There isn’t any firm within the U.S. that has turn out to be extra carefully related to Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids than House Depot Inc.
In and across the retailer’s parking heaps, masked and armed ICE brokers chase and deal with and detain the day laborers who collect there to search for work.
Retailer workers who’re upset by witnessing the grim scenes are allowed to go house for the day with pay — a tacit acknowledgment by House Depot that the raids are violent and traumatic to observe.
You gained’t discover the corporate saying as a lot publicly. As a substitute, it’s constantly supplied the identical reply after every episode, trying to distance itself from not solely the raids but additionally the employees who’re getting hauled off in unmarked vans from its property. Once I reached out for this column, I obtained the standard inventory response:
“We aren’t notified that immigration enforcement activities are going to happen, and we aren’t involved in the operations. We’re required to follow all federal and local rules and regulations in every market where we operate.”
Backlash brewing
The sweeps have put the corporate in the course of one of the crucial polarizing points in American politics, forcing it to weigh whether or not to defend the rights of the undocumented immigrants who serve its buyer base or to remain quiet to keep away from the ire of the Trump administration. It’s an all however not possible place, so it’s maybe no shock that, to date, the corporate has chosen the latter path. However that’s a mistake. And never only a ethical mistake, but additionally a enterprise one.
Because the raids have continued, customers have began to query whether or not the corporate’s silence makes it an confederate to the sweeps fairly than merely the backdrop. Demonstrations at House Depot shops have amped up across the nation in current weeks, and The Bulwark has reported {that a} nationwide boycott is brewing. The House Depot raids are piercing the broader nationwide consciousness, too, making their means into an Instagram publish by comic Chelsea Handler and a Saturday Evening Reside sketch.
All of the indicators are there: A backlash is coming for the corporate. However there are actions House Depot’s administration staff may take to at the least reduce the blow.
The primary is solely to acknowledge the day laborers as an integral a part of the House Depot ecosystem. This might be a marked change in ways; traditionally the corporate has claimed the employees are neither a House Depot drawback nor a part of its enterprise mannequin.
There isn’t any denying, nonetheless, that the corporate’s fortunes are tied with these of day laborers — a workforce that its rise helped create. Earlier than House Depot grew into one of many largest retailers within the nation, contractors made a lot of their cash by marking up the provides they purchased at wholesalers. House Depot eliminated that revenue supply by giving everybody entry to the identical pricing. Labor prices then turned the important thing variable, driving demand for just-in-time, low cost labor.
House Depot turned a spot the place contractors and householders may decide up not solely provides but additionally the employees who began to congregate at its places. Whether or not the corporate admits it or not, day laborers are actually a promoting level of its shops — particularly for the skilled contractors, homebuilders and renovators it aggressively courted, and which now make up half its enterprise.
The development business, already going through a labor scarcity and chronically not on time, can not operate with out these employees. Somebody wants to color the homes and set up the flooring and the brand new sinks and tubs that each one get purchased at House Depot.
Poor, lonely, careworn
And it’s the day laborers who tackle the riskiest and dirtiest jobs that different folks don’t wish to do, says London College of Economics professor Paul Apostolidis. “They are not criminals or dangerous. They’re poor and lonely and stressed,” Apostolidis, who has carefully studied day laborers, advised me. “They are the ones who are routinely subjected to danger.”
House Depot, he notes, may merely say that.
After a raid at a House Depot, workers are required to report the episode, which is recorded in a central database. These stories haven’t been shared outdoors the corporate. Day laborer advocate teams have requested for this knowledge, and inform me that they see it as a strategy to deflate the local weather of misinformation and concern the raids are designed to create. When and the place the raids befell are merely information, and the corporate ought to make them public.
House Depot doesn’t have simply knowledge; it additionally has a lobbying equipment that it is aware of the right way to deploy successfully when it needs to. In April, its Chief Government Officer Ted Decker went to the White Home with different retail CEOs to foyer in opposition to tariffs. Prior to now, it lobbied in opposition to the pursuits of day laborers, preventing an ordinance in Los Angeles that might require new house enchancment shops to construct facilities for the employees.
It’s time now for the corporate to face actuality and acknowledge that its destiny is intertwined with day laborers and to begin contemplating their pursuits. This doesn’t should be an ethical case. In August, House Depot reported that gross sales have been up 5% over the prior yr interval, though it missed analyst expectations. However there are indicators it may have issues forward. The chain doesn’t publicly escape metrics by retailer, however The Bulwark reported that in Chicago, the location of a number of raids, gross sales at some places are down 20%. We might have a greater sense of whether or not the optics have began to hit the underside line when the corporate stories once more subsequent week.
In Los Angeles, the corporate’s silence on the raids has led to pushback in opposition to a retailer it needs to construct in Eagle Rock, a location that could possibly be a serious gross sales generator as town rebuilds after the devastating wildfires. And past the monetary upside, the shop can be an opportunity for the corporate to tout its position — and the position of day laborers — within the restoration. That’s a a lot better affiliation for any model than ICE.
Beth Kowitt is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist overlaying company America. ©2025 Bloomberg. Distributed by Tribune Content material Company.
