Home Depot quiet on immigration raids outside its doors : NPR

Ray Hudson arrived at his local Home Depot in Los Angeles preparing for a move. He picked up plastic crates. Usually, he would also hire help — one of the men who tend to gather nearby looking for work. But they weren’t there.

Earlier that day, on August 6, federal agents in tactical gear sprung out of a rented moving truck, going after day laborers and food sellers in an immigration raid. Hudson heard about it on the news.

“It’s just not right,” Hudson said. “They’re out here trying to make an honest living. They’re not hurting nobody, they’re not bothering nobody.”

If there’s a company most caught up in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, it’s Home Depot, after numerous raids near stores around Los Angeles and the country. But the home-improvement giant has largely stayed quiet.

During Tuesday’s earnings call with Wall Street analysts, executives said nothing — and received no questions about — immigration raids or day laborers. Last week, after a man died as he ran from one of the raids onto a freeway and was struck by a car, Home Depot representatives did not respond to NPR’s inquiry on the death. Earlier in the month, Home Depot replied to questions about the company’s position on raids and interaction with federal authorities with a statement it has issued repeatedly:

“We ask associates to report any suspected immigration enforcement operations immediately and not to engage for their own safety,” the statement reads, in part. “We aren’t notified that immigration enforcement activities are going to happen, and we aren’t involved in them. In many cases, we don’t know that arrests have taken place until after they’re over. We’re required to follow all federal and local rules and regulations in every market where we operate.”

Home Depot’s hands-off response frustrates Chris Newman. He advocates for day laborer rights as the legal director of the National Day Labor Organizing Network.

“I sympathize with the fact that they are now ground zero for a big polarizing political and cultural issue,” Newman told NPR earlier this month. “However, I think that they have a responsibility and certainly a moral obligation to defend day laborers, who are both customers and service the stores where they seek work.”

A wreath for the late Carlos Roberto Montoya, a 52-year-old man from Guatemala, is placed in the parking lot of Home Depot in Monrovia, Calif. Montoya died after being hit by a car on the freeway as he was fleeing from an immigration raid outside the store.

VCG/VCG via Getty Images/Visual China Group

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VCG/VCG via Getty Images/Visual China Group

In a statement to NPR, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin also said Home Depot has no role in their operations and businesses don’t get notified in advance of enforcement actions.

Day laborer sites sprung up as Home Depot grew

Home Depot does not have a formal relationship with day laborers, but their history runs deep.

“Much of Home Depot’s success has led to the conditions that we see in the industry today and why contractors turn to day laborers so often,” said Nik Theodore, a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago who’s one of the top researchers on day laborers.

Before the 1990s, when the retailer grew into the biggest home improvement chain, contracting crews tried to keep their costs lower than their rivals by shopping for supplies at different wholesalers. But now, everyone pays the same prices at Home Depot. That’s made the cost of labor a key way for a contractor to get the edge over competitors.

Add in the chronic worker shortage in construction, and day laborers became a particularly convenient and cheap solution: an on-demand workforce right outside the store.

“The construction industry is highly volatile and the need for on-call labor remains high,” Theodore said. “And the immigrants are filling that shortage.”

Roughly half of Home Depot’s sales are now to professional contractors, who might need quick help with demolition, construction or cleanup.

The other type of customer at Home Depot was, in many ways, created by the chain: The retailer early on began teaching home owners to DIY and skip the contractor. Those shoppers now hire day laborers, too, for quick repairs or landscaping.

“In general, day laborers love Home Depot, and Home Depot’s bottom line loves day laborers,” said Newman.

A bystander films an immigration agent during an operation outside a Home Depot in Los Angeles on Aug. 15.

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Gregory Bull/AP

Raids haven’t had any clear impact on sales so far

Home Depot has said that day laborers are not part of its business model. Wall Street analysts say they’re not a huge customer base and people who hire them would shop at the chain even if day laborers weren’t nearby.

Investors so far have shrugged off the immigration spotlight on the company. Home Depot’s stock price is at its highest since February.

“I don’t think that it’s had any impact really on their sales,” said Telsey Advisory Group analyst Joe Feldman, speaking earlier this month. “There’s nothing to say from Home Depot’s standpoint in the sense that Home Depot doesn’t hire [day laborers] — doesn’t have a network to try to help them get hired — they just happen to show up at Home Depot’s doorstep.”

On Tuesday, Home Depot reported its U.S. sales grew 1.4% between early May and early August, a tepid result that nonetheless surpassed the previous quarter notably. Home owners have continued to delay major projects out of worry about the economy and tariffs, but appear to be doing more smaller projects.

The company has also stuck to a neutral tone on President Trump’s tariffs. After Trump publicly shamed Walmart in May for warning that tariffs would lead to higher prices, Home Depot said it didn’t expect “broad-based” price increases, though some products might disappear from shelves. On Tuesday, executives flagged possible “modest” price hikes for some imported products.

Critics, meanwhile, often zero in on the company’s perceived politics: Two of the company’s three founders have supported Trump. But those men have not run Home Depot for about 20 years, and one of them died last year. The retailer donates to both political parties.

On Reddit, Home Depot workers have begun trading tales of raid impacts: Some claim fewer contractors are visiting and stores are struggling to meet sales goals; others say it’s business as usual and sales are booming.

Back at the Los Angeles Home Depot a few hours after that raid with the rental truck, shopper Margarita Ochoa pointed out one change.

“This parking lot is always full,” she said. “Right now, there is like so many spaces.”

Ochoa runs a housekeeping business and usually sends her employees to stock up on cleaning supplies or liquids for her pressure washer. But today, for the first time in a while, Ochoa is at the Home Depot.

“Because they’re afraid to come,” she said, “They’re afraid to be here.”

Ochoa said she hopes Home Depot will speak out more against the raids and also do more, perhaps by protecting people who run inside by closing the doors to immigration agents.

She was thinking of taking her business elsewhere, she said. But this Home Depot is still the most convenient to get her supplies — and it has been her store for 33 years.

NPR’s Ximena Bustillo contributed to this report.