‘Ice raids while the wealthy party next door’: the migrants living in the shadow of Mar-a-Lago

Five residents of Lake Worth Beach - just 10 miles from Trump's Maga fortress - share their stories of survival as an immigration crackdown takes its toll

Lake Worth Beach, a small coastal city of about 45,000, sits in the shadows of Donald Trump's Florida residence, Mar-A-Lago. A 10 minute drive from Maga"
HQ, it is sometimes optimistically referred to as mini San Fran", with a largely progressive, white middle class occupying its beachfront bungalows and a local economy built on tourism, retail and construction.

It is also home to many undocumented and temporary visa migrants, who work at fruit farms and restaurants, landscape gardens and support the area's affluent households. Though data on undocumented people is notoriously hard to collect, the 2024 census estimates that nearly half of the city's residents are Hispanic and include Guatemalans (many of whom are Indigenous Maya), Mexicans and Venezuelans.