Emma de Paz woke up every morning for 25 years to make soup, roast chicken and tamales, and sold them at Home Depot at work where he picked up supplies for the day.
She joined other immigration vendors lined up on the side streets under the tents and above the grill in a makeshift community that was a shelter for Latinos immigrants in the Hollywood area. Abelino Perez Alvarez and his wife sold orange juice, soda and water. Day workers scrolled their phones while waiting outside the parking lot in hopes of getting a job.
An outdated photo of longtime vendor Emma de Pas outside Hollywood’s Home Depot. De Paz was arrested by an immigration agent on the morning of June 19, 2025.
(Carlos Barrera de Pas)
The shelter was crushed at about 7:30am on Thursday. Many of the mask’s armed agents converge in the parking lot, block gates, and surround lots that are usually lined with day-to-day workers and street vendors.
“Migración! Migración!” people cried – and scattered.
They jumped into the car and drove down the street. They were hidden behind shops and construction sites in the Home Depot Gardening section, and in the back of soil bags. Alvarez’s wife opened the door to a passing car and jumped in.
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“They came in all directions,” Domingo Ruda Hernandez said. The horror, even a resident with legal status, he ran behind a bag of dirt with others in the parking lot.
“Agaralon Ross Indios,” he said. They went on to explain that they had taken dark skinned people.
The last two weeks of immigrant raids in Los Angeles have attracted global attention due to protests, sporadic violence and peacetime deployments of the National Guard and the US Marines. However, each Roundup is causing very personal trauma to those dragged into people, tearing their families apart, incites fear, feeding their children, and taking away the means of paying rent.
In a flash, all this happened in Hollywood on Thursday morning. Nearby Home Depot is the lifeblood of economic stability for many working-class immigrants across the country, bringing the Trump administration to zero.
Elias Garcia shows the text he received from a brother, a US citizen, who informed him that he had been arrested by a Hollywood immigration agent on Thursday, June 19, 2025.
(Brittny Mejia/Los Angeles Times)
Witnesses and organizers who gathered information from their families after the sweep said the agents picked up more than a dozen vendors, Day workers and customers, including US citizens.
On Thursday afternoon, Homeland Security Advisor Tricia McLaughlin said the Director of Customs and Border Protection “arrested 30 illegal aliens in Hollywood, California, and nine illegal aliens in San Fernando and Pacoima.” She said that during the day’s operation someone plunged his vehicle into a law enforcement vehicle.
“CBP agents were also assaulted during surgery and verbally harassed,” McLaughlin said.
A Hollywood witness said agents incited many, arrested people quickly and left within about 30 minutes. There was no clear target. However, there have been unconfirmed reports that the agent is smashing the car window and grabbing someone.
“Here we are a unified community and all the workers that come to this corner,” said Carlos Barrera de Pas, whose sister was taken. “They took us and they took our community.”
The tear-in-the-mouth families gathered in broken glass scattered throughout the parking lot. The usual bustling stands selling tamale, juice and coffee for workers they start their day have been abandoned. The eggshells are cracked, scattered with orange peels, and the tortillas remain on the grill.
Knowing that Home Depot was a major target, Sylvia Menendez had come to the area early to offer a “know your rights” card. When the agent showed up, she started filming because people ran. She saw six agents tackle one person on the ground. Officers with attack rifles and face coverings dragged the arrested people into vans and trucks. One of the masked agents began filming her.
Food stand outside Home Depot in Hollywood.
(Brittny Mejia/Los Angeles Times)
“It was really unsettling and scary,” she said.
In one video, armed Border Patrol agents cried out to those recording “Back on the sidewalk and back!” Another agent told the audience they could record, but said, “Just let them work.” People cried out, “Die.”
Job Garcia, a 33-year-old doctoral student at Claremont College, had taken orders at Home Depot for clients. He texted his brother Elias Garcia about 7:59am. Ice got me.
Elias said he couldn’t speak to his brother to find out why he was arrested and booked to a federal detention facility downtown.
“Is it racial profiling that occurred, or was he trying to help his fellow undocumented people?
Veronica Perez sobbed along the St. Andrews location on the sidewalk outside Home Depot, where her father, Averino Perez Alvarez, 58, has been selling orange juice for seven years. Her mother, in her 50s who didn’t want to name, also worked in this way. The family usually has two positions, but in every attack they decide to paint it into one.
As immigration agents flocked to the area, Perez’s mother heard a cry of “immigrants!” and then ran towards the street. The driver pulled when he found everyone on the road.
“Ayudanos, ayudanos,” someone pleaded to the driver, a stranger. Please help us.
Perez’s mother didn’t wait. She opened the car door and entered. Another female vendor couldn’t jump fast enough and was grabbed by an agent, Perez said.
After Border Patrol agents carried out the assault, many vendors fled, leaving empty food outside Home Depot.
(Silvia Menendez)
The couple was running in the opposite direction. Perez’s mother ran away, but her father was arrested.
For many, their hearts were still slammed as they tried to sort out what had happened and where their families were.
Meghan Ortiz, executive director of the nonprofit, was popular in California, known as Idepsca, and hugged Perez when she cried.
She collected Perez’s father’s names and dates of birth and wrote them in a notebook where she edited the names of all those who filmed it.
“Rosient. We will do our best to find him,” Ortiz reassured Perez.
Perez pulled up the phone log. This indicated that the first call to the mother, listed as “Madrita” went out at 7:35am. Perez said he only had a brother, a daughter and parents.
“They’re all I have. That’s the three of us,” Perez said. The family had applied for a U visa, the type granted to a particular victim of crime after his mother became a victim of a violent attack.
“We have that hope,” Perez said.
Many of the workers were enrolled in the IDEPSCA Day Workers Program. Their family tricked them after searching for them, picking up the car and talking to others who already felt empty.
“Lourdes was taken too,” one person told another.
Emma de Pas, 58, was nowhere to be found when her brother arrived at her stands. Barelade Pass, who was wearing paint splatter blue jeans, worked as a handy man and rushed from Long Beach after watching a live video at Tiktok of arrest.
“If anything happens to her, it will be the responsibility of the authorities who took my sister along,” he said.
Emma, who lost her husband after a heart transplant last year, has been suffering from depression ever since and has faced several medical problems.
There have been unconfirmed reports that immigration agents were smashing the truck window and grabbing someone. The vehicle was still in the parking lot at Home Depot hours after the attack.
(Brittny Mejia/Los Angeles Times)
“My sister needs her medication. She has diabetes. She needs blood pressure and heart medication,” he said. By Thursday afternoon they were able to remove her medicine.
“I’m thinking about Germany, Hitler and the persecution there. I thought it was just history,” he said. Now it felt like history was being repeated.
The stands were empty, and many were furious.
“The sleazy thing is, I don’t even start explaining what this is,” said Hugo Soto Martinez, a member of the Los Angeles City Council, representing the area. “You’ve heard about what’s going on in military dictatorships and totalitarian governments. What happens here in the second largest city in America is that I have no words and I just have rage.”
While organizers are working to find legal representatives for some, Soto-Martinez said the response should be a non-violent protest.
“Non-violent, direct action defeated Jim Crow. It defeated apartheid. We are experiencing it at the national level. We know what works.
Federal officials claim that it focuses primarily on criminals. Border Patrol Sector Chief Greg Bovino posted a video on his Instagram page this week.
“Roving patrols in urban environments like Los Angeles County present a lot of challenges for us, and it’s not as easy as people think about it,” Kim said. “But just because you’re at Home Depot, there’s that story out there that you’re hardworking and people think that’s everything you’ve done.”
He noted that he went to Cerritos Home Depot to pick up Mexicans on Tuesday.
In May, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller reportedly instructed top immigrants and customs enforcement officers to go beyond their target list and arrested agents as they tried to raise daily arrests at Home Depot or 7-Eleven convenience stores to 3,000.
Federal agents stormed another Home Depot in San Fernando on Thursday. Maria Elena Solorio, the city’s vice-mayor, said in an Instagram post that she was looking for answers and only photographed those first names. She joined Los Angeles City Councilman Monica Rodriguez for help.
Immigration agents walk outside Home Depot.
(Silvia Menendez)
“We need to protect each other in these very scary times,” Rodriguez said. She urged people to report sightings of immigration agents to a prompt response line, warning them to remain peaceful, not interfering.
“This is a systematic attack on the most vulnerable members of the immigrant community,” said Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director of the National Day Laborer organizational network. “It’s the working poor people. That’s the people they’re chasing away. These are the spaces they feel they can do this. They don’t even have legal parameters.”
Edwin Guevara says the people filmed are those who build Los Angeles. He ran a construction crew and received a call from one of the workers around 7:20am. He told the man to hide in Home Depot.
“Here at Home Depot, we’re building this community, we’re building society into what it is. We’re building the economy where it exists,” Guevara said. “There’s no money in the shops, targets, those places where we shop, without us building buildings, without us building houses, without us building restaurants for people to eat.”
