MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. – If all the Mexican-born service workers in this thriving resort town high in California's Sierra Nevada took even a day off work, the booming tourism economy would likely struggle harder than a novice skier on an icy professional slope.
Most restaurants have no staff, residents say. Hotels and Airbnbs would suffer the same fate. Construction projects in this noble ski resort would come to a standstill.
“I think it would be like one of those zombie movies,” said Jose Diaz, 33, of Sinaloa, a supervisor at Stove, a cozy breakfast spot in the heart of the city.
Like so many others who have come here from small towns in Mexico, Diaz didn't come to ski. He had heard through the grapevine that Mammoth was a good place to earn a steady salary.
The idea of Latino workers staging a one-day strike to demonstrate the city's reliance on imported labor is brewing in restaurant kitchens and hotel break rooms in Mammoth Lakes.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
That was 14 years ago. Now Diaz and his wife — she is from Guadalajara and they met while working at a Mammoth restaurant — are both here legally, he said. They have two U.S.-born children and recently purchased a condo in the city.
But like almost everyone else in this Alpine community of about 7,000, they have friends and family who would be at risk if President-elect Donald Trump's announcements about deporting millions of illegal immigrants actually take effect.
The locals aren't sure exactly how to react. Some workers say that given his business background, they are counting on Trump to take a softer stance when it comes to resort towns like Mammoth and South Lake Tahoe, whose economies would be devastated by mass deportations.
Others are calling for something more proactive: The idea of Latino workers staging a one-day strike to demonstrate the city's dependence on imported labor has been brewing in restaurant kitchens, hotel break rooms and group chats.
Mayor Chris Bubser said she understood the growing concerns about deportations but hoped a strike would not occur.
Mammoth Lakes residents say their resort would be devastated if the undocumented workers who make up much of the workforce were caught up in mass deportations.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
“I feel bad for the business owners because they are not the ones making these terrible threats and they would be left in the lurch,” Bubser said.
As state and local officials across California wrestle with the potential consequences of Trump's proposed deportations, the focus is naturally on the farming communities of the Central Valley, where about half of the people working in the fields and orchards are believed to be undocumented have.
But more expensive ZIP codes are also at risk, and it's hard to imagine that anywhere in the state would be more damaged than Mammoth Lakes if a significant percentage of its undocumented workforce were to suddenly disappear.
Because almost all of the tourists who flock to this internationally famous holiday resort are employees. And the people who own real estate are, by and large, real estate investors, skiers with enough money to afford a second home, or wealthy retirees moving to the mountains to escape the traffic jams of coastal cities. None of them are likely to respond to job advertisements for assistant cooks and snowplow drivers.
As a result, most of the work is ultimately done by immigrants.
A worker moves lumber at the construction site of a condominium in Mammoth Lakes.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about a third of Mammoth's population is of Spanish descent, and more than half of the students in the local public school system come from Spanish-speaking homes.
Many of the city's Latinos are citizens or green card holders, and some come from families that have lived here for generations. But residents believe that at least half are in the country illegally. They are not difficult to find.
On a recent chilly afternoon, about a half-dozen men were busy clearing snow from a commercial office building in the city. The owner of the roofing company simply asked to identify himself as Julio because he has no papers. He said he has done construction work in the United States since 1989, most of that time in Mammoth Lakes.
His company has 15 employees, he said. He also has three children, all US citizens; his oldest is a California Highway Patrol officer.
He has doubts about the benefits of a one-day strike by Latino workers: “The purpose of this strike is to show that Hispanic workers are necessary, but I'm pretty sure everyone already knows that,” he said, shrugging.
Roofer Julio at a construction site in Mammoth Lakes last week.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
He mentioned the record snowfall in the winter of 2022-23, when homeowners were desperate to clear snow from their roofs before their homes collapsed.
“I didn’t see a lot of Americans, you know, white people, on those rooftops,” Julio said.
The talk of deportations doesn't worry him much, he said, partly because he doesn't see the point in worrying about something he can't control. But he also said he thinks Trump is a rational businessman who needs to know how much undocumented workers contribute to the economy.
And Trump is under construction, Julio joked, so “I'm pretty sure he has some undocumented people working for him too.”
In fact, while Julio was put off by the sweeping, derogatory comments Trump made about Mexicans during the campaign, he still thinks Trump is “a pretty good president.” Julio said he was right about deporting people who cross the border illegally “looking for free stuff.”
“I worked my ass off,” Julio said. “I pay all my medical bills out of pocket, my dentist, my vision. I didn’t get social housing because I don’t think I need it.”
He said he hopes Trump will spare hard workers like him who “make the country stronger.” But he has no problem deporting lazy people.
A kitchen worker at a popular Mammoth Lakes restaurant takes a quick breakfast break.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
“If anyone doesn’t benefit the country, throw them out,” he said.
For others, the shocking scale of Trump's threat to deport up to 11 million undocumented U.S. citizens is frightening. They find it difficult to imagine how a dragnet of this size could pause to examine the merits of individual cases.
A secretary in the Mammoth school system who asked only to be identified as Maria is one of the people concerned.
She said she came from Mexico with her mother as a child and has since received U.S. citizenship. But her husband, who has worked in construction in Mammoth for more than 20 years, is undocumented.
When he was 14, he was caught crossing the border illegally and “couldn't change his status,” she said.
Maria and her husband have three children, all of whom were born in the USA. One is about to join the military, she said. But the children watch the news and hear the gossip at school, and their fear grows.
“My 10-year-old is scared when the new president says he’s going to deport everyone,” Maria said.
In addition to working in construction, her husband was a bus driver for the school district and recently started his own snow removal business. He has an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITN), a document issued by the Internal Revenue Service to foreign nationals – including undocumented immigrants – so they can pay taxes like everyone else.
“He’s a responsible guy, a hardworking guy who doesn’t come from an ugly background at all,” Maria said.
Mono County Sheriff Ingrid Braun worries that fear of immigration agents will deter crime victims from reaching out to her for help.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
A few years ago his kidneys failed. Thanks to the health insurance Maria receives through her work in the school district, he was able to undergo dialysis and ultimately a transplant. But he now depends on specific medications to stay alive, Maria said.
If he is deported and has to return to her home village of Michoacan, Maria fears he will lose access to the life-saving pills.
“People in Mexico die from things like this,” she said.
Like many law enforcement officials in California, Mono County Sheriff Ingrid Braun said she will not help round up undocumented residents for deportation. But she worries that fear of immigration officials is discouraging people from reaching out to them for help if they have been robbed, attacked by a romantic partner or otherwise victimized.
“They're not going to call if they're worried that he's going to be deported or that they're going to be separated from their children,” Braun said.
At the moment, Braun said, she is skeptical that the raids will actually happen. “I don’t think they have a plan. I think it was all just a bunch of talk,” she said.
Although she can't do anything to stop federal agents if they show up, she said, news travels quickly in a small town and she believes outsiders who don't know the lay of the land would have difficulty catching locals who are in on it almost certainly would know they were coming.
Mammoth High School students walk home after school in Mammoth Lakes.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
She also expects the disruption to the economy would be so severe that immigration officials would receive little cooperation from others in the city. In one way or another, almost everyone here depends on immigrants.
“People think resorts like Mammoth are just full of rich people gambling,” Braun said. But it is immigrants who do all the work and “keep the industry going.”