They’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Anti-ICE protesters tried to freeze business at a Southern California Home Depot Saturday by gobbling up cheap ice scrapers and then returning them en masse to denounce immigration raids at the hardware chain.
The demonstration, known as a “buy-in,” clogged up registers at the store in Monrovia, when nearly a hundred activists snatched up the 17-cent ice scrapers, only to turn around and return them immediately.
Some of the demonstrators waved signs with the orange and white Home Dept logo reading “ICE out of The Home Depot,” “No Secret Police,” and “No to ICE,” according to video posted on Reddit.
The protest came in response to claims that the company has allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to raid parking lots at the big-box chain, which for decades has been a hub for work-for-hire day laborers, many of whom are illegal immigrants.
Home Depot denied it was cooperating with the feds.
“We are not coordinating with ICE or Border Patrol, and we’re not involved in the operations. We aren’t notified that immigration enforcement activities are going to happen, and often, we don’t know operations have taken place until they’re over, George Lane, manager of corporate communications for Home Depot told the LA Times.
“At this specific Home Depot, when ICE did a raid there, they chased a man all the way onto the nearby freeway,” said one comment on the video’s Reddit page, referring to a man named Carlos Roberto Montoya Valdez, who was fatally hit by an SUV on the 210 Freeway while fleeing immigration officers in August.
DHS has previously said its agents were not pursuing Valdez at the time.
Protesters also set up altars with 24 white crosses representing those who have died this year in connection to immigration raids or while in federal detention, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“I’ll drive past 4 Home Depots to go to Lowes. F*ck Depot,” another comment read.
The protest was meant to “scrape ICE out of their stores,” said Erika Andiola, political director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which organized the stunt, according to The Los Angeles Times.
Immigration raids have taken place at Home Depots across Los Angeles and elsewhere in recent months, sparking public outcry.
“Take your orange aprons somewhere else. Home Depot has no place in Eagle Rock,” Councilmember Ysabel Jurado fumed on Instagram in August.
“These raids are part of a disturbing pattern across Los Angeles, with ICE repeatedly targeting Home Depot parking lots– common gathering spots for day laborers– without judicial warrants, in clear violation of people’s rights.”
Lowe’s has faced scrutiny alongside Home Depot for using an AI surveillance system from the company Flock, which reads license plates and shares data with law enforcement, a practice civil liberties groups and the American Civil Liberties Union warn could potentially be accessed by ICE.
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