US border patrol agents carried out a raid outside a Home Depot in Los Angeles on Wednesday, with officers jumping out of an unmarked rental truck and chasing and arresting more than a dozen people.
Videos of the operation, and federal officials’ statements boasting about the detentions, have raised questions about whether the US government was complying with a federal court order halting indiscriminate raids in the region due to evidence of racial profiling. That ruling, upheld last week by an appeals court, followed reports of Latino US citizens getting swept up in LA raids and accounts of undocumented people being targeted based on their appearance and whether they spoke Spanish.
Clips of the early morning raid by Home Depot in the Westlake neighborhood, near MacArthur Park, showed masked, heavily armed officers jumping out of a yellow truck from Penske, a private rental company, and people fleeing. Day laborers often gather outside Home Depot stores looking for work and have been subject to aggressive immigration raids in southern California.
One day-laborer present for the Wednesday raid told the Los Angeles Times that the Penske truck pulled up to the parking lot around 6.45am, with the driver telling people gathered in Spanish that he had work to offer. Someone then rolled up the back of the truck, and masked agents, including one in a cowboy hat, jumped out as people scattered, the witness said.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in an email that agents arrested 16 undocumented people from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua. Border patrol and DHS spokespeople did not respond to inquiries about the arrest tactics and whether agents had been targeting specific people.
A spokesperson for Penske said in an email that it was aware of the videos, writing: “Penske strictly prohibits the transportation of people in the cargo area of its vehicles under any circumstances. The company was not made aware that its trucks would be used in today’s operation and did not authorize this.” The company would reach out to DHS to “reinforce its policy to avoid improper use of its vehicles in the future”, the statement said.
“It is deeply disturbing that the federal government will stoop to these levels to continue their campaign of terror against working Angelenos,” said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, a spokesperson for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (Chirla), a California-based group that is part of the lawsuit challenging the raids. “These are Angelenos looking for an honest day’s living … What we see in the video looks like an assault on people’s liberties, an assault on individuals that were standing there looking for a job, and a targeted operation that was in fact lawless.”
One witness, who is a member of the LA Tenants Union, a grassroots advocacy group, said they were setting up a “know your rights” community defense table when the raid began. They took video, shared with the Guardian, of a group of officers piling back into the Penske truck after making arrests.
They said they saw the officers detain street vendors and day laborers. “These are people who need to make money to pay rent, who have no choice. It was really tragic that the officers came out in full force just flaunting their power and bringing another level of chaos,” said the witness, who asked to remain anonymous, fearing retribution.
Fox News published footage from inside the Penske truck, which was reposted by Gregory Bovino, a border patrol commander in California, who called it “Operation Trojan Horse”. Bovino also posted footage of arrests, writing: “Different day, different illegal aliens, same objective. We’re on a mission here in Los Angeles. And we’re not leaving until we accomplish our goals.”
Bovino has previously faced scrutiny for misleading the public about an immigration sweep, in which he said agents had a “predetermined list of targets”, many with criminal records. Records later showed that 77 out of 78 people detained had no prior record with the agency, according to a CalMatters investigation. He also falsely claimed that a US citizen who was arrested had been charged with “assaulting” one of his officers, as the Guardian reported this week.
Bill Essayli, the Trump-appointed US attorney for the region, also promoted the Home Depot raid on social media, writing: “For those who thought immigration enforcement had stopped in Southern California, think again. The enforcement of federal law is not negotiable.”
Those statements have raised alarm among advocates as the US government is under court order restricting raids in the region. Essayli’s spokesperson declined to comment, and a border patrol spokesperson declined to answer questions about Bovino’s statements.
In a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups challenging DHS arrests in LA, a federal court ruled last month the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in showing there was a pattern of officers targeting people based on factors including their race and ethnicity, speaking Spanish or English with an accent, being present at specific locations, or doing certain jobs.
An appeals court affirmed the ruling, arguing that the US government had not meaningfully disputed the conclusions that officers were relying on those discriminatory factors in an unconstitutional manner.
Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, said in a statement Wednesday that the organization was “deeply troubled” by the Home Depot arrests: “While we continue to investigate these incidents, the evidence available so far raises serious concerns that the federal government may be in violation of the federal judge’s July temporary restraining order.”
That order, Tajsar noted, prohibited agents from stopping and detaining people “based solely on generalizations about how they look, how they speak, or where they are, including where they work” throughout seven counties in the region.
“As shown at every step in the case thus far, the government seems unwilling to fulfill the aims of its racist mass deportation agenda without breaking the law,” he said.
Cabrera, of Chirla, said that in recent weeks, immigrant communities have been able to move more freely with less fear of indiscriminate raids due to the court order. The Wednesday arrests have shattered that, he said: “It seems to indicate the government do whatever they can do to cause panic and terror in the community.”
