‘Aquí’ Is Asking You to Spend $30 at a Latino-Owned Business This Hispanic Heritage Month and the Reason Is Devastating

Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15th through October 15th every year, and this year the celebration comes with a context that makes it impossible to treat as a routine cultural moment. A new study from the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute documented the devastating economic toll that ICE enforcement activity has taken on Latino business corridors across Los Angeles County, and the numbers are impossible to ignore.

The findings arrive at a moment when Latino-owned businesses across the country are still trying to recover from a year of sustained financial pressure, fear-driven foot traffic declines and the kind of compounding stress that does not resolve itself when the news cycle moves on. Aquí: The Accountability Movement has launched its second annual Buy Latino Campaign in direct response to that reality, calling on individuals, families and organizations across the country to intentionally spend money at Latino-owned businesses throughout the month and put real economic support behind the celebration.

What the UCLA Study Actually Found

The UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute study, conducted in partnership with Inclusive Action for the City, paired mobility data on businesses near nine enforcement sites with surveys and focus groups from 75 Latino entrepreneurs across Los Angeles County. The findings document an economic shock that began immediately and deepened over time rather than resolving. Every participating small business owner reported fewer customers and fewer sales. By the end of the second week following enforcement activity, foot traffic had declined by 3.23 percent within a quarter mile of enforcement sites and by 1.63 percent between a quarter and a half mile away. Eight of the nine commercial areas studied experienced reduced foot traffic, meaning the disruption spread across an entire network of Latino business corridors rather than concentrating in one location.

The human dimension of those numbers is worth sitting with. Business owners described fewer customers, canceled orders, reduced operating hours, staffing disruptions, depleted savings and accumulated debt. Fifty-nine percent reported revenue declines exceeding fifty percent, and another twenty percent reported declines between twenty-six and fifty percent. Sixty-eight percent temporarily closed or reduced their operating hours. Fifty-one percent reported staff missing work due to fear of enforcement, meaning the disruption reached workers who had nothing to do with the enforcement activity itself.

The researchers found that financial strain and worsening health reinforced one another, with fear, prolonged uncertainty and financial pressure limiting business owners’ ability to work, manage their operations and recover. Seventy-six percent reported a substantial emotional impact, and focus groups described sustained fear, anxiety, depression, sleep disruption and stress that translated into physical symptoms including gastrointestinal disorders, panic attacks and worsening chronic conditions. Nearly a year after the initial enforcement activity, ninety-five percent of participating businesses continued to report financial stress, with fifty-two percent still unable to cover their operating costs and forty-three percent barely breaking even.

Latino Businesses Are Local Economic Engines and Treating Them That Way Matters

Latino-owned businesses are not a niche category of the U.S. economy but a structural component of it, employing neighbors, buying from local suppliers and keeping money circulating in communities that depend on that circulation to function. When enforcement activity drives away their customers and creates an environment of fear that prevents people from leaving their homes, the harm spreads outward to everyone those businesses serve, regardless of anyone’s immigration status.

The UCLA study found that business owners were managing their own anxiety while simultaneously reassuring frightened customers and comforting employees and family members, which is a description of people doing extraordinary emotional labor under impossible conditions while trying to keep their livelihoods intact. Rudy Espinoza, CEO of Inclusive Action, described the toll these policies have taken on small businesses and commercial corridors across the country, noting that business owners and workers are struggling while families suffer, and calling the research an opportunity for community members to share their truth.

The study’s authors estimate that a similar decline extrapolated county-wide could represent up to $52 million in losses within two weeks and $114 million over a month of sustained enforcement, figures they describe as a plausible order of magnitude rather than a precise measure. The point is not the exact number but the scale of what is happening to communities that have always been central to the U.S. economy while being treated as peripheral to it.

How to Participate in the Buy Latino Campaign Right Now

Sindy Benavides, founding Executive Director of Aquí, described intentionally investing in and building the Latino community as also a way of protecting it, and that framing deserves to be taken seriously. If ten percent of U.S. households intentionally spend at least $30 at a Latino-owned business during Hispanic Heritage Month, the campaign estimates that $400 million would surge back into the Latino community over the course of 31 days. The math behind that number is not abstract, and the barrier to participation is deliberately low because the goal is volume.

The $30 Challenge is the entry point. Thirty dollars at a Latino-owned restaurant, grocery store, salon, boutique, service provider or any other business counts toward the collective target, and the cumulative effect of that spending across millions of households is the point. Beyond the financial transaction, the campaign also asks participants to use social media to spotlight their favorite local Latino-owned businesses and share the stories behind them, creating visibility that has its own economic value for businesses that depend on word of mouth and community loyalty.

Aquí’s bilingual Buy Latino Toolkit provides concrete resources including data, graphics and captions for social media, ways to share Latino business origin stories and guidance for organizations looking to activate their networks around the campaign. Hispanic Heritage Month exists to honor the contributions of Latino people to the United States across every field and every generation, and the most honest way to honor those contributions right now is to support the businesses that are still standing after a year of financial pressure that most people reading about it from the outside cannot fully imagine. The campaign runs through October 15th, the toolkit is available in both English and Spanish through Aquí’s website, and thirty dollars is all it takes to be part of something that adds up to four hundred million.