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Home Depot Site Of Day Laborer Skirmish
Guard Takes 'Zero Tolerance' View Toward Trespassing

POSTED: 5:46 pm PDT September 1, 2006
UPDATED: 6:50 pm PDT September 1, 2006

SAN DIEGO -- A confrontation between day laborers and store security brought police to a Grantville Home Depot on Friday.

Some workers had gone into the store's parking lot to talk with prospective customers but a new security officer took a hard line regarding the lot's "no trespassing'' sign and called police.

The incident ended with no violence but there are still some hard feelings among the day laborers that regularly gather near the store looking for work.

Day laborers like Pedro Rivera said they have always had good relations with the Home Depot location, despite finding themselves targeted by Minutemen activists -- until the new guard started this week.

"She said, 'I'm going to call the cops,' and she did call the cops. And she's over there making a big deal out of it. And that's wrong. She's been here, like, two to three days and just wants to keep her job, and she don't really know what's goin' on," Rivera said.

The incident started when some of the laborers drifted into Home Depot's landscaping and parking lot to talk with prospective employers. That's when the security guard zoomed into action with a "zero tolerance" policy.

"She said we gonna kill the grass, and there's no grass -- as you can see over there. There is no grass. And for that reason she calls the cops on us. For what? We just come here to get a job to support," Rivera said.

The skirmish became a police issue and no trespassing boundaries were once again established.

However, one worker, Robert Cordova, suspects the Minutemen have been pressuring the store to intimidate them.

"The Home Depot people, they're nice to us. We obey them. These other people, the Minutemen, they have the Ku Klux Klan spirit. They don't like us. Not everybody here is an illegal alien. I'm an American citizen," Cordova said.

A Home Depot spokeswoman said the company backs the security officer's strict enforcement of its policy against soliciting on the property.

She also acknowledged Home Depot has been pressured by the Minutemen but insists the action taken on Friday was not in reaction to that pressure, just something that the guard's predecessors should have been doing along.

Still, Cordova said he believes the workers are being demonized by the company's actions.

"We're looking for a job. We're not crooks. We don't want to do nothing outlaw. We come here early in the morning; we work. We support our families and we pay our dues. We pay our taxes and stuff," Cordova said.

After Police were called in to sort out the turf issues, the day laborers retreated to a nearby parking lot that serves other businesses that haven't objected to their gathering there.