“ICE has been kidnapping day laborers from Home Depots across the country,” said Jorge Torres, an immigrant rights organizer with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), as he led a march of dozens of activists through a Home Depot in East Windsor, New Jersey. “We are sending a message from New Jersey, all the way to Los Angeles, that we will not allow Home Depot to keep cooperating with ICE.”
On July 3, dozens of immigrant rights activists protested at a Home Depot store in East Windsor and to deliver a letter of demands to the store’s manager. “We no longer feel safe going into your Home Depot store,” said an immigrant rights activist, reading from the demands letter. “No one should be afraid to buy supplies, go to work, or fear being in a parking lot.”
The demands within the letter included to “state to your corporate leadership and Trump that your store locations must not be used for immigration enforcement operations,” to affirm that all “are welcomed and safe at Home Depot regardless of background,” and to engage with local groups to “develop protective policies or safe spaces on or near your property.” The store manager did not reply to these demands.
Although the police arrived quickly to the store to kick the activists out, they did not seem deterred, and some were heard mentioning that if Home Depot could kick them out, they could easily kick ICE agents out.
“Home Depot might not have asked to be ground zero for the Trump Administration’s brutal assault on Americans, but here we are, and it is far past time for the company to take a stand,” said Pablo Alvarado, Co-Executive Director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON). “Sadly, Home Depot has been silent so far. It has said nothing about the masked men chasing and tackling workers and customers and abducting them in unmarked vans. It has no comment on racial profiling and other Constitutional violations being committed in plain sight of their front door.”
“Home Depot must speak up,” Alvarado asserted. “It has a moral duty to oppose the Trump administration’s dangerous and lawless aggression at and near its stores.”
