Activists disrupt Westlake Home Depot, demand protections for immigrant workers

Checkout lanes at the Westlake Home Depot in Los Angeles shut down Friday afternoon after activists entered the store, took over checkout stands and stopped business for roughly 20 minutes before the Los Angeles Police Department arrived.

Several protesters held yellow signs reading “ICE out of The Home Depot” as the group carried out a coordinated May Day demonstration tied to International Workers’ Day. Some reports described the demonstrators as anti-ICE protesters and others as DSA protesters. The immediate impact was operational: customers and associates were caught in a sudden store-level disruption that briefly halted normal sales activity inside one of Home Depot’s most closely watched Los Angeles locations.

Protesters said they were advocating for undocumented workers and day laborers, and they demanded that Home Depot protect immigrant workers from immigration enforcement. The scene quickly shifted from the sales floor to the sidewalk once police intervened, with the protest moving outside as chanting continued.

The Westlake store has been a flashpoint since 2025, when immigration raids around Home Depot locations in Los Angeles put the chain at the center of a broader labor dispute. On June 6, 2025, Homeland Security Investigations agents detained workers at the Westlake Home Depot parking lot, and later raids at other Home Depot sites across the region intensified fear among day laborers and contractors who rely on the lots as gathering points for work. Local coverage later described Home Depot parking lots as common day-labor pickup spots and said repeated enforcement actions had a chilling effect on the labor market.

Immigrant-rights organizers also built a visible presence outside the same Westlake store in June 2025, setting up community defense support and know-your-rights aid as the location became a recurring protest site. That history helped turn Friday’s demonstration into more than a one-off interruption. It was another reminder that a Home Depot parking lot and sales floor can become a public stage for immigration enforcement, labor access and store continuity all at once.

For associates and managers, the Westlake protest showed how fast outside demonstrations can affect front-end operations, customer flow and store safety. A store that depends on steady contractor traffic and daily pro sales can lose that rhythm in minutes when activists block the checkout area, and the Westlake location is now one of the clearest examples of how national immigration fights can spill directly onto the retail floor.