After days of raids, Los Angeles day labourers set aside their fear to support their families

CBC

a day ago

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Most days, Edwin Ciara positions himself on a median at the entrance to the Home Depot parking lot along Wilshire Avenue in Los Angeles and waits for a contractor who might give him a few hours of work.
In time, he'll move to another spot in the city — dipping into a fresh hiring pool because he doesn't want to stay in the same place too long.
"Everybody who's coming here, they're coming here to survive," said Ciara, 57, reading glasses hanging from his collar as he leans against a parking lot lamp post.
"We're doing nothing wrong to anybody here. We are looking for a job."
Day labourers have returned to Home Depots in the Los Angeles area after the stores were targeted by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers during raids last Friday. They wait on sidewalks and medians to be hired by the homeowners and contractors who rely on the undocumented workforce.
The hardware store chain has found itself at the centre of raids across the city that have been criticized by city and state officials. The raids also prompted numerous protests that resulted in what some say is an outsized response from U.S. President Donald Trump, who deployed the National Guard and marines.
Officials have raided a number of Home Depot locations since Friday, including Westlake, Paramount, Whittier and Huntington Park.
"The people who don't have papers, we are feeling panicked. People work hard to come here to L.A. or the U.S.A. and they're taking us to go back to our country," said Ciara, who immigrated to the U.S. from Guatemala nearly 35 years ago.
WATCH | L.A. day labourer says workers are just trying to feed families:
'Standing in front of the Home Depot for work to feed our family? Is that our crime?'
7 hours ago
Duration 2:59
'These guys are troopers, man'
In Westlake on Wednesday, private security guards assigned to patrol the strip-mall parking lot greeted the labourers with nods and handshakes.
One guard, who declined to provide his name because his employer doesn't want guards to speak to the media, said some of the labourers didn't wait long to return after Friday's raid because they have families depending on their income and are here to work, not cause trouble.
"These guys are troopers, man."
Nearly 50 kilometres southeast of Los Angeles, several more men sought respite from the heat of the day under some trees while waiting for work outside another Home Depot in Santa Ana.
They know their freedom is at risk, but financially, they say they have no choice.
"It's nonsense. It's ridiculous. We haven't done nothing wrong. Standing in front of the Home Depot for work to feed our family? Is that our crime?" asked Edbin Rios Perez, 24, who crossed the border from Mexico to the United States with his family as a child around 2008.
"I don't have papers and I'm still here, risking my life to provide."
Perez says he's seen ICE officers around and knows they could come after him. He and the others keep watch for black trucks, just as the men in Westlake do.
"I am scared, honestly, but I don't want to show it because as a man, we gotta be there," he said. "I'd rather have my kids see that I'm not scared. My father, my mother? I still make them laugh, like, 'Hey, I'm OK.' But in reality, I'm not."
WATCH | ICE raids strike fear in workers, L.A. business owner says:
Workers too afraid to show up amid ICE raids, says L.A. business owner
9 hours ago
Duration 8:17
Undocumented residents steer clear of protests
Los Angeles police say that since protests began Saturday, they have made nearly 400 arrests and detentions, the vast majority of which were for failing to leave the area at the request of law enforcement. Nine police officers have been wounded, mostly with minor injuries.
On Tuesday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass imposed a curfew encompassing one square mile of the city between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. PT, in what she said was an effort to control vandalism and looting.
By Wednesday, there was little sign of any unrest in the city's core. Hundreds of marines deployed to join thousands of National Guard personnel were out of sight, completing civil disobedience training at a Navy facility in Orange County.
While the streets calmed, the fight between Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom picked up steam. Newsom, a Democrat, said the president's rare decision to deploy the marines on U.S. soil and the National Guard without state approval was in line with "authoritarian regimes."
From the Home Depot parking lot in Westlake, the epicentre of the protest downtown is easy to spot in the skyline on account of the helicopter circling overhead. People who are undocumented are staying well away from the area, Ciara said.
They're scared, but Ciara says he worries the entire scene — from the protests to the military to the politics — is distracting the public from the raids themselves and making the situation worse for those in hiding.
"When the people who are legal here are doing something wrong, they think the people who are illegal are doing that, too," he said.
"We are just trying to make things all right."