ICE Raids on Home Depot Parking Lots Leave Day Laborers Living in Fear

Masked federal agents are increasingly targeting Home Depot parking lots across Southern California, leaving day laborers with a wrenching choice between survival and the threat of deportation. In North Hollywood and Alhambra, workers were detained as organizers demanded to see warrants. The raids are part of what advocates describe as an unjust immigration crackdown that punishes people simply trying to feed their families. “What can you do? In this country you can’t stay home. You need money for kids, bills, rent, food,” said Arturo, a worker who has lived in Los Angeles for 25 years.

The danger is not abstract. Just a week earlier, Guatemalan day laborer Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez died after fleeing federal agents at a Home Depot in Monrovia. He ran onto a freeway and was struck by a car. His niece Mariela Mendez rejected the criminalization of her uncle: “He came here to work hard. My uncle was not a criminal. He wanted what a lot of us want: a better life.” Fellow worker Jose wept at the site of Montoya’s death, saying, “It’s like it happened to all of us. We all know each other. We’re all the same.”

Community members and labor organizers see these operations as terrorizing an already vulnerable workforce. Nancy Meza of the National Day Laborers Organizing Network said volunteers now patrol parking lots to warn workers of approaching raids. “There’s a feeling of, ‘If we stay home and just sit back in fear, it makes things worse, we feel really anxious, powerless.’ They would rather take their chances,” she explained.

Workers like Felipe, who has stood outside Home Depot for years, say the raids have destroyed what little opportunity remained after wildfires, tariffs, and the pandemic. Despite trauma and fear, many continue showing up each day, driven by necessity. As Arturo put it, the risk of arrest is outweighed by obligation: “All you can do is work to survive. Immigration or no, people come out because they have to eat.”

Link: NBCNews