Emma de Paz wakes up in 25 years every day, sells them to staff with soup, grilled chicken and tamales, and picks up their supplies for the day at Home Depot.
She joined other immigrant vendors that set off on the street below the tent, on a barbecue in a makeshift community, a shelter for Latino immigrants in Hollywood. Abelino Perez Alvarez and his wife sold orange juice, soda and water. Day workers scroll on their phones as they wait outside the parking lot in hopes of going to work.
Undated photos of Emma de Paz, a long-time supplier outside Hollywood home warehouses. De Paz was arrested by immigration agents on the morning of June 19, 2025.
(Carlos Barrera de Paz)
At around 7:30 a.m. Thursday, the shelter was broken. Dozens of armed vendors, many wearing masks, gathered in parking lots, blocking doors and surrounding workers and suppliers.
“Migración! Migración! ” People shouted-scattered.
They jumped into the car and ran along the street. They are hiding in shops and construction sites in the gardening area of the home warehouse, behind the soil bags. Alvarez's wife opened the door of a passing car and jumped in.
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“They come in from all directions,” Domingo Rueda Hernandez said. It’s frightening to be true that even as a resident of legal status, he ran around behind a bag of dirt in the parking lot with others.
“Agarraron Los Indios,” he said. He went on to explain that they had dark skinned people.
Over the past two weeks, the immigration raid in Los Angeles has attracted the attention of the world – protests, sporadic violence, peacetime deployments of the National Guard and the U.S. Marine Corps. But each review causes very personal trauma to the people who are dragged into it, tearing the family apart, inciting fear, taking away raising children and paying rent.
In a flash, all of this was on Thursday morning in Hollywood — near Home Depot, an economically stable hit plant for many working-class immigrants nationwide, and the Trump administration is zeroing in.
Elias Garcia showed a text message he received from his brother, a U.S. citizen, telling him that he was arrested by immigrant agents in Hollywood on Thursday, June 19, 2025.
(Brittny Mejia/Los Angeles Times)
After the sweep, witnesses and organizers who helped collect information about their families said the agents took over more than a dozen suppliers, postal workers and customers, including U.S. citizens.
In a statement Thursday afternoon, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin said the Customs and Border Protection “arrested 30 illegal foreigners in Hollywood, California, and nine illegal foreigners in San Fernando and Pacoma.” She said that during a day of operation, someone crashed into a law enforcement vehicle.
“During the operation, CBP agents were also beaten and verbally harassed,” McLaughlin said.
Eyewitnesses in Hollywood described a lot of people roaming in the carnival, quickly arresting people and leaving within about half an hour. No clear goal. However, there are unconfirmed reports that agents broke the window and grabbed someone.
“Here, we are a unified community, all the workers who come to this corner,” said Carlos Barrera de Paz, whose sister was taken away. “They took us there, and they took our community.”
Afterwards, family members in tears gathered together and broken glasses littered the parking lot. Usually, the stalls in Xixi Tast are the beginning of their sale of tamales, juices and coffee, for workers starting the day. The eggshells cracked and the orange peels scattered, tortillas left on the grill.
Silvia Menendez knew that Home Depot had always been a major target, so he came to the area early and sent out the Know Your Rights card. When the agent shows up, she starts shooting, people start shooting. She saw six agents driving one to the ground. The officer covered with assault rifles and face pulled the arrested into the van and truck. A masked agent starts filming her.
Food rack outside Home Depot in Hollywood.
(Brittny Mejia/Los Angeles Times)
“It's really disturbing and horrifying,” she said.
In one video, an armed border patrol agent screamed at the people who were recording “The person back to the sidewalk!”. Another agent told the audience that they could record, but “get them to work.” One person shouted they were “dead”.
Job Garcia, a 37-year-old PhD student at Claremont Graduate University, is taking orders for customers on Home Depot orders. He texted his brother Elias Garcia around 7:59 a.m.: “Hey, my Elias I Agaro Ice. It reads. I got the ice.
Elias said he was unable to talk to his brother to find out why he was arrested and booked in federal detention centers in downtown.
“Is it the race profile happening? Or is it that he is trying to help someone without a document? I don't know what will happen,” he said.
Veronica Perez,,,,, Orange juice has been on sale for seven years. Her mother is in her 50s and doesn't want to be named, and he works on the street. The family usually has two stalls, but in all the raids they decided to cut it to one.
Perez's mother heard a shout as immigrant agents flocked to hermigrate! “When the driver found everyone running, the driver stopped.
“Ayudanos, Ayudanos,” someone begged the driver, a stranger. Help us.
Perez's mother didn't wait. Perez said she opened the door and went in. Another female supplier couldn't jump in quickly enough and was caught by agents.
After the Border Patrol raid, many suppliers fled, leaving empty food stalls outside Home Depot.
(Silvia Menendez)
The couple ran in the opposite direction. Perez's mother escaped, but her father was arrested.
For many, their hearts remain shocked when they try to figure out what happened and where their family is.
Maegan Ortiz (known as Idepsca), the popular Decución Institute, the executive director of the nonprofit Instituto de Educación, hugged Perez tightly as she cried.
She collected Perez's father's name and date of birth and wrote it into a notebook where she was compiling the names of all the admitted people.
“Lo Siento. We will try our best to find him.
Perez pulled up her phone log, indicating that her first call to her mother (listed as “Madresita”) went out at 7:35 a.m., and Perez said she had no siblings, only one daughter and parents.
“They are all of me. This is the three of us,” Perez said. The family has been applying for U visas to certain crime victims after their mom became a victim of violent attacks.
“We have hope,” Perez said.
Many workers are registered in the daytime workers program in Idepsca. After sweeping to find them, picking up the car and talking to someone else who already felt ineffective, their family trickle flowed in.
“Lourdes were taken away too,” one told the other.
Emma de Paz, 58, was nowhere to be found when her brother arrived in her stands. Barrera de Paz, wearing blue jeans played in paint, worked as a handyman and rushed over from Long Beach after watching live videos of Tiktok who was arrested.
“If anything happens to her, it will be the responsibility of the authorities to take my sister,” he said.
Emma, who lost her husband last year after a heart transplant, has suffered from depression and faced several medical problems since then.
There are unconfirmed reports that immigration agents broke truck windows to grab someone’s heart. Hours after the raid, the car was still in the Home Depot parking lot.
(Brittny Mejia/Los Angeles Times)
“My sister needs her medicine. She has diabetes. She needs medicine to get her blood pressure and heart,” he said. By Thursday afternoon, they were able to put her medicine in a downtown detention center.
“I thought about Germany, Hitler and the persecution there, and I think that's just history,” he said.
The stall was empty and many people were angry.
“The mean people didn't even start describing what it is,” said Hugo Soto-Martinez, a Los Angeles City Councilman representing the area. “You'll hear what's happening in military dictatorship and totalitarian government. What's happening in the second largest city in the United States is-I have no words, just anger.”
Organizers are working to find legal representatives for some, but Soto-Martinez said the reaction should be a non-violent protest.
“Nonviolence, direct action breaks Jim Crow. It reduces segregation. We are at the national level. We know what is effective and we have to commit to this movement.”
Federal officials insist they focus primarily on criminals. Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino posted a video on his Instagram page this week, which included Assistant Patrol agent David Kim.
“Parking in an urban environment like Los Angeles County has brought us a lot of challenges. It’s not as easy as people think,” King said. “But there’s a narrative that people think it’s just because you’re at Home Depot, that’s that you’re a hard-working person, and that’s all you do.”
He noted that they picked up a Mexican national on Tuesday at a Cerritos Home Depot, where he was convicted of having sex with a minor under the age of 16.
In May, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller reportedly directed senior immigration and customs law enforcement officers to go beyond the target list and let agents arrest them at Home Depot or 7-Eleven convenience stores as they attempted to increase the number of daily arrests to 3,000.
Federal agents raided another Home Depot in San Fernando on Thursday. Maria Elena Solorio, the city's deputy mayor, said on an Instagram post that she was looking for answers and that only the names of the people who were taken away. She went to seek help with Los Angeles City Councilman Monica Rodriguez.
An immigration agent is walking outside of Home Depot.
(Silvia Menendez)
“We need to protect each other during these very terrible times,” Rodriguez said, urging people to report quick response lines to immigration agents and warn them to stay peaceful rather than intervene.
“This is a systematic attack on the most vulnerable members of the immigrant community,” said Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director of the National Day Labor Organization Network. “It's working poor people. That's the people they want to follow. These are the spaces they think they can do that. They don't even have legal parameters.”
Edwin Guevara said the people who were taken away were the ones who built Los Angeles. He runs a construction team and gets a call from one of his workers around 7:20 a.m. who was buying timber when the immigrant arrived to work in a hotel. He told the man to hide in the home depot.
“We have warehouses here, we have built this community, we have built society, we have built society, “There are no buildings in the United States, no houses in the United States, no restaurants in the way we have restaurants, shops for people to shop on the goal, these places wouldn't have money.” ”
