Power tools, light fixtures, house paint, lumber, immigration raids. You can find it all at Home Depot. While everyone else was celebrating the May Day holiday of international solidarity and workers’ rights, a group of undocumented workers were either sitting in jail waiting to hear if they’d be permitted to stay in the United States or they’d already been deported.
Last month, law enforcement officials including the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department and the federal Immigration and Control Enforcement bureau arrested several workers waiting for jobs in front of the Home Depot location on Ice House Terrace in Fremont.
“They detained many of us, leaving only a couple of us behind. From what we know, most of them were deported,” one worker told KCBS April 29.
Just before the holiday, immigration activists from La Raza Centro Legal, the Living Wage Coalition and other groups held a press conference to denounce the raids.
“These are human beings we’re talking about, workers who were simply trying to work and earn a living,” a La Raza organizer said in a prepared statement. “We’re going to find out what happened to them.”
NBC 11 reported that several weeks ago Home Depot called the Fremont Police Department complaining about workers loitering in front of the store and 13 people were eventually taken to the Santa Rita Jail because they could not be properly identified.