"People were hiding under wood, in the trash, wherever they could find a little hole," said Oscar Mendia, a Guatemalan who estimated 25 people were arrested.
The raid was part of an anti-immigration crackdown ordered by President Donald Trump that has seen factories and work sites targeted since Friday, sparking days of angry protests in America's second biggest city.
Mendia, who has lived undocumented in the United States for 26 years, had never been involved in a raid before, not even during Trump's first term.
'Families to support'
But they are not enough to keep these workers away from the parking lot, where they gather in the hope of snagging off-the-books work in construction, farming or manual labor.
Mendia, who also used remittances to educate and raise his three children in Guatemala, says men like him have less to fear in this anti-immigration climate.
"They come with hope, they come dreaming of a future."
The young man was saved from Friday's raid because he had already been picked up for a construction project by the time the armed federal agents arrived.
"We need to do it," he told AFP.
The men's stories are echoed in parking lots, car washes and on construction sites all over Los Angeles and throughout the United States.
After difficult and dangerous journeys, they work for low salaries, doing the kind of back-breaking jobs many Americans have long since abandoned -- and often pay taxes.
'Country of immigrants'
The ramped-up raids this week appear to be part of a push to make do on that promise, and come after White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller reportedly ordered ICE (Immigration Customs and Enforcement) bosses to make at least 3,000 arrests every day.
"Why is Donald Trump doing this?" asked a Mexican man who arrived in the United States nearly three decades ago.
"Why is he attacking Los Angeles? Because we are a power, because we are the ones who make the economy," he said,
The migrants of the 21st century might be largely Latinos, but America's rich history is one of waves of different people coming to these shores.
"Everyone from the president to the person who sweeps the streets."
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