Businesses close, children skip school for ‘a day without immigrants’

In Southern California and across the country on Monday, dozens of businesses nationwide closed, schools reported lower attendance and families put off trips to the grocery store in observance of “A day without immigrants.”

The call to action, which began circulating on social media last week, encouraged immigrants to skip work, keep their children home from school and refrain from shopping Monday.

Businesses across the U.S. announced closures on social media. A quinceañera boutique in Omaha. A coffee shop in Salt Lake City. A used car lot in Baltimore. An accounting firm in Pasco, Wash.

Monday’s protest echoed a similar nationwide action in February 2017, a month after President Trump started his first term. Then, as on Monday, students stayed away from school and workers did not report to work, including employees at a Senate coffee shop in Washington, D.C.

Wendy Guardado, a Los Angeles activist who helped organize the action, said she had counted 250 businesses nationwide that had closed in solidarity with the movement. Other establishments found themselves short of workers. At the Abbey Food & Bar, a popular LGBTQ+ nightclub in West Hollywood, the kitchen was closed due to a staffing shortage.

She said that Monday’s action was just the beginning, and that she heard many people could not afford to take a day off work with just a week’s notice.

“There is so much more coming,” Guardado said, “because there’s four years of Trump.”

Throughout Los Angeles Unified, attendance was 66% Monday compared with 93% for the year as a whole — and 91% last week, according to district data. Guardado said three district teachers told her that their classrooms were empty Monday. Others told her that their classrooms were nearly empty.

A spokesperson for the Inglewood Unified School District said that it experienced “a higher-than-usual student absence” across schools. San Diego Unified School District Supt. Fabi Bagula noted that some students and families were participating in the protest, but did not specify now many.

A teacher at Parmelee Avenue Elementary School in South L.A., who asked to not be named because they were not authorized to speak out, said that 390 of the school’s 670 students were absent Monday and that many parents had said it was because of the protest.

At El Sol Academy in Santa Ana, as many as 50 students will miss a day of school for personal reasons, said Sara Flores, the school’s chief student and family support officer. On Monday, 180 didn’t show up.

In Sacramento, Mario Ledesma, 31, decided to close his store, Pa’l Norte Work & Western Wear.

Ledesma said his dad, who immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico decades ago, used to sell western boots at a local flea market. Ledesma later sold boots too, switching to online sales during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was so successful that he opened a brick-and-mortar four months ago.

For Ledesma, closing his fledgling shop for a day was more important than any profit he stood to make. The name of his store means To The North.

“I named my business in honor of the sacrifices our people made to come to this country in search of the American dream,” he wrote on Instagram. “We are living in a moment where our American dream is being attacked…Let’s show them that without us El Norte no existe” — the United States wouldn’t exist.

Demonstrators block parts of Santa Ana Boulevard to protest President Trump’s immigration policies on Feb. 3, 2025, in Santa Ana.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Among the restaurants closed to show solidarity with the protesters was Golfo de Fonseca, a Salvadoran eatery in Pacoima. Yonatan Franco, 30, a undocumented immigrant who arrived from El Salvador in 2015, had hoped to order pupusas for lunch. He and his father drove up in his black Nissan Xterra at noon to find the restaurant dark.

Franco said that, given the wave of deportations ordered by Trump, he has chosen not to buy at large businesses, such as McDonald’s, Target and Walmart.

“Those big stores are supporting Trump,” he said “There are a lot of Latinos at swap meets selling clothes, and we can support our people who are struggling with their businesses.”

In Santa Ana, Reyna, a restaurant line cook who didn’t want to provide her last name because she’s in the country without legal status, decided to keep her children home from school and planned to put off grocery shopping for the day.

Reyna already had the day off from work. But when a friend texted her about the boycott over the weekend, she decided to join.

“We are part of this economy,” she said. “Many of us immigrants who are here are not hurting anyone. We just wanted something better.”

Although the extent of the business closures and absences wasn’t immediately clear, experts said the significance shouldn’t be measured in dollars and cents.

“The effectiveness of these kinds of mobilizations is more on the message,” said Victor Narro, project director at the UCLA Labor Center. He said Monday’s protest highlights the fact that with the population growing older and birth rates falling, the country will have to rely more on the immigrant workforce for the economy to remain strong.

Several California restaurants posted on social media that they were closing in support of the action: In Oakland, La Casa de Maria. In La Mirada, Barbacoa Los Gueros. All 10 locations of the popular Teddy’s Red Tacos, from Anaheim to Venice.

Antojitos Puebla, in downtown Los Angeles, also announced it would close for the day. On Facebook, the restaurant wrote that “Immigrants are the backbone of our nation.”

Thousands march in downtown Los Angeles to protest President Trump’s immigration policies.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Also downtown, protesters resumed demonstrations Monday that brought out thousands and shut down the 101 Freeway a day earlier over Trump’s recent executive actions on immigration. The action was significantly smaller, and there was no sign of another freeway takeover.

Outside Los Angeles City Hall, the whir of helicopters overhead was drowned out by a cacophony of bullhorns and fiery chanting. Katherine Sanchez, 18, couldn’t help but smile.

“It’s very heartwarming,” Sanchez said, standing with her sister and parents Monday afternoon. She held a sign that read, “Ur racism won’t end our strength.”

The Burbank High School senior, who heard about the demonstration on TikTok, said she and many of her friends skipped school to join the protest.

Sanchez’s father, Esteban Sanchez, the child of Mexican immigrants, is disheartened by the messaging behind Trump’s recent actions on immigration.

“I was born here, and I feel like a foreigner,” he said.

“It’s not the country that I thought we were,” he added, before stepping off the curb and joining the protesters as they rushed Spring Street.

Thousands rally during the march in downtown Los Angeles.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

In downtown Santa Ana, hundreds of protesters similarly gathered at Sasscer Park and across the street at the Ronald Reagan federal courthouse. Cars drove up and down the neighborhood’s narrow streets while honking their horns to the cheers of pedestrians. Some cars, stuck in traffic in between the park and the courthouse, began to spin their tires in place, filling the air with smoke.

Fernanda Hernandez, 19, led some of her friends down 4th Street, Orange County’s historical Latino corridor. She held a sign that said, “My Parents Work Harder than Your President.” Both of her parents are undocumented immigrants from Mexico.

“Trump wants us to be afraid but we can’t be,” said Hernandez, who called in sick from her retail job. “We need to stand up for our gente. He wants us gone, whether we’re illegal or not.”

Times staff writers Soudi Jimenez, Howard Blume, Daniel Miller and Jaweed Kaleem contributed to this report.