loading . . . PHOENIX – As the sun set over the desert horizon, community organizers handed out small electric candles to a crowd about 100-strong marching west on Thomas Road in central Phoenix. They were part of a vigil marching on Saturday to protest raids conducted by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Home Depot parking lots.
The light illuminated the crowd as it proceeded toward Central Avenue, a five-mile trip from the Home Depot parking lot to the ICE Phoenix Field Office building.
Demonstrators carried black signs reading “ICE IS KILLING US” in stark-white letters, each bearing the name and photo of a different community member who the protesters said died in altercations with ICE, or while in ICE custody. This year has seen the most deaths in ICE custody since 2005.
Several other signs memorialized Carlos Roberto Montoya Valdés, a 52-year-old Guatemalan immigrant, who died in August after he was struck and killed by a vehicle on the 210 Freeway in California while fleeing an immigration raid at a Home Depot in Monrovia.
“He came to this country to seek a better life,” said Erika Andiloa, political director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and leader of the event. “He was seeking work, and he returned to Guatemala dead.”
A protest sign condemning ICE raids at Home Depot sits along Thomas Road on Oct. 28, 2025, in Phoenix. (Photo by Lorenzo Gomez/Cronkite News)
Organizers charge that Valdés’ death shows the unintended consequences of an immigration campaign to target people looking for work outside Home Depot locations across the country.
“There was no statement from Home Depot,” Andiola said. “They said nothing, they have allowed ICE to continue to raid their stores and their parking lots, so we’re here asking people to join us.”
This controversy is playing out against the backdrop of ICE raids and National Guard deployments to cities with Democratic leadership around the nation. The march and procession in Phoenix was just one of many nationwide demonstrations part of the Disappeared in America Weekend of Action that coincided with Día de los Muertos.
This also follows a recent ICE-involved shooting in Phoenix in which Jose Garcia-Sorto, a Honduran immigrant, was injured when an officer fired at his vehicle after he attempted to flee an ICE traffic stop on Oct. 29.
**‘We sing to grieve our losses’**
Beginning near the Home Depot parking lot on the corner of Thomas Road and 44th Street around 4:30 p.m., protesters’ chants, including “si, se puede” and “immigrant rights are human rights,” spurred the crowd as they marched through the daylight. As night settled in, the chants gave way to song.
Kai Newkirk, activist and founder of For All, took up a microphone from his place in the middle of the moving crowd and began the first verse to “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round” with a warm timbre, his voice amplified by a carried speaker toward the front of the march.
As his voice rang out softly but full-bodied, the marchers fell quiet.
Newkirk thought about his father while he marched. His father is a carpenter who has worked in construction for years. Newkirk grew up seeing the mistreatment of laborers, he said.
“This mass deportation project, it is proven beyond a doubt at this point, that it cannot be carried out, certainly by this administration and ICE, without violating basic human rights and civil rights,” he said.
It’s not just undocumented immigrants who are getting persecuted, he said, but people with green cards, permanent residence, and veterans.
“We’re calling on them not to be bystanders and not to be complicit in the abuses and violations that ICE and Trump are carrying out, but to actually exercise their power to say, this is our private property,” he said. “They’re not welcome here.”
Before his finale, Newkirk asked his fellow marchers to hold their small, artificially flickering candles and join him as he began to harmonize:
_“Oh, this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.”_
“We sing to bring us together,” Newkirk said. “We sing to grieve our losses and to gain strength in the face of our fears.”
**‘Haven’t gone far enough’**
The march arrived at its destination, the ICE Phoenix Field Office, about three hours later, and concluded with a procession in the spirit of Día de los Muertos, which was the following day.
Saturday’s procession came after a press conference outside of a Phoenix Home Depot on Oct. 28, led by Andiloa and other organizers. They brought large signs and loud voices to shine a light on a controversy sweeping the country.
George Lane, a spokesperson for Home Depot, denied the company’s role in any ICE raids.
“We aren’t notified that immigration enforcement activities are going to happen,” Lane wrote in a statement to Cronkite News. “And we aren’t involved in the operations. We’re required to follow all federal and local rules and regulations in every market where we operate.”
During the 2024 election cycle, Home Depot donated $2,028,000 to candidates through a political action committee, according to opensecrets.org. Republicans received 58% of those funds, including U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Tucson, who received $12,500, the second most of any candidate.
Two men look for work in a Home Depot parking lot on Oct. 28, 2025, in Phoenix. In August, Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, a 52-year-old Guatemalan man seeking work near a Home Depot, was hit and killed by a car while fleeing from an ICE raid in California. (Photo by Lorenzo Gomez/Cronkite News)
In a 2024 interview with NPR, Ciscomani, a naturalized citizen from Mexico, supported President Donald Trump on his efforts to secure the border through Executive Order.
On Sunday, Trump said in an interview with 60 Minutes that ICE raids will not end anytime soon.
“Haven’t gone far enough,” the president said, repeating that his goal is to remove criminals.
Ciscomani said during the NPR interview that immigration has become a crisis that impacts the people in his district throughout their daily lives.
“Issues like street releases of migrants weren’t something that kept people up at night a few years ago,” Ciscomani said. “Now, if you talk to county officials, that is the issue. And having funding for that and making sure that we don’t have 1000 releases a day is what keeps them up.”
**Low-hanging fruit**
Tensions between ICE and Phoenix residents have grown in recent weeks. Jose Garcia-Soto was hospitalized and later discharged on Oct. 29 after being shot by an ICE agent on Interstate 17, headed Northbound near Dove Valley Road. According to ICE spokesperson Fernando Burgos-Ortiz, Garcia-Soto was evading arrest.
“These are the unfortunate consequences when misinformation flows freely, and illegal aliens are urged to resist arrest even though they know they are residing illegally in this country,” Burgos-Ortiz said in a statement to Cronkite News. “ICE remains undeterred in carrying out its congressionally mandated mission to uphold the nation’s immigration laws.”
ICE agents aren’t trained for the street confrontations they find themselves in routinely under President Trump’s administration, according to a federal law enforcement officer who works for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
It’s much easier, the agent added, for ICE agents to arrest what he characterized as low-hanging fruit instead of building cases against organized criminals who are involved in large-scale drug dealing or human trafficking.
“At the beginning of the Trump administration, people were getting fired left and right. There’s a lot of pressure on the directors and the officers to meet those numbers,” said the agent, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution. “If you just take the ‘war on drugs’ and you flip it into the war on migrants, this is the equivalent of going after corner boys.”
They are not going after quality arrests; they are going after whoever is easiest to get, he added. It’s like meeting a quota instead of thorough investigations.
“It’s just easier to go after them than to actually go into, let’s say, like the projects or, you know, a low-income area and try and root out actual gangs,” he said. “It’s not something that the feds are well-versed in.”
Compounding the problem, the officer said, is that the standard for hiring has been lowered and that the new crop of agents does not have the experience for more complex investigations.
“They’re taking anybody and everybody,” he said, including people who have been kicked out of local law enforcement. “They’re not, they’re not used to going into neighborhoods and working the street. You know, so they’ve had the numbers where they can get them.”
The protestors have rebuked Home Depot for allowing ICE operations to continue on its property, according to the National Immigration Law Center. ICE agents can only enter private property if they provide a judicial warrant, and critics pointed out that on June 19, the World Series Champion Los Angeles Dodgers denied ICE agents access to its parking lots when looking to conduct a raid at a game.
Although not all parking lots are considered private property, according to The Home Depot’s Privacy and Security Center, the company uses security cameras in parking lots to prevent theft, implying it owns the spaces.
“Our goal is for the commercial entities in the United States to actually stand up,” Salvador Reza, 74, an immigrant rights activist and author, said Tuesday, Oct. 28. “Those corporations benefit from our dollars.”
**Prepared, not alarmed**
Former Arizona Democratic Chair Raquel Terán now works with Proyecto Progresso in Arizona to spread awareness about ICE arrests to ensure people know their rights and where to find help when a situation arises.
Salvador Reyes speaks at a news conference on Oct. 28, 2025, in response to ICE raids at Home Depot in Phoenix. (Photo by Lorenzo Gomez/Cronkite News)
“We have been working to ensure that our people in our communities know their rights,” Teran said Oct. 28. “We want to make sure our communities are prepared and not alarmed, because we’re not seeing the escalation of abuse like we’re seeing in Los Angeles and Chicago and other places. That doesn’t mean enforcement is not happening here in Arizona.”
Five miles later, as the marching crowd approached its destination, Andiloa took up the microphone and read off each name on the black signs, prompting the marchers to respond “presente” loud enough for those detainees held within the ICE Phoenix Field Office to hear.
Reza thanked the crowd for caring about the community and day laborers, and spoke about what he sees as the next steps for this movement.
“This is just the beginning, we are going to continue on,” Reza said. “Today, there were about 100 people walking; in the future, there are going to be thousands and thousands.”
The ICE Phoenix Field Office continues to hold people arrested and detained off the street despite 30 years of several organizations arriving on-site to protest, Andiloa said before she encouraged the marchers present to push other communities in Phoenix and around the state to join in the call for a change in policy.
“Don’t take for granted the conversations that you can have,” Andiloa said. “Let them know what happened here today or the stories that you heard and invite them to join us, so that next time we’re double or triple.”
She then invited the crowd to construct the ofrenda.
The marchers went up to the fence to set down their signs and photos in a makeshift altar, and place their “little light” candles atop a table in front, each one shedding light on the traditional flores de cempasúchil on the table, and on the memory of those killed.
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# ICE agents find ‘the numbers where they can get them’: DHS agent questions, protesters condemn controversial Home Depot raids
by Ryan Myers and Anyon Fak-McDaniels, Cronkite News
November 6, 2025
HTML Plain Text
<h1>ICE agents find ‘the numbers where they can get them’: DHS agent questions, protesters condemn controversial Home Depot raids</h1> <p class="byline">by Ryan Myers and Anyon Fak-McDaniels, Cronkite News <br />November 6, 2025</p> <p>PHOENIX – As the sun set over the desert horizon, community organizers handed out small electric candles to a crowd about 100-strong marching west on Thomas Road in central Phoenix. They were part of a vigil marching on Saturday to protest raids conducted by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Home Depot parking lots.</p> <p>The light illuminated the crowd as it proceeded toward Central Avenue, a five-mile trip from the Home Depot parking lot to the ICE Phoenix Field Office building.</p> <p>Demonstrators carried black signs reading “ICE IS KILLING US” in stark-white letters, each bearing the name and photo of a different community member who the protesters said <a href="https://www.aila.org/library/deaths-at-adult-detention-centers">died in altercations with ICE, or while in ICE custody.</a> This year has seen the most deaths in ICE custody since <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/10/23/nx-s1-5538090/ice-detention-custody-immigration-arrest-enforcement-dhs-trump">2005</a>. </p> <p>Several other signs memorialized Carlos Roberto Montoya Valdés, a 52-year-old Guatemalan immigrant, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/15/us/immigration-raid-man-freeway-death-hnk">who died</a> in August after he was struck and killed by a vehicle on the 210 Freeway in California while fleeing an immigration raid at a Home Depot in Monrovia.</p> <p>“He came to this country to seek a better life,” said Erika Andiloa, political director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and leader of the event. “He was seeking work, and he returned to Guatemala dead.” </p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/102825_GOMEZ_HOMEDEPOT_3-1024x683.jpg" alt="A protest sign condemning ICE raids at Home Depot sits along Thomas Road." class="wp-image-97745" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A protest sign condemning ICE raids at Home Depot sits along Thomas Road on Oct. 28, 2025, in Phoenix. (Photo by Lorenzo Gomez/Cronkite News)</figcaption></figure> <p>Organizers charge that Valdés’ death shows the unintended consequences of an immigration campaign to target people looking for work outside Home Depot locations across the country. </p> <p>“There was no statement from Home Depot,” Andiola said. “They said nothing, they have allowed ICE to continue to raid their stores and their parking lots, so we’re here asking people to join us.”</p> <p>This controversy is playing out against the backdrop of ICE raids and <a href="https://capitalbnews.org/trump-national-guard-city-updates/">National Guard deployments</a> to cities with Democratic leadership around the nation. The march and procession in Phoenix was just one of many nationwide demonstrations part of the <a href="https://www.citizen.org/news/this-weekend-disappeared-in-america-actions-demand-justice-and-due-process-for-immigrant-families/">Disappeared in America Weekend of Action</a> that coincided with Día de los Muertos.</p> <p>This also follows a recent ICE-involved shooting in Phoenix in which Jose Garcia-Sorto, a Honduran immigrant, was injured when an officer fired at his vehicle after he attempted to flee an ICE traffic stop on Oct. 29.</p> <p><strong>‘We sing to grieve our losses’</strong></p> <p>Beginning near the Home Depot parking lot on the corner of Thomas Road and 44th Street around 4:30 p.m., protesters’ chants, including “si, se puede” and “immigrant rights are human rights,” spurred the crowd as they marched through the daylight. As night settled in, the chants gave way to song. </p> <p>Kai Newkirk, activist and founder of For All, took up a microphone from his place in the middle of the moving crowd and began the first verse to “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round” with a warm timbre, his voice amplified by a carried speaker toward the front of the march.</p> <p>As his voice rang out softly but full-bodied, the marchers fell quiet.</p> <p>Newkirk thought about his father while he marched. His father is a carpenter who has worked in construction for years. Newkirk grew up seeing the mistreatment of laborers, he said. </p> <p>"This mass deportation project, it is proven beyond a doubt at this point, that it cannot be carried out, certainly by this administration and ICE, without violating basic human rights and civil rights,” he said.</p> <p>It’s not just undocumented immigrants who are getting persecuted, he said, but people with green cards, permanent residence, and veterans. </p> <p>“We're calling on them not to be bystanders and not to be complicit in the abuses and violations that ICE and Trump are carrying out, but to actually exercise their power to say, this is our private property,” he said. “They're not welcome here.” </p> <p>Before his finale, Newkirk asked his fellow marchers to hold their small, artificially flickering candles and join him as he began to harmonize:</p> <p><em>“Oh, this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.”</em></p> <p>“We sing to bring us together,” Newkirk said. “We sing to grieve our losses and to gain strength in the face of our fears.”</p> <p><strong>‘Haven’t gone far enough’</strong></p> <p>The march arrived at its destination, the ICE Phoenix Field Office, about three hours later, and concluded with a procession in the spirit of Día de los Muertos, which was the following day.</p> <p>Saturday’s procession came after a press conference outside of a Phoenix Home Depot on Oct. 28, led by Andiloa and other organizers. They brought large signs and loud voices to shine a light on a controversy sweeping the country.</p> <p>George Lane, a spokesperson for Home Depot, denied the company’s role in any ICE raids. </p> <p>“We aren’t notified that immigration enforcement activities are going to happen,” Lane wrote in a statement to Cronkite News. “And we aren’t involved in the operations. We’re required to follow all federal and local rules and regulations in every market where we operate.” </p> <p>During the 2024 election cycle, Home Depot donated $2,028,000 to candidates through a political action committee, according to opensecrets.org. Republicans received 58% of those funds, including U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Tucson, who received $12,500, the second most of any candidate. </p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/102825_GOMEZ_HOMEDEPOT_4-1024x683.jpg" alt="Two men look for work in a Home Depot parking lot on Oct. 28, 2025, in Phoenix. " class="wp-image-97747" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Two men look for work in a Home Depot parking lot on Oct. 28, 2025, in Phoenix. In August, Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, a 52-year-old Guatemalan man seeking work near a Home Depot, was hit and killed by a car while fleeing from an ICE raid in California. (Photo by Lorenzo Gomez/Cronkite News)</figcaption></figure> <p>In a 2024 interview with NPR, Ciscomani, a naturalized citizen from Mexico, supported President Donald Trump on his efforts to secure the border through Executive Order. </p> <p>On Sunday, Trump said in an interview with 60 Minutes that ICE raids will not end anytime soon. </p> <p>“Haven’t gone far enough,” the president said, repeating that his goal is to remove criminals. </p> <p>Ciscomani said during the NPR interview that immigration has become a crisis that impacts the people in his district throughout their daily lives.</p> <p>“Issues like street releases of migrants weren't something that kept people up at night a few years ago,” Ciscomani said. “Now, if you talk to county officials, that is the issue. And having funding for that and making sure that we don't have 1000 releases a day is what keeps them up.”</p> <p><strong>Low-hanging fruit</strong></p> <p>Tensions between ICE and Phoenix residents have grown in recent weeks. Jose Garcia-Soto was hospitalized and later discharged on Oct. 29 after being shot by an ICE agent on Interstate 17, headed Northbound near Dove Valley Road. According to ICE spokesperson Fernando Burgos-Ortiz, Garcia-Soto was evading arrest. </p> <p>“These are the unfortunate consequences when misinformation flows freely, and illegal aliens are urged to resist arrest even though they know they are residing illegally in this country,” Burgos-Ortiz said in a statement to Cronkite News. “ICE remains undeterred in carrying out its congressionally mandated mission to uphold the nation’s immigration laws.”</p> <p>ICE agents aren’t trained for the street confrontations they find themselves in routinely under President Trump’s administration, according to a federal law enforcement officer who works for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. </p> <p>It's much easier, the agent added, for ICE agents to arrest what he characterized as low-hanging fruit instead of building cases against organized criminals who are involved in large-scale drug dealing or human trafficking. </p> <p>“At the beginning of the Trump administration, people were getting fired left and right. There’s a lot of pressure on the directors and the officers to meet those numbers,” said the agent, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution. “If you just take the ‘war on drugs’ and you flip it into the war on migrants, this is the equivalent of going after corner boys.” </p> <p>They are not going after quality arrests; they are going after whoever is easiest to get, he added. It’s like meeting a quota instead of thorough investigations. </p> <p>"It's just easier to go after them than to actually go into, let's say, like the projects or, you know, a low-income area and try and root out actual gangs,” he said. “It's not something that the feds are well-versed in.”</p> <p>Compounding the problem, the officer said, is that the standard for hiring has been lowered and that the new crop of agents does not have the experience for more complex investigations. </p> <p>“They're taking anybody and everybody,” he said, including people who have been kicked out of local law enforcement. “They're not, they're not used to going into neighborhoods and working the street. You know, so they've had the numbers where they can get them.”</p> <p>The protestors have rebuked Home Depot for allowing ICE operations to continue on its property, according to the National Immigration Law Center. ICE agents can only enter private property if they provide a judicial warrant, and critics pointed out that on June 19, the World Series Champion Los Angeles Dodgers denied ICE agents access to its parking lots when looking to conduct a raid at a game. </p> <p>Although not all parking lots are considered private property, according to The Home Depot’s <a href="https://www.homedepot.com/privacy/privacy-and-security-statement">Privacy and Security Center</a>, the company uses security cameras in parking lots to prevent theft, implying it owns the spaces. </p> <p>“Our goal is for the commercial entities in the United States to actually stand up,” Salvador Reza, 74, an immigrant rights activist and author, said Tuesday, Oct. 28. “Those corporations benefit from our dollars.” </p> <p><strong>Prepared, not alarmed</strong></p> <p>Former Arizona Democratic Chair Raquel Terán now works with Proyecto Progresso in Arizona to spread awareness about ICE arrests to ensure people know their rights and where to find help when a situation arises. </p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/102825_GOMEZ_HOMEDEPOT_2-1024x683.jpg" alt="Salvador Reyes speaks at a news conference on Oct. 28, 2025, in response to ICE raids at Home Depot in Phoenix. " class="wp-image-97746" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Salvador Reyes speaks at a news conference on Oct. 28, 2025, in response to ICE raids at Home Depot in Phoenix. (Photo by Lorenzo Gomez/Cronkite News)</figcaption></figure> <p>“We have been working to ensure that our people in our communities know their rights,” Teran said Oct. 28. “We want to make sure our communities are prepared and not alarmed, because we’re not seeing the escalation of abuse like we’re seeing in Los Angeles and Chicago and other places. That doesn’t mean enforcement is not happening here in Arizona.”</p> <p>Five miles later, as the marching crowd approached its destination, Andiloa took up the microphone and read off each name on the black signs, prompting the marchers to respond “presente” loud enough for those detainees held within the ICE Phoenix Field Office to hear.</p> <p>Reza thanked the crowd for caring about the community and day laborers, and spoke about what he sees as the next steps for this movement.</p> <p>“This is just the beginning, we are going to continue on,” Reza said. “Today, there were about 100 people walking; in the future, there are going to be thousands and thousands.”</p> <p>The ICE Phoenix Field Office continues to hold people arrested and detained off the street despite 30 years of several organizations arriving on-site to protest, Andiloa said before she encouraged the marchers present to push other communities in Phoenix and around the state to join in the call for a change in policy.</p> <p>“Don’t take for granted the conversations that you can have,” Andiloa said. “Let them know what happened here today or the stories that you heard and invite them to join us, so that next time we’re double or triple.”</p> <p>She then invited the crowd to construct the ofrenda.</p> <p>The marchers went up to the fence to set down their signs and photos in a makeshift altar, and place their “little light” candles atop a table in front, each one shedding light on the traditional flores de cempasúchil on the table, and on the memory of those killed.</p> <p>This <a target="_blank" href="https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2025/11/06/controversial-home-depot-raids/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org">Cronkite News</a> and is republished here under a <a target="_blank" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.</p> <img id="republication-tracker-tool-source" src="https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/?republication-pixel=true&post=97739" style="width:1px;height:1px;"><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: "https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2025/11/06/controversial-home-depot-raids/", urlref: window.location.href }); } } </script> <script id="parsely-cfg" src="//cdn.parsely.com/keys/cronkitenews.azpbs.org/p.js"></script>
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**Article Content:** ICE agents find ‘the numbers where they can get them’: DHS agent questions, protesters condemn controversial Home Depot raids Ryan Myers and Anyon Fak-McDaniels, Cronkite News November 6, 2025 PHOENIX – As the sun set over the desert horizon, community organizers handed out small electric candles to a crowd about 100-strong marching west on Thomas Road in central Phoenix. They were part of a vigil marching on Saturday to protest raids conducted by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Home Depot parking lots. The light illuminated the crowd as it proceeded toward Central Avenue, a five-mile trip from the Home Depot parking lot to the ICE Phoenix Field Office building. Demonstrators carried black signs reading “ICE IS KILLING US” in stark-white letters, each bearing the name and photo of a different community member who the protesters said died in altercations with ICE, or while in ICE custody. This year has seen the most deaths in ICE custody since 2005. Several other signs memorialized Carlos Roberto Montoya Valdés, a 52-year-old Guatemalan immigrant, who died in August after he was struck and killed by a vehicle on the 210 Freeway in California while fleeing an immigration raid at a Home Depot in Monrovia. “He came to this country to seek a better life,” said Erika Andiloa, political director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and leader of the event. “He was seeking work, and he returned to Guatemala dead.” Organizers charge that Valdés’ death shows the unintended consequences of an immigration campaign to target people looking for work outside Home Depot locations across the country. “There was no statement from Home Depot,” Andiola said. “They said nothing, they have allowed ICE to continue to raid their stores and their parking lots, so we’re here asking people to join us.” This controversy is playing out against the backdrop of ICE raids and National Guard deployments to cities with Democratic leadership around the nation. The march and procession in Phoenix was just one of many nationwide demonstrations part of the Disappeared in America Weekend of Action that coincided with Día de los Muertos. This also follows a recent ICE-involved shooting in Phoenix in which Jose Garcia-Sorto, a Honduran immigrant, was injured when an officer fired at his vehicle after he attempted to flee an ICE traffic stop on Oct. 29. ‘We sing to grieve our losses’ Beginning near the Home Depot parking lot on the corner of Thomas Road and 44th Street around 4:30 p.m., protesters’ chants, including “si, se puede” and “immigrant rights are human rights,” spurred the crowd as they marched through the daylight. As night settled in, the chants gave way to song. Kai Newkirk, activist and founder of For All, took up a microphone from his place in the middle of the moving crowd and began the first verse to “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round” with a warm timbre, his voice amplified by a carried speaker toward the front of the march. As his voice rang out softly but full-bodied, the marchers fell quiet. Newkirk thought about his father while he marched. His father is a carpenter who has worked in construction for years. Newkirk grew up seeing the mistreatment of laborers, he said. "This mass deportation project, it is proven beyond a doubt at this point, that it cannot be carried out, certainly by this administration and ICE, without violating basic human rights and civil rights,” he said. It’s not just undocumented immigrants who are getting persecuted, he said, but people with green cards, permanent residence, and veterans. “We're calling on them not to be bystanders and not to be complicit in the abuses and violations that ICE and Trump are carrying out, but to actually exercise their power to say, this is our private property,” he said. “They're not welcome here.” Before his finale, Newkirk asked his fellow marchers to hold their small, artificially flickering candles and join him as he began to harmonize: “Oh, this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.” “We sing to bring us together,” Newkirk said. “We sing to grieve our losses and to gain strength in the face of our fears.” ‘Haven’t gone far enough’ The march arrived at its destination, the ICE Phoenix Field Office, about three hours later, and concluded with a procession in the spirit of Día de los Muertos, which was the following day. Saturday’s procession came after a press conference outside of a Phoenix Home Depot on Oct. 28, led by Andiloa and other organizers. They brought large signs and loud voices to shine a light on a controversy sweeping the country. George Lane, a spokesperson for Home Depot, denied the company’s role in any ICE raids. “We aren’t notified that immigration enforcement activities are going to happen,” Lane wrote in a statement to Cronkite News. “And we aren’t involved in the operations. We’re required to follow all federal and local rules and regulations in every market where we operate.” During the 2024 election cycle, Home Depot donated $2,028,000 to candidates through a political action committee, according to opensecrets.org. Republicans received 58% of those funds, including U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Tucson, who received $12,500, the second most of any candidate. In a 2024 interview with NPR, Ciscomani, a naturalized citizen from Mexico, supported President Donald Trump on his efforts to secure the border through Executive Order. On Sunday, Trump said in an interview with 60 Minutes that ICE raids will not end anytime soon. “Haven’t gone far enough,” the president said, repeating that his goal is to remove criminals. Ciscomani said during the NPR interview that immigration has become a crisis that impacts the people in his district throughout their daily lives. “Issues like street releases of migrants weren't something that kept people up at night a few years ago,” Ciscomani said. “Now, if you talk to county officials, that is the issue. And having funding for that and making sure that we don't have 1000 releases a day is what keeps them up.” Low-hanging fruit Tensions between ICE and Phoenix residents have grown in recent weeks. Jose Garcia-Soto was hospitalized and later discharged on Oct. 29 after being shot by an ICE agent on Interstate 17, headed Northbound near Dove Valley Road. According to ICE spokesperson Fernando Burgos-Ortiz, Garcia-Soto was evading arrest. “These are the unfortunate consequences when misinformation flows freely, and illegal aliens are urged to resist arrest even though they know they are residing illegally in this country,” Burgos-Ortiz said in a statement to Cronkite News. “ICE remains undeterred in carrying out its congressionally mandated mission to uphold the nation’s immigration laws.” ICE agents aren’t trained for the street confrontations they find themselves in routinely under President Trump’s administration, according to a federal law enforcement officer who works for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It's much easier, the agent added, for ICE agents to arrest what he characterized as low-hanging fruit instead of building cases against organized criminals who are involved in large-scale drug dealing or human trafficking. “At the beginning of the Trump administration, people were getting fired left and right. There’s a lot of pressure on the directors and the officers to meet those numbers,” said the agent, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution. “If you just take the ‘war on drugs’ and you flip it into the war on migrants, this is the equivalent of going after corner boys.” They are not going after quality arrests; they are going after whoever is easiest to get, he added. It’s like meeting a quota instead of thorough investigations. "It's just easier to go after them than to actually go into, let's say, like the projects or, you know, a low-income area and try and root out actual gangs,” he said. “It's not something that the feds are well-versed in.” Compounding the problem, the officer said, is that the standard for hiring has been lowered and that the new crop of agents does not have the experience for more complex investigations. “They're taking anybody and everybody,” he said, including people who have been kicked out of local law enforcement. “They're not, they're not used to going into neighborhoods and working the street. You know, so they've had the numbers where they can get them.” The protestors have rebuked Home Depot for allowing ICE operations to continue on its property, according to the National Immigration Law Center. ICE agents can only enter private property if they provide a judicial warrant, and critics pointed out that on June 19, the World Series Champion Los Angeles Dodgers denied ICE agents access to its parking lots when looking to conduct a raid at a game. Although not all parking lots are considered private property, according to The Home Depot’s Privacy and Security Center, the company uses security cameras in parking lots to prevent theft, implying it owns the spaces. “Our goal is for the commercial entities in the United States to actually stand up,” Salvador Reza, 74, an immigrant rights activist and author, said Tuesday, Oct. 28. “Those corporations benefit from our dollars.” Prepared, not alarmed Former Arizona Democratic Chair Raquel Terán now works with Proyecto Progresso in Arizona to spread awareness about ICE arrests to ensure people know their rights and where to find help when a situation arises. “We have been working to ensure that our people in our communities know their rights,” Teran said Oct. 28. “We want to make sure our communities are prepared and not alarmed, because we’re not seeing the escalation of abuse like we’re seeing in Los Angeles and Chicago and other places. That doesn’t mean enforcement is not happening here in Arizona.” Five miles later, as the marching crowd approached its destination, Andiloa took up the microphone and read off each name on the black signs, prompting the marchers to respond “presente” loud enough for those detainees held within the ICE Phoenix Field Office to hear. Reza thanked the crowd for caring about the community and day laborers, and spoke about what he sees as the next steps for this movement. “This is just the beginning, we are going to continue on,” Reza said. “Today, there were about 100 people walking; in the future, there are going to be thousands and thousands.” The ICE Phoenix Field Office continues to hold people arrested and detained off the street despite 30 years of several organizations arriving on-site to protest, Andiloa said before she encouraged the marchers present to push other communities in Phoenix and around the state to join in the call for a change in policy. “Don’t take for granted the conversations that you can have,” Andiloa said. “Let them know what happened here today or the stories that you heard and invite them to join us, so that next time we’re double or triple.” She then invited the crowd to construct the ofrenda. The marchers went up to the fence to set down their signs and photos in a makeshift altar, and place their “little light” candles atop a table in front, each one shedding light on the traditional flores de cempasúchil on the table, and on the memory of those killed. This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Copy Content
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