Border Patrol agents clad in tactical gear jumped out of a Penske moving truck in the parking lot of a Los Angeles Home Depot before arresting more than a dozen immigrants early on Wednesday morning.
The raid, dubbed “Operation Trojan Horse” by U.S. Border Patrol El Centro Sector Chief Gregory Bovino, came weeks after a federal judge temporarily blocked agents from using race, spoken language or place of work to target people in indiscriminate immigration arrests. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals later affirmed the federal judge’s ruling.
The Wednesday raid, as well as others in the Los Angeles area in recent weeks, suggest that the Trump administration is not complying with court orders, immigrant rights advocates told HuffPost.
“We are deeply troubled by reports of raids in Southern California since Saturday, including at a Home Depot in Westlake this morning,” Mohammad Tajsar, an attorney at ACLU Foundation of Southern California and one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, told HuffPost in a statement. “While we continue to investigate these incidents, the evidence available so far raises serious concerns that the federal government may be in violation of the federal judge’s July temporary restraining order.”
“What we saw today is disturbing. It creates chaos. And it sends waves of terror in the community that is already reeling with the impact of more than 45 days of military siege,” said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, communications director for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, one of the plaintiffs in the suit.
In early July, Southern California residents, workers and immigrant rights groups sued the Department of Homeland Security, accusing the agency of using unlawful stop-and-arrest tactics to carry out immigration enforcement. U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong granted a temporary restraining order later that month, temporarily blocking federal agents from racially profiling people to carry out arrests and detentions.
“The community has breathed a sigh of relief during the past three weeks as a result of the [temporary restraining order],” Cabrera told HuffPost. Although there were sporadic incidents that “shattered that peace,” Cabrera said more community members felt safe enough to leave their homes to grocery shop and work.
But in recent days, community watchdog groups have posted videos of alleged raids and arrests at Home Depots, car washes and grocery stores across the county, according to a round up by LA Taco, an independent news outlet.
“The government may be unwilling or unable to fulfill the goal of racist ‘mass deportation’ without breaking the law and violating civil rights,” Antonio De Loera, the communications director at United Farm Workers, said in a shared statement. UFW is another plaintiff in the suit.
Fox News reporter Matt Finn posted a video on Wednesday morning from inside the Penske truck, showing at least six Border Patrol agents jumping out of the truck and running toward people in the parking lot. Finn posted on X that “DHS says MS 13 has a chokehold on this area, which is one reason why they’re carrying out the highly optic immigration raids.”
Finn and Fox New Media’s corporate communications senior executive vice president Irena Briganti did not immediately respond to an email asking if he was inside the truck.
Bovino, the Border Patrol sector chief, credited Fox News with the video footage in an Instagram post — and compared agents to “The Odyssey” characters Odysseus, Achilles and Ajax. Bovino wrote that agents used a “legendary ruse” to “swiftly defeat potentially violent Anti-ICE protesters serving as lookouts to aid illegal aliens.” He notably did not accuse the individuals who were arrested of being part of MS-13, or any other gang.
A spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security told HuffPost Border Patrol agents arrested 16 “illegal aliens from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua,” but also did not mention MS-13. The spokesperson, who declined to provide their name, did not respond to questions about the basis for the arrests, whether any of the individuals arrested were charged with a crime, or whether the arrests were in compliance with the temporary restraining order.
Volunteers from the LA Rapid Response Network, a community protection group that responds to immigration raids, quickly arrived at the scene of the raid to interview witnesses and gather information about what happened. Despite the anonymous DHS spokespersons’ claims, at least one of the people arrested had legal immigration status, Cabrera told HuffPost. CHIRLA is still working on identifying the names of all the people who were arrested, he continued, describing the challenge of finding people once they have been arrested, and connecting them with lawyers and their loved ones.
U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli applauded the raid at Home Depot and reposted the Fox News reporter’s video of a Border Patrol agent holding two men by the backs of their shirts.
“For those who thought immigration enforcement had stopped in Southern California, think again. The enforcement of federal law is not negotiable, and there are no sanctuaries from the reach of the federal government,” Essayli wrote on X.
Randolph P. Ryerson, a spokesperson for Penske, told the Los Angeles Times that the company did not authorize this operation nor was it made aware that its trucks would be used.
“Penske will reach out to DHS and reinforce its policy to avoid improper use of its vehicles in the future,” Ryerson said. “Penske strictly prohibits the transportation of people in the cargo area of its vehicles under any circumstances.”
Earlier this summer, Penske banned members of the white nationalist group, Patriot Front, from renting its vehicles after videos surfaced of its members fleeing a demonstration in Missouri in a Penske yellow truck.
In 2019, President Donald Trump awarded Roger Penske, chairman and founder of the Penske Corporation, with a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Penske, the chairman, donated more than $1.1 million to pro-Trump groups during the 2024 election cycle.
Advocates in Sacramento expressed concern that the Trump administration was defying similar court orders in July when immigration officials raided and arrested 10 people at a Home Depot in the state’s capital. The raid came several months after a federal judge representing the eastern district of California blocked officials from conducting “warrantless arrests.”