Why Immigrant Rights Organizers are Boycotting Home Depot

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FEATURING MIRIAM ARGHANDIWAL - In spite of a court order prohibiting indiscriminate immigration raids in Southern California, ICE agents are continuing to terrorize communities, and in particular the parking lots of Home Depot stores where day laborers are known to congregate to obtain work-for-hire.

Most recently a Guatemalan man named Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdés was tragically killed when hit by a car in Monrovia, trying to flee ICE agents. 

Home Depot representatives say they are not cooperating with ICE but organizers are calling for a boycott of the corporate hardware chain. 

Miriam Arghandiwal, an organizer with the Boycott Home Depot Coalition, and a reporter-turned-scriptwriter, spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about the boycott campaign.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Welcome to the program, Miriam. 

Miriam Arghandiwal: Thank you. Thank you for having me. 

Kolhatkar: So first, let's talk about what Home Depot has turned into or the role that it has played in the way in which ICE agents have gone after immigrants. This is a store that I recall in early June, was the initial focus of the big ICE raid. I believe it was around June 6th. It is a target I suppose of ICE agents because that's where day laborers congregate, because that's where Home Depot customers tend to hire them. Is that fair? 

Arghandiwal: Yes. So, they, they're definitely targeting day laborers that target that gather outside of Home Depots. And Home Depots in general have just become the epicenter of these ICE raids for the past two months or so. And, you know, it's literally, you'll see military tanks just circling, you know, a Home Depot, targeting day laborers, targeting organizers who are trying to protect the day laborers. 

And it's just been a gross use of militarized force. And, you know, we've seen the photos of the Penske trucks that they drove in like a Trojan horse and just opened up the back and came out of those.