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The Guardian
16-06-2025
- The Guardian
Ice raids target workers at Home Depots who build much of LA: ‘This community has been here for decades'
The white vans zipped into the parking lot of the Home Depot in central Los Angeles. Pedro watched from the corner as masked federal immigration agents emerged before grabbing and handcuffing people. There were a hundred or so day laborers milling about the home improvement megastore's sprawling parking lot – soliciting construction work from homeowners and contractors – plus Home Depot shoppers and a number of food vendors. Everyone was suddenly frantic. It took a few seconds for Pedro to grasp what he was seeing. Unlike most of the other workers and vendors there, the 27-year-old from Mexico had a legal residency status, so he jumped up to help, trying to usher away workers. Schools were out for the summer, so a couple of the vendors had brought their children with them that day. 'Imagine – young children,' he said. 'They all started to run.' That raid – and subsequent ones at a nearby garment manufacturer in downtown LA – sparked massive protests in LA, which the Trump administration tried to quell by mobilizing thousands of national guard troops. It also disrupted and destabilized the little economy at the Home Depot parking lot, along Wilshire Boulevard and Burlington Avenue, in ways that Pedro said he's still trying to understand. In the days after, vendors selling lunch and fruits stopped coming. Hardly any workers came. 'Look – nothing, just silence,' Pedro said as he gestured around. 'I have never seen anything like this before. Not here. Never here in LA.' The immigration enforcement raids in California have been targeting undocumented immigrant workers all across southern California – at donut shops, car washes, factories and farms. But one of the most common sites have been Home Depots. The chain has long maintained an unofficial, symbiotic relationship with the undocumented laborers who gather in store parking lots, hoping to get hired for a day of painting, landscaping or roofing. Federal agents trialled the tactic in January, when they rounded up immigrants at a Home Depot in California's agricultural Kern county in January. Over the past week, agents have visited Home Depot parking lots in the LA suburbs of Huntington Park, Santa Ana and Whittier. 'These workers, this community, has been here for decades,' said Jorge Nicolás, a senior organizer at a day labor center called Central American Resource Center (Carecen). The group maintains a resource center for workers abutting the Home Depot lot in LA's Westlake neighborhood, near downtown. On Fridays, the organization distributes food there – but since the raid, they have stopped, to avoid putting workers and families at risk. 'There's a lot of emotions, a lot of sadness,' he said. There is also indignation. The raids have entrapped the very immigrant workers who have built, roofed, painted and wired much of the city, he said. Many of these workers have been helping clean and rebuild communities in LA that burned in fires that raged across the region this winter. Nicolás was nearby when the agents arrived on Friday. For laborers who escaped military juntas and gang violence in their home countries, the masked, armed agents triggered painful flashbacks to cartel kidnappings. 'It looked like a war zone,' he said. Lawyers said they had been blocked from speaking to immigrants who were held in the basement of federal administrative buildings in downtown LA for days, without adequate food or water. Some were transferred to detention centers in California's high desert, or in Texas. At least a handful of people were deported to Mexico almost immediately, according to lawyers. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) flatly denied that attorneys had been barred from seeing detained clients. 'These allegations are FALSE,' spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said, despite documented evidence that attorneys and even congressional representatives were barred from speaking to detainees this week. In the days following the raids, Nicolás and other advocates struggled to track the the day laborers who had been arrested. 'It really does look like a kidnapping,' he said. Agents have picked off people with brown skin seemingly at random, said Nicholás. 'Even workers with legal status are worried.' On Monday, Eduardo saw another raid unfold at a Home Depot in Huntington Park, a city where nearly 97% of residents are Latino or Hispanic. 'They just come and grab you, like grabbing a baby,' said the 45-year-old day laborer. 'They don't ask any questions.' He watched the whole thing from inside his flatbed truck. It was so fast – all of a sudden, a rush of vans, and a flood of armed agents. He got lucky – they didn't look his way. 'It is difficult to describe. It is a terrible fear,' he said. 'It feels like a sandbag falling on your body. Your vision starts to darken – because the American dream is escaping you at that moment. And all you can do is dream of your land, imagine what it would be to go back after so many years.' Eduardo came to the US from Honduras 18 years ago. His older daughter is almost 24, and his younger is nine, and they were worried about him returning to the Home Depot on Thursday. He was worried, too. 'But they already came, and they left me alone,' he said, shrugging. 'And I need the work.' Only two other laborers and a couple of food vendors decided to take the risk that day. There seemed to be fewer Home Depot shoppers as well. Across the lot, Carlos, 48, was scanning the half-empty scene. On a typical day, he'd make $200, maybe even $300, selling fruit out of the back of his minivan. But since the raids began, he's scarcely seen a customer. He expects he'll make maybe $50 this week, if he's lucky. He was at home when the raid happened, and friends messaged him to warn him not to come. He returned to the Home Depot the next day, despite the objections from his nine-year-old son, who was terrified he wouldn't come back. But he's a single dad, and he has to make rent. 'I told him God watches over us,' he said. Across the city, day laborers and street vendors were similarly weighing the dangers of showing up to work against the risks of staying home and losing income. On Thursday in Paramount – a predominantly Latino suburb of LA, where the presence of federal agents last Saturday triggered a roaring protest – there were no workers outside the local Home Depot. But larger numbers of customers and workers had begun to return to Home Depot in the Westlake neighborhood – which was among several locations hit by federal agents in central LA on Friday – after volunteers showed up this week to patrol the street corners for Ice agents. 'Now we're ready for them,' said Diego, a 75-year-old day laborer and sometime flower vendor from Guatemala. Still, everybody was on edge. There was far less work than usual, far fewer customers slowing their cars. 'When someone does stop, there's like a mountain of workers rushing over,' he said. 'And usually they just want to hire one or two people.' Even if the lot looks the same as always, said Daniel, 45, it's not. 'Everything is different since the raid. Nothing is the same,' he said. He plans to look for work here for as long as he can. 'We are here because of the luck of the draw,' he said. 'We do not know what is going to happen from here on.' Note: The Guardian is not using the full names of any workers in this piece, to protect their privacy and safety
Bloomberg
13-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
How Home Depot Parking Lots Turned Into Deportation Hotspots
As President Donald Trump deployed thousands of troops into Los Angeles last weekend, a national group that helps day laborers called for the city's residents to stage a parallel deployment. 'Go to Home Depot, any Home Depot near you,' said a June 8 statement from the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, 'and stand with the immigrants who are being seized and taken away.' It's not even an open secret that Home Depot, with more than 2,000 stores across the US, is seen as a fixture in the off-the-books market for day laborers, the vast majority of whom are undocumented. It's been that way for more than a generation — roughly 30 years ago, the same group cited Home Depot Inc. as one of the businesses that needed to improve conditions for day laborers. Few other major American retailers are as enmeshed in national immigration issues like those that have boiled over into rolling street confrontations in Los Angeles and other cities over the past week.
Telegraph
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
I outran ICE. Now I'm back on the streets looking for illegal work
When a black Jeep rolled into the Home Depot car park just after 8.30am on Friday morning, Abraham sprung into action. As Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents dressed in vests and helmets climbed out of their blacked-out vehicle, he did his best to warn his fellow illegal migrants camped outside the hardware store in search of work. 'La migra! La migra!' he screamed, before sprinting away from the scene. Dozens of people tried to follow him. 'I felt very scared when I saw them coming but I ran like a flash and they didn't get me,' he says. Like the 100 or so men who gather daily outside the DIY shop in Westlake, Los Angeles, that morning Abraham had been hoping to pick up a day's work from customers in need of help for their home improvements. Most of those he was standing with are undocumented. Nicaragua-born Abraham managed to escape but not everyone was so lucky. At least 40 men, some of whom had lived in the US for decades, were handcuffed and detained by ICE agents who had raided a string of workplaces and Home Depot locations that morning, sparking a wave of volatile protests which have gripped Los Angeles and spread to more than 35 other cities. Despite the pervasive threat of deportation, Abraham was back at the Home Depot parking lot on Wednesday morning to resume his search for work. The targeting of day labourers in Home Depots, workers at car washes and clothing manufacturers marks a gear change in the administration's attempts to ramp up its deportation efforts in order to fulfil Donald Trump's 'largest deportation program' in US history. While officials had initially focused their efforts on those with criminal records, Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr Trump's hardline immigration policy, instructed ICE field officers to begin widening their nets. Mr Miller has set a target of 'at least' 3,000 arrests a day, a steep jump from the roughly 660 daily arrests during Mr Trump's first 100 days in office. He is understood to have directed ICE chiefs to start targeting spots where migrants congregate, specifically naming Home Depot. It is a move that has drawn fierce opposition from not only Mr Trump's political opponents such as Gavin Newsom, the Democrat governor, but also from some of the Republican leader's supporters, with Florida State Senator Ileana Garcia, the co-founder of Latinas for Trump, saying the move was 'not what we voted for'. While demonstrations have brought parts of the state to a standstill, the ICE raids have continued at pace, with uniformed officers chasing farmworkers through fields and turning up at churches to arrest migrants. While the majority of migrants have stayed home amid the ongoing threat, Abraham, a father-of-two, who crossed the El Paso border with Ciudad Juarez three years ago, says he has no choice but to take the risk and continue his search for work at Home Depot. 'I'm not afraid to come... I have to work because if I don't work I can't eat,' he tells The Telegraph as he cools himself from the California sun with a pink plastic portable fan. Obdulio, another undocumented worker who managed to flee the Home Depot raid on Friday, had also returned on Wednesday despite seeing at least a dozen people 'grabbed' by ICE agents. The Guatemalan, who has lived in the US for 20 years, was frustrated he could not do anything to help his friends. 'You can't confront them because they're going to take you away, so what we did was shout at people to run and we kept running,' he says. Obdulio, 48, who did not want to give his last name, told The Telegraph: 'We are still in fear because we've heard ICE is still roaming here.' 'We're not criminals, we come to work honestly without harming anyone,' he adds. Standing on the other side of the Westlake Home Depot car park, Edwin Cuadra, who is from Guatemala and has a green card, recounted how he saw ICE agents arriving on Friday morning in his car's wing mirror. 'Those who don't have papers had to escape, they started running,' he says. The number of people out looking for work has since dwindled, he says, because migrants are terrified they will be caught. 'It's very bad,' he adds, becoming tearful. 'They are my brothers, like my family. They need the money to pay rent, to pay bills.' On the sixth day of demonstrations in Los Angeles, a largely peaceful protest of around 1,000 protesters briefly became chaotic when police on horseback charged at protesters and hit them with wooden rods before the area's 8pm curfew came into effect. Officers fired rubber bullets and pepper balls into the crowd before carrying out dozens of arrests and packing protesters into police vans, but the streets downtown were mostly quiet by 9pm. In recent days demonstrations across the city at times became violent, with some agitators setting fire to cars and throwing Molotov cocktails, fireworks and rocks at police. Some of the thousands of National Guard troops controversially deployed by Mr Trump despite governor Gavin Newsom insisting they were not needed have been assisting ICE officers as they round up illegal migrants on raids, standing by with their rifles as agents arrest and detain people. The 700 Marines sent into Los Angeles by Mr Trump will also accompany ICE agents on missions, officials have said, sparking fears that the administration could further intensify the pace of its raids. Mr Newsom has warned the unprecedented militarisation of the state would spread further. 'Democracy is under assault right before our eyes,' he said on Tuesday. 'California may be first, but it clearly won't end here.' The Department of Homeland Security released an Uncle Sam style poster on social media on Wednesday urging members of the public to report 'foreign invaders'. As ICE raids continued in spite of the protests, on Monday morning a Home Depot in Huntington Park, around eight miles away from the Westlake branch, was targeted. Eduardo Baz, 45, who illegally crossed into the US from Honduras 20 years ago, was lucky to have escaped. He had been a safe distance away when he saw federal agents starting to detain migrants in the car park at around 7.30am. The only saving grace, he says, was that it was early so not many people had arrived at the shop. On Wednesday morning he was one of a handful of migrants who had returned to the car park hoping to pick up work. 'Of course we're all afraid,' he says. 'All these years later, they can send you home in one swoop.' 'You're never calm, you're always afraid they might catch you at any moment.'
Wall Street Journal
11-06-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
How Home Depot Became Ground Zero in Trump's Deportation Push
President Trump's immigration crackdown is starting to show up in and around the parking lots of Home Depot HD 0.74%increase; green up pointing triangle stores across the country. The usual crowds of day laborers have begun to dwindle, scared off by increasing and unannounced immigration raids. These laborers often lack legal status in the U.S.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Activists demand release, fair hearings for 3 men detained in Pomona federal raid
Immigration activists representing several day laborers who were taken into custody during a federal raid in Pomona are speaking out, alleging the workers are being denied their due process. Activists and community members held a press conference outside Pomona City Hall on Tuesday, demanding answers and transparency after a court hearing was held for three detained workers. On April 22, at least 10 day laborers were taken into custody by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents as they waited outside a Home Depot store, looking for work. The raid sparked concern as immigrant rights advocates protested the targeting of those they described as innocent civilians. Video of the raid showed Border Patrol vehicles surrounding the store's parking lot as the laborers were taken to an undisclosed location. Activists said three of those undocumented workers were later transferred into the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and were being held at a detention facility in Calexico. From left: Edwin Juarez, Johnny Garcia, and Jesus Domingo Ros are seen in photos provided by their families. Community activists, immigration rights advocates and community members held a rally and press conference outside Pomona City Hall on May 6, 2025, demanding that three undocumented day laborers who were detained in a federal raid be given a fair bond hearing and due process. (KTLA) Alexis Teodoro, a Worker Rights Director with the Pomona Economic Opportunity Center, spoke at a rally and press conference that was held outside Pomona City Hall on May 6, 2025. (KTLA) Community activists, immigration rights advocates and community members held a rally and press conference outside Pomona City Hall on May 6, 2025, demanding that three undocumented day laborers who were detained in a federal raid be given a fair bond hearing and due process. (KTLA) Home Depot store in Pomona, California. (KTLA) Community activists, immigration rights advocates and community members held a rally and press conference outside Pomona City Hall on May 6, 2025, demanding that three undocumented day laborers who were detained in a federal raid be given a fair bond hearing and due process. (KTLA) A bond hearing for the three workers was scheduled on Tuesday morning for Jesus Domingo Ros, Edwin Juarez, and Johnny Garcia. 'I will remind the public that an immigration judge only considers two factors to issue a bond hearing: Is this detainee a flight risk? Is this detainee a national security threat or public safety risk?' said Alexis Teodoro, a Worker Rights Director with the Pomona Economic Opportunity Center. But during Tuesday's hearing, Teodoro claimed ICE officials said the local immigration judge lacked jurisdiction because the men had been living in the U.S. for less than one year, making them ineligible for a bond hearing and instead, subject to expedited removal. Teodoro said not only were those claims false, but that none of the men are threats to public safety and a bond hearing is within their basic rights. 'All three men have been living in the United States for more than two years,' Teodoro said. 'ICE is trying to push through expedited deportations by lying to the court and denying these men the most basic rights, like the right to be heard. Looking for work is not a crime. Waiting for a job opportunity outside a Home Depot isn't a threat to anyone.' Arturo Burga, an immigration attorney based in the Inland Empire, shed more light on the case. 'If you don't have any evidence that you've been in the country for more than two years, you could be at risk of expedited removal and that's very fast,' Burga said. If evidence to support that timeline isn't found, Burga said their due process is limited. However, if they have indeed been living in the U.S. for more than a year, they'll have more options. 'They'll get an opportunity to defend themselves from deportation with an immigration judge, but that process is not quick,' Burga said. In a previous statement on the Home Depot raid, CBP officials said, 'Agents conducted an operation in Pomona targeting an illegal alien with an active arrest warrant. During the operation, nine additional illegal aliens were encountered and taken into custody. Several of those apprehended had prior charges, including child abuse, assault with a deadly weapon, immigration violations, and DUI.' Immigrant rights advocates and community members held a demonstration outside a Home Depot store in Pomona on April 22, 2025, protesting a raid that involved the arrest of a group of day laborers at the location. (KTLA) Cell phone video from a witness showed several unmarked vehicles and vans reportedly belonging to U.S. Customs and Border Protection as agents surrounded a Home Depot store in Pomona and arrested a group of day laborers on April 22, 2025. Cell phone video from a witness showed several unmarked vehicles and vans reportedly belonging to U.S. Customs and Border Protection as agents surrounded a Home Depot store in Pomona and arrested a group of day laborers on April 22, 2025. Surveillance video showed Miguel Majin's father being surrounded at gunpoint and taken into custody by immigration officials outside his barber shop in Pomona on April 22, 2025. (Miguel Majin) Surveillance video showed Miguel Majin's father being surrounded at gunpoint and taken into custody by immigration officials outside his barber shop in Pomona on April 22, 2025. (Miguel Majin) Immigrant rights advocates and community members held a demonstration outside a Home Depot store in Pomona on April 22, 2025, protesting a raid that involved the arrest of a group of day laborers at the location. (KTLA) Immigrant rights advocates and community members held a demonstration outside a Home Depot store in Pomona on April 22, 2025, protesting a raid that involved the arrest of a group of day laborers at the location. (KTLA) Home Depot store in Pomona, California. (KTLA) However, Teodoro claimed many of the detained laborers did not have criminal records. As for the three workers they're representing, they intend to prove the men have been living and working in the U.S. for more than a year, that they should be released, and that they deserve a fair hearing before a judge. 'We demand that their due process rights are respected and that they are at least given the opportunity to post bond,' Teodoro said. A follow-up court hearing is scheduled for May 9. KTLA has reached out to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for a statement and is awaiting a response. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTLA.
