Los Angeles protesters rally against Trump's deportations

Businesses closed, children stayed home from school, and workers walked off their jobs across the United States in observance of "A Day Without Immigrants".

The demonstrations on Monday aimed to highlight the contributions of immigrants while opposing President Donald Trump's intensified crackdown on illegal immigration.

The campaign was originally scheduled for May but was moved up in response to Trump's recent executive orders, including a policy targeting birthright citizenship.

Large-scale protests took place Sunday in downtown Los Angeles as thousands took to the streets, draped in Mexican and Salvadoran flags and shutting down a portion of the 101 Freeway for several hours.

"All the foreign flags being waved by these people blocking U.S. Route 101 in Los Angeles — holding up paramedics and other first responders rushing to emergencies — to protest Trump's deportations shows exactly why Trump's deportations are needed; they don't respect their hosts," wrote Jack Montgomery to 33,000 followers on X.

Riot police were deployed later in the evening as tensions escalated.

Additional protests took place in New York, Chicago and Houston, with thousands chanting slogans and holding signs denouncing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and mass deportations.

ICE has said the current deportations are focused on people who have entered the US illegally and have committed violent crimes.

Amid the protests, Sebas Ram, a UCLA student from an immigrant family, spoke with China Daily about the struggles and resilience of the Hispanic community in the US.

"Our core values have always been family, cultural identity, hard work and education," Ram told China Daily. "My parents made sure we knew Spanish alongside English because they wanted us to adapt to life in the US, while preserving our heritage. They emphasized that nothing should be handed to us — we must earn everything through hard work.

"Many in my family never went past elementary school. Their dream was for us to have a better life, to pursue education, and to make a positive impact on the world," he said.

Ram called the deportations "inhumane", adding that the ICE raids "are targeting communities vital to both the economy and society. These are our neighbors, our friends, our family members — people who have lived here longer than they have in their birth countries," he said.

Ram pointed to the economic impact, particularly in sectors such as agriculture, hospitality and custodial services.

"Fieldwork has decreased by about 80 percent in some areas because people are too afraid to go to work," he said. "White-collar workers also live in fear, afraid that simply stepping out of their homes could mean being detained or deported."

Wendy Guardado, a Los Angeles activist who helped organize the action, told the Los Angeles Times that she had counted 250 businesses nationwide that had closed in solidarity.

"There is so much more coming because there's four years of Trump," she said.

In the Los Angeles Unified school district, the nation's second largest, attendance was 66 percent on Monday compared with 93 percent for the year overall, the Times reported.

In San Diego, hundreds rallied near the city's convention center on Sunday.

In Texas, demonstrators gathered in downtown Dallas on Sunday in a pair of protests against recent arrests by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Dallas police told The Associated Press that approximately 1,600 people gathered between the two rallies.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that foreign-born workers — both documented and undocumented — comprised more than 19 percent of the US labor force in late 2024.

A report by the American Immigration Council estimated that deporting 1 million individuals annually over a decade could cost nearly $1 trillion. The report also highlighted that such actions would reduce the US gross domestic product by 4.2 percent to 6.8 percent due to the loss of workers across various industries.

Economists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington have contended that mass deportations would lower US GDP and reduce employment.

Wen Siyuan in Los Angeles and agencies contributed to the story.