Day laborers beg for silence as Home Depot weaponizes sound
Deals on duct tape and the peals of institutional cruelty are the current Home Depot ambiance in Los Angeles. Day laborers, who’ve weathered pandemics, government abduction, and everything short of a plague of locusts, now have to contend with a nonstop industrial whine pumped directly into their skulls while waiting for jobs. The earplugs help, but the message is clear: you are not welcome here.
The Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA), a nonprofit that supports day laborers, held a press conference at Home Depot Wednesday, calling for the company remove the machines and vocalize opposition to the ICE raids taking place in its parking lots, part of a growing number of protests targeting corporate cooperation with immigration enforcement.
Home Depot locations nationwide have been a prime target for ICE raids under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. In early November, ICE agents detained a man at the Cypress Park location and then drove off with his toddler in the back of the vehicle.
Around 50 people have been detained at the Cypress Park location this year, said Maegan Ortiz, IDEPSCA’s executive director. The machines are an attempt to push day laborers off its lots, she said.
The machines were turned off by the company during the press conference, but were turned back on about an hour after it ended, according to workers. The noise is in earshot of the IDEPSCA’s day laborer center, one of five operated by the organization that have supported workers for over two decades.
But this isn’t just about an annoying sound. The machines, installed shortly after the latest ICE raid, are part of a larger pattern: targeted sweeps, physical barriers, and passive-aggressive corporate apathy toward immigrant workers who’ve turned Home Depot lots into impromptu community hiring halls. In a press conference held literally under the noise cannons, organizers, laborers, and city officials accused the company of “weaponizing sound” against people just trying to survive.
This technique has been slowly adopted across Southern California in attempts to dislocate people who annoy commercial property owners, and their tenants. Santa Monica has seen the deployment of sound machines intended to annoy homeless people into moving on, and other communities are following suit.