The Home Depot in Pomona has been raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol three times since April, with at least a dozen people arrested. Now immigrant rights and labor groups say they’re fed up. On Sunday, they stormed inside the store to demand the company bar federal immigration agents from its parking lot.
Advocates with the Pomona Economic Opportunity Center, Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, Warehouse Worker Resource Center and National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) delivered a letter to store management outlining their demands. Among them: train staff on how to handle immigration officers and clearly designate the parking lot as private property to block ICE and Border Patrol from entering.
"We are demanding that the Home Depot take equal and perhaps more aggressive action against ICE,” said Caleb Soto, worker's rights director and an attorney with NDLON, “who are coming into their parking lots and arresting workers, arresting their own clients, every day.”
In a statement, a Home Depot spokesperson said the company typically isn't aware when ICE operations are planned or underway.
“We’re required to follow all federal and local rules and regulations in every market where we operate,” the statement read. “We tell associates to report suspected ICE activity immediately and not engage with the activity for their safety.”
The spokesperson added that employees who feel uncomfortable after witnessing ICE activity may go home with pay.
Soto said federal immigration agencies appear to be concentrating enforcement efforts at Home Depot stores in Latino and immigrant communities.
“In retrospect, looking back at April, that was probably a preparation for the mass actions they are now doing every single day,” said Soto. “They saw Pomona as a place that they could see as vulnerable. I think, frankly, this specific store is a place where they know workers stand, where they know it's spread out.”
The most high-profile of those incidents took place on April 22, when 10 day laborers were arrested by Border Patrol in the store’s parking lot. According to the PEOC, seven of those workers were deported. The remaining three—Jesus Domingo Ros, Yoni Garcia and Edvin Juarez Cobon—have since posted bond.
Advocates say they’re also calling on Congresswoman Norma Torres and other federal lawmakers to intervene and take stronger action to address the raids and protect immigrant workers.
Immigration advocates have also delivered letters to Home Depot stores in San Bernardino and Riverside.
