Anti-ICE Protesters Shut Down Westlake Home Depot to Demand Corporate Accountability

On May Day, a group of anti-ICE demonstrators stormed a Home Depot store in Westlake, Los Angeles, temporarily shutting down business to protest the company’s perceived role in facilitating Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. Holding bright yellow signs reading “ICE out of The Home Depot,” the protesters occupied checkout lanes and blocked the entrance, forcing the store to pause operations for about 20 minutes.

The demonstration quickly drew a police response, and the activists moved outside, continuing their chants and demands. Organizers accuse Home Depot of enabling ICE raids by allowing federal agents to use its premises to target day laborers, a vulnerable population often subjected to aggressive immigration enforcement under the Trump administration.

Home Depot pushed back against these allegations in a statement, saying, “We aren’t notified that immigration enforcement activities are going to happen, and we aren’t involved in the operations. We aren’t coordinating with ICE or Border Patrol. We cannot legally interfere with federal enforcement agencies, including preventing them from coming into our stores and parking lots.”

Despite the company’s denials, federal immigration agents have repeatedly targeted Home Depot locations across Los Angeles since last summer, a period marked by heightened ICE activity and raids. This protest highlights the growing demand for corporate accountability amid the administration’s aggressive immigration tactics.

The activists’ action at Home Depot fits into a broader pattern of resistance pushing back against the normalization of ICE’s presence in everyday spaces and calling on businesses to take a stand against human rights abuses tied to immigration enforcement. This demonstration serves as a reminder that complicity can take many forms, and silence or inaction from corporations can enable authoritarian overreach.