Several other signs memorialized Carlos Roberto Montoya Vald\u00e9s, a 52-year-old Guatemalan immigrant, who died<\/a> in August after he was struck and killed by a vehicle on the 210 Freeway in California while fleeing an immigration raid at a Home Depot in Monrovia.<\/p>\n \u201cHe came to this country to seek a better life,\u201d said Erika Andiloa, political director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and leader of the event. \u201cHe was seeking work, and he returned to Guatemala dead.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Organizers charge that Vald\u00e9s\u2019 death shows the unintended consequences of an immigration campaign to target people looking for work outside Home Depot locations across the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no statement from Home Depot,\u201d Andiola said. \u201cThey said nothing, they have allowed ICE to continue to raid their stores and their parking lots, so we\u2019re here asking people to join us.\u201d<\/p>\n This controversy is playing out against the backdrop of ICE raids and National Guard deployments<\/a> to cities with Democratic leadership around the nation. The march and procession in Phoenix was just one of many nationwide demonstrations part of the Disappeared in America Weekend of Action<\/a> that coincided with D\u00eda de los Muertos.<\/p>\n This also follows a recent ICE-involved shooting in Phoenix in which Jose Garcia-Sorto, a Honduran immigrant, was injured when an officer fired at his vehicle after he attempted to flee an ICE traffic stop on Oct. 29.<\/p>\n \u2018We sing to grieve our losses\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Beginning near the Home Depot parking lot on the corner of Thomas Road and 44th Street around 4:30 p.m., protesters\u2019 chants, including \u201csi, se puede\u201d and \u201cimmigrant rights are human rights,\u201d spurred the crowd as they marched through the daylight. As night settled in, the chants gave way to song.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kai Newkirk, activist and founder of For All, took up a microphone from his place in the middle of the moving crowd and began the first verse to \u201cAin\u2019t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round\u201d with a warm timbre, his voice amplified by a carried speaker toward the front of the march.<\/p>\n As his voice rang out softly but full-bodied, the marchers fell quiet.<\/p>\n Newkirk thought about his father while he marched. His father is a carpenter who has worked in construction for years. Newkirk grew up seeing the mistreatment of laborers, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n “This mass deportation project, it is proven beyond a doubt at this point, that it cannot be carried out, certainly by this administration and ICE, without violating basic human rights and civil rights,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just undocumented immigrants who are getting persecuted, he said, but people with green cards, permanent residence, and veterans.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe’re calling on them not to be bystanders and not to be complicit in the abuses and violations that ICE and Trump are carrying out, but to actually exercise their power to say, this is our private property,\u201d he said. \u201cThey’re not welcome here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Before his finale, Newkirk asked his fellow marchers to hold their small, artificially flickering candles and join him as he began to harmonize:<\/p>\n \u201cOh, this little light of mine, I\u2019m gonna let it shine.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe sing to bring us together,\u201d Newkirk said. \u201cWe sing to grieve our losses and to gain strength in the face of our fears.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Haven\u2019t gone far enough\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n The march arrived at its destination, the ICE Phoenix Field Office, about three hours later, and concluded with a procession in the spirit of D\u00eda de los Muertos, which was the following day.<\/p>\n Saturday\u2019s procession came after a press conference outside of a Phoenix Home Depot on Oct. 28, led by Andiloa and other organizers. They brought large signs and loud voices to shine a light on a controversy sweeping the country.<\/p>\n George Lane, a spokesperson for Home Depot, denied the company\u2019s role in any ICE raids.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe aren\u2019t notified that immigration enforcement activities are going to happen,\u201d Lane wrote in a statement to Cronkite News.\u00a0 \u201cAnd 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\u00a0<\/p>\n During the 2024 election cycle, Home Depot donated $2,028,000 to candidates through a political action committee, according to opensecrets.org. Republicans received 58% of those funds, including U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Tucson, who received $12,500, the second most of any candidate.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a 2024 interview with NPR, Ciscomani, a naturalized citizen from Mexico, supported President Donald Trump on his efforts to secure the border through Executive Order.\u00a0<\/p>\n On Sunday, Trump said in an interview with 60 Minutes that ICE raids will not end anytime soon.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHaven\u2019t gone far enough,\u201d the president said, repeating that his goal is to remove criminals.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ciscomani said during the NPR interview that immigration has become a crisis that impacts the people in his district throughout their daily lives.<\/p>\n \u201cIssues like street releases of migrants weren’t something that kept people up at night a few years ago,\u201d Ciscomani said. \u201cNow, if you talk to county officials, that is the issue. And having funding for that and making sure that we don’t have 1000 releases a day is what keeps them up.\u201d<\/p>\n Low-hanging fruit<\/strong><\/p>\n Tensions between ICE and Phoenix residents have grown in recent weeks. Jose Garcia-Soto was hospitalized and later discharged on Oct. 29 after being shot by an ICE agent on Interstate 17, headed Northbound near Dove Valley Road. According to ICE spokesperson Fernando Burgos-Ortiz, Garcia-Soto was evading arrest.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThese are the unfortunate consequences when misinformation flows freely, and illegal aliens are urged to resist arrest even though they know they are residing illegally in this country,\u201d Burgos-Ortiz said in a statement to Cronkite News. \u201cICE remains undeterred in carrying out its congressionally mandated mission to uphold the nation\u2019s immigration laws.\u201d<\/p>\n ICE agents aren\u2019t trained for the street confrontations they find themselves in routinely under President Trump\u2019s administration, according to a federal law enforcement officer who works for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.\u00a0<\/p>\n It’s much easier, the agent added, for ICE agents to arrest what he characterized as low-hanging fruit instead of building cases against organized criminals who are involved in large-scale drug dealing or human trafficking.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAt the beginning of the Trump administration, people were getting fired left and right. There\u2019s a lot of pressure on the directors and the officers to meet those numbers,\u201d said the agent, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution. \u201cIf you just take the \u2018war on drugs\u2019 and you flip it into the war on migrants, this is the equivalent of going after corner boys.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n They are not going after quality arrests; they are going after whoever is easiest to get, he added. It\u2019s like meeting a quota instead of thorough investigations.\u00a0<\/p>\n “It’s just easier to go after them than to actually go into, let’s say, like the projects or, you know, a low-income area and try and root out actual gangs,\u201d he said. \u201cIt’s not something that the feds are well-versed in.\u201d<\/p>\n Compounding the problem, the officer said, is that the standard for hiring has been lowered and that the new crop of agents does not have the experience for more complex investigations.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey’re taking anybody and everybody,\u201d he said, including people who have been kicked out of local law enforcement. \u201cThey’re not, they’re not used to going into neighborhoods and working the street. You know, so they’ve had the numbers where they can get them.\u201d<\/p>\n The protestors have rebuked Home Depot for allowing ICE operations to continue on its property, according to the National Immigration Law Center. ICE agents can only enter private property if they provide a judicial warrant, and critics pointed out that on June 19, the World Series Champion Los Angeles Dodgers denied ICE agents access to its parking lots when looking to conduct a raid at a game.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/102825_GOMEZ_HOMEDEPOT_3-1024x683.jpg\")
A protest sign condemning ICE raids at Home Depot sits along Thomas Road on Oct. 28, 2025, in Phoenix. (Photo by Lorenzo Gomez\/Cronkite News)<\/p>\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/102825_GOMEZ_HOMEDEPOT_4-1024x683.jpg\")
Two men look for work in a Home Depot parking lot on Oct. 28, 2025, in Phoenix. In August, Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, a 52-year-old Guatemalan man seeking work near a Home Depot, was hit and killed by a car while fleeing from an ICE raid in California. (Photo by Lorenzo Gomez\/Cronkite News)<\/p>\n
![\"Salvador](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/102825_GOMEZ_HOMEDEPOT_2-1024x683.jpg\")
Salvador Reyes speaks at a news conference on Oct. 28, 2025, in response to ICE raids at Home Depot in Phoenix. (Photo by Lorenzo Gomez\/Cronkite News)<\/p>\n