out of the community they’re helping to rebuild one hammer at a time.