Six days a week, 39-year-old Fredis vacuums vehicles at the same Los Angeles car wash where she’s been working for 18 years.

But after all that time, it’s hardly business as usual.

“It’s very different, now. There’s a lot of fear… going to work, dropping the kids off at school, going out to shop,” she said in Spanish. (Marketplace isn’t publishing Fredis’ last name because of the risk of being targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.)

Fredis said she’s leaving the house less because of immigration raids, but she can’t miss out on her paycheck. Her kids in LA and family back home in Honduras depend on the $16.50 she makes an hour.

“What can I do? I have to work,” she said.

But something has eased her mind: This summer, a group of organizers dropped by the carwash to help her and her coworkers prepare for what to do in the case of an immigration raid.

“We have to have a place where we plan to go… in case they (ICE) come,” she said.

“We know what to do, now,” said Omar, another carwash worker who attended the training and whose last name is not being published due to immigration concerns.

“They said if ICE comes,” he said in Spanish, “to not volunteer our names, to stay quiet and not run away.”

Omar and Fredis worked with Cynthia Ayala, an organizer with the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. Ayala has watched raids hit local businesses in her community.

“Some folks, when it was really bad, didn't go to work,” she said. “A lot of folks, their business went down, of course.”

Private sector employment of noncitizens dropped 12% in California in the wake of those raids, according to a University of California, Merced, analysis of government data.

Now businesses and their employees are preparing for what might be coming next, considering the unprecedented expansion of ICE's budget to detain and deport immigrants.

Ayala and other organizers and volunteers have offered training to roughly 9,000 businesses to teach workers and employers about their rights during an immigration raid.

Their efforts include putting up signs.

“It says just ‘employees only’, and that's only for the office space and their break room,” Ayala said.

The sign shows where the private property line starts. The idea is ICE is not supposed to enter unless they have a judicial warrant. Ayala has even given business owners print outs of what judicial warrants look like.

“Just so everybody can see how it looks if they (ICE) come in, they have to have that,” she said.

Ayala said car washes have been a big target for raids because people are working out in the open air.

One of the car washes she worked with already had workers deported. But now, the owner is keeping a lookout and using walkie talkies in case it happens again.

“He's like, ‘Yeah, man, I don't want to put anybody else at risk,’” she said.

Ayala’s efforts to prepare LA businesses for immigration raids is part of a quiet movement that has spread to other parts of the country like New Mexico and Oregon, according to Claudia Magaña who is coordinating national know your rights efforts with Organized Power in Numbers.

“This is the most accessible thing a lot of folks find that they can do to support right now,” Magaña said.

Corissa Hernandez, who owns a bar in northeast LA, said small businesses like hers are bracing for how the next string of raids could impact their bottom line.

“We have businesses right now that are a rent away from closing,” she said.

LA businesses have gone through a pandemic, wildfires and now immigration raids.

“You're going to see these restaurant shutdowns, which will impact the community as a whole, because you're losing tax revenue and jobs,” she said.

She’s done know your rights training for her staff, and has encouraged other restaurants to get involved as well.

Her bar hasn’t been raided so far. She knows speaking out puts a target on her back — but she said this isn’t the time to back down.

“Immigrants built your business, immigrants contribute to the success of your business,” she said. “Just as much as they've had your back, it's time to have their back.”