Editor’s Note: The following article was originally published by NDLON on June 20th 2025.
LOS ANGELES, June 20 — ICE raids this week in greater Los Angeles and other cities across the country have terrorized immigrant communities. They have also put an intense focus on Home Depot, where many of the day-laborer victims had gathered to seek work.
The following is a statement from Pablo Alvarado, Co-Executive Director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON):
“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.
“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. It has a moral duty to oppose the Trump administration’s dangerous and lawless aggression at and near its stores. It should defend those whose hard work in construction, landscaping and do-it-yourself home improvement has made them central to Home Depot’s business model for decades. And Home Depot should support its employees, communities and shareholders who are being harmed by this chaos and violence.
“Home Depot’s co-founder Ken Langone is known as a diehard Trump supporter, but for years the company’s leadership has attempted to avoid being associated with the hard-core ideologies of nativism and xenophobia.
“Has Home Depot changed? Its vocal opposition to Trump’s tariffs suggests otherwise. So does its business model of opening stores in Mexico and Central and South America, and its heavy reliance on selling products made in China.
“But the company’s awkward silence at this dire moment suggests only one thing: it has co-signed the brutal and self-destructive dehumanization of its customers and workers.
“Silence in the face of atrocity will put the Home Depot on the losing side of history in a way that will never be forgotten across the hemisphere.
“As locations for employment of immigrant day laborers, Home Depot stores have been a microcosm of the polarizing immigration debate for decades. They are occasionally flashpoints of controversy, but the stores, communities and day laborers have generally worked it out locally – even as Congress and presidents from both parties have failed to modernize immigration laws.
“However, while immigration laws change over time, the law of supply and demand is immutable. Day laborers perform a market and community function that long predates the United States. Adam Smith wrote about day laborers. After escaping slavery, Frederick Douglass began his new life of freedom as a day laborer.
“If Home Depot abandons good corporate citizenship to become a partisan actor favoring authoritarianism, it will badly damage its reputation and business. Customers throughout the hemisphere — where Home Depot is trying to expand— will likely reject the way it attacked their people.
“Speaking for NDLON, we will continue to pursue pragmatic, constructive solutions, as we have always done. At the same time, we will not stop vigorously defending day laborers’ First and 14th Amendment rights, and the human rights of day laborers and Home Depot customers — in court, on the streets and with every tool at our disposal.”
“Immigrants are often aspiring citizens who give so much back to the communities where they live and work. Day laborers love this country even when its government doesn’t acknowledge their contributions or humanity. Day laborers in Pasadena and Altadena have done so much backbreaking and dangerous cleanup and recovery work since the January fires.
“Let’s all find a way to act righteously in pursuit of shared prosperity and belonging. We are encouraged by the groups of mothers, clergy members and other allies who have started to accompany day laborers to stores, standing in protest of the invasion of our communities. We will work with anyone who seeks a peaceful solution to the current crisis.
“Solo el Pueblo Salva al Pueblo.”
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