Since Home Depot parking lots have become magnets for ICE arrests and deportations, a couple hundred protesters hit the Emeryville Home Depot Tuesday night to pressure the retailer to push back more against ICE.
There's more to the East Bay hamlet of Emeryville than an Ikea and a food court, and Emeryville actually has a pretty strong protest scene. Recall how the town gained leftie credibility in 2018, when a billboard-hacking collective altered a waste-removal company billboard so it read “We Make Kids Disappear - ICE.”
And so it was again Tuesday night, as KGO reports that a group of more than 200 anti-ICE protesters stormed an Emeryville Home Depot and Target store (which have adjacent parking lots) as part of their demonstrations against the escalating ICE violence in Minneapolis. The protest of Home Depot is tied to the enormous spike in Home Depot parking lot raids seeking to arrest day laborers, a hallmark of the Trump 2.0 administration.
As seen in the videos below, the protests did not start at Home Depot. They slowly gathered steam at various outdoor locations in Emeryville and made their way into the Home Depot. But here's one video that captures the unusual scene of a protest inside Home Depot.
The protesters are demanding that Home Depot do more to restrict ICE operations on their properties, that they train staff to handle interactions with ICE agents, and post more information about Fourth Amendment protections.
But Home Depot corporate insists they have nothing to do with the ICE raids, and their hands are tied.
“We are not coordinating with ICE or Border Patrol, and we’re not involved in the operations,” Home Depot manager of corporate communications George Lane recently told the LA Times. “We aren’t notified that immigration enforcement activities are going to happen, and often, we don’t know operations have taken place until they’re over.”
The Emeryville Target store, for their part, was apparently a "target” because the company gave the Trump inauguration $1 million and rolled back DEI policies and Pride Month observances at the Trump administration’s behest.
As the E’ville Eye notes, Tuesday night’s protests were planned and coordinated, and the retailers were given a heads-up. The protests happened without incident, and the protesters wrapped up at 9 pm as they were scheduled to.
Related: Yes, ICE Says Their Agents Will Be All Over the Place at the Super Bowl In Santa Clara [SFist]
Image: Margaret Stretch via Facebook
