Semantha Raquel Norris
Special to San Fernando Valley Sun/el Sol
Inside la casita – the Day Laborers Community Job Center – located at the far end of the parking lot at the Van Nuys Home Depot on Balboa Boulevard, jornaleros (day laborers) stood in a circle around an altar, sharing how the ongoing federal immigration enforcement raids have been affecting them.
“What is happening now is, they [immigration authorities] grab two or three people – who knows where they are being taken,” said one laborer. “We are losing our friends.”
Since June, masked federal immigration officers have kidnapped laborers without warrants from job sites and outside Home Depots, as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policies.
The Van Nuys Home Depot has been one of the most heavily targeted locations in the San Fernando Valley, leaving laborers and activists on high alert. Although the site hasn’t been raided in recent weeks, it has been targeted at least six times since June, and even twice in one day in August.
The raids may have slowed down, but so has the work, as employers are becoming less inclined to hire undocumented laborers out of fear of retribution from federal authorities.
“Work is very slow right now,” said Baltasar, 32, a jornalero from Guatemala who has been in Los Angeles for a year.
“There are times when there is work too, but the person who hires you doesn’t pay well, or they don’t want to pay,” he added.
Baltasar said there have been three times that he’s worked for weeks at a time on a job site, only to not be paid at the end. Like him, many of the laborers don’t have another option, and some have even lost their homes due to the lack of money.
But he is grateful for the casita, which he said has helped protect workers during raids, aided them in finding work from vetted employers and supported them with resources and information about their rights.
Maegan Ortiz, the executive director of the Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA), a nonprofit organization that operates the center, said they’ve been focusing on supporting those who remain in federal detention centers during the pause in raids at the site.
“We’ve been able to successfully get five workers bonded out,” said Ortiz, “but those are from raids in June, and now they’re barely getting bonded out.”
Despite the difficulties workers are facing, Ortiz is encouraged by the “continued growth of solidarity” from the community.
On Nov. 1, San Fernando Valley activists organized a convivio (gathering) at the Van Nuys Home Depot, for the community to come together and share information, food, music, resources and conversations to support laborers impacted by immigration enforcement.
“The intention behind the event was to build community with [the day laborers], in addition to giving them some space to rest and breathe,” said Luna Awal, who helped organize the event in partnership with the “Boycott Home Depot” campaign – a grassroots effort to encourage customers to shop elsewhere to pressure the corporation for its complicity to the raids happening on its premises.
As a child of immigrants, Awal felt they had to do something to support those who are experiencing hardship from current immigration policies, even if those efforts don’t fully manifest during their lifetime.
“I want to plant seeds of trees that I may not see the shade of,” said Awal. “In order for things to fundamentally change in the long run, we have to do the work now, even if it looks small.”
As the convivio coincided with Día de Los Muertos, inside the center, an ofrenda (altar) was erected by the group Guatemaya LA Mujeres en Resistencia to honor those who have passed away or been taken by immigration authorities.
Xuana, one of the women who organized the ofrenda, said this was a time to invite the laborers to process their feelings surrounding the kidnappings and persecution that they have faced. Sharing those accounts with others in the community, she added, can help heal one’s spirit and mental health.
Her colleague, Magada Estrada, said she found hope in seeing the community come together to organize in the defense and protection of others from the terror now plaguing their community.
“They try to keep us under a system of fear and terror,” said Estrada. “What we are doing here is saying that despite this … we are here together, united, looking for ways to help each other, … [and] ensure that fear does not make us weaker than it.
“May borders not divide us, may terror not appease us,” she added.