LOS ANGELES – Amid increased ICE operations over the past year, Home Depots across the county have become a hot-bed for detainments. Recent protests led by community organizers have put pressure on the home-improvement chain to take a stand against the raids held at their locations.
Home Depot parking lots have been targeted over a dozen times since the ICE raids first started last year, with day-laborers being taken at multiple locations including Inglewood, Marina Del Ray, and Westlake. After a Monrovia raid in November where a worker, Carlos Roberto Montoya Valdez, was killed while fleeing an immigration sweep, communities organized to push Home Depot to denounce recent ICE activity.
On Jan. 18, Phill Ansell, retired Director of the Los Angeles Homeless Initiative and Chief Deputy Director of Social Services, organized a protest at the Home Depot location in Ladera Heights. Launching the community organization Culver City and Friends Rising last year, Ansell followed a recent string of community actions to hold Home Depot accountable.
Organized by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), around 100 protesters in November bought ice-scrapers or other small items, circled around the store, and returned the item in a symbolic action called a “buy-in”. “It’s a legal way to disrupt the business,” Ansell said. “As well as to very concretely demonstrate opposition to Home Depot’s failure to denounce … the horrible ICE raids that have been occurring consistently at Home Depot facilities across the country.”
Although their public position has not changed, the wave of community resistance has put pressure on Home Depot. According to Ansell, Mayor Karen Bass organized a closed-door meeting between the chief counsel for Home Depot and NDLON after the Culver City protest forced the chain to shut down its location.
Pressure on the company has also emerged internally. Reuters has reported an internal conflict brewing among shareholders over the company’s complicity in ICE operations. Following recent reports of Home Depot’s surveillance partner Flock Safety sharing data with law enforcement, a motion has been brought forth by investors ahead of a shareholder meeting in May for an assessment into the civil rights violations caused by the company’s partnership.
Palmira Figueroa, the Communications Director for NDLON, said the protests have caught the company’s attention. “They definitely noticed what we’re doing,” Figueroa said.“There’s a response. You know, in a way, it might be even worse.”
During a silent protest Figueroa attended last month commemorating ICE-related deaths, the store ended up calling the police to sweep demonstrators out. “There was a helicopter running around, about seven police cars came. They closed the store.”
As ICE raids continue to terrorize Home Depot day-laborers in Los Angeles, with a recent raid hitting a Cypress Park location last month, Figueroa feels the only change can come from the “bottom-up”. “In our view, I would say the public officials, especially in California, have not done enough to push Home Depot and others to do the right thing,” she said.
“[The protests] are not stopping the detentions, but they are creating a movement and a way of showing up that says we’re here to protect each other.”
NDLON has no interest in slowing down their efforts to pressure Home Depot to change their policy. For Figueroa, the mission isn’t over until the home-improvement chain takes a stand. “We want to continue to pressure people, and any corporation organization that is complacent in the abuse and killing of our people,” she said. “There’s no stop to this, because there’s no stop to the suffering.”
