Day laborers come together at a convention to process a year and a half of ICE raids
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Set us as preferred Carlos wasn’t surprised when immigration agents cornered him at a Home Depot in Los Angeles last summer.His luck had finally run out, he thought.
The 68-year-old, originally from Guatemala, had spent nearly every morning for more than 30 years looking for work in Home Depot parking lots.He’d evaded immigration agents at least three times before he was detained in late June.
“I knew that sooner or later, it would happen to me,” Carlos said.“I’d be out there seven days a week.
I had to go out and look for work.I had no choice.
How else would I pay my rent?”He spent four and half months in ICE detention before he was released in November, with the help of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which provided financial and legal support to his case.Carlos joined around 80 other day laborers on Saturday at a convention held by NDLON in Pasadena, the first time the community came together in person since the raids began last year.
An in-person event of this scale was difficult to organize but necessary to NDLON’s activism, said Pablo Alvarado, the organization’s co-executive director.“There’s power when people come together,” Alvarado said.
“When workers feel isolated, they don’t build community.The first step of of fighting back is getting to know each other, getting to talk to each other.” Similar regional conventions are being planned across the country, he said.
The impact of immigration enforcement varied among the assembled day laborers.Some had been in detention for months late last year.
One man was released from Adelanto ICE Processing Center just days ago.But all of them have daily feared the same fate since aggressive immigration raids swept Los Angeles and other cities across the country.
Day laborers and activists came from across Southern California, including San Diego and the Antelope Valley, to discuss the effects of ICE raids on their l...