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How 'Made in USA' will unravel without immigrants

22 Jun '25
3 min read
How 'Made in USA' will unravel without immigrants
Pic: Shutterstock

Insights

  • LA houses the largest cut and sew apparel base in the US.
  • ICE raids on LA garment factories have disrupted the immigrant-driven US apparel sector, exposing the contradiction in promoting 'Made in USA' while cracking down on its workforce.
  • With immigrants comprising nearly one-third of garment workers, the crackdown threatens domestic production, exports, and the very revival tariffs aim to support.
Before sunrise on June 6, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents stormed into Ambiance Apparel in downtown Los Angeles (LA), detaining over 40 immigrant workers. The raid—part of a coordinated strike on four local manufacturers—ignited street protests following an unsustainable period of tension.

Even as Washington pushes tariffs and ‘Made in USA’ campaigns to revive domestic manufacturing, its aggressive immigration enforcement is currently gutting the workforce that keeps many factories running.

For decades, immigrant labour—documented and undocumented—has been the invisible thread holding American apparel together. Now, as ICE raids empty workshops and tariffs strangle supply chains, the industry faces a reckoning. The question is not whether the US wants to manufacture clothes domestically—it is whether it is willing to keep the workers who make it possible.

LA’s cut-and-sew hub

LA’s Fashion District is the beating heart of US apparel manufacturing stretching across 100 blocks and 4,000 businesses, and it is immigrants who primarily work at the cutting tables, sewing machines and pressing stations.

“Garment factories in the US have always run on immigrant labour,” Susan Scafidi of the Fashion Law Institute told Vogue, pointing to waves of European, Latin American and Asian workers who built the trade.

When ICE stormed Ambiance Apparel early this month, it did not just arrest workers—it shattered an ecosystem, according to the LA Times.

Within days, the district’s bustling streets turned ghostly. Wholesale shops sat empty and factories halted mid-production. Sales fell by 50 per cent as panic spread. Some owners, fearing more raids, pre-emptively shut down, idling both legal and undocumented workers.

Policy at odds

Since returning to office, President Trump has escalated workplace raids nationwide, targeting everything from warehouses to garment factories.

This crackdown coincides with his administration’s aggressive push to revive US manufacturing through tariffs. While one policy aims to ‘liberate’ American industry from foreign competition, the other is systematically dismantling its workforce.

Nearly one-third of America’s 300,000 garment workers are immigrants—about 30,000 undocumented.

“These aren’t jobs Americans are lining up for,” says Scafidi.

Export implications

The happening in Los Angeles also carries implications beyond California, because the US still maintains a significant textile and apparel manufacturing base in other regions—from garment factories in New York and Texas to textile mills in the Carolinas and Georgia. These businesses not only serve domestic consumers but also feed a robust export market for US-made fabric and fashion.

According to the Office of Textiles and Apparel (OTEXA) under the US Department of Commerce, the country’s exports of textiles and apparel consistently total roughly $22–25 billion per year.

American-made yarns, fabrics and clothing are shipped to markets like Mexico, Canada, Honduras and beyond, sustaining jobs and revenue at home.

Fewer garments produced domestically means fewer goods available for export, potentially widening the US trade deficit that tariffs are meant to shrink.

President Trump, however, is unlikely to be daunted by all of this disruption. “I am not looking to make T-shirts, to be honest,” he told reporters on May 25. “I am not looking to make socks. We can do that very well in other locations. We are looking to do chips and computers and lots of other things, and tanks and ships.”

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (IL)

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