ICE raids, calls for boycott: Home Depot on frontlines of Trump crackdown
Over the summer, just weeks before the arrest that led to his own deportation, Atlanta-area reporter Mario Guevara filmed as masked federal agents put a group of day laborers in chains and loaded them into an unmarked white van.
The June 2 operation resulted in the arrests of at least six men. It took place outside of a Home Depot in Riverdale, Clayton County.
“Having come to Home Depot to look for work is going to be what gets them deported,” Guevara said as he livestreamed. “Being in a group, doing this kind of thing is risky these days.”
As Immigration and Customs Enforcement ratchets up arrests to meet the Trump administration’s mass deportation objectives, few private companies have become as associated with the ongoing crackdown as Home Depot, the Atlanta-based home improvement behemoth.
In recent months, ICE raids were documented outside Home Depot locations in cities including Chicago, Baltimore and Sacramento.
Los Angeles metro area stores emerged as an enforcement hub, sparking protests. The lot outside a Home Depot in Van Nuys was raided at least five times this summer. In his attempt to run away from ICE agents near another Home Depot outside downtown L.A., a Guatemalan man was killed on a freeway.
Back in May, Stephen Miller, a top White House aide and a central figure behind the administration’s immigration agenda, specifically asked ICE officials to step up enforcement in Home Depot parking lots, according to The Wall Street Journal. The raids that have followed have triggered a wave of backlash online, recurring protests outside Home Depot stores, and calls from liberal activists to boycott the Atlanta-based brand.
Home Depot has repeatedly denied claims that it helps facilitate immigration arrests. One of the company’s co-founders, the late Bernie Marcus, contributed millions to Trump campaigns, but a Home Depot political action committee has supported both Republicans and Democrats.
Federal agents do not let Home Depot stores know in advance about scheduled raids, the company said.
“We aren’t notified that immigration enforcement activities are going to happen, and we aren’t involved in the operations. In many cases, we don’t know that arrests have taken place until after they’re over,” Beth Marlowe, a company spokesperson, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Still, anger directed at the company is growing. Activists recently hosted ‘ICE out of Home Depot’ vigils near a Home Depot location in Savannah and others across the country.
“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,” Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said in a statement.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the AJC that Home Depot represents just one element of the administration’s enforcement campaign.
“Every day, DHS is enforcing our nation’s laws across all of the country — not just Home Depots. Since Jan. 20, 2025, ICE and CBP [Customs and Border Protection] have made more than 510,000 arrests across the country,” she said in an email.
Can Home Depot prevent raids on its property?
Immigration agents need a warrant signed by a judge to enter homes or private businesses to conduct arrests. If ICE fails to show a warrant, private businesses have the right to decline entry to officers.
But there are spaces in the vicinity of stores that are considered public for the purpose of immigration enforcement, even as they technically remain privately owned.
ICE agents may freely access and conduct arrests in those areas, which include parking lots that are open to the public.
According to Charles Kuck, an Atlanta-based immigration attorney, Home Depot could only turn ICE away if it created and enforced a rule that made its parking lots accessible only to customers.
“It’s kind of an in-for-a-penny, in-for-a-pound situation. If you’re not going to allow ICE being there you can’t have anybody being there except customers,” Kuck said. “So, it’s not unusual that Home Depot allows ICE on its parking lot because Home Depot allows everybody onto their parking lot.”
Shopping center parking lots are different from sports stadiums, for instance, where only ticketholders have access to lots, Kuck said. That explains why the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team was able to turn away federal agents working with ICE earlier this summer, in a heavily publicized decision.
Home Depot’s current policy is also what allows day laborers to gather in parking lots seeking work in the first place.
“As long as they allow that to happen, ICE is allowed to go there,” Kuck said.
Why do workers go to Home Depot?
Day laborers have gathered outside metro Atlanta Home Depot for decades hoping to find jobs in construction, landscaping, painting, cleanup and more.
Terry Easton, an English professor at the University of North Georgia, ran into them starting in the late 1990s while documenting the conditions under which metro Atlanta laborers lived and worked for a doctoral dissertation.
Laborers are drawn to Home Depot, he explained, because “there’s a lot of contractors driving in and out throughout the day, who might be looking for someone for a job for a few hours.”
Home Depot’s popularity among construction industry professionals, who take on big projects and have jobs to give out, likely makes the Atlanta-based chain more attractive to day laborers than many of its competitors in the home improvement space, said Drew Reading, a homebuilding analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. He said roughly 50% of Home Depot’s business comes from professional contractors.
“This is a differentiator for the company as this part of the business has been stronger than the do-it-yourself market and is expected to grow at a faster pace,” he wrote in an email to the AJC. “It would stand to reason that given the higher concentration of contractors shopping at Home Depot, it would be a draw to those looking for employment.”
For builders, working with day laborers can be attractive because it is a practice that results in lower labor costs.
“Competing on labor is certainly a big part of the construction industry as it represents a significant portion of project costs,” Reading said. “Day laborers would typically garner lower wages, and employers can be more flexible i.e. no long-term employment commitment.”
Can ICE round up day laborers?
According to the Immigration and Nationality Act, officers may only make arrests without a warrant if they have a reasonable suspicion that the individual is in the country without legal status.
And for decades, a unanimous decision from the U.S. Supreme Court held that race or ethnicity alone do not provide enough justification to target people for immigration enforcement.
But recent ICE tactics — including Home Depot raids described by critics as indiscriminate — are challenging that precedent, and ongoing litigation may be expanding the limits on the discretion officers have to detain people over a possible lack of legal immigration status.
In Los Angeles, a lawsuit over ICE sweeps targeting Home Depot parking lots, car washes and construction sites led to a Supreme Court decision in September that at least temporarily allows federal agents in that city to solely consider race when making arrests.
Other factors that can justify stopping and at least briefly detaining people include: if they speak Spanish or English with an accent; the type of work they perform and their presence at particular locations including pickup sites for day laborers, the high court ruled.
“What it boils down to is it effectively greenlights racial profiling,” said Luis Alemany, an Alpharetta-based immigration attorney.
DHS’ McLaughlin said race does not play a role in immigration enforcement.
“What makes someone a target of ICE is if they are illegally in the U.S. — NOT their skin color, race, or ethnicity,” she wrote. “President Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem are putting the American people first by removing illegal aliens who pose a threat to our communities. Law and order will prevail.”
Workers approached by ICE agents in Home Depot parking lots have the right to remain silent and not answer questions about their immigration background. But even those who know about that right may be easily intimidated, Alemany said.
“I’m not there, but I’ve heard from clients. They have these ICE officers just approach them and start talking to them, and they’re so intimidated that they don’t have the wherewithal to exercise their constitutional rights. And in a way, I believe ICE is counting on that,” Alemany said.
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