Osvaldo Castro was one of just three day laborers lingering not far from a Home Depot in Santa Ana.

The scene on the morning of June 11 was a marked change from the dozens of men who usually wait along MacArthur Boulevard in search of work.

Castro, a U.S. citizen, said he recently returned from a law enforcement job in Tijuana and figured he could take advantage of the desolate scene and make a few bucks.

The other laborers, he said, were scared off by immigration raids happening regularly outside Southern California Home Depot stores.

“They just went around looking for people to snatch up,” Castro said of federal agents. “I’ve got nothing to hide. What are they going to do, pick me up here in Santa Ana and deport me to Costa Mesa?”

The 45-year-old was sitting on one of a handful of chairs lined up against a fence at the Harbor Business Center entrance when a Tesla Cybertruck pulled over. A woman asked Castro if he was interested in yard work around her property.

He hopped into his Toyota truck and followed her.

Why Home Depot

The deportations at Home Depot threaten to disrupt a decades-long relationship between homeowners, contractors and the laborers they hire for remodeling or landscaping projects.

After picking up their building materials at Home Depot, contractors scoop up laborers gathered along the entrances to the shopping center or in back parking lots. While the retailer has a no solicitation policy, the laborers are permitted to loiter off store property.

Immigration sweeps at Home Depot stores in Santa Ana and Paramount were two of several reported in Southern California in the past week. The raids led to protests, some of which turned violent in downtown Los Angeles. Law enforcement officers used flash-bang stun grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse larger crowds.

Some laborers were detained or deported to Mexico, but others — like Castro — are digging in their heels.

A Home Depot spokesman declined to speculate on why the home improvement chain has been targeted, or if the chain requested help cleaning up its day laborer image. Its billionaire founder, the late Bernie Marcus, was a supporter of President Donald Trump.

“We weren’t notified that this was going to happen, and we weren’t involved in the operations,” the spokesman said. He directed questions about why his chain is being targeted to Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Department of Homeland Security.

ICE did not respond to questions about its Home Depot sweeps, which started in early June in Southern California. Federal agents first swept through downtown Los Angeles’ Fashion District before spreading to Paramount and other cities.

Last month, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who grew up in Santa Monica, challenged ICE to make a minimum of 3,000 arrests per day in order to meet Trump’s deportment quotas. Miller told ICE officials to aim their sweeps at retail chains such as Home Depot and 7-Eleven stores, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“Why are they targeting Home Depots? They consider that low-hanging fruit, perhaps, because there is less protection for them (day laborers) in parking lots,” said Sandra De Anda, coordinator for the Orange County Rapid Response Network, a mutual aid group that keeps watch for ICE activity in local communities.

“They’re basically scaring people (undocumented workers) into signing over their rights in order to meet these deportation quotas,” De Anda said.

In recent days, ICE reportedly detained day laborers in the parking lots of Home Depot stores in Los Angeles and Orange counties, including:

6400 Alondra Blvd., Paramount

1750 E. Edinger Ave, Santa Ana

1675 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles

3040 Slauson Ave, Huntington Park

3500 W. MacArthur Blvd., Santa Ana

2300 Harbor Blvd., Costa Mesa

In one case in April, federal agents targeted the Home Depot on South Towne Avenue in Pomona.

Deporting laborers

Targeting day laborers is a legacy issue from conservative-led community efforts to ban day laborers from soliciting work on city streets in Southern California, explained Carlos Perea, executive director of the Harbor Institute for Immigrant & Economic Justice.

In the early 2000s — and in some cases earlier — ordinances were passed in Costa Mesa, Glendale, Lake Forest, Orange and Redondo Beach. They were challenged in federal court and dropped or ruled unconstitutional.

“Now that they (conservatives) have the power of the federal government, they can bypass local jurisdictions and target migrant workers,” Perea said. “If you create enough fear where they can’t the work, the strategy of attrition is to wear down the enemy.”

Backers of such initiatives included The Minuteman Project, an activist group founded in 2004 to stop illegal immigration across the southern border, and the Tea Party, a political movement dating to 2009 that advocates for fiscal conservatism.

“The Home Depot raids are symbolic,” Perea said. “It’s an accessibility spot for day laborers … especially in Orange County, and Southern California, where they were targeted with anti-day laborer ordinances since the early 2000s.”

Early Monday, Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento got text messages from a constituent who said she saw vans from ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol driving around the parking lot of the Home Depot on Edinger Avenue in Santa Ana.

“She worried because she saw people scattering. I went there as a response to see if anybody’s rights were being violated and if anyone needed assistance,” he said.

Sarmiento said he was told a man had been detained and efforts were being made to locate him. “There’s a temporary holding space here in Santa Ana, but normally they take them to a permanent facility in Adelanto,” Sarmiento said. “We’re trying to identify … where he is.”

Some of the fiercest clashes between police and community members protesting federal immigration agents took place on Alondra Boulevard outside the Home Depot in Paramount, a largely Latino community.

As of June 11, roughly a dozen Army National Guard troops remained, huddled around four-wheeled military Humvees, at a business park across the street from the Home Depot.

“I’m scared,” said Jose Hernandez, a resident of nearby Lynwood, sitting defiantly June 11 on a lawn chair in the parking lot at the Paramount Home Depot.

Hernandez leaned signs against trees, advertising his availability to do handyman work, like paint, lay concrete or fix a leaky roof. He said he became a U.S. citizen after immigrating more than 40 years ago as part of a wave of El Salvadoran immigrants fleeing civil war in the Central American country.

“This is not necessary,” the 70-year-old said, showing photos on his phone of Border Patrol agents driving away with undocumented workers in vans.

A CBP spokesman did not return messages seeking comment.

Earlier on in Santa Ana, Jose Tinoco sat against a light pole in the parking lot of the Home Depot along Edinger Avenue.

Snacking on a burrito he bought from a lady selling food out of her Toyota Sienna, the 40-year-old said he would work for just about anything. Sometimes he picks up odd jobs gardening or cleaning at nearby motels. In return, he gets a free room for the night.

“I came here today to see if anyone needs me to work,” he said. “I’m not afraid,” he said.