By CHRISTOPHER WEBER AND JAIMIE DING
LOS ANGELES (AP) — U.S. Border Patrol agents jumped out of the back of a rented box truck and made arrests Wednesday at a Los Angeles Home Depot store during an immigration raid that an agency official called “Operation Trojan Horse.”
The early morning raid near downtown LA came just days after a federal appeals court upheld a federal judge’s order blocking the Trump administration from conducting indiscriminate immigration stops and arrests in Southern California.
“For those who thought immigration enforcement had stopped in Southern California, think again,” acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli posted on the social platform X after the raid. “The enforcement of federal law is not negotiable and there are no sanctuaries from the reach of the federal government.”
Messages were sent to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security seeking details on the raid, including how many people were arrested. U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Greg Bovino reposted Fox News reports of Monday’s arrests on X, calling the action “Operation Trojan Horse.”
Photos on social media showed the moment the rear door of the rented Penske truck opened, revealing several uniformed agents with guns. A spokesperson for Penske Truck Rental said the company was looking into the use of its vehicles by federal officials, saying its regulations prohibit transporting people in truck cargo areas.
“The company was not made aware that its trucks would be used in today’s operation and did not authorize this,” spokesperson Randolph P. Ryerson said in an email. “Penske will reach out to DHS and reinforce its policy to avoid improper use of its vehicles in the future.”
Since June, the Los Angeles region has been a battleground in the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration strategy that spurred protests and the deployment of the National Guards and Marines for more than a month. Federal agents have rounded up immigrants without legal status to be in the U.S. from Home Depots, car washes, bus stops, and farms. Some U.S. citizens have also been detained.
Lupe Carrasco Cardona, an educator with Union del Barrio, said members of her advocacy group were conducting regular patrols at the Home Depot early Monday when they saw a Penske truck pull into the parking lot, advertising work to the day laborers there. Immigrant workers, some with legal status and others without, often wait in Home Depot parking lots to be hired for various day jobs.
“They opened the back, they hopped out and they started indiscriminately just grabbing people,” Cardona said.
Unmarked white vans with U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents arrived shortly after the truck to participate in the operation, Cardona said. The organization has identified three street vendors and four day laborers that were arrested, but they were still trying to account for others. Family members said one street vendor tried to show evidence of holding asylum before he was arrested, she said.
Last month, a federal judge temporarily blocked federal agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate arrests after the ACLU, Public Counsel and other advocacy groups sued over the practices. Attorneys for the government argued that the order hinders agents from carrying out immigration enforcement, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal on Friday upheld the order.
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has previously said that “enforcement operations are highly targeted.”
The National Day Laborer Organizing Network condemned Wednesday’s raid, calling targeted workers the backbone of the local economy.
“Today’s raid staged by agents in cowboy hats jumping out of a rented van with a TV crew in tow marks a dangerous escalation in the Trump Administration’s assault on immigrant communities, the courts, and the people of Los Angeles,” Pablo Alvarado, the group’s co-executive director, said in a statement.
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