Los Angeles Coalition Rallies at Home Depot, Demanding Day Laborer Protections

Ten minutes before a press conference she had called to defend a day labor center in Cypress Park, Assemblymember Jessica Caloza said Home Depot was already on the phone trying to walk things back. She wasn't buying it.

"Ten minutes before this press conference, Home Depot has been blowing me up, my office and spreading lies this was just a simple misunderstanding," Caloza told the nearly 100 people who had gathered at the Cypress Park Community Job Center on February 6. "One of the two is lying and I know it is not me."

The flashpoint was a phone call Caloza said she received the night before from Home Depot's head of government relations and affairs, who told her the IDEPSCA-run center at 2055 N. Figueroa St. would be served with an eviction notice. IDEPSCA, the Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California, has operated the Cypress Park Community Job Center at that location for more than 20 years, in a space subleased from Home Depot, which itself leases the property from Caltrans.

Home Depot spokesperson Beth Marlowe denied both the phone call and the eviction threat. "There are no plans or discussions about evicting IDEPSCA," Marlowe wrote in an email.

The dispute over a single phone call has since widened into a sustained public pressure campaign. On February 22, the Boycott Home Depot coalition coordinated simultaneous rallies at three Home Depot locations across Los Angeles County: Westlake, Cypress Park and Torrance. The Cypress Park rally concluded with speeches in Confluence Park, just south of the store's parking lot, where representatives from IDEPSCA, Union Del Barrio, the Boycott Home Depot coalition and allied organizations spoke about what they described as a pattern of corporate indifference to violence against day laborers on Home Depot property.

The coalition's grievances extend beyond the eviction dispute. According to internal data from IDEPSCA, more than 33 people have been abducted by federal agents from the Cypress Park Home Depot parking lot alone across four separate raids since the escalation of immigration enforcement in Los Angeles. At the Westlake Home Depot, that figure exceeds 70 individuals since June 2025, including 10 people taken in a single August raid in which, according to reporting by Knock LA, militarized federal agents emerged from the back of a Penske truck. These figures come from IDEPSCA's internal tracking and have not been independently corroborated by law enforcement records.

Miriam Arghandiwal, an organizer with the Boycott Home Depot coalition, placed the eviction threat in a longer timeline of alleged harassment. "Home Depot has targeted and harassed day laborers long before they rolled out the red carpet for ICE raids on their properties," she said. "And it's clear from their actions in Cypress Park, where they installed noise machines and are trying to evict the day laborer center, that these raids have only emboldened their cruelty against workers and their advocates."

Home Depot's presence in Los Angeles carries a specific civic obligation. A 2008 city ordinance required the company to create safe spaces for day laborers as a condition of obtaining permits to expand into the city. The Cypress Park center, described as a community hub for hundreds of jornaleros, was part of that arrangement.

Maegan Ortiz, executive director of IDEPSCA, framed the boycott call in economic terms. Boycotts are powerful, she said, especially "when it is the community that is helping Home Depot to be a billion-dollar corporation."

Neither ICE nor Border Patrol provided statements in response to the specific incidents described by coalition groups and IDEPSCA. Caltrans did not respond to a request for comment from the Los Angeles Times. Home Depot's response to date is limited to Marlowe's denial of the eviction plans; the company has not publicly addressed the allegations of federal agents accessing its parking lots without warrants or the specific abduction counts cited by IDEPSCA.

The coalition has framed its actions as ongoing. With three simultaneous county-wide protests already executed and the underlying tensions over immigration enforcement and day laborer centers unresolved, the pressure on Home Depot shows no sign of easing.