Federal agents hid in back of rental truck at start of raid outside LA
Home Depot
[August 07, 2025]
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.
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This image taken from video shows U.S. Border Patrol agents jumping
out of a Penske box truck during an immigration raid a, t a Home
Depot in Los Angeles, on WednesdayAug. 6, 2025. (FOX News/Matt Finn
via AP)
“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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