The nearest entrance to the Home Depot in Monrovia is marked by two memorials. The first marks the spot near the 210 East freeway where Carlos Roberto Montoya Valdez was struck and killed by a car in October last year while trying to flee ICE agents. The second memorial, which was added in mid-November last year, covers a small portion of grass at the entrance to the store’s parking lot. Both memorials commemorate Valdez as well as numerous day laborers who died in federal custody.
It’s a grim reminder of how many public areas have been converted into potential sites of domestic terror by federal law enforcement, which has grown exponentially worse since last June. It also maintains the unnerving connection between The Home Depot, a decades-old corporation that conquered the market on home improvement to become an inescapable piece of modern Americana, with the new reality of Trump administration’s daily assaults on the American public.
“Bernie [Marcus] and I founded Home Depot with a special vision – to create a company that would keep alive the values that were important to us. Values like respect among all people, excellent customer service, and giving back to our communities and society. And here is the key – a value means something only when you live it.”
- The Home Depot co-founder Arthur M. Blank, as quoted in “Inside Home Depot: How One Company Revolutionized an Industry Through the Relentless Pursuit of Growth” by Chris Roush
At the end of May 2025, Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy and Homeland Security advisor, held a meeting with senior executives at ICE and laid into them, demanding they raise their arrest numbers by raiding Home Depot and 7-Eleven locations. ICE had already raided a few Home Depot locations, such as one high-profile raid at a store in Pomona in mid-April last year. Miller, however, wanted more.
The Siege of Los Angeles began in earnest on June 6 with a raid at the Home Depot in Westlake and raids in the Fashion District. The following day, the Battle for Paramount occurred hundreds of feet away from the Home Depot on Alondra Boulevard by the 710 freeway. The store’s logo and entrance street sign were visible in photos and video footage and its orange shopping carts were used to build a makeshift barricade in the street.
“What they don't talk about too in that Paramount situation is that it wasn't just that they saw ICE agents...” says Guadalupe Cardona of Union Del Barrio. “It's that the community, their families were locked in factories, so they had closed factory doors. A lot of the youth that came out were rightfully angry. It was because that was their parents and their uncles in there. That is completely lost from the narrative.”
It only got worse from there. Federal agents have continually raided Home Depot stores throughout Los Angeles since that day, often targeting the same stores multiple times in the same day. The Westlake location was also used for a propaganda video where agents hid in a Penske truck.
When asked about Home Depot’s policy regarding the presence of, and actions by immigration enforcement agents, Home Depot spokesperson Beth Marlowe responded with the following via email:
“No, we aren’t notified that immigration enforcement activities are going to happen, and we aren't coordinating with ICE or Border Patrol. We're in no way involved in the operations. We cannot legally interfere with federal enforcement agencies, including preventing them from coming into our stores and parking lots.”
Cardona disputes that, saying that there have been times when other organizations have been tipped off by Home Depot employees about potential ICE raids. The employees shared the information with the Boycott Home Depot Coalition, which collaborates with Barrio.
“[The Home Depot is] claiming that they have no knowledge about what's going on, but we have intel that tells us otherwise,” says Cardona. “There are workers, who we will not divulge their information, that have said that they have gotten calls in advance, knowing that ICE was going to go and raid the area. Home Depot knew about it and they basically were alerting their security, so that their security could, kind of, support ICE.”
L.A. TACO hasn’t verified this information independently, but we have verified that rapid response groups scan for ICE and CBP patrols in neighborhoods at risk of a potential immigration raid. The response groups will alert other responders at locations such as Home Depot stores to alert people in those areas.
The statement we received from The Home Depot also repeats what other news outlets have also shared since last year, such as one shared by Block Club Chicago, this report shared by MSN and another from PR News Online. Home Depot Senior Executive Vice President Ann-Marie Campbell said that “there are things that will happen that, at the end of the day, our associates can do very little about,” when confronted by representatives of Radio Jornalera during a visit to the company’s store in Downey last August.
This is in contrast to what other major companies have said about immigration raids.
“Chipotle has come out with a public statement on ICE raids,” says Richard T. Herman, Esq. of Herman Legal Group, LLC. “They have employee training and they have advocate advocacy partnerships. Amazon has come out on public statements regarding DACA and family separation due to ICE raids and they have advocacy partnerships.”
(Quick side note: Amazon is a frequent target of protests due to the company’s web services contracts with DHS and other organizations.)
When asked about the company’s policy towards day laborers who may be present in or near a company parking lot or store, the official company line is that the Home Depot has “long had a no-solicitation policy, which prohibits anyone from selling goods or services in our parking lots.”
Policy is one thing; enforcement is another. As anyone who’s ever shopped at a Home Depot can attest to, there are often immigrant day laborers at or near a store looking for work in physical labor, which has been the case for decades.
“There's a very long history of day laborers just being either outside the parking lots or inside even the parking lots around Home Depots seeking work,” says Palmira Figueroa, director of communications at the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, by phone. “Because those are the natural places where people go buy stuff, or even like they have become the places where even companies, small companies or contractors go pick up workers.”
The company policy is also not enforced equally among all Home Depot stores. As Figueroa explained, there are stores with managers “that are nice to the workers” and who are “actually accommodating sometimes.”
Then again, she says “But there's managers that really don't want them there, that sometimes even call the police.”
Herman, who has practiced immigration law for over 30 years, says that the Home Depot “could have stopped all this, you know, the day laborers from gathering on a Home Depot lots for years. They didn't want to do that. They created a marketplace.”
“It’s about giving back to society. The customer is very important to us, whether in our environment, their homes and their communities. We want customers to go away from their experience with the Home Depot believing that we care about them, and not just as a customer.”
- The Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, as quoted in “Inside Home Depot: How One Company Revolutionized an Industry Through the Relentless Pursuit of Growth” by Chris Roush
It isn’t just the Home Depot. In other parts of the country, Target stores are the site of choice for apprehensions and preparations. In early December, community members and leaders in Minneapolis gathered at a Target parking lotcalling on the company to ban DHS from using its parking lots as staging areas. They also called for a national boycott against Target, citing “Target’s $1 million contribution to the Trump/Vance inauguration committee,” among other criticisms.
Two weeks ago, Border Patrol detained two men, US citizens, at the entrance to a Target. One of them was dumped, left bleeding from his face, at a nearby Wal-Mart. Days later, a group of over 100 clergy from the Minnesota-based nonprofit Isaiah united in protest inside a Target to secure a meeting with Target CEO Brian Cornell.
We reached out to representatives at Target, but did not receive a response.
Other retail stores that continue to be hit by immigration enforcement actions, though to a lesser extent, are Lowe’s, Dunn-Edwards Paints, and Wal-Mart.
Grocery chains are rarely hit, but employees at El Super are asking their executives to provide safety protocols for themselves and for their customers in case federal agents ever step foot on company property.
“According to UFCW, other major grocery chains, including Ralphs, Super A, Vons, Pavilions, Gelson's and Albertsons, have agreed to similar protections in contracts with workers represented by the union,” reports Libby Rainey of LAist.
As for Home Depot, the statement shared by Marlowe also offers the following:
“We ask associates to report incidents immediately and not engage with the activity for their safety. If associates feel uncomfortable after witnessing ICE activity, we offer them the support they need to take care of themselves and their families, which often includes the option to go home for the rest of the day with pay.”
“The thing that strikes me specifically about lots of folks [is] how little they are willing to share with others. And one of the things we have learned is to give back to the community.”
- The Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, as quoted in “Inside Home Depot: How One Company Revolutionized an Industry Through the Relentless Pursuit of Growth” by Chris Roush
2026 is a massive year for The Home Depot. The company is an “Official Supporter” of the FIFA World Cup 2026. The company will host numerous activations in the US, including at World Cup host city Atlanta, which is also the company’s headquarters, and has already launched an ad campaign titled “We All Have A Name,” featuring Texas-born, Mexican-American US men’s national team striker Ricardo Pepi.
It’s the peak of THD’s brand strategy in sports marketing. The company has signed multiple agreements since at least 2002 with various sports marketing groups that has helped established the brand not only as a household name, but as the household name.
Case in point:
- They are a sponsor of Major League Soccer as the “Official Home Improvement Retailer” since 2003.
- They signed a sponsorship deal with the U.S. Soccer Federation just last year.
- Their commercial partnership with Soccer United Marketing since 2003 includes ad placements during Mexico’s men’s national team matches as the “Official Home Improvement Sponsor,” such as these classic TV ads from years yonder featuring everyone’s favorite curly-haired goalkeeper.
- Their sponsorship deal with ESPN College GameDay since 2003, which has morphed into a full-blown pre-game experience called ESPN College GameDay Built by The Home Depot.
- Their partnership with The Atlanta Braves, which features The Home Depot Tools mascot race.
And that’s just skimming off the top.
The executives at The Home Depot won’t like it, but the company’s reputation in the eyes of many has now become synonymous with ICE raids. Their attempts to convince the public of their helpless, hands-off neutrality haven’t worked and their status as an official partner of a World Cup that is under intense criticism over the Department of Homeland Security’s public statements on how they plan to police every game, fan and traveler during the tournament may only intensify the public outcry against the company.
