“How cheaply the new Carlos Saladrigas wants to buy us!” Fidel Castro wrote in 2008, at the age of 81, after illness had forced him to hand over political power to his brother Raúl and devote himself to churning out his Reflections in state media. According to Castro, Saladrigas, a successful Cuban American businessman from South Florida, was trying to take over Cuba “with Miami money.”

The claim came as a surprise to Saladrigas. Cuba had always been more of a drain on his finances than a source of profit. “Buying cheap has never been my goal. My aim has never been to make money in Cuba,” he says.

Saladrigas was born in 1948 in Havana’s then-affluent Miramar neighborhood. His father was a lawyer who worked for the Ministry of Education. His mother owned a fashion store that imported dresses. A year after the Cuban Revolution began, his mother told him he would be leaving the country alone under one of the so-called waiver visas, a special authorization issued by the U.S. government that allowed 14,000 Cuban children to enter the United States as part of what became known as Operation Peter Pan. It was a dark episode in which some children never reunited with their families, others disappeared from view, and some were victims of sexual abuse. In August 1961, young Saladrigas arrived in Florida.

“That decision was my mother’s. My father didn’t want it,” Saladrigas recalls from his home in Miami. “He was convinced, as many here were for years, that the Americans would not allow communism in Cuba and that they would do something. There were rumors that parental rights would be taken away in Cuba. Today it’s unclear whether those rumors were started by the CIA or by the Cuban government itself, but any scenario seemed possible. That frightened many parents, and my mother took the risk of sending me without knowing when we would reunite. I have four children, and every time one turned 12 my wife and I discussed this. Would we do the same or not? To this day I have never been able to answer that.”

His parents arrived the following year. Money was scarce. He dropped out of secondary school and later resumed his studies in evening classes. He went on to study business administration, attended Harvard Business School, worked for accounting firms and in real estate, and was eventually hired by PepsiCo.

He later left the corporate world and, in 1984, founded The Vincam Group, a pioneering human-resources management company. Before he sold it in 2000, it was considered the largest Hispanic-owned company of its kind in the United States. Since then, Saladrigas has founded three more companies and later sold them. The Peter Pan child had become a capitalist.

“I am a capitalist because I believe that, generally, when a country’s problems can be solved by markets, markets offer the best solution. But not all a country’s problems find answers in markets; that is the mistake many make,” he says. “That is why I believe one of the great errors of American capitalism has been taking market logic too far, into sectors that do not belong to the market but to the state.”

Today, Saladrigas is dedicated to advising, devising strategies, and supporting businesses. He devotes much of his time to thinking about Cuba, alongside the Cuba Study Group, the organization he co-founded to promote the growth of the private sector on the island. At this point in his life, at age 78, Saladrigas has come to realize what he considers to be a truth: that if there is one thing the Cuban government fears, it is money.

“That is, us — the exile community, the very exile community they created,” the businessman says. “Although individually it has been hard, the Cuban exile community as a group has succeeded in the arts, in academia and in business. That is due in part to our DNA as Cubans. That is why my optimism about Cuba’s future is based solely and exclusively on what I see of its people,” he explains. “The exile community has also been very generous in extending a hand to the Cuban people in every sense. That is part of the success: the fact that we have not forgotten Cuba.”

After more than half a century of building an ideological wall between those on the island and those outside it, the Cuban government, in the depths of its current crisis, has called on exiles to return and help revive the country’s ailing economy with their dollars.

When the government announced a package of measures in June as a first step toward liberalizing the economy, President Miguel Díaz-Canel declared: “To anyone who wants to build a future with Cuba, without seeking to impose anything on it, we say with our hearts on our sleeves: this is your home, and our door is open to you, because at this moment, this homeland cannot afford to lose a single good Cuban.”

Question. Would you be one of those Cubans willing to go and invest in Cuba?

Answer. Those of us Cubans who felt that deep attachment to Cuba are getting quite old. There is a sector of the community that 20 years ago, or under Barack Obama, would have been willing to go and set up businesses in Cuba. But many people already have what they call an investment horizon. When you are 30 years old, your investment horizon is long. When you are 78, it is short. I no longer see my investments there as long-term, because at some point I will not be here.

Q. And what could Cuba count on now?

A. We can count on all the family investment that exists here, which is large and important, and on many younger Cubans who are very interested in seeking new business opportunities in Cuba. But it is not what it would have been 30 years ago, because there is a whole generation emotionally tied to Cuba that achieved the most economic success because they have been here longer. That group is the least interested in the new adventure of moving to the island.

In the case of Venezuela, how many Venezuelans do you know who have gone back to invest there? None. Nobody who is already established here is going to go live in Cuba. So you cannot run a business there unless you partner with someone. That is why we have always thought the point is not to go invest alone, but to co‑invest with Cubans in Cuba. But there must be change. Right now it is unsustainable.

Q. What guarantees does an entrepreneur who wants to invest on the island today have?

A. Practically none. The idea that the exile community is the most logical point for Cuba’s economic salvation has been one we have put forward for years. We continue to think that the exile community will be a fundamental driving force of economic recovery — not the only one, but a very important one.

There are two sectors within the exile community that are essential. The family sector, which sends significant remittances. All that capital can be used to grow small businesses in Cuba. The other capital the exile community has is more formal capital, where you invest after conducting an investment analysis and assessing risks. That capital needs more formality in the country. Cuba will not have that formality until it has a stable macroeconomic climate and a serious banking system, a serious currency, and laws that respect private property. So that if you have a dispute with the government, you can take them to independent courts. None of that is being done.

Q. So political change is the first guarantee for any investor who sees an opportunity in Cuba…

A. Without political change, these measures lack seriousness and credibility. Last year the government seized all foreign currency bank accounts from the Vietnamese, its privileged partners. What credibility can this government have? None.

Q. After Díaz-Canel announced the new package of changes, people said Cuba was finally opening to capitalism. To what extent is that true?

A. The government hasn’t even talked about political change, and we don’t believe it will. Opening to what? They are taking measures that, although most of them we can criticize, are necessary and good — measures they should have taken 20 or 30 years ago. But it seems to me they themselves lack the capacity to manage the changes because they want to control everything. That is my first impression. The second is that the measures are destined to fail.

Q. Why?

A. Because Cuba has reached the end of the road. Every day, the situation gets worse. What is needed are deep, swift and sustained measures to open up the economy. Cuba cannot recover on its own at this point. It does not have the capacity.

Without a significant change in the judiciary, so that it is truly independent of the political sphere, it won’t work. Without fundamental changes to the system’s structure, constitutional changes that clearly state that Cuba is going to open up, and an end to the monopoly of a single political party, nothing will work. At the same time, if the United States does not lift the economic sanctions, Cuba will not recover.

Q. How much does the success of any reform effort depend on Washington?

A. The embargo’s sanctions, plus all the additional ones, have a cumulatively devastating impact on a market economy. Although the embargo limited Cuba, it did not finish off Cuba while Cuba was not a market economy. But now that Cuba has a new need — because it has no option but to open to the market — this is killing it because there is no investment and no inflow of money.

What I don’t understand about the [Trump] administration is its lack of clarity about its expectations. At the same time, the Cubans are playing a game of trying to do as little as possible, or at least to avoid the most significant reforms, and leaving the hardest issues for later to see what happens after November, whether the elections and the war with Iran prove distracting enough. That is a factor complicating everything.

I don’t know how much longer the Cuban people can endure this. It’s been five or six months since the administration imposed the oil embargo, and the aid the U.S. government has announced for a population that is dying of hunger is a drop in a bucket.

Q. What can we expect for Cuba from the Trump administration?

A. I highly value Cuban sovereignty and independence. Our people have shed much blood for it. The things I hear from Trump, if serious, worry me enormously. Words like: “I will be the president of Cuba,” or “Cuba is mine when I want it.” Those words reach deep into my heart. They are painful to hear. I don’t want Washington to be the one to solve Cuban problems. We have to solve them ourselves, exercising our autonomy.

On the other hand, I applaud that pressure has been put on a regime that has refused to change. Obama handed them change on a silver platter, and they chose not to seize the opportunity. It’s almost a schizophrenic scenario because I believe there is a great opportunity for a serious, sincere negotiation that could lead to solutions. But that requires Cuban leaders to be willing to engage.

Q. You have said Cuba first needs a stabilization period and then a reconstruction period. How would those be implemented?

A. The stabilization period runs from the moment the reforms begin until the point at which Cuba becomes an investment-grade destination for private capital. In other words, until private investors feel confident and secure enough to invest.

That will be the most difficult period because no one will invest heavily during that time. Meanwhile, schools and hospitals must be maintained, people must be fed, a tax system must be created, a banking system and an economy must be established, the peso defended, the Cuban currency strengthened. These are things that must happen in the first three, four or five years at most. I hope it does not take longer because if the measures are slow, the people will continue to go hungry.

Q. And after that?

A. Once Cuba is stabilized, foreign investment will begin to arrive, large companies will be created, factories established, people will have jobs, Cuba will have agricultural production. The electricity system will stabilize, the government will stabilize. At that point, at the end of the stabilization period, free elections can be held. A new government will be established. There must be a new constitution and that constituent process must be participatory for the people. There must be openness. It cannot be done in secret. Transparency is the most important thing for Cuba’s future, and we must achieve it. One of the things we have recommended and continue to recommend is a kind of Marshall Plan for Cuba.

Q. How would that Marshall Plan proposal work without losing sovereignty?

A. It must be a pact in which Cuba commits to implementing these changes while maintaining its independence, but the United States should remove all sanctions by executive order for a period of two to three years until Cuba implements the measures. At that point, a Marshall Plan for Cuba would be prepared, where loans could be granted on very long terms, repayable later or even forgivable. That money would be used to restore the power grid, support schools, public order, hospitals — all the activities the country needs.

Then the private sector will experience extraordinary growth. SMEs will expand. Cuba will begin to produce food. That is where healing and stabilization begin. For the United States, it would be the best investment, as it was in Japan after the war. We must learn to understand our sovereignty as something different from what José Martí may have envisioned. Martí feared economic integration, but today economic integration is almost inevitable.

Q. Would there be anything in the Cuban system worth preserving in that future country?

A. Two sectors must be saved because they are very important: health and education, and they must be accessible to the entire population. No one truly understands what socialism is, neither in Cuba nor in Miami. However, there are many European countries where socialism has produced extraordinary results, but those are socialisms within a market. As I said in Havana many years ago: Cuba has been very efficient and very good at managing poverty, but disastrous at creating wealth, and without wealth you cannot solve poverty. We are at a new starting point, with a great opportunity to create something better. We can distill a system that works for Cuba, one that harnesses the full strength of markets while also retaining the sense of humanity we want Cuba to have.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition

July 10. A foreign couple planning to settle in Ibiza are driving along a rural road in the north of the Spanish island. They are looking for a school for their son and are headed to visit one of their options. He is James “Fergie” Chambers, heir to the fortune of one of the wealthiest families in the United States, the telecommunications giant with annual revenues of $20 billion. He is 41 years old, a pro-Palestine activist, and identifies as Marxist-Leninist and a revolutionary. She is Stella Schnabel, an actress, producer and daughter of the filmmaker who directed, among other titles, Before Night Falls, the movie that earned Javier Bardem an Oscar nomination in 2001.

“All of a sudden,” says Schnabel to EL PAÍS in a Madrid hotel, “there are five cars. There’s three in the front, two in the back, and they’re unmarked. There are three women and three men. They said they were civil police and that they had to take in Fergie immediately on charges of money laundering. I was totally shocked, although I’m always thinking that something could happen with the present situation in America.”

The charges were indeed stemming from the U.S. government. The Interpol Red Notice, to which EL PAÍS had access, states that Chambers is accused of three offenses: money laundering, rioting, and conspiracy to riot (a charge that does not exist in the Spanish legal system), carrying a combined maximum sentence of up to 30 years in prison in the United States. The order briefly mentions his alleged financial support to organizations in Gaza that could be tied to Hamas.

EL PAÍS asked Chambers, via his spouse, about the groups he has supported in Palestine. From prison, the activist sent the following response: “I am not Palestinian and have no control over who they vote for. I am a human rights defender, and that is why I will always offer my moral support to people who are fighting for their lives, for the lives of their children and for freedom. Whether it’s the CNA [the historic party of Nelson Mandela] in South Africa; the FNL [the party that won the country’s independence] in Algeria; the Allies against Hitler in the 1940s or any other anti-colonial struggle. I will always support these people and their rights.”

According to Spanish law, the United States has until approximately August 26 (from 40 to 45 days, depending on whether the applicable framework is the extradition treaty or Spain’s extradition law) to submit the documentation supporting its request for Spain to hand Chambers over to stand trial in a U.S. court.

And that is the limbo in which the activist and his family now find themselves: waiting for the formal extradition request to arrive and hoping that, once Spanish authorities review it, they will conclude that the charges are politically motivated, one of the grounds on which extradition can be blocked, and bring the proceedings to a halt.

Once the request has passed review by Spain’s high court, the Audiencia Nacional, and if the court approves it, the final decision rests with Spain’s Cabinet, according to Spanish extradition law. The Cabinet is next scheduled to meet on September 25. The Spanish government, led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, will have to decide whether to grant the U.S. extradition request at a time when its relations with the Trump administration are particularly tense.

The White House has openly criticized Spain over the immigration crisis in Ceuta after 70,000 entered the Spanish exclave city. Trump recently described Spaniards as “a lost cause” and said he had no interest in a trade deal with the country due to its delay in raising its military spending and refusal to allow the U.S. to use the military bases at Rota and Morón to refuel aircraft involved in the war with Iran. Trump later said, however, that the Spanish government had “redeemed itself” by committing to “an important payment.”

Meanwhile, Sánchez’s firm stance on the Gaza massacre and Spain’s leadership in recognizing Palestine as a state have provoked angry reactions from Israel’s chief ally, the United States, as well as from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

For Chambers’s wife and his legal team, led by former high court judge Baltasar Garzón, there is no doubt that the international arrest warrant is the result of “political persecution” by the United States because of his support for the Palestinian cause and his activism against what he describes as Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza. “They can make up anything they want. Right now, there’s a new witch hunt under way in the United States. It’s very frightening,” says Schnabel.

Trump has sanctioned eight judges and three prosecutors from the International Criminal Court for carrying out investigations related to the United States and Israel. One of those sanctioned, Ugandan appeals judge Solomy Balungi Bossa, told EL PAÍS in a recent interview: “Trump views us the same way as terrorists and drug peddlers.” She added that the sanctions were an attempt at “coercion” aimed at obstructing investigations into war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Baltasar Garzón’s law firm places the warrant for Chambers’s arrest within that broader context and notes that the United States has also sanctioned Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The U.S. State Department has accused her of “antisemitism” and of supporting “terrorism.”

Once it receives the extradition request for Chambers, the Spanish government will have to decide whether one of the world’s leading democracies is engaging in “political persecution” serious enough to prevent one of its citizens, currently being held in Aranjuez prison, from being tried with full due process guarantees.

Pending the more detailed account that must be included in the extradition request once it is formally submitted, Interpol’s notice states that Chambers is accused of “money laundering” in connection with a transfer that U.S. authorities regard as suspicious, totaling $7.5 million to Tunisia, where the activist had been living before deciding to move to Ibiza with his wife.

“I have family in Spain,” Schnabel explains. “I’ve been coming here my whole life; my middle name is Madrid. My father named me after a racehorse who won the Kentucky Derby.”

Chambers’ wife explains that the transfers were “not an investment.” “He gave this money away to pay the debts and salaries of the players of a football team, the Club Africain, which is the team the country’s working class follows, like the Rayo Vallecano in Spain,” she says.

“In Tunisia, we rented the house of a man who used to be the president of the team, and I became friends with his daughter,” she continues. “When we went to one of their matches, Fergie saw the rigor and excitement of the fans, as well as their total devotion and support for Palestine, and he kind of fell in love. There were these incredible banners and artwork 65 feet tall [in support of Gaza]. Fergie, who has always been obsessed with sports, saved the club from financial ruin.” Chambers has a development and management company named JII Sports.

A million dollars for Palestine

Chambers also donated, according to his lawyers, around a million dollars to “humanitarian projects and causes” in Gaza under the supervision of his foundation’s technical advisor. Of that donation, they say that $550,000 went to the Middle East Children’s Alliance, which provides “direct aid including food, medicine, medical supplies, and clothes as well as books, toys and school supplies […] to children in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon”; another $370,000 to The Sameer Project (TSP), which funds small businesses like bakeries; $300,000 to the People’s Health Movement, which raises funds to rebuild health care facilities and bring equipment and medicine to Gaza; $200,000 for the Ghasan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund, which helps injured kids; and $100,000 to The Zaynab Project, which provides psychological support to victims of war.

“All these organizations can be verified,” says Schnabel. “Fergie sent the money so that a bakery could make 2,000 loaves of bread a week. He has given money to a girl who was a refugee in Paris to have dialysis on her kidney, to orphans…”

When asked if she could confirm that her husband has not financed Hamas in any way, she responds: “Absolutely. And it’s really hard to hear that. This was humanitarian aid and we can prove where each donation went. I come from a family of Jewish origin.” Her father, film director Julian Schnabel, previously opposed calls to boycott actors Gal Gadot and Gerard Butler at the Venice Film Festival because of their support for Israel.

Several international media outlets have highlighted past statements by Chambers defending Hamas following the October 7, 2023 attacks in Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed. In particular, they point to a post on X in which he wrote: “No faction of the Palestinian resistance, Hamas or other, has done *anything* wrong.” Schnabel has made her spouse’s social media profiles private and says that she doesn’t remember that particular message, but insists none of their money has gone to fund terrorist groups.

Chambers’s activism has led him to support the group Palestine Action in a variety of ways. Founded in the U.K. in 2020, the organization aims to carry out “disruptive action” campaigns and primarily targets the facilities of Elbit Systems, a military technology company whose main customer is the Israeli army. In an interview published in 2025, Chambers acknowledged taking part in one such action: “I locked myself to a door.”

Last June, four members of the group were sentenced in the U.K. to prison terms ranging from four to almost eight years for destroying several drones during an operation against the Israeli company. Amnesty International criticized the British courts for introducing a “terrorist connection” into the case against the activists, arguing: “The defendants in today’s case were sentenced as terrorists because prosecutors want to make an example of them and set a precedent for how direct action protesters could be treated in the future. Criminal damage has never been treated as terrorism within the U.K. justice system before.”

Another action against the company took place in Merrimack, New Hampshire, in November 2023. While several demonstrators held a banner outside, others spray-painted the building and climbed onto the roof with smoke bombs. Chambers was interviewed at the scene by a local news station. Four women were arrested. They were ultimately sentenced to 60 days in jail and issued restraining orders barring them from approaching the company.

Schnabel says that her husband has dedicated himself to “economically sustaining” some of those activists, but that it would be incorrect to speak of him as a “coordinator” of such actions because “the group organizes spontaneously online.” The office of Baltasar Garzón believes that the accusations of “rioting” and “conspiracy to riot” — which are briefly mentioned in the arrest warrant — may be related to Chambers’ support for Palestine Action.

This is not the first time Chambers has run into trouble with authorities, although never on this scale. According to Schnabel, and as Chambers himself recounted in a 2024 interview with Rolling Stone, shortly before leaving the United States for Tunisia, he was arrested in Atlanta after taking part in protests against the clearing of an urban forest to make way for a police training facility known as Cop City. The issue was particularly personal for him because the executive responsible for fundraising for the project was his cousin, Alex Taylor, CEO of Cox Enterprises. He was also arrested for vandalizing a McDonald’s during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Washington, D.C.

Chambers has donated considerable sums to organizations like The Black Alliance for Peace and the Abolitionist Law Center. He also founded a “socialist commune” in Massachusetts. He is an immensely wealthy person whose primary contradiction — say his critics — is his apparent commitment to dismantling the system that allowed people like himself and families like his own to accumulate such wealth. His father, James Cox Chambers, whom the activist has defined on occasion as “the family’s first black sheep,” works in the film industry and in promoting renewable energy. He is also, according to Schnabel, “one of the largest donors of the Democratic Party in America.” In 2004, he married Nabila Khashoggi, the daughter of Adnan, a Saudi arms dealer who died in 2017.

Chambers traveled to the Donbas region in 2022 to speak with supporters of the Russian presence in the region. His first wife was Russian, and he speaks the language. Schnabel insists that many of her husband’s statements “have been taken out of context.” “Fergie speaks with directness as well as in an oppositional way towards the ruling class, which they don’t like. He grew up surrounded by millions of dollars, and most wealthy people today are far right and don’t understand him. But all he does is help people, without any personal gain. Even with his foundation, his name is not even attached to it.”

In Rolling Stone, Chambers said his mother first took him to a psychiatrist when he was six years old, that he was admitted to a hospital at 12, and that he was raped there by another patient. “I think he’s a pretty strong person, mentally. But I think he’s very worried,” says Schnabel, who visited him on August 4 at the Aranjuez Prison. “The thing that he’s asking for is books. He asked me for one by Gramsci, and I also brought him The Aleph by Borges, some fantasy.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition

Erwin nearly ran out of the parking lot of a Home Depot store in Los Angeles. In front of him, a vehicle with tinted windows had stopped and a man in a black vest asked him: “Are you looking for a job?” He turned out to be a private security worker. “I thought they were ICE,” Erwin says in a nervous voice, alluding to the dreaded Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. That morning, Erwin, who is from Guatemala, was on constant alert, keeping an eye on every vehicle that entered that establishment, which has become one of the main targets of immigration raids in the city.

Despite the risk, day laborers continue to come seeking work at this branch, located a few blocks from the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles. Many are undocumented and have only been in the U.S. for a few years. They stand at the store’s entrances and approach pick-up trucks loaded with materials, hoping to get a temporary job unloading in return for a few dollars. This practice, which has been going on for years, makes them particularly vulnerable to federal government operations.

“I’m scared, but I don’t have a single cent to buy food. That’s why I’m taking a risk, I have no choice,” says Erwin, 31, originally from San Marcos in western Guatemala, near the border with Mexico. “I have applied for jobs in several companies and they all asked me for work permits, which I do not have,” he adds.

Ever since he was fired from a recycling plant after they discovered he was undocumented, Erwin’s strategy has been to call everyone he knows to ask if they need help. It worked for a while, but he hasn’t earned anything for several days. Coming to this Home Depot store is a last resort. “We don’t know at what point ICE will arrive. They drive private cars,” he says. “Being here is a risk.”

More than 500 day laborers arrested

Day laborers are one of the main targets of the massive raids carried out in this city. There are dozens of videos on social media of ICE and Border Patrol agents chasing migrants in the vicinity and inside Home Depot stores. ICE even mounted an operation called the Trojan Horse, in which officers hid in a truck to enter the heart of a Hollywood branch. Their goal was to get as close as possible to the migrants and reduce the chance of a chase. More than 500 day laborers in Los Angeles have been caught in such operations since the beginning of 2025, according to estimates by the National Day Laborer Network (NDLON), which has no record of the numbers deported or of those making it out of the ICE detention centers.

“[In the past] the agents arrived in large numbers. They mapped the place; they blocked the entrances and exits so that, if someone ran in one direction, agents would be waiting for them. We have not seen that so much [lately], although it does not mean that they will not go back to that,” Pablo Alvarado, head of NDLON, tells EL PAÍS.

Alvarado explains that many day laborers are now caught at construction sites, as well as at traffic lights where, he says, racial profiling is used. “They see the driver and the van full of building material or gardening tools. That’s all they need to stop it,” he says. “They’re changing their tactics.”

Day laborers themselves have also changed the way they look for work. They seek work through networking and agree with contractors to be picked up at random meeting points. That’s why there are fewer day laborers hanging around Home Depot stores, Alvarado explains. “They have not disappeared or ”self-deported”; they are looking for alternative ways to survive. But when their economic situation becomes dire, they go back to the Home Depots. They are still looking for a way to make a living. What other option do they have? They take that risk.”

Benjamin Wood, who went from being an activist in a day laborers’ organization in Pomona to a defense attorney for migrants, agrees that ICE operations have moved away from Home Depots, but maintains that these workers are still in their crosshairs. One of his clients was arrested in what he describes as a “military operation” at a San Bernardino branch, while another was taken into custody inside a coffee shop. “ICE agents arrived at the donut shop; He was drinking coffee. They started interrogating the people who were there,” Wood says.

Those released from the immigration detention centers usually return to their routine and, in some cases, get caught up in another ICE operation. “There have been cases of people who are released, return to the corner to look for work and ICE agents detain them again,” says Wood.

Boycotts of Home Depot

Juan’s calloused hands tell of years working in construction. Each morning, he is strategically positioned at the corner of Wilshire and Union streets, where he can be easily spotted by contractors looking for temporary labor. That same corner allows day laborers to identify vehicles that could be ICE. “All day long I’m on the lookout,” he says. “If you relax, you’ll end up deported.”

Juan — not his real name — has been working independently for seven years and agrees that the last two have been hell. “There are nights when I don’t sleep for worrying. I dream ICE is chasing me, that no one gives me a job, that I go back to Mexico voluntarily but things go badly there.”

But Juan doesn’t blame the Home Depot chain, accused by some activists of remaining silent, and even of cooperating with ICE in the operations carried out in its facilities. “What can the store do? These people don’t ask for permission: they go in and take everyone,” says Juan. Among day laborers, opinions are divided over the calls to boycott Home Depot. Some, like Juan, refuse to rise up against the place where they still find work.

Home Depot has been under pressure since the raids intensified. Several campaigns have emerged to support the day laborers. One of them, called “Adopt a Day Laborer Corner,” invited volunteers to go with their cell phones to the places where day laborers congregate to document possible ICE operations and provide the migrants with support. More than 200 people responded to the call. Another initiative has asked customers to stop shopping at the chain. “At the same time that there has been an unprecedented systematic persecution of day laborers, there has also been a lot of solidarity,” says Alvarado.

Another mobilization occurred in a store in Monrovia at the end of 2025. A number of activists came to buy an ice scraper that cost 17 cents and then returned it. The protest was called the ice scraper protest. This caused the payment and customer service lines to collapse for almost an hour. Protesters also marched through the aisles. Management had no choice but to close the store, something that activists interpreted as a sign that the corporation could take similar measures when federal agents arrive.

Far from closing its doors to ICE agents, Home Depot closed them to day laborers and expelled them from its facilities, citing an old rule that prohibits the offering of services on its premises without authorization. The company claims that it cannot do anything to prevent the raids. “We are not notified when immigration enforcement activities will take place, nor do we participate in such operations. We do not coordinate actions with ICE or the Border Patrol,” Home Depot said in a statement to EL PAÍS.

The company believes that immigration agents do not need a court order to enter and detain undocumented immigrants “since our stores and parking lots are publicly accessible.” It denied that it is sharing the information it obtains from the license plate readers in its parking lots with the authorities. It has ordered its staff to stay out of ICE operations: “Legally we cannot interfere.”

“If the situation doesn’t change, I’ll go back”

Being a day laborer in the U.S. was never in Erwin’s plans. In early 2020, when he quit his job as a delivery driver in Guatemala and said goodbye to his wife and two young children, he imagined that a more bearable life awaited him. At first, luck seemed to be on his side in California. He found a job as a tractor driver at a recycling plant and worked his way up to earning $1,400 a week — working from Monday to Sunday. With that money, he was able to save to pay the $16,000 charged by the gang of traffickers who brought him to Los Angeles and also to buy a car and a plot of land back home where he built a house.

Erwin felt that the sacrifice had been worth it. Until everything fell apart. The agency involved in his hiring discovered that his Social Security card was fake, and he was fired. When Donald Trump returned to the White House, Erwin ended up losing what he had gained. Formal employment was off the table, and he was unable to pay the $375 monthly rent on an apartment he shared with two other migrants, who threw him out. He now sleeps in an abandoned wagon in a dirty alley in South Los Angeles. Every day he goes to two churches in the area for food. He is homeless. Two months ago, he sent his wife in Guatemala his last $300. “I tell her to be patient and that, in time, maybe I’ll have a steady job,” he says.

Erwin’s situation drove him to seek work at the Home Depot store most targeted by ICE agents. “I know it is. I’ve seen it on the news. In the first operation, several day laborers were taken. That’s where they caught a lady who sold tamales,” he says, pointing to the main entrance of the branch. Erwin approaches customers to offer services that cover refurbishments, carpentry and plumbing. But recently, the only answer he gets is no. “I never imagined that the situation would get the way it is now, but, as the saying goes: the ‘never’… eventually arrives.”

A few days ago, Erwin’s wife called him to ask for money to buy food for their children and cover other outstanding expenses. His eldest daughter, 11, came on the line and asked, “When are you coming, daddy?” The question left him speechless. Erwin’s feelings are mixed. The idea of self-deporting to Guatemala, which he left to help his family, has begun to reverberate in his head. “If the situation doesn’t change, I’ll go back to my country,” he says.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition