Meet El Puestesito: a mutual aid project by the nieces and nephews of Job Garcia

Over 20 vendors gathered in Los Angeles on Nov. 16 for the inaugural Más Vida Market, an event celebrating local artists and small businesses. Among them was El Puestesito, a family-run business managed by Job Garcia and his niece and nephew.

ICE abducted Garcia, a PhD student at Claremont Graduate University, in Los Angeles during the summer of 2025. Since then, he has used El Puestesito as a way to support street vendors and community members affected by immigration enforcement, while also healing from his own experience.

Originally, Garcia’s niece had the idea to sell lemonade and told her uncle, who offered to build her a stand. Garcia began to build the foundation but his work was later derailed when he was detained. 

“I just wanted to take a step back from everything. And then a couple months later I was like, you know what? Let’s [do it] before the summer ends,” he said. “Let’s see if we can finish it up and maybe you could sell your lemonade. And yeah, I built it and it’s been super healing, selling it.”  

Garcia expanded on his ways of processing moving on from what he and his community went through over the summer.

“I’ll go to therapy every week. I’ll do my photography pretty regularly, I’ll go work out regularly… But nothing has healed me like helping my niece and my nephews. It’s been so rewarding to see them,” he said. 

After building El Puestesito, Garcia had a conversation with his niece about the ongoing ICE raids in Los Angeles and across the country, pushing her to think of ways they could help. 

“I asked her, do you know that a lot of people, due to the ICE raids, are being impacted, especially street vendors? She said yes, and I asked if we could donate some of the profits. She said, ‘Yeah, totally. Let’s do it,’” Garcia said. 

From Aug. 17 to Nov. 22, LA Taco reported that 1,069 people have been abducted by ICE in Los Angeles, based on reports from community members, watch groups and rapid response teams. However, there are more arrests that remain unaccounted for that haven’t been recorded or documented. 

Garcia described one of the organizations La Puestesito has donated to saying, “Recently we made our birth donation to an organization that delivers food directly to undocumented immigrants who, for [any] reason, are scared to go out to purchase [food] or they don’t have any money because [they are not] able to work.”

Profits from El Puestesito have also been donated to Al Otro Lado, an organization providing no-cost legal and humanitarian aid for deportees, refugees, and separated families. 

Garcia and his niece and nephew have been selling tamales and champurrado for around two months. Garcia described El Puestesito as a family business, with his mom helping to make tamales and his niece and nephew helping sell them.  

“They sort of become those kids that I never had. I want them to be able to be decent people when they grow up,” Garcia said. “And I don’t want them to hoard any wealth as they’re building this. I also want them to be able to give [to others] and have that sort of foundation as they get older.”

This article was published Jan. 12, 2026 and was backdated to Nov. 4, 2025 for browsing convenience.