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Business at a Los Angeles Home Depot came to a screeching halt when anti-ICE DSA protesters barged their way into the business and refused to leave.
The scene unfolded inside a Home Depot in Westlake on Wilshire Blvd, just outside of downtown Los Angeles, on Friday. Protesters with signs that read “ICE OUT OF THE HOME DEPOT” made their way inside, pounding on drums and chanting.
The protesters then sat on the ground, blocking customers from using some of the self-checkout registers.
“On International Worker’s Day, we are halting for a moment a piece of profit that in the end will not effect the pockets of this billionaire’s profit that he’s making, and we are asking for them to end collaboration with ICE,” Priscilla, a member of Democratic Socialists of Los Angeles told ABC7 outside the store.
“This city is of migrants and we are asking for them to stop allowing ICE in here and snatching day laborers from their parking lots and inside their stores,” she continued.
After only a few minutes, LAPD officers showed up to the store and ordered the crowd to disperse — which did happen without much push back.
Home Depot has maintained the company does not collaborate or work with federal agencies.
“We aren’t notified that immigration enforcement activities are going to happen, and we aren’t involved in the operations,” a spokesperson for Home Depot told The Post. “We aren’t coordinating with ICE or Border Patrol. We cannot legally interfere with federal enforcement agencies, including preventing them from coming into our stores and parking lots.”
The sit-in comes only moments after The California Post published an exclusive about anti-ICE nonprofits asking the city to increase funding from $1 million to $3 million in order to fight against ICE.
Day laborer hubs, first constructed in the 1990s, offer laborers — who are sometimes illegal — a place to gain legal protective services, get work advice and even use the restroom.
The hubs have been supported by DSA councilmember Eunisses Hernandez.
“The work centers have been a rescue due to the conditions we have been living in. That’s why I’m asking that the budget be increased to $3 million for these work centers,” Hernandez asked the City’s Budget and Finance Committee in meetings this week.
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