On Sunday, February 22, community members rallied at three Home Depots across Los Angeles County in a protest demanding an end to violence against immigrants and jornaleros (day laborers) on Home Depot property. The three respective actions — held in Westlake, Cypress Park and Torrance — were a coordinated effort to apply public pressure on Home Depot. This comes after months of ICE and Border Patrol abductions occurring in Home Depot parking lots and attempts by Home Depot corporate to push day laborer centers off their premises.
Organizers from North East Los Angeles Alliance for Democracy, the Community Self Defense Coalition, and the Boycott Home Depot Coalition gathered on Figueroa Street with signs, banners, and musical instruments as a car caravan drove through the parking lot with an informational audio recording playing over a truck’s loudspeakers. The informational audio included statistics about people kidnapped and killed by federal agents in the last six months.
According to a press release from the Boycott Home Depot Coalition, back in 2008 when Home Depot first expanded its franchise into Los Angeles, they were required to create safe spaces for day laborers on their properties as part of the agreement to obtain building permits.
Ordinance no. 180174 — an amendment to Municipal Code Section 12.24 U14 — states that the day laborer centers on “home improvement store” property may be “easily accessible and viewable to Day Laborers seeking employment, as well as potential employers of these individuals … [and] equipped with a minimum level of easily accessible and convenient amenities, such as sources of drinking water, toilet and trash facilities, tables and seating, for use by Day Laborers seeking employment; is covered to provide adequate shelter from the weather; [and] is open during the hours of operation of the Home Improvement Store.”
The Day Laborer Center at the Cypress Park Home Depot — which is supported by the Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA) — has been in existence for over 25 years. On February 5, Assemblymember Jessica Caldoza announced that Home Depot had filed an eviction to remove the center from their property.
“This eviction is not a coincidence,” Caldoza said in a statement. “The Trump administration has been terrorizing our state and is in our backyards thanks to Home Depot.”
When asked by the media about the eviction notice, Home Depot spokesperson Beth Marlowe stated that the allegations were false, to which Assemblymember Caldoza replied, “One of us is lying, and it’s not me.”
Eviction threats follow a series of hostile acts that Home Depot has committed against rapid response patrollers, day laborers, and even their own customers. In November, the Cypress Park store management installed noise machines in their parking lot that let out a painfully high pitched sound for 24 hours straight. The sound has caused community members and day laborers to experience nausea, headaches, and other adverse health effects. It was only after the Boycott Home Depot Coalition and allies called attention to the noise emitters and held a public press conference that Home Depot reduced the frequency of their operation. The company denied that the installation of the machines had anything to do with the day laborer center and insisted that the move was made to deter illegal overnight parking.
While an eviction of the day laborer center did not go through, community organizations have not let up on pressuring Home Depot to repair the harm committed against immigrants, migrants, day laborers, and customers on their property. In a press release sent to Knock LA for the February 22 action, the Boycott Home Depot Coalition stated their demands for the corporation were to “publicly oppose the federal government’s aggressive immigration enforcement actions; deny federal immigration agencies access to all properties owned by the company; establish day laborer centers at every Home Depot location and cease any harassment of day laborers; [and] compensate families negatively impacted by immigration raids conducted on Home Depot premises.”
Home Depot’s spokespeople have repeatedly denied that they have any involvement with ICE or Border Patrol activity on their store property.
“We aren’t notified that immigration enforcement activities are going to happen, and we aren’t involved in them,” Home Depot said in a statement to the press. “In many cases, we don’t know that arrests have taken place until after they’re over. We’re required to follow all federal and local rules and regulations in every market where we operate.”
According to internal data from IDEPSCA, since the onset of escalated immigration raids in Los Angeles, over 33 people have been abducted by federal agents from the Cypress Home Depot parking lot in four separate raids. At the Westlake Home Depot, where militarized federal agents jumped out of the back of a Penske truck and abducted 10 individuals last August, over 70 individuals total have been kidnapped since June.
The rally at the Cypress Park Home Depot ended with speeches in Confluence Park, to the south of the store’s parking lot, as representatives from IDEPSCA, Union Del Barrio, Boycott Home Depot coalition, and other organizations emphasized the importance of holding the corporation accountable for the harm done to day laborers and customers alike.
“Home Depot is a huge, corporate perpetrator of human rights violations by colluding with ICE,” said John, a representative from the Defend Migrants Alliance, in a speech at the end of the event. “They turn around and they reinvest [profits] in groups like Geogroup and Core Civic that run ICE detention facilities.”
Representatives of the Boycott Home Depot Coalition emphasized that in the more than 260 days since ICE escalated their assaults on immigrants and migrant communities in LA, Home Depot has doubled down on their harassment and antagonism towards day laborers — and that the community must escalate too.
“Today is about us affirming the kind of world we want to live in,” Maegan Ortiz, Executive Director of IDEPSCA, told Knock LA. “Immigrant communities are here to stay, including in the Home Depot parking lot.”
