When I wrote about the clashes between ICE and people on the street Saturday there were two stories circulating about how all this got started. The LA Times was reporting that there were “reports” that ICE was targeting day laborers at a Home Depot in Paramount.
In Paramount, a city that is 82% Latino, protesters gathered along Alondra Boulevard after reports that immigration officers were targeting people at a Home Depot, where day laborers commonly gather in search of work.
A group of protesters stationed themselves near the Alondra exit of the 710 freeway, as a second gathered at the Home Depot.
The Times doesn’t say where these “reports” about targeting day-laborers originated, but it seems to have been the story everyone in the area was hearing Saturday morning. Here’s a video shot by someone who apparently works for Project Lincoln claiming the ICE agents were there to arrest day laborers at Home Depot.
I went to Paramount yesterday and this is what I saw. This ICE activity was never intended to make us safer. It was designed to terrorize us into accepting fascism. Documenting the truth is how we actually keep our communities safe. pic.twitter.com/T1gEbDDUdm
— Maya May (@mayaonstage) June 8, 2025
Today the LA Times has a story outlining what really happened Saturday morning. It never had anything to do with targeting Home Depot.
Assemblymember José Luis Solache Jr., who represents the Paramount area that includes the Home Depot, was driving on the freeway on the way to a community event in neighboring Lakewood when he spotted a caravan of U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicles exiting Alondra Boulevard. The street runs through the heart of the working class, largely immigrant Latino community of Paramount.
He turned around, thinking they may be executing an immigration raid in his district and he tracked them down to an office park, the Paramount Business Center, across the street from Home Depot. Federal law enforcement has a facility in Paramount…
Unclear why they were there, he decided to record a post for Instagram.
That video posted on Instagram by Assemblymember Solache is apparently what started drawing “protesters” to the site. His Instagram is here but I don’t see that first clip as described by the LA Times. The earliest one I see is this one which includes scenes after people started arriving.
In any case, word spread that they were targeting the Home Depot across the street but that was never the case.
The scene began to turn darker as agents formed a line and brought out rifles that shot out tear gas and pushed the crowds back.
The protests arrived as word spread on social media of a raid at Home Depot or at a meatpacking place. There was never a raid at Home Depot but dozens of Border Patrol agents and other federal agencies were inside a gated industrial office park, where an initial crowd had gathered.
This is very reminiscent of the BLM riots in Ferguson where false stories about what happened to Michael Brown (‘hands up, don’t shoot’ being one example) were circulating and bringing people out in the streets. People were angry about things that never happened.
The conflict in Paramount just kept escalating all day until police declared an unlawful assembly, but that only made things worse. As night approached it turned into a genuine riot.
Around 4 p.m., the confrontation near a Home Depot was declared an unlawful assembly, and officials warned protesters in Spanish and English to leave the area.
By 7 p.m., about 100 protesters had gathered on the other side of the 710 Freeway near Atlantic Avenue and Alondra Boulevard, where some were lobbing rocks and bottles at L.A. County sheriff’s deputies. They set at least three fires in the area including a car that burned in the middle of the intersection.
At some point, the deputies retreated back to the bottom of a bridge that runs over the 710 Freeway and the Los Angeles River. Throughout the night deputies and demonstrators engaged with each other, with demonstrators launching fireworks that exploded near the line of deputies and police vehicles. They used cars to drive toward the deputies in an attempt to scare them, prompting the deputies to fire rubber bullets, tear gas and flash-bang grenades at the vehicles.
The conflict with ICE in LA actually started on Friday. ICE made 45 arrests of criminal migrants (and some of those arrests did happen at Home Depot) on Friday, including some very unsavory characters.
Among those arrested was 49-year-old Cuong Chanh Phan, an illegal alien from Vietnam with a criminal history that includes a conviction for second-degree murder.
Phan was convicted of shooting up a high school graduation party after a dispute, killing an 18-year-old and a 15-year-old. Seven others were injured in the incident, according to DHS.
ICE also arrested Rolando Veneracion-Enriquez, a 55-year-old illegal alien from the Philippines who was convicted of burglary, sexual penetration with a foreign object and assault with intent to commit rape.
Lionel Sanchez-Laguna, a 55-year-old Mexican national, was arrested by ICE on Friday. His criminal history includes discharging a firearm at an inhabited dwelling and vehicle, battery on spouse or cohabitant, willful cruelty to child, driving under the influence, assault with a semi-automatic firearm and personal use of a firearm.
Others arrested had convictions for assault, robbery, drug distribution and human trafficking. No doubt the newspapers will describe all of them “California men” once they are deported.
So it’s not clear who the ICE agents were targeting on Saturday but it seems they never got as far as arresting anyone because they were busy dealing with an angry mob instead. The people, like Assemblymember Solache, who helped instigate that mob with his videos probably ensured several dozen more criminals escaped arrest by ICE and will remain in these neighborhoods.
