Cleaning Business Owner Claims Impact from Threatening Street Vendors
A Hispanic American who owns a cleaning company has expressed that her business has been “ruined” after she threatened to contact Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) about street food vendors she believed were negatively affecting her neighborhood and local businesses.
In a video shared by a Los Angeles news outlet, Francesca Ortega confronts the vendors in Spanish in Santa Clarita, California, stating her intentions to alert ICE.
This particular threat seems to have had severe repercussions, even for someone like Ortega, who is also Hispanic. The video and subsequent backlash quickly went viral on social media, leading numerous individuals to flood her business with negative reviews.
Critics bombarded her well-regarded cleaning service with one-star ratings and nasty remarks. In an ironic twist, many local residents flocked to the food stand in support, demonstrating minimal concern about the vendors, who do not seemingly adhere to food safety regulations in Los Angeles County.
Ortega mentioned that with the makeshift tents and open cooking sites, she is worried about the area’s image, saying she “doesn’t want Santa Clarita to turn into Mexico.”
Ortega, who has shared that she was born in the U.S. but spent her early years in Mexico, pointed to L.A. and Santa Monica, expressing frustration that, in her view, no one seems to address such issues.
Unfortunately for her, things took a turn for the worse. She lamented in a personal video, “Now all of my livelihood is ruined. The business that I worked so hard to build for 10 years — we had excellent, perfect reviews — it got flooded, flooded by these insane horrible Latino people.”
This situation illustrates a sentiment in Southern California where a law-abiding business owner is criticized while an unregulated vendor is sympathized with. One commenter on social media pointed out, “America is so damn backwards right now it’s insane.”
As reported previously, a large number of street food vendors in the region operate without regulation. Authorities suspended all enforcement of street food permits and health standards while legal food establishments continue facing rigorous scrutiny and penalties.
Despite a significant number of public health complaints against these vendors, the local news coverage didn’t highlight the suspension of food safety standards, which can be seen as a contributing factor to the contentious situation.
The controversial incident intensified when Ortega decided to retaliate against her harassers by changing her business’s Google listing to one of her critics’ phone numbers, leading to a wave of unpleasant calls to that individual.
As the situation escalated, Ortega later claimed that she “never meant to threaten anyone,” explaining her distress stemmed from the vendors taking pictures of her car during their encounter.
Furthermore, a columnist from the *Los Angeles Times* criticized her, suggesting that she has been using inflammatory language against Latinos online. The columnist referred to her as an example of a Latino supporter of former President Trump, suggesting she may regret her previous support.
Amid all the backlash, Ortega, now visibly upset, recently posted an emotional video on Instagram, sharing that she is pregnant and pleading with people to stop bothering her family. She expressed concern for her employees and repeatedly apologized for her actions during the confrontation, stating she “should not have confronted them.”
In her plea, she emphasized, “Please leave my children and family in peace. They have done nothing wrong.”
