For more than two decades, a resource center at a Home Depot parking lot in northeast Los Angeles has been a lifeline to day laborers, helping them safely solicit work and negotiate fair wages. For the past eight months, it’s also been a refuge as federal agents increasingly target Home Depot locations for immigration enforcement. Now its leaders are scrambling to ensure they can keep doing this essential work from their long-time base in the Home Depot parking lot.
A state lawmaker has sounded the alarm that Home Depot is trying to evict the resource center, a claim Home Depot has denied.
Maegan Ortiz, executive director of Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California, or IDEPSCA, a nonprofit laborer advocacy organization that manages the center, told LA Public Press the potential eviction is forcing her to spend time calling elected officials in an attempt to save the center…