It’s back to business at Broadacres, but it’s not back to normal

After Broadacres Marketplace’s six-week hiatus over Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid fears, a full concert hall Sunday afternoon was a welcome sight to surrounding vendors at the giant North Las Vegas swap meet.

Dozens of patrons danced in pairs to bands between the outdoor venue’s seating and stage, away from the sun beating down on the 44-acre complex. For those who had Broadacres in their weekly routine, it was a return to normal — although not everything was the same.

Two screens flanked the swap meet’s main stage. After opening Friday afternoon, both featured rotating messages recommending people keep documents on them to prove they are legal residents and memorize friends’ and family’s phone numbers in case they’re arrested by federal agents.

Similar “know your rights” posters from the Nevada ACLU were plastered on the walls of food fair stalls.

The trepidation that helped close the predominantly Latino market persists too, with some vendors saying it, along with the heat, led to a slower-than-normal weekend despite a strong Friday night. Still, business owners said they were happy to be back and with the swap meet’s larger community.

“This is our home and our whole life,” said Gabby Ramirez, operations supervisor at Coco Loco Produce. “I’ve been here since I was 14 years old, and before that, my parents would bring me here. It’s everything that I know.”

David Ocampo of Ocampo’s Produce watched the ebb and flow of the crowd from his stall, one of a handful of businesses his family runs at the marketplace. Peanuts and drinks filled out one side of the stand while Ocampo sold keyboards on the other end.

“We wanted to see a lot of people … but we know that a lot of people are scared,” he said of reopening weekend. “We know that there’s a lot of tension going on, and not that many people can come or they refuse … to because (of) the dangers.”

Carlos Sousa, who worked Monsieur Parfums’ table near the food hall Sunday, believes attendance will creep up as people regain trust with Broadacres. The “worst thing that happened” for Broadacres, Sousa said, was when ICE agents raided a California swap meet with the same ownership in June.

Before Broadacres officially closed, the Santa Fe Springs, Calif., sweep deterred people from coming, vendors told the Sun.

“We were expecting more business, more people, more sales. But honestly, it’s really, really bad,” said Stephanie Hernandez of Stephanie’s Accessories, adding later that she hopes traffic picks up, “but honestly, the year has been super slow, so I don’t see it getting any better.”

However, there is reason to feel more comfortable this time around, vendors said. Broadacres has instituted a new “vendor alert protocol … to ensure transparency and communication in the event of visible law enforcement activity in or around the area,” according to a news release from the swap meet.

The release also stated that Broadacres had handed out educational materials and that the Nevada ACLU would be providing voluntary constitutional rights training to vendors and customers.

“Broadacres has always stood for family, opportunity and resilience,” Broadacres General Manager Yovana Alonso said in a statement. “We used (the temporary closure) to strengthen our internal safety protocols, expand training opportunities, and provide information that helps all members of our community.”

Ramirez said the new protocols ensured her employees could depend on Coco Loco to warn them in case “anything goes wrong.” On top of that, Broadacres’ more than 1,000 vendors are also “pretty good” at communicating with one another, she added.

The new system and resources haven’t completely quelled the worries and questions of Ramirez’s staff, however.

Coco Loco now has 21 employees, whereas before the closure, it had 45. Some left for other jobs, others can’t be scheduled while traffic levels are up in the air and several wanted to “wait and see how things go for the first week,” Ramirez said.

Some staff wanted to see “if anything happens, whether we do have a lot of people or not, because they don’t want to go ahead and quit their job that they have right now if it just goes back to … being super dead,” she said.

Outside interest, local support

Walking around Broadacres on Sunday afternoon, Carlos Eduardo Espina drew a crowd of adoring fans wanting a selfie wherever he went. The 26-year-old UNLV law graduate, who has more than 13 million followers on TikTok, has become one of the country’s largest immigrant rights activists.

Espina’s account is a top landing spot for immigration news on social media, and a video he posted of himself with a worker from Broadacres asking people to support Latino businesses racked up around a quarter of a million views by Monday afternoon.

Broadacres’ closure was part of “a trend that’s happening all over the country. You’ve seen it in LA. Where I live in Texas, it’s happening a lot too,” Espina told the Sun. “Small markets and businesses (are) closing down temporarily.

“A lot of these places, even when they open back up, they still don’t reach the capacities they used to, for obvious reasons,” he added.

While Espina was the star of the show at Broadacres, he was in town to speak at the “Benefits Over Billionaires” town hall with U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., on Sunday evening at Canyon Springs High School.

Khanna told the Sun he went to the swap meet to highlight the economic impact of President Donald Trump’s “draconian” immigration policies.

Earlier that day, Khanna and Espina were eating breakfast at Park MGM when a server recognized the massively popular influencer sitting next to the congressman. Khanna said the MGM employee described his hours being cut amid depressed travel, specifically mentioning Californians not driving to Nevada due to immigration fears.

Las Vegas had around 400,000 fewer people visit in June compared with the same month in 2024, an 11.3% drop. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority credited it to “persistent economic uncertainty and weaker consumer confidence” along with a “slower convention month.”

“People aren’t coming from around the world,” Khanna said. “We are so used to in this country hearing all this rhetoric about how immigration is somehow hurting the working class. What’s hurting the working class is the anti-immigrant rhetoric. That’s really what’s killing economies like Vegas.”

In his district, people are afraid to send their kids to school and come to town halls, he said. And while Trump said he was going to target violent criminals with his deportation plan, that’s not what he’s done, Khanna said.

But at the same time, he believes Democrats haven’t done enough to push back on the president, saying it was “appalling” that fellow party members voted for the Laken Riley Act. In Las Vegas, it expanded what crimes Metro Police will refer “foreign born” people to ICE for.

“That bill was basically deportation without due process,” he said. “The Democrats have been too quiet on immigration. I believe we need more people going and meeting with (Mexican) President (Claudia) Sheinbaum,” which Khanna did recently.

Each member of Nevada’s congressional delegation voted for the bill.

Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., on July 28 joined the Nevada Immigrant Coalition for a community meeting with Broadacres vendors in the run-up to the reopening. While there, Horsford said he had been looking to create a working group to support the small-business owners.

“Broadacres is more than just a market, it’s a cultural hub that represents the heart and soul of our community,” Horsford said. “The closure has caused significant hardship for hardworking entrepreneurs who are simply trying to support their families and pursue the American dream.”

The Nevada GOP has not yet commented about the swap meet’s reopening, but the party did post on social media following its closure that, “If you can’t stay open without illegal aliens, you don’t deserve to be open at all.”

Khanna said the statement showed the party did not “recognize the dignity” of immigrants, nor did they understand the importance of American small businesses. Broadacres’ closure reverberates past just the Latino community, he said.

Ken Boyle, a Las Vegas resident of 10 years, said he didn’t care whether the people he sees walking down the street have proper documentation. Sitting at the concert hall before turnout picked up Friday, he said the United States was “going downhill.”

“One of the things that hit me as I was walking: (Broadacres) is almost a symbol of our country right now; the decline of our country,” Boyle said. “The stalls are bare.”

Vanessa Wagoner and her husband, David, were among the first to enter the complex Friday. After hearing about the reopening earlier that day, they made the drive from Henderson to support the swap meet’s vendors.

“We’ve been coming here since we were kids,” Vanessa said, later adding, “I hope that people come back. I hope that they’re not scared. … Some of this is (the vendors’) only form of income.”