LOS ANGELES, United States (AFP)—For over a month, Alberto has hardly dared to leave the small room he rents in someone’s backyard for fear of encountering the masked police who have been rounding up immigrants in Los Angeles.

“It’s terrible,” sighed the 60-year-old Salvadoran, who does not have a US visa.

“It’s a confinement I wouldn’t wish upon anyone.”

To survive, Alberto — AFP agreed to use a pseudonym — relies on an organization that delivers food to him twice a week.

“It helps me a lot, because if I don’t have this… how will I eat?” said Alberto, who has not been to his job at a car wash for weeks.

The sudden intensification of immigration enforcement activity in Los Angeles in early June saw scores of people — mostly Latinos — arrested at car washes, hardware stores, on farms and even in the street.

Videos circulating on social media showed masked and heavily armed men pouncing on people who they claimed were hardened criminals.

However, critics of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sweeps say those snatched were only trying to earn a meagre wage in jobs that many Americans don’t want to do.

The raids — slammed as brutal and seemingly arbitrary — sparked a wave of demonstrations that gripped the city for weeks, including some that spiraled into violence and vandalism.

Alberto decided to hole up in his room after one such raid on a car wash in which some of his friends were arrested, and subsequently deported.

Despite being pre-diabetic, he is hesitant to attend an upcoming medical appointment. His only breath of fresh air is pacing the private alley in front of his home.

“I’m very stressed. I have headaches and body pain because I was used to working,” he said.

In 15 years in the United States, Trump’s second term has turned out to be “worse than anything” for him.