Caught on camera: Man directs racist rant towards Long Beach street vendor
A disturbing video out of Long Beach shows a man directing a racist tirade towards the workers at a taco stand, raising additional concerns for the safety of street vendors in the Southland.
"Let's get La Migra here!" the man shouted at the workers, using a slang term used to refer to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "Let's get ICE here."
As the video, first released by LA Taco continues, the man can be seen with arms raised asking the workers, who were more than five hours into their shift last Tuesday, if they "got a problem with it," questioning if they had a valid business license.
According to Lionel Perez, who owns and operates the business located on Clarke Avenue, this isn't the first time they've been targeted by racist comments, and the second time specifically by this man.
In a prior incident, the unidentified man, seen wearing a Dodgers hat, pushed one of their grills to the ground.
Perez, while speaking to reporters through a translator, said that he would come back stronger and better than before because of the positivity and support he's received from the Long Beach community in the wake of the incident.
"I think it's really unfortunate that people think like that. Especially nowadays.," said Nancy Perez, one of Taco Lionel's customers. "It's unfortunate to see on social media that there's still so much hate going around. These vendors are just working hard and they're families that are trying to make ends meet most of the time."
This incident is just the latest in a string of recent attacks on street vendors, including a fatal armed robbery attempt in Gardena, another racist rant accompanied by destruction of property in separate incidents in South LA and in San Pedro and a group attack of a vendor in Dockweiler Beach, who was jumped by a group of people in their late-teens on Sunday.
The City of Santa Ana recently considered a proposal to classify attacks on street vendors as a hate crime in the wake of these incidents which have become increasingly common.