California Woman Threatens Taco Vendors With ICE, Then Redirects Angry Calls to a Critic

A confrontation outside a taco stand in Southern California did not end when Francesca Ortega walked away. Video circulating online shows Ortega insulting one of the vendors in Spanish and telling her, “I’m going to call ICE.”

Ortega complained that the stand was hurting nearby businesses that pay rent and described the operation as cheap and out of place. She later told FOX 11 Los Angeles that she became upset after one of the vendors photographed her license plate.

The video spread online, and the attention soon reached Ortega’s own house-cleaning company, Excellence Cleaning Pros. Ortega said negative reviews and angry messages poured in and that the business she had spent about a decade building had been ruined.

Then the calls began reaching someone else. Ricardo Morales, who said he had sent Ortega a critical message about the confrontation, began receiving calls and texts meant for her business. Ortega confirmed to FOX 11 that she had changed the telephone number on her Google business listing to Morales’ number.

Wrong Number

Embedded media follows; please allow a moment to load.

Morales told FOX 11 that the calls started roughly 40 minutes after he contacted Ortega. During the station’s interview with him, his phone could be heard repeatedly ringing as additional messages arrived.

He said people from around the country were contacting the number, apparently believing they were reaching Ortega.

When reporter Gina Silva asked Ortega why she had substituted Morales’ number for her own, Ortega said people had been harassing her and would not stop calling.

Morales had a different view of the situation. He called the move vindictive and said there was no reason for Ortega to have confronted people working on the street in the first place.

Her Explanation

Ortega did not dispute making the comments captured in the video.

In a telephone interview, she told FOX 11 that she did not want the Santa Clarita area to “turn into Mexico” and complained about changes she said she had seen elsewhere in the Los Angeles region.

She also posted a video describing the consequences for Excellence Cleaning Pros. Ortega said her livelihood had been ruined after the company’s previously positive reviews were overwhelmed by negative ones.

Ortega maintained that she had not intended to hurt the vendors.

“It was just a confrontation,” she told FOX 11, adding that people say ugly things when they become upset.

That explanation came after the video showed her calling the vendors criminals and threatening to contact federal immigration officials.

A Location Detail

There is also an important jurisdictional wrinkle surrounding the stand itself.

FOX 11 reported that the City of Santa Clarita requires permits for sidewalk vendors and said it was unclear whether this particular stand had one. But subsequent local reporting from KHTS placed the stand on The Old Road in Stevenson Ranch.

Stevenson Ranch is an unincorporated Los Angeles County community rather than part of the incorporated City of Santa Clarita. Los Angeles County includes Stevenson Ranch among the unincorporated communities it serves.

That distinction matters for the permit question. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health requires qualifying sidewalk food operations to obtain public-health permits, while vendors operating in unincorporated communities may also face county-level business and sidewalk-vending requirements.

The available reporting does not establish whether the taco operation involved in Ortega’s confrontation held the permits applicable to that location.

By the time KHTS published its follow-up, the stand was no longer simply the subject of one confrontation. Ortega’s comments had spread far beyond The Old Road, her cleaning business was absorbing the backlash, and Morales said his phone was still receiving calls intended for her.