Weekdays at the Walgreens parking lot in Fruitvale have grown eerily quiet.

On a typical morning months ago, upwards of 60 men in work boots and dark hoodies would have been gathered around light poles and pop-up food stands in the large lot, chatting and drinking coffee out of paper cups. But on a recent gloomy Friday, only about a dozen day laborers milled about, hoping to find work.

“I think people are starting to feel it. I’m scared,” a man in a black hooded sweatshirt, leaning against the Oakland drugstore building, said in Spanish. “It’s not like last year. Right now, I’m just scared. You can’t trust anyone anymore.”

He and other workers who spoke with KQED anonymously, fearing identification by immigration officials, said the number of day laborers gathering there has dwindled

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