ICE Rally At East Windsor Home Depot Thursday

EAST WINDSOR, NJ – A grassroots immigrant justice organization will be rallying outside Home Depot on Thursday to demand that the company stop collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The rally will take place on Thursday at 11 a.m. Community members from Princeton and nearby areas, as well as allies, will be joining the demonstration.

“The action follows reports of ICE raids and detentions of workers at Home Depot stores, including incidents in California and New York. Organizers are calling for corporate accountability and an end to complicity in family separations,” organizers Resistencia en Acción NJ said in a statement.

According to immigration activists, ICE raids across the country have terrorized immigrant communities. They have also put an intense focus on Home Depot, where many immigrant day laborers gather to seek work.

According to Pablo Alvarado, Co-Executive Director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), Home Depot might not have asked to be ground zero for the Trump Administration’s immigration raids, but the time has come for the company to take a stand.

“Home Depot must speak up. It has a moral duty to oppose the Trump administration's dangerous and lawless aggression at and near its stores. It should defend those whose hard work in construction, landscaping and do-it-yourself home improvement has made them central to Home Depot’s business model for decades. And Home Depot should support its employees, communities and shareholders who are being harmed by this chaos and violence,” Alvarado said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Home Depot told CNBC recently that while it does not allow laborers to sell their services on the premises, they are also not involved in ICE operations either.

The crackdown on immigrant laborers will exacerbate an already tenuous labor market in the U.S., reports say.

The Hispanic Construction Council estimates a nationwide construction workforce shortage of 500,000 workers.

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