{"id":795,"date":"2026-02-20T23:12:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T23:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosentinel.com\/?p=795"},"modified":"2026-02-23T04:14:04","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T04:14:04","slug":"homeboy-industries-activates-hope-alley-in-support-of-street-vendors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosentinel.com\/en\/california\/homeboy-industries-activates-hope-alley-in-support-of-street-vendors\/","title":{"rendered":"Homeboy Industries Activates \u2018Hope Alley\u2019 in Support of Street Vendors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Former gang members and ex-prisoners lend a helping hand to people who are afraid to go out onto the streets to sell their products.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Jesuit priest, Greg Boyle, devised an altruistic way to help street vendors in Los Angeles, through Hope Alley.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every third Friday of the month, the small Bruno Street in Los Angeles transforms into \u201cHope Alley,\u201d where former gang members and ex-prisoners show compassion and solidarity to undocumented street vendors and their families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHope Alley,\u201d a project developed in collaboration with Father Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, is a space created to offer support to immigrant vendors affected by ICE raids by promoting the sale of food and other items to raise funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The initiative involves inviting vendors to work from mobile stands, with all profits going to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe most important word in these efforts is hope. We want to offer hope to the immigrant vendors who are staying home for fear of ICE,\u201d declared Father Gregory Boyle. \u201cWe want to do our part to offer them hope.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Jesuit priest observes that the phenomenon of people treating other human beings with such cruelty by ICE agents as if they were animals \u201cdoesn\u2019t come from anyone who is in their right mind.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo one in their right mind can agree with this effort by President Trump,\u201d he added. \u201cThey\u2019re sick, poor people, because they don\u2019t want to see others as human beings with dignity who deserve their respect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have to go out and work.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jos\u00e9 M. L\u00f3pez, who is married to Mar\u00eda Cort\u00e9s and has five children, has visited \u201cHope Alley\u201d multiple times. He owns the \u201cBirria Los Amigos\u201d food stand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow my work is more difficult,\u201d said Diaz, who received help from the \u201cHomies,\u201d Maria Santos and Romell Thomas, in delivering the taco orders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L\u00f3pez, 53, said that since arriving in the United States, he has worked in kitchens and restaurants and, over time, had the opportunity to open his own business. However, sales have plummeted since 2025 due to immigration raids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven though many of us don\u2019t have papers, we shouldn\u2019t be afraid because we have to go out and work,\u201d said the man born in Guadalajara, Jalisco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three of his customers\u2014Dave V\u00e1zquez, Cynthia Huizar, and Anthony L\u00f3pez\u2014valued the importance of supporting street vendors in \u00c1ngeles and emphasized community solidarity in the face of attacks by the federal government against undocumented immigrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI came to support my people because of everything that\u2019s happening,\u201d said Dave. \u201cI love supporting my people. We need to help our community; \u201cWe need to help each other because the government isn\u2019t going to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 29-year-old added that the mistreatment his Latino brothers and sisters receive should not happen, \u201cbecause we all live on land stolen [from Native Americans] and we should all be treated equally,\u201d he said. \u201cWe all deserve the opportunity to live on stolen land.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Privilege of Solidarity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cynthia Huizar emphasized that she felt \u201cprivileged\u201d to help her \u201cbrothers and sisters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey are our people and they do so much for us,\u201d she stated. \u201cEverything we eat every day is prepared by them, and we all have the opportunity to help immigrants.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s what our parents and grandparents in Guatemala did and taught us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huizar criticized the September 2025 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which paved the way for racial discrimination during immigration raids and operations based on physical appearance, language, and accent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not right, because we shouldn\u2019t be judged by our appearance or how we present ourselves,\u201d he said. \u201cYou know, I come from a background where my whole family was in gangs. My grandfather was a gang member. My grandmother lived in the barrio.\u201d But do you know what? Who we are today does not justify who we were then.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a 6-3 vote in the case known as V\u00e1squez Perdomo v. Noem, the Supreme Court granted an emergency request from the Trump administration. It temporarily suspended a Los Angeles judge’s order prohibiting \u201croaming patrols\u201d from stopping people on the streets of California and questioning them about their appearance, language, occupation, or even their location. Both a federal court in Los Angeles and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that these actions constituted illegal racial profiling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anthony L\u00f3pez also said he felt privileged to cooperate with the cause of helping street vendors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThank you for the opportunity. It is the first time I have done this, I am open to it, and I hope to have more opportunities to help soon,\u201d he emphasized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Restoring Dignity and Human Respect<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shirley Torres, program director at Homeboy Industries, explained that the mobilization of human resources within the nonprofit organization to support the street vendor community was initiated by the \u201chomies\u201d [friends] themselves, who want to help their brothers and sisters who are staying home and living in fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want to give dignity and respect to everyone who wants to earn a living,\u201d she said. \u201cThe American Dream is for everyone. That is why we created and transformed a block into Hope Alley\u2026 We are not going to give up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Jos\u00e9 Arellano, who began his career at Homeboy Industries in 2013 as an apprentice and rose to vice president of operations, where he leads organizational initiatives, stated that, like everyone else, he witnessed the injustice inflicted on the immigrant community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have always been an organization that supports the marginalized and the demonized, and we knew we had to do something,\u201d he said. \u201cWe thought about the undocumented street vendors, and that connects us to the workforce we have here. We knew our colleagues would want to participate and support. So, we wanted to create something safe and healthy for them, so they could persevere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perseverance is what Mar\u00eda Chavez, originally from Zapotiltic, Jalisco, is doing. She sells chocolates, stuffed animals, crafts, and floral arrangements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI came to buy a heart-shaped flower for my girlfriend,\u201d said Juan Laguna. \u201cThis flower never wilts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mabel Gastelum arrived at the stall of Marlene Jim\u00e9nez, an immigrant from Valle de Chalco, State of Mexico, to buy a vanilla flan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve only sold two flans so far, but I hope more people come to buy,\u201d said Marlene. \u201cI\u2019m hopeful that sales will go well by the end of the day.\u201d Federico D\u00edaz, a vendor of mangonadas\u2014a Mexican frozen dessert combining mango pulp, chamoy, lime juice, and chili powder, along with fried snacks\u2014shared the same concerns: \u201cIt\u2019s cold, and that makes sales harder.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

D\u00edaz, 42, originally from Puebla, Mexico, said that \u201cliving in fear is difficult,\u201d even though the Callej\u00f3n de la Esperanza (Alley of Hope) is a restricted area, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents could never enter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDuring the week, I sell on a street in Koreatown. The masked ICE agents have been close by two or three times already,\u201d he revealed. \u201cBut as soon as they tell us, I leave my cart parked on the street and come back two or three hours later, when they\u2019re gone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former gang members and ex-prisoners lend a helping hand to people who are afraid to go out onto the streets to sell their products. The Jesuit priest, Greg Boyle, devised… <\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,51,9,49],"tags":[67,68,72,19,71,70,73,54,69],"class_list":["post-795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-california","category-estados-unidos","category-inmigracion","category-latinos","tag-homeboy-industries","tag-hope-alley","tag-immigration-raids","tag-los-angeles","tag-solidarity","tag-street-vendors-ice-compassion","tag-supreme-court","tag-trump","tag-undocumented"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosentinel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosentinel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosentinel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosentinel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosentinel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/latinosentinel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":803,"href":"https:\/\/latinosentinel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions\/803"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosentinel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosentinel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosentinel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosentinel.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}