Federal agents use Penske rental truck as 'Trojan Horse' to raid Los Angeles Home Depot
People gather outside after Border Patrol agents raided the Home Depot in the 1600 block of Wilshire Boulevard on Wednesday. (Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)A man driving a Penske truck pulled up to day laborers at the Home Depot and told them he was looking for workers, recalled one day laborer.
The workers gathered around, just as more than half a dozen Border Patrol agents jumped out the back. Many of the people scattered, but 16 were arrested in the operation.
After weeks of relative quiet, the immigration raid on a Home Depot in Westlake early Wednesday morning revived fears of widespread sweeps in Los Angeles as U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Greg Bovino warned, "We're not leaving."
Bovino, who has led operations since they began in June, referred to the raid as "Operation Trojan Horse."
Immigrant advocates and city leaders had hoped such sweeps had stopped with a federal judge's order, affirmed by a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel, that immigration officials cannot racially profile people or use roving patrols to target immigrants.
“We are all trying to look into ... exactly what happened,” said Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. “But from the video and from the stills, it looks like the exact same thing that we were seeing before."
In her temporary restraining order, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong had ruled that using a person's race, language, job or location as a probable cause to detain them violated the 4th Amendment.
"For those who thought Immigration enforcement had stopped in Southern California, think again," acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli posted on X shortly after the raid. "The enforcement of federal law is not negotiable and there are no sanctuaries from the reach of the federal government."
Department of Homeland Security officials released a short statement saying the operation led to "the arrest of 16 illegal aliens from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua," and did not answer questions. They told a Fox News reporter that "MS-13 has a chokehold on this area." However, agents appeared to arrest only day laborers and street vendors, who are often extorted by the gangs.
When a reporter told Bass at a news conference that Border Patrol said it was targeting gang members, she replied sarcastically. "Yeah, and you can see that when somebody is sitting at a Home Depot."
Bass said later she wants City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto's office to determine whether the tactics used by federal agents during the Home Depot operation violated the restraining order.
"Just being a Home Depot day laborer, to me, is not probable cause," she said. "So the question I would have is, what were they possibly observing at Home Depot? They were observing people looking for a job for one day."
The Border Patrol changed one aspect of its approach. Instead of arriving in unmarked Ford and Chevy SUVs, agents showed up in vans that could be easily mistaken for those driven by workers, and the Penske truck, often used by people moving who need extra help. At least one van had a straw hat and orange construction vest sitting on the dashboard.
Read more:9th Circuit keeps freeze on Southern California ICE patrols
A day laborer, who identified himself as Cesar, said around 6:45 a.m. the Penske truck pulled up to laborers who had gathered in the parking lot. The driver told them in Spanish he was looking for workers.
Several of the men gathered around the truck and then someone, it was unclear who, rolled up the back of the truck, Cesar recounted. Masked agents, one wearing a cowboy hat, jumped out and started chasing people. People scattered.
"This is the worst feeling ever," said Cesar, who has been going to the home improvement store to pick up work for several years.
Video on social media captured the moment the back of the rental truck opened. When Penske Truck Rental was asked about it, the company said it was looking into it.
"The company was not made aware that its trucks would be used in today’s operation and did not authorize this," said Penske spokesman Randolph P. Ryerson. "Penske will reach out to DHS and reinforce its policy to avoid improper use of its vehicles in the future."
He added: "Penske strictly prohibits the transportation of people in the cargo area of its vehicles under any circumstances."
Read more:Majority of people arrested in L.A. immigration raids had no criminal history
Anna Cho, a member of the advocacy group LA Tenants Union, was setting up a booth at the Home Depot for renters in the dense, low-income Latino neighborhood to get information about their legal rights. Lately, she said, the group has become a de facto recorder of enforcement activity.
“It was really chaotic,” she said. “There was a lot of yelling. There was running, and when I went outside, the immigration officers were grabbing people. It was very indiscriminate. Some were resisting.”
In a video shown to The Times, two white sprinter vans and the yellow Penske truck arrive at the parking lot. One of the vans can be seen blocking the Home Depot driveway on Union Avenue, in a move to apparently stop vehicles from driving out of the lot. The other van parks near a sidewalk where street vendors sell food.
In another video, masked men in Border Patrol uniforms can be seen leading a woman in an apron away from the folding table where she sold food and drinks. She was handcuffed and loaded into the van.
A member of Tenants Union can be heard asking, “Do you have a warrant?” None of the agents responded.
“It was so fast. It happened in a matter of 10 minutes,” said Xochilt Soza, a mover who picks up work at the Home Depot. She saw several white vans drive into the lot, along with the Penske truck, and about 20 to 30 agents fan out of the vehicles. Agents arrested Angel, a man whom she knew for years and who was also looking for work.
“It’s so sad,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief.
"I am not well," said another worker, who did not want to give his name. He said he was devastated by the raids but that he wasn’t going to leave the parking lot, because he still needed the work.
One worker who escaped was still shaken by the experience an hour later. He identified himself as Raul and said he saw at least eight people get arrested.
"That's one of their cars," he said pointing to a silver Toyota sedan.
The Home Depot had been one of the scenes of the first raids in June that kicked off more than a month of operations in Southern California in which civil rights lawyers say federal agents indiscriminately arrested immigrants. The raids gutted businesses, spread fear and tore apart families.
On July 11, Judge Frimpong temporarily blocked federal agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate arrests after the ACLU, Public Counsel, other groups and private attorneys sued over the practices, saying the region had been "under siege."
Department of Justice attorneys argued the order hindered them from carrying out federal immigration enforcement, but the 9th Circuit upheld the order.
City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who represents the area, called Wednesday's operation "yet another attack on our judicial system by the Trump Administration" and said it was a "clear violation of the temporary restraining order."
"Using a rental truck to round up people like cargo is a disgusting reflection of this administration’s total disregard for human life and the rule of law," Hernandez said in a statement. "It is clear that Angelenos — my constituents — are being racially profiled and hunted for political points."
ACLU attorney Mohammad Tajsar said the organization is reviewing reports of recent raids.
“The evidence available so far raises serious concerns that the federal government may be in violation of the federal judge's July temporary restraining order," he said. "We encourage community members to reach out if they have any specific information about these incidents and we will continue to evaluate the evidence and alert the court at the appropriate juncture of any further unlawful actions.”
This week, a federal judge approved a court settlement barring Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers from identifying as state or local law enforcement and from engaging in ruses misrepresenting their governmental identity or purpose, according to the ACLU. That settlement applies specifically to ICE.
For the last weeks since the restraining order kicked in, Bovino has shared photos of arrests of undocumented immigrants, stating that some had active arrest warrants. With others, he referenced a lengthy criminal history, marking the arrests as more targeted than they had been prior.
But organizers say similar operations to the Wednesday raid have unfolded in recent days and have sparked concerns about violations of the restraining order. On social media, people shared a video from Saturday of Border Patrol agents seemingly raiding a Lakewood Car Wash and taking at least two people into custody.
Another operation unfolded Monday at a Home Depot in Hollywood that was the site of a massive raid in June.
Maegan Ortiz, the executive director of the nonprofit group Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California, known as IDEPSCA, said it began receiving word about an immigration operation at the Home Depot in Hollywood around 6:50 a.m. She said at least two people were arrested.
Ortiz said Border Patrol agents "seem to be making the same rounds again."
"They're hitting the same places they hit Round 1, if you will, and they're trying new tactics," she said. She said they're pretending to be employers and luring people "as if they're street vendors themselves."
"What does this mean for the TRO [temporary restraining order]? There's a lot of anxiety both from workers and from organizational staff," she said.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.