'Afraid': ICE Raids Shake Hollywood’s Immigrant Workforce
Productions disrupted, workers paralyzed: Crew & staff who grew up undocumented (like I did) are filled with fear as studios stay mum
I write about TV from L.A. I interviewed a top agent-turned-manager about his take on the TV marketplace, reported on the boom in microdramas and wrote about how L.A. sound stages are scrambling as SoCal production dwindles. Reach me at elaine@theankler.com. As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from Elaine, Lesley Goldberg and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including Sean McNulty’s The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.
Hello, Series Business readers: With everything going on in the world, I wouldn’t blame you if you were having trouble focusing on — checks notes — making TV shows right now.
Abroad, there are very loud overtures of war. Here in Los Angeles, immigration raids have upended daily life for many, with entire parts of the city paralyzed as federal agents swarm local businesses in search of undocumented immigrants: bus ridership has plunged, stores have closed, and childcare providers are bracing themselves for visits from ICE.
Then again, perhaps the news cycle isn’t deterring you too much. After all, it’s easier to keep your head down and pay attention to the things you can affect rather than the seemingly endless turmoil that envelops the world around us. Fair enough.
But it would be a mistake to think that what is happening on the ground in L.A., distant though it may feel from most Hollywood offices and backlots, is completely detached from the entertainment industry.
“You can’t sit in a Hollywood office that was most likely engineered, built and maintained by immigrants and think this issue doesn’t affect you,” says Rafael Agustín, a TV writer best known for his work on several seasons of Jane the Virgin — and who was once an undocumented immigrant himself.
At the studios and on set, it’s unlikely that there are undocumented workers — strict employee verification processes make sure of that — but there are still plenty of people working legally in the industry who are afraid of being wrongly swept up in the raids.
Case in point: Laborers International Union of North America (LiUNA!) Local 724 represents about 1,800 utility workers who support carpenters, plasterers, painters, electricians and other TV and film craftspeople, as well as workers at Universal Studios Hollywood and janitorial staff at the major studios — the people who take care of your workspaces when you go home for the day and literally build the sets where your shows are filmed.
Local 724 business manager and principal officer Alex Aguilar, Jr. tells me he’s gotten phone calls from members who are scared, despite being legally in the U.S. About 20 percent of LiUNA members are immigrants, he estimates, and around half are Latino.
“I asked them, ‘Hey, is everything okay? How are you doing?’” recounts Aguilar. “They’re like, ‘Well, we’re afraid to come to work, because now they’re just picking up anybody, right?’” The perception is that law enforcement believes “if you’re brown and you have an accent, then you’re here illegally.’” Recent news reports of legal residents and U.S. citizens getting caught up in immigration nets, sometimes violently, have stoked those fears.
Hollywood, like most American industries, was built on the backs of immigrants. Some just happened to grow up undocumented, like Agustín, who spent his childhood in the San Gabriel Valley obsessed with B-movies like the Michael Dudikoff starrer American Ninja, or Aguilar, who worked for years as a laborer on the sets of feature films — and even, say, an entertainment business reporter like myself.
Some kids learn the unpleasant truth when they apply for a driver’s license or fill out college applications. My parents and I moved from Singapore to Chicago when I was 11, and I always knew that I was undocumented. It becomes a defining part of your being, weaving its way into your personality: Keep your head down, follow the rules, stay out of trouble, work hard. There is no room for teenage rebellion or youthful detours when you can’t even jaywalk without fearing deportation, and it is distinctly jarring to come of age feeling American while knowing that you don’t technically belong.
After high school, my friends went to places like Yale and the University of Chicago. I got into Northwestern but couldn’t afford it without financial aid; instead I earned a full scholarship from a local university that didn’t care about my status, which is fortunate, because I wouldn’t have even been able to afford community college without it. I was the first in my immediate family to go to college at all.
While my friends spent their early 20s going to grad school and finding their first full-time jobs, I spent it hustling for freelance work — tutoring, writing one-off stories and working the booths at conventions like E3. I’d go to the local sliding-scale clinic and see student dentists because I didn’t have health insurance. And I always, always made sure to pay taxes on whatever paltry amount I brought in. You won’t find anyone scrappier or more patriotic than a young undocumented American.
So in this week’s Series Business, let’s talk about:
Which productions in L.A. have been disrupted by raids and protests
How the guilds are responding to the turmoil
Why legal immigrant Hollywood workers are fearful of heading to job sites
The personal pain, shame and anxiety of growing up undocumented in the U.S.
How Agustín found his way to Hollywood, and the story he’s still hoping to tell as a TV writer
How Aguilar is guiding guild members through an anxious time
The invisible and integral work immigrants do in the entertainment industry, on and off the set