By Jorge Mercado Monday, September 15th, 2025

It has been just over two months since the federal agent’s raid of Glass House Farms’ operations in both Carpinteria and Camarillo, but the business community is still feeling the fallout, with some owners facing labor challenges and others seeing a loss of business.

In an effort to understand some of the economic impact from the raids, the Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce, in collaboration with Visit Santa Barbara, conducted a survey with community members. 

The chamber represents businesses from Goleta to Carpinteria. It should be noted that while the majority of responses were from the city of Santa Barbara and neighboring cities, there were a few responses from cities in Ventura County.

The chamber shared the early results with the Business Times on Aug. 25 and the survey showed that nearly 50% of business owners in the community feel that the recent activity by agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement has had a direct on their business. 

According to the survey, 15.9% believe it has had a significant impact on their business, 18.8% believe it has had a moderate impact on their business and another 14.2% answered that recent activity has had a slight impact on their business.

“Even before the (Glass House) raids, we were hearing significant anecdotal feedback from our businesses that the current policy enforcement was definitely causing disruption,” Kristen Miller, president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce, told the Business Times. “But after the incident in Carpinteria, there was an even greater perceived effect on our local economy, which we wanted to try and quantify.”

Those two biggest impacts are on the workforce and customer patterns. 

According to the survey, 16.6% of businesses have experienced disruptions to staffing and scheduling. Nearly 25% of business owners also said that they have frequently heard of customers changing their shopping habits — such as shopping less and avoiding high-traffic areas — with another 19.6% saying they have occasionally heard that as well.

Additionally, 39% of business owners — 69 out of 176 — answered that they have either had slightly, moderately or significantly had a loss of business, a reduction in customers and/or the need to reduce hours for staff due to recent immigration activity.

Moreover, when asked to rate 1-5 the current level of fear or anxiety among staff in relation to immigration activity, 57.1% of respondents were at least a 3.

“This wasn’t shocking to see because we have been hearing this, but to have it confirmed has opened our eyes,” Miller said.

Miller added that in talks with business owners, many already highlighted that they struggle enough with having access to a qualified workforce.

“This is already a touch point for us and it has been heartbreaking to hear businesses talk about trying to help their employees weather this storm, particularly as it relates to just the fear around it,” she said.

True data points about the economic impacts of the raids that touched the Central Coast will take much longer to come out, said Matthew Fienup, executive director of Cal Lutheran University’s Center for Economic Forecasting.

“The lack of evidence of an impact is not evidence of no impact,” Fienup told the Business Times. “We haven’t seen it in the data yet, but it’s there. We know it’s there. It will show up, but unfortunately, we’re going to have to be patient before we see it in the data.”

Fienup, along with his three co-authors, releases annual reports on the impacts of Latinos and Latinas on the United States Gross Domestic Product, usually on a two-year lag. The 2025 California Latino GDP Report takes 2023 data, for example, and that report found that in 2023, the state’s Latino GDP surpassed $1 trillion, meaning that if California Latinos comprised their own state, their GDP would be the nation’s sixth-largest state GDP.

Latinos’ contribution to California’s economy has enabled the state to have the fourth biggest GDP in the world at $4.1 trillion. 

“The effort to displace immigrants is not only a human tragedy, it is an economic tragedy that affects everyone,” Fienup said.

Moreover, 41% of working-age Latinos living in California are immigrants, including both documented and undocumented. 

“But even of that total percentage, we don’t have a good estimate of the number of those that are documented versus undocumented,” Fienup said. “Think about the fact that it is a survey response, and you’re asking people to identify as immigrants in the current environment. Why on earth would they reply? So it’s just a really challenging environment in terms of data.”

Miguel Avila, CEO of the Greater Santa Barbara Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, told the Business Times he has heard dozens of stories of local businesses being affected by immigration activity, with some losing members of their workforce to ICE agents.

“The most affected businesses are Latino-owned businesses because they depend on walking traffic on Milpas and Andres of people nearby who normally walk the streets, but are now too afraid to do so,” Avila said.

Last year, the Greater Santa Barbara Hispanic Chamber of Commerce threw a large party with thousands of people in attendance in September in celebration of Mexican Independence Day, which falls on Sept. 16. 

This year, the chamber threw a much smaller get-together on Sept. 11 at a local restaurant with a few hundred people gathering. The reason for a much smaller party was fear of ICE agents being in the area at the time of the celebration.

“We wanted to make sure we were not exposed on the streets,” Avila said.

The day before Mexican Independence Day is celebrated with the traditional “El Grito de Independencia,” or independence battle cry ceremony. Avila noted that the Mexican General Consulate from Oxnard did the Grito at their celebration before noting that the city of Santa Maria had completely canceled their celebration despite 79% of the population being Hispanic.

“This is the worst I have ever seen in 53 years when it comes to immigration,” Avila said.

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