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.
