Home warehouses across Los Angeles become new tense battlefields for ice attack phase

There is a new reality in the parking lot of one of the largest home improvement stores in the United States, highlighted in events of all sizes throughout Los Angeles.

Construction workers are still dragging wood and nails, while DIY homeowners push paint and soil. But suddenly, federal immigration agents may appear.

On Thursday, they moved to a family warehouse parking lot in Monrovia to get workers running, including a man jumping off a wall and entering Highway 210, where he was fatally attacked. The day before, fears that a possible raid at the Ladera Ranch location would trigger social media warnings.

The number of arrests in Southern California fell in July as federal judges issued a temporary restraining order that prohibits federal agents from targeting people only based on their race, language, occupation, or location.

But over the past two weeks, some higher attacks have returned, often at home Depot sites, where migrant workers often gather in search of jobs.

The number of arrests in these incidents is not immediately known, but fear of fear underlines how Home Depot emerges this summer, a key battlefield in the struggle for immigration enforcement in Los Angeles and Southern California.

“Home Depot, whether they like it or not, is the center of the raid,” said Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director of the National Day Labor Organization Network, which represents thousands of Northern workers.

On August 6, a man drove the truck to a Home Depot in West Lake and began to recruit day workers. Suddenly, suddenly, the Border Patrol jumped out of the back of the car and began chasing people. The re-explosion of the attack began when a man drove the truck to a worker in Westlake and began to recruit day workers. 16 people were arrested.

This raid – The Trump administration’s imprint “Operation Troyhouse” – Shown by government officials Lens From the Embedded Fox News TV crew. “For those who think immigration enforcement has stopped in Southern California, think about it again.” Bill Essayli posted on X.

The next day, federal agents raided a home depot in San Bernardino. Then, on August 8, they did Two raids outside Van Nuis’s Home Depot The DHS described it as a “targeted immigration raid” leading to the arrest of seven undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.

Militants said last weekend, Home Depot was targeted at Cypress Park and said federal agents were at Marina Del Rey’s Home Depot. On Monday, temporary workers were caught outside the Home Depot in North Hollywood and on Tuesday, at Home Depot in Inglewood.

“It’s not just the day laborers they’re taking,” Alvarado added, asking anyone who looks like Latino or appears to be immigrants when federal agents land on the parking lot of the hardware store and asking them about their papers. “They also attract Home Depot customers, who look like summer workers and speak Spanish.”

The National Hardware Chain (which has been an informal gathering for undocumented workers for decades, hoping to be hired for a day’s home repair or construction project, is one of the first locations that the Los Angeles Raiders began in June, which launched intense immigration enforcement by the Trump administration in southern Southern California.

Nearly 3,000 people in seven Los Angeles counties were arrested in June as masked federal agents patrolled a series of chaotic street corners, bus stops, warehouses, farms, farms, car washes and home warehouses. But the number of raids and Arrests dropped sharply In mid-July, after a court order preventing federal agents in the region from targeting the people, they illegally entered the country unless they have reasonable suspicions.

On August 1, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Trump administration’s request to lift the restrictive order against harassment. But within just a few days, federal agents came back and raided West Lake Home Depot.

“Even if we made two successful court rulings, the government continues its unconstitutional behavior is coming and goes to the Home Depot store,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a press conference Thursday. “They violated the interim restraining order.

Advocates who advocate undocumented immigration question the legitimacy of federal agent practices. In many cases, agents fail to show judicial orders, they say. They believe that the agency’s goal is illegal to target day workers and other brown-skinned people.

“It’s obvious,” Alvarado said.

The Department of Homeland Security did not answer questions about how many people in the New York State’s Times were arrested at home warehouses in Los Angeles, or explain why the agency resumed raids outside hardware stores.

After last Friday’s raid on Van Nuis, Homeland Security spokesman Tricia McLaughlin said four out of the seven arrested had criminal recordsincluding driving under the influence of alcohol, misconduct and failure to comply with previous demolition orders. She dismissed the activist’s claim that the Trump administration violated the temporary restraining order.

“The goal of making someone an immigration enforcement is to be if they are illegal in the United States rather than their skin color, race or race,” McLaughlin said. “The brave men and women in the United States are evacuating the murderers, MS-13 gang members, pedophiles, rapists, and that’s really the worst case scenario in the Golden State community.”

The activists say federal agents are targeting home warehouses because they are hubs for ongoing day workers, mostly Latino, and most of them undocumented.

“They know that at home, there will always be some people who are day workers, many of whom have no evidence,” said Ron Gochez, a member of Unión del Barrio. “So they think it will be an easier, faster, more efficient way to kidnap people just to go to Home Depot.”

Another reason hardware store parking has become the focus is that they provide a wide open space to hunt people down, Gochez said.

“There is nowhere to go, nowhere to hide,” Gochez said. “When some workers started running inside the home warehouse store, agents literally chased them to the aisle of the store.”

In Los Angeles, the pressure is getting bigger and bigger, to speak out against the goals of people outside the store.

“They didn’t speak; their customers were taken away and they said nothing,” Alvarado said. “They haven’t publicly condemned the fact that their customers have been kidnapped in their houses.”

This is not the first time that Home Depot has found itself in the heart of a political fire.

In 2019, the Atlanta-based company faced a boycott of the campaign after its co-founder Bernie Marcus announced support for Trump’s re-election campaign. At that time, the chain tried to distance itself from its founder and noted that Marcus retired from the company in 2002 and did not speak for it.

But in global cities like Los Angeles, citizens and political leaders are opposing raids and public schools to develop policies that prevent federal agents from entering their homes, with increasing calls for state hardware chains to develop consistent policies for attacks, such as requiring federal agents to have judicial orders before being demoted.

A coalition of advocacy groups led the protests in MacArthur Park on Tuesday and urged Angelenos to support 24-hour home warehouses and other businesses that they said did not stop federal immigration agents from raiding in parking lots or hunting people in stores.

“We call them accomplices of these raids because no other location is hit like they do,” Gochez said. “We think Home Depot is accomplices. We actually cooperate in some way, whether it is direct.”

Home Depot denied that it is working with federal agents or notifying federal immigration enforcement activities in advance.

“It’s not true,” George Lane, communications manager at Home Depot, said in an email to the Times. “We have not notified that these activities will occur and we are not involved in operations. We must comply with all federal and local rules and regulations in every market we operate.”

Ryan said Home Depot asked colleagues to report any suspicious immigration enforcement actions immediately and not to participate for their own safety.

He added: “If colleagues feel uncomfortable after witnessing ice activities, we provide them with the flexibility they need to take care of themselves and their families.”

The goal of postal workers outside Los Angeles’ home warehouses is particularly controversial, as workers, who have been primarily Latino male, have represented an integral part of the Los Angeles workforce for decades.

Since the 1960s, day workers have formed an informal labour market that has promoted this huge city and helped it expand, and they have played in recent months. Key role in reconstruction Los Angeles destroyed thousands of homes through the Pacific Palisades and Altadena after the January fire.

“It seems they are targeting and leading people to rebuild our city,” Alvarado said. “It is impossible to try to rebuild Los Angeles without documented and undocumented immigration labor.”

In many Los Angeles communities, day workers are so constant, deeply entrenched in home warehouses that the city’s economic and labor development department has established its The resource center for postal staff next to the store.

Day workers are also the reason why many customers come to Home Depot.

“Day workers are part of their business model,” Alvarado said. “You come in, get the material, and get the assistant.”

Alvaro M. Huerta, director of litigation and advocacy at the Immigration Defender Law Center, said part of a coalition of groups prosecuting the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration attacks on immigration attacks in Los Angeles said the attacks on warehouse parking lots at home in Los Angeles were “deeply troubled” and raised serious concerns that the federal government continues to violate the July temporary restriction order.

“It looks a lot like before the temporary restrictions are in place,” Holta said.

Huerta said lawyers are investigating the raid and asked some of the detained people a series of questions: Does the agent have an arrest warrant? What questions did they ask? Do you think you can leave?

“One thing we’ve been arguing about is that some of these situations are mandatory,” Huerta said. “The government said, ‘No, we allow us to ask questions and people can answer them voluntarily.” But we think that in many cases, people don’t feel like they can’t speak. ”

Huerta said lawyers may provide information about the arrests to the court at a preliminary injunction hearing in September.

Huerta said some people weren’t even looking for jobs in the parking lot during the recent Home Depot raid.

Huerta said a 22-year-old man was in custody after fueling from a family department on the street from last Thursday, even though he was taken to the U.S. as a teenager, even though he was in a special immigrant teenager status. The man had an asylum application, work authorization and no criminal history – however, a week later, he was detained at the Adelanto Detention Center.

Times worker Julia Wick contributed to this article.