LOS ANGELES (AP) – Home Depot parking lots allow you to patrol your bike for federal immigrants and hit a megaphone on your waist to blow warnings to workers on days awaiting landscaping and construction work.
Workers in Mexico, El Salvador and other countries carry whistles to sound the alarm, but activists exchange details with two-way radios about whether the car, an unmarked vehicle carrying officers preparing for the attack, could ring out.
Their work is cut out for them. The agent has Attack This summer, the plot outside the 108,000-square-foot Home Depostore in Los Angeles’ Vannuiss neighborhood has concluded immigrants at least five times, sending others running for safety.
The Southern California Home Depostore was a hub that legally and illegally seeks informal work for domestic Day Laurers. Today, the location is a major target for immigration agents.
In fact, Home Depot was reportedly mentioned earlier this year as the target of an immigration attack by Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff at White House and chief architect of President Donald Trump’s immigration policy.
At least 12 Home Depostores have been repeatedly targeted since the administration tightened immigration crackdowns this summer.
Immigrant advocates sued the attack but sued on Monday. supreme court Finished how federal agents keep cleaning up Immigrants For now, the business in Los Angeles Latest victory for Trump Management in the High Court. Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem called it a “winner” in the rule of law, and defenders quickly criticised the ruling.
“When you undermine the civil rights of more vulnerable people, you undermine the civil rights of everyone else,” Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director of the National Network of Day Workers’ Organizations, said Monday at a press conference held near Home Depot.
Last month, a man ran off immigration authorities on a nearby highway outside the Home Depot in Monrovia. I was hit and killed.
The Van Nuys location was particularly hit hard.
Escape three attacks
Javier, a 52-year-old Mexican immigrant who has lived in a US state ranging from California to Kansas for the past 30 years, said he will narrowly escape three raids at the store, hiding under a truck, avoiding agents, and sprinting among busy shoppers.
“They come in big vans and they all go out to chase after people,” he said in Spanish.
The store is located in a property near Vanneis Airport, owned by Los Angeles World Airport, a city division that restricts cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement that her office supported the lawsuit against the Sweep and trained city workers to prepare for immigration enforcement on the property owned by the city.
Councilman Isabel Jurado has expressed his opposition to her new home depot plan for her district.
“These locations should be protected by the city to the same extent as public libraries,” said Chris Newman, legal director for the National Day Workers Organization Network.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.
Contractors make up about half of their business
Immigration advocates say the nation’s largest big box home improvement retailer should do more to protect its customers, employees and daytime workers, as they have a sufficient labor pool that is ready for contractors.
The Atlanta-based company had nearly $160 billion in annual revenue by February 2nd, counting contractors and experts for about half of its operations. This is a key draw for mostly migrant workers. According to Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, the second-place competitor, Lowe acquires around 30% of the business from contractors and relies heavily on homeowners and DIY enthusiasts.
“So, if you’re looking for volume, you go where people are and if you can force things, you’re going to Home Depot,” Sanders said.
The raids have not hurt overall sales, but the confusion can affect certain stores by making them scared to shop there, Sanders said.
In the Los Angeles area, the company’s stores saw a 10.7% drop in walking numbers in June and a 10% drop in July, according to Placer.ai, an analytics company that tracks people’s movements based on cell phone use. This is a larger drop than the 3.8% and 2.7% decline reported at stores nationwide over the same months.
Home Depot says he has not been warned of an attack
Home Depot has repeatedly denied being involved in immigration enforcement activities. The company’s late co-founder Bernie Marcus But he supported Trump Home Depot Political Action Committee Donated to both Democrats and Republicans.
The company said it is not known whether the attack will take place at around 2,300 stores.
Company spokesman Beth Marlowe said:
In Van Nuys, witnesses said they arrested many people before federal agents appeared to ask about their immigrant status. Local managers closed the store’s automated glass doors to keep agents out, they said.
“They’re just fishing,” says Lewis, a 37-year-old worker, a legal resident and grew up in the United States after arriving from Mexico as a child. He refused to use his last name for fear of government retaliation.
“Home Depot is not an innocent bystander.”
Nick Theodore, a professor of urban planning and policy at the University of Illinois in Chicago, said the trend of workers gathering outside of Home Depot began with the rise of home improvement retailers that allow people, including contractors, to purchase directly from materials.
“The basis of competition is beginning to change and what distinguishes contractors from getting bids is distinguishing whether they have nothing to do with labor costs,” Theodore said. “Home Depot is not an innocent bystander in all of this. Their source of success helped catalyze this change.”
As the trend grew, complaints about workers gathering in store parking lots increased, and in 2008 Los Angeles passed an ordinance requiring similar retailers to adopt plans to provide relief for seating areas, bathrooms and garbage facilities.
In Van Nuys’ parking lots, nonprofits run labor centres, taking the workers’ names and tracking employers who fail to pay as promised. That’s one reason why workers said they were back after repeated attacks.
The other is the community.
Since the attack, Javier said he has begun considering returning to Mexico to await the Trump administration. In the meantime, he said he would continue to come to Van Nuis to find work.
“It’s a familiar place,” he said. “Here we all became friends together.”
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d’Hynenzio was reported from New York. San Diego Associated Press Writer Elliot Spagut contributed to this report.
