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An ICE raid at a Home Depot in Hollywood shatters an immigrant refuge

Immigration agents arrested dozens of people outside this Home Depot on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood on June 19, 2025.(Brittny Mejia / Los Angeles Times)

Immigration agents arrested dozens of people outside this Home Depot on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood on June 19, 2025.(Brittny Mejia / Los Angeles Times)

Emma De Paz woke up at 2 every morning for 25 years to make soup, roasted chicken and tamales to sell to work crews picking up their day’s supplies at the Home Depot.

She joined other immigrant vendors lining the side streets under tents and over grills in a makeshift community that was something of a refuge for Latino immigrants in the Hollywood area. Abelino Perez Alvarez and his wife sold orange juice, soda and water. Day laborers scrolled through their phones as they waited outside the parking lot in hopes of getting work.

 

An undated photo of Emma De Paz, a longtime vendor outside the Home Depot in Hollywood. De Paz was arrested by immigration agents on the morning of June 19, 2025. (Carlos Barrera de Paz)
An undated photo of Emma De Paz, a longtime vendor outside the Home Depot in Hollywood. De Paz was arrested by immigration agents on the morning of June 19, 2025.
 
(Carlos Barrera de Paz)

 

Around 7:30 a.m. Thursday, the refuge was shattered. Dozens of armed agents, many in masks, converged on the parking lot, blocking gates and surrounding the lots normally lined by day laborers and street vendors.

“Migración! Migración!” people shouted — and scattered.

They jumped in cars, ran down streets. They hid in stores and construction sites and behind bags of soil in the Home Depot gardening section. Alvarez’s wife opened the door of a passing car and jumped in.

“They came in on all sides,” said Diego Rueda Hernandez. Fearful, even as a resident with legal status, he ran behind bags of dirt in the parking lot with others.

“Agarraron los indios,” he said. They took the dark-skinned people.

The immigration raids in Los Angeles over the last two weeks have captured the world’s attention — for the protests, the sporadic violence, the peacetime deployment of the National Guard and U.S. Marines. But each roundup has inflicted very personal trauma to the people dragged into them, tearing families apart, inciting fear, taking away means to feed children and pay rent.

In a flash, all of this happened Thursday morning in Hollywood — at the neighborhood Home Depot, the lifeblood of economic stability for many working-class immigrants nationwide, which the Trump administration is zeroing in on.

 

Elias Garcia shows a text he received from his brother, a U.S. citizen, informing him that he had been arrested by ICE
Elias Garcia shows a text he received from his brother, a U.S. citizen, informing him that he had been arrested by immigration agents in Hollywood on Thursday, June 19, 2025. (Brittny Mejia / Los Angeles Times)

 

Witnesses and organizers who helped gather information from family members after the sweep said agents picked up more than a dozen vendors, day laborers and customers — including a U.S. citizen.

In a statement Thursday afternoon, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Customs and Border Protection “arrested 30 illegal aliens in Hollywood, California, and 9 illegal aliens in San Fernando and Pacoima.” She said that during the day’s operations, someone rammed his vehicle into a law enforcement vehicle.

“CBP Agents were also assaulted during the operation and verbally harassed,” McLaughlin said.

Witnesses in Hollywood described the agents fanning out in the lot, apprehending people quickly and leaving within roughly half an hour. There was no clear target. But there were unconfirmed reports of agents breaking a car window to grab someone.

“Here, we are a united community, all the workers that come to this corner,” said Carlos Barrera De Paz, whose sister was taken. “They took us and they took our community.”

In the aftermath, tearful family members gathered with broken glass littering the parking lot. The usually bustling stands where they sell tamales, juice and coffee for workers starting their day were abandoned. Eggshells lay cracked, orange peels strewn, tortillas left on grills.

Knowing Home Depots have been prime targets, Silvia Menendez had come to the area early to give out “know your rights” cards. When the agents showed up, she began filming as people ran. She saw six agents tackle one person to the ground. Officers with assault rifles and faces covered pulled those arrested into vans and trucks. One of the masked agents began filming her.

 

People on a sidewalk.
A food stand outside the Home Depot in Hollywood. (Brittny Mejia / Los Angeles Times)
 

 

“It was really unsettling and scary,” she said.

In one video, an armed Border Patrol agent screamed at people who were recording to “get back on the sidewalk!” Another agent told spectators they could record, but to “just let ‘em work.” A person shouted at them to “die.”

Job Garcia, a 33-year-old doctoral student at Claremont College, was picking up an order at Home Depot for a customer. He texted his brother Elias Garcia around 7:59 a.m.: “Hey Elias me agarro ICE,” it read. ICE got me.

Elias said he has not been able to talk to his brother to find out why he was arrested and booked into a federal detention facility downtown.

“Is it racial profiling that occurred or was he trying to help out a fellow undocumented person? I don’t know what it could be,” he said.

Veronica Perez stood sobbing along St. Andrews Place, on the sidewalk outside the Home Depot where her dad, Abelino Perez Alvarez, 58, has sold orange juice for seven years. Her mother, who is in her 50s and did not want to be named, also worked on this street. The family usually has two stands, but with all the raids they decided to pare it down to one.

When immigration agents swarmed the area, Perez’s mother ran toward the street after she heard shouts of “Migracion!” A driver pulled over when they spotted everyone running.

“Ayudanos, ayudanos,” someone pleaded with the driver, a stranger. Help us.

Perez’s mother didn’t wait. She opened the car door and got in. Another female vendor wasn’t able to jump in fast enough and was grabbed by agents, Perez said.

 

A table and a tent on a sidewalk.
After Border Patrol agents conducted a raid, many vendors fled, leaving empty food stands outside Home Depot. (Silvia Menendez)

 

The couple had run in opposite directions. Perez’s mother got away, but her father was arrested.

For many, their hearts still pounded as they tried to sort out what happened and where their family members were.

Maegan Ortiz, the executive director of the nonprofit group Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California, known as IDEPSCA, hugged Perez tight as she cried.

She had gathered Perez’s father’s name and date of birth and wrote it into a notebook in which she was compiling the names of all those taken.

“Lo siento. We’re going to do our best to find him,” Ortiz reassured Perez.

Perez pulled up her phone log, which showed that her first call to her mother — listed as “madresita” — went out at 7:35 a.m. Perez said she doesn’t have siblings, only a daughter and her parents.

“They’re all I have. It’s the three of us,” Perez said. The family had been applying for a U visa — a type granted to certain crime victims — after her mom became the victim of a violent attack.

 

“We have that hope,” Perez said.

Many of the workers were registered with IDEPSCA’s day laborer program. Their families trickled in after the sweep looking for them, picking up cars and talking to others who already felt a void.

 

“Lourdes also got taken,” one person told another.

Emma De Paz, 58, was nowhere to be found when her brother arrived at her stand. Barrera De Paz, who wore paint-splattered blue jeans, works as a handyman and had rushed over from Long Beach after seeing a live video on TikTok of arrests unfolding.

“If anything happens to her, it will be the responsibility of the authorities that took my sister,” he said.

Emma, who lost her husband after his heart transplant last year, has suffered from depression ever since and faces several medical issues.

 

There were unconfirmed reports of immigration agents breaking a truck window to grab someone inside. That vehicle was still in the Home Depot parking lot hours after the raid. (Brittny Mejia / Los Angeles Times)
There were unconfirmed reports of immigration agents breaking a truck window to grab someone inside. That vehicle was still in the Home Depot parking lot hours after the raid.   (Brittny Mejia / Los Angeles Times)
 

 

“My sister needs her medicine. She has diabetes. She needs medicine for her blood pressure and her heart,” he said. By Thursday afternoon, they were able to drop off her medication.

“I think of Germany, Hitler and the persecutions there, I thought that was just history,” he said. Now, it felt like history repeating.

With the stands empty, many were enraged.

“Despicable doesn’t even begin to describe what this is,” said Hugo Soto-Martinez, a Los Angeles City Council member who represents the area. “You hear about this happening in military dictatorships and totalitarian governments. To happen here in the second-largest city in America is — I don’t have words, just outrage. “

Organizers are working to find legal representation for some, but Soto-Martinez said the response should be nonviolent protest.

“Nonviolent, direct action broke Jim Crow. It brought down apartheid. We are experiencing that at a national level. We know what works, we have to commit ourselves to that type of movement,” he said.

Federal officials insist they are focusing mainly on criminals. Border Patrol Sector Chief Greg Bovino posted a video this week on his Instagram page featuring Assistant Chief Patrol Agent David Kim.

“Roving patrols in an urban environment like Los Angeles County presents a lot of challenges for us. It’s not as easy as people think it is,” Kim said. “But there is that narrative out there where people think that just because you’re at a Home Depot that you’re a hard worker and that’s all you’ve ever done.”

He pointed out that they’d picked up a Mexican national at a Cerritos Home Depot on Tuesday who’d been convicted of sex with a minor younger than 16. “We have a lot of people hiding in the country that should not be here. It takes us getting out on the ground, looking for these folks and it’s just a lot of hard work that goes into it. We’ll continue doing it.”

In May, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller reportedly directed top Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to go beyond target lists and have agents make arrests at Home Depot or 7-Eleven convenience stores as they sought to crank up their daily arrest numbers to 3,000.

Federal agents raided another Home Depot on Thursday in San Fernando. The city’s vice mayor, Maria Elena Solorio, said on an Instagram post that she was looking for answers and had only the first names of those taken. She pleaded for help, alongside Los Angeles City Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez.

 

A person in a military uniform and other people on a sidewalk.
An immigration agent walks outside the Home Depot. (Silvia Menendez)

 

“We need to protect one another in these very scary times,” Rodriguez said. She urged people to report immigration agent sightings to a rapid response line and cautioned those to remain peaceful and not interfere.

“This is a systematic attack against the most vulnerable members of the migrant community,” said Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. “It is the working poor. That’s who they are going after. These are the spaces where they feel they can do this. They don’t even have legal parameters.”

Edwin Guevara says the people taken are those building Los Angeles. He runs a construction crew and got a call from one of his workers around 7:20 a.m. The man was buying lumber for a hotel job when immigration arrived. He told the man to hide inside Home Depot.

“Us here at the Home Depot, we build this community, we build society to what it is. We’re the ones who build the economy to where it’s at,” Guevara said. “Without us building buildings, without us building homes, without us building restaurants for people to go eat, shops to shop at, Target, there would be no money in those places. “

Author: Editors Desk, Brittny Mejia and Rachel Uranga

Source: Los Angeles Times

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