By Purushottam Dhakal, LOS ANGELES:- Home Depots in Southern California have become centers for the arrest and detention of undocumented workers by ICE and federal agents.
On Friday, ICE and federal agents targeted at least two Home Depot parking lots in the Los Angeles area, rounding up and arresting undocumented workers.
Workers were detained in North Hollywood and Alhambra despite local demands for warrants.
It is uncertain when the undocumented workers who line up in the parking lots of Home Depots in Southern California every morning, hoping to earn a day’s wages, will be rounded up and arrested.
ICE and federal agents lurk around Home Depots, waiting for an opportunity to arrest undocumented workers.
Undocumented workers are on notice, ICE and federal agents are around Home Depot looking for an opportunity to arrest them. But with worries about raising a family, paying rent, and paying bills, they have become destined to wait for customers in the parking lots of Home Depots, enduring the challenges of arrest and detention.
“I can’t stay at home,” says an undocumented worker. “I have to go out looking for work to earn money for my children, bills, rent, and food.”
Guatemalan worker Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez died after fleeing agents in a Home Depot parking lot in Monrovia during a Home Depot operation by ICE and federal agents on Friday. He fled onto a nearby freeway and was struck and killed by a car.
But the Department of Homeland Security has distanced itself from the incident, saying federal agents were not following Montoya when he died.
Home Depot also declined to comment on his death or say how many arrests have been made from its depot.
Home Depot said, “We have not been notified of any ice activities. All of our depots are required to comply with all federal and local rules and regulations.”