I outran ICE. Now I'm back on the streets looking for illegal work

Telegraph

a day ago

When a black Jeep rolled into the Home Depot car park just after 8.30am on Friday morning, Abraham sprung into action.
As Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents dressed in vests and helmets climbed out of their blacked-out vehicle, he did his best to warn his fellow illegal migrants camped outside the hardware store in search of work.
'La migra! La migra!' he screamed, before sprinting away from the scene. Dozens of people tried to follow him.
'I felt very scared when I saw them coming but I ran like a flash and they didn't get me,' he says.
Like the 100 or so men who gather daily outside the DIY shop in Westlake, Los Angeles, that morning Abraham had been hoping to pick up a day's work from customers in need of help for their home improvements.
Most of those he was standing with are undocumented.
Nicaragua-born Abraham managed to escape but not everyone was so lucky.
At least 40 men, some of whom had lived in the US for decades, were handcuffed and detained by ICE agents who had raided a string of workplaces and Home Depot locations that morning, sparking a wave of volatile protests which have gripped Los Angeles and spread to more than 35 other cities.
Despite the pervasive threat of deportation, Abraham was back at the Home Depot parking lot on Wednesday morning to resume his search for work.
The targeting of day labourers in Home Depots, workers at car washes and clothing manufacturers marks a gear change in the administration's attempts to ramp up its deportation efforts in order to fulfil Donald Trump's 'largest deportation program' in US history.
While officials had initially focused their efforts on those with criminal records, Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr Trump's hardline immigration policy, instructed ICE field officers to begin widening their nets.
Mr Miller has set a target of 'at least' 3,000 arrests a day, a steep jump from the roughly 660 daily arrests during Mr Trump's first 100 days in office. He is understood to have directed ICE chiefs to start targeting spots where migrants congregate, specifically naming Home Depot.
It is a move that has drawn fierce opposition from not only Mr Trump's political opponents such as Gavin Newsom, the Democrat governor, but also from some of the Republican leader's supporters, with Florida State Senator Ileana Garcia, the co-founder of Latinas for Trump, saying the move was 'not what we voted for'.
While demonstrations have brought parts of the state to a standstill, the ICE raids have continued at pace, with uniformed officers chasing farmworkers through fields and turning up at churches to arrest migrants.
While the majority of migrants have stayed home amid the ongoing threat, Abraham, a father-of-two, who crossed the El Paso border with Ciudad Juarez three years ago, says he has no choice but to take the risk and continue his search for work at Home Depot.
'I'm not afraid to come... I have to work because if I don't work I can't eat,' he tells The Telegraph as he cools himself from the California sun with a pink plastic portable fan.
Obdulio, another undocumented worker who managed to flee the Home Depot raid on Friday, had also returned on Wednesday despite seeing at least a dozen people 'grabbed' by ICE agents.
The Guatemalan, who has lived in the US for 20 years, was frustrated he could not do anything to help his friends.
'You can't confront them because they're going to take you away, so what we did was shout at people to run and we kept running,' he says.
Obdulio, 48, who did not want to give his last name, told The Telegraph: 'We are still in fear because we've heard ICE is still roaming here.'
'We're not criminals, we come to work honestly without harming anyone,' he adds.
Standing on the other side of the Westlake Home Depot car park, Edwin Cuadra, who is from Guatemala and has a green card, recounted how he saw ICE agents arriving on Friday morning in his car's wing mirror.
'Those who don't have papers had to escape, they started running,' he says.
The number of people out looking for work has since dwindled, he says, because migrants are terrified they will be caught.
'It's very bad,' he adds, becoming tearful. 'They are my brothers, like my family. They need the money to pay rent, to pay bills.'
On the sixth day of demonstrations in Los Angeles, a largely peaceful protest of around 1,000 protesters briefly became chaotic when police on horseback charged at protesters and hit them with wooden rods before the area's 8pm curfew came into effect.
Officers fired rubber bullets and pepper balls into the crowd before carrying out dozens of arrests and packing protesters into police vans, but the streets downtown were mostly quiet by 9pm.
In recent days demonstrations across the city at times became violent, with some agitators setting fire to cars and throwing Molotov cocktails, fireworks and rocks at police.
Some of the thousands of National Guard troops controversially deployed by Mr Trump despite governor Gavin Newsom insisting they were not needed have been assisting ICE officers as they round up illegal migrants on raids, standing by with their rifles as agents arrest and detain people.
The 700 Marines sent into Los Angeles by Mr Trump will also accompany ICE agents on missions, officials have said, sparking fears that the administration could further intensify the pace of its raids.
Mr Newsom has warned the unprecedented militarisation of the state would spread further.
'Democracy is under assault right before our eyes,' he said on Tuesday. 'California may be first, but it clearly won't end here.'
The Department of Homeland Security released an Uncle Sam style poster on social media on Wednesday urging members of the public to report 'foreign invaders'.
As ICE raids continued in spite of the protests, on Monday morning a Home Depot in Huntington Park, around eight miles away from the Westlake branch, was targeted.
Eduardo Baz, 45, who illegally crossed into the US from Honduras 20 years ago, was lucky to have escaped. He had been a safe distance away when he saw federal agents starting to detain migrants in the car park at around 7.30am.
The only saving grace, he says, was that it was early so not many people had arrived at the shop. On Wednesday morning he was one of a handful of migrants who had returned to the car park hoping to pick up work.
'Of course we're all afraid,' he says. 'All these years later, they can send you home in one swoop.'
'You're never calm, you're always afraid they might catch you at any moment.'