There is a new reality emerging in the parking lots of one of America\u2019s biggest home improvement stores, highlighted by incidents big and small across Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
Construction workers are still hauling lumber and nails, and DIY homeowners pushing carts of paint and soil. But all of a sudden, federal immigration agents may appear.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, they moved on a Home Depot parking lot in Monrovia, sending laborers running, including a man who jumped a wall and onto the 210 Freeway, where he was fatally struck. A day prior, fear of a possible raid at a Ladera Ranch location sparked warnings across social media.<\/p>\n
Since a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order<\/a> prohibiting federal agents from targeting people solely based on their race, language, vocation, or location, the number of arrests in Southern California declined in July.<\/p>\n But over the last two weeks, some higher-profile raids have returned, often taking place at Home Depot locations, where migrant laborers often congregate looking for work.<\/p>\n The number of arrests in these incidents was not immediately known, but the fear that pervades the sweeps underscores how Home Depot has emerged this summer as a key battleground in the fight over immigration enforcement in Los Angeles and Southern California.<\/p>\n \u201cHome Depot, whether they like it or not, they are the epicenter of raids,\u201d said Pablo Alvarado, the co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, a group that represents the tens of thousands of day laborers working in L.A.<\/p>\n The renewed burst of raids outside neighborhood Home Depots began Aug. 6, when a man drove a Penske moving truck to a Home Depot in Westlake<\/a> and began soliciting day laborers when, all of a sudden, Border Patrol agents jumped out of the back of the vehicle and began to chase people down. Sixteen people were arrested.<\/p>\n The raid \u2014 branded \u201cOperation Trojan House\u201d by the Trump administration \u2014 was showcased by government officials with footage<\/a> from an embedded Fox News TV crew. \u201cFor those who thought Immigration enforcement had stopped in Southern California, think again,\u201d acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli posted<\/a> on X. <\/p>\n The next day, federal agents raided a Home Depot in San Bernardino. Then, on Aug. 8, they conducted two raids outside a Home Depot in Van Nuys<\/a> in what DHS described as a \u201ctargeted immigration raid\u201d that resulted in the arrest of seven undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.<\/p>\n Over the weekend, activists say, a Home Depot was targeted in Cypress Park and word spread that federal agents were at a Home Depot in Marina del Rey. On Monday, day laborers were nabbed outside a Home Depot in North Hollywood, and on Tuesday more were arrested at a Home Depot in Inglewood.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd it\u2019s not just day laborers they are taking,\u201d Alvarado added, noting that when federal agents descend on the hardware store\u2019s parking lots, they question anyone who looks Latino or appears to be an immigrant and ask them about their papers. \u201cThey also get customers of Home Depot who look like day laborers, who speak Spanish.\u201d<\/p>\n The national hardware chain \u2014 whose parking lots have for decades been an unofficial gathering point for undocumented laborers hoping to get hired for a day of home repair or construction work \u2014 was one of the first sites of the L.A. raids in June that kicked off the Trump administration\u2019s intense immigration enforcement across Southern California.<\/p>\n Nearly 3,000 people across seven counties in L.A. were arrested in June as masked federal agents conducted roving patrols, conducting a chaotic series of sweeps of street corners, bus stops, warehouses, farms, car washes and Home Depots. But the number of raids and arrests plummeted dramatically<\/a> across L.A. in mid-July after the court order blocked federal agents across the region from targeting people unless they had reasonable suspicion they entered the country illegally.<\/p>\n On Aug. 1, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Trump administration\u2019s request to lift the restraining order prohibiting roving raids. But within just a few days, federal agents were back, raiding the Westlake Home Depot.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though we\u2019ve had two successful court decisions, the administration continues with their unconstitutional behavior coming and going to Home Depot stores,\u201d L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said at a news conference Thursday. \u201cThey are violating the\u201d temporary restraining order.<\/p>\n Advocates for undocumented immigrants question the legality of federal agents\u2019 practices. In many cases, they say, agents are failing to show judicial warrants. They argue that the way agents are targeting day laborers and other brown-skinned people is illegal.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s clear racial profiling,\u201d said Alvarado.<\/p>\n The Department of Homeland Security did not answer questions from The Times about how many people have been arrested over the last week at Home Depots across L.A. or explain what why the agency has resumed raids outside hardware stores.<\/p>\n After last Friday\u2019s raids on Van Nuys, Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said four of the seven individuals arrested had criminal records<\/a>, including driving under the influence of alcohol, disorderly conduct and failing to adhere to previous removal orders. She dismissed activists\u2019 claims that the Trump administration were violating the temporary restraining order.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S. \u2014 not their skin color, race, or ethnicity,\u201d McLaughlin said. \u201cAmerica\u2019s brave men and women are removing murderers, MS-13 gang members, pedophiles, rapists \u2014 truly the worst of the worst from Golden State communities.\u201d<\/p>\n Activists say that federal agents are targeting Home Depots because they are hubs for a constant flow of day laborers \u2014 mostly Latino and a great deal of whom are undocumented.<\/p>\n \u201cThey know that at the Home Depot there will always be people who are day laborers, many of them undocumented,\u201d said Ron Gochez, a member of the Uni\u00f3n del Barrio, a group that patrols neighborhoods to alert residents of immigration sweeps. \u201cAnd so they figured it would be a much easier, faster and more effective way for them to kidnap people just to go to the Home Depot.\u201d <\/p>\n Another reason the hardware store parking lots had become a focal point, Gochez said, is that they present a wide, open space to hunt people down.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide,\u201d Gochez said. \u201cAnd when some of the day laborers started running inside of the Home Depot stores, the agents literally have chased them down the aisles of the store.\u201d<\/p>\n In Los Angeles, pressure is mounting on Home Depot to speak out against the targeting of people outside their stores.<\/p>\n \u201cThey haven\u2019t spoken out; their customers are being taken away and they are not saying anything,\u201d Alvarado said. \u201cThey haven\u2019t issued a public condemnation of the fact that their customers have been abducted in their premises.\u201d<\/p>\n This is not the first time Home Depot has found itself in the center of a political firestorm.<\/p>\n In 2019, the Atlanta-based company faced boycott campaigns after its co-founder Bernie Marcus, a Republican megadonor, announced his support<\/a> for Trump\u2019s reelection campaign. Back then, the chain tried to distance itself from its founder, noting that Marcus retired from the company in 2002 and did not speak on its behalf.<\/p>\n But in a global city like L.A., where civic and political leaders are rallying against the raids and public schools have developed policies blocking federal agents from entering their premises, there are growing calls for the national hardware chain to develop consistent policies on raids, such as demanding federal agents have judicial warrants before descending on their lots.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, a coalition of advocacy groups led a protest in MacArthur Park and urged Angelenos to support a 24-hour boycott of Home Depot and other businesses that they say have not stopped federal immigration agents from conducting raids in their parking lots or chasing people down in their stores.<\/p>\n \u201cWe call them an accomplice to these raids, because there is no other location that\u2019s been hit as much as they have,\u201d Gochez said. \u201cWe think that Home Depot is being complicit. They\u2019re actually, we think, in some way collaborating, whether directly or not.\u201d<\/p>\n Home Depot denies that it is working with federal agents or has advance notice of federal immigration enforcement activities.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s not true,\u201d George Lane, manager of corporate communications for Home Depot, said in an email to The Times. \u201cWe aren\u2019t notified that these activities are going to happen, and we aren\u2019t involved in the operations. We\u2019re required to follow all federal and local rules and regulations in every market where we operate.\u201d<\/p>\n Lane said Home Depot asked associates to report any suspected immigration enforcement operations immediately and not to engage for their own safety.<\/p>\n \u201cIf associates feel uncomfortable after witnessing ICE activity,\u201d he added, \u201cwe offer them the flexibility they need to take care of themselves and their families.\u201d<\/p>\n The targeting of day laborers outside L.A. Home Depots is particularly contentious because day laborers, primarily Latino men, have for decades represented an integral part of the Los Angeles labor force.<\/p>\n Since the 1960s, day laborers have formed an informal labor market that has boosted this sprawling city, helping it expand, and in recent months they have played a pivotal role in rebuilding<\/a> L.A. after the January firestorms tore through Pacific Palisades and Altadena destroying thousands of homes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt appears they\u2019re targeting and taking the very people rebuilding our cities,\u201d Alvarado said. \u201cWithout migrant labor, both documented and undocumented, it\u2019s impossible to try to rebuild Los Angeles.\u201d<\/p>\n