TJ L’Heureux
Audio By Carbonatix
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with a response from Immigration and Customs Enforcement
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Four day laborers were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents outside a central Phoenix Home Depot on Sunday morning, according to several immigration activists. The raid comes after reports of increased ICE activity in the metro area.
According to Sal Reza, a longtime immigration activist, the jornaleros — the day laborers who hang around home improvement stores looking for work, and who are sometimes undocumented — ran when ICE was spotted in the parking lot at 36th Street and Thomas Road. Still, four people were detained at the Arcadia-area Home Depot, including a 63-year-old man who goes by “Fernando,” according to immigration activists Ricardo Reyes and Raquel Terán.
“Fernando” has been a day laborer in the Valley for more than 30 years, Terán said in a video posted on Instagram. His wife, who is a U.S. citizen, showed up at the site after her partner of 19 years was already taken away by agents.
The 13-year-old U.S. citizen son of another detainee also showed up at the site looking for their father after he had already been taken away by ICE, Reyes said. Another day laborer was briefly detained by agents before showing proof of legal status, Reza said. Reza was able to capture video of the agents transferring the detained workers behind a nearby Walgreens before quickly leaving the scene.
In a statement to New Times provided after this story initially published, ICE spokesperson Fernando X. Burgos said that ICE made two arrests, identifying the arrestees as Juan Esquivel Moreno and Fernando Molina Mendoza. Burgos claimed that Moreno is “a criminal illegal alien from Mexico who chose to commit a felony by illegally reentering the United States after being deported at least FOUR separate times.” ICE did not claim that Mendoza has any criminal record but said he “has no legal status to remain in the United States.”
“Both illegal aliens are in ICE custody pending removal,” Burgos wrote.
As a result of the raid, Rezo told New Times that he’s “telling people not to go to Home Depot. They are gonna start hitting them like they did in LA.”
Earlier this year, Reza and other activists called on Home Depot to bar ICE from using its parking lots to indiscriminately pick up workers, which has been a common tactic by immigration agents in Arizona. If they didn’t, Reza said, activists would implement a “boycott” of the hardware store and tell people “avoid Home Depot totally.”
“We have the punish the people who are persecuting our communities,” Reza said. “We’re asking the community not to come to this place because it’s dangerous. It’s a dangerous place.”
In a statement to New Times, Home Depot spokesperson George Lane said the company wasn’t notified of any immigration activity and wasn’t involved in the operation.
“We aren’t coordinating with ICE or Border Patrol,” he wrote. “We cannot legally interfere with federal enforcement agencies, including preventing them from coming into our stores and parking lots.”
A long history
As far back as 2007, the same central Phoenix area along Thomas Road has been the longtime site of constant protests and standoffs between pro-immigration activists and jornaleros and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, then led by infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and anti-immigration organizers.
Sunday’s actions recalled that history for Reza, who was a lead organizer pushing back against Arpaio’s unconstitutional immigration enforcement. That year, Phoenix police had shooed jornaleros away from Home Depot, dispersing them into the streets nearby, including to Pruitt’s furniture store. The city put a stop to Pruitt’s hiring of off-duty officers to keep jornaleros away, but soon Arpaio stepped in.
Arpario’s deputies, deputized as federal immigration agents, arrested dozens of undocumented immigrations near Pruitt’s during the showdown. Cars would be pulled over for a minor traffic infraction, only to have every person forced to turn over their papers. Protests continued about the Home Depot and Pruitt’s for years. The Department of Justice found these stops to be unconstitutional and discriminatory toward Phoenix’s Latino population, resulting in a court order to reform the sheriff’s office that is still in place today.
Activists are attempting to contact the remaining families picked up on Sunday’s raid and are remaining vigilant as more ICE activity is expected. The weekend activity comes after reporting from The Bulwark on Friday that Phoenix would be the next city targeted by ICE, and Reza expects ICE to continue targeting Home Depot stores across the Valley.
“This was expected,” Reyes wrote in a text to New Times. “It’s still troubling and we are working on making sure we have rapid response to help anyone who gets picked up with resources and their families.”
Billions of dollars are flowing into the Department of Homeland Security and ICE with the passage of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” last year. As a result, activists and elected officials expect immigration activity in Phoenix “to get worse before it gets better,” Rep. Yassamin Ansari said in a video shared with New Times.
“It is going to potentially be a very, very dark time for immigrants in Phoenix,” Ansari said. “Arizona is not new to this.”
