‘We never felt like this before’: CBP arrests stir fear at Sacramento Home Depot
Federal immigration agents detained a dozen people outside a south Sacramento Home Depot at about 8 a.m. Thursday. By lunchtime, the temperature had climbed, but a chill had already descended on the site of the first high-profile immigration raid locals could remember in the area.
Tortas Sinaloa, which serves Mexican staples in the hardware store’s parking lot at 4641 Florin Road, saw a 70% drop in sales compared to usual, restaurant owner Maria Lopez estimated. The immigration enforcement operation by U.S. Border Patrol agents — unlike any Lopez, 35, had heard of over nearly two decades in south Sacramento — also marked a profound shift for the community, she said.
“Today, it’s been slow in sales,” Lopez said about 2 p.m. “Tomorrow, people just gonna be afraid to come out of their houses.”
Before arriving at the eatery about 9:30 a.m., Lopez said she heard about the raid from regular customers, some of them undocumented immigrants, who typically seek work in the parking lot. “They were shaking,” Lopez said.
Word of the arrests spread quickly, and two employees whom Lopez was expecting at the restaurant called her close to 9 a.m. to say they were too worried to come to work.
“I was just like, if you feel at risk, don’t show up,” she said, adding that even some Latino immigrants with legal documents feared arrest.
“We never felt like this before,” she said.
David Kim, the assistant chief patrol agent for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s El Centro Sector, said in a statement that the agency arrested 11 undocumented immigrants in Thursday’s operation, as well as one U.S. citizen accused of “obstructing/impeding federal officers and vandalism of government property.”
In a Thursday afternoon video advertising the raid as a necessary security mission, El Centro Sector’s Chief Patrol Agent Gregory K. Bovino said one of the individuals arrested was an “aggravated felon” who “appears to have charges related to fentanyl trafficking.”
Andrea Castillo, the wife of the U.S. citizen, tearfully recounted his arrest. She had seen and been unable to stop Jose Castillo’s detainment after he had called her to the Home Depot.
“If he wasn’t brown, he wouldn’t have been questioned,” Castillo said.
Minutes after the detainments, protesters came to the Home Depot with signs to protest President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation policy.
Tanya Homman, 58, a retired Medi-Cal official from Elk Grove, said she learned about Thursday’s raid from the activist group 50501 but arrived too late to try to protect the people from being held. She said she may return to the Home Depot early some mornings, believing that the presence of onlookers can deter federal immigration agents.
“This is my new job,” Homman said. “This is awful.”
By midday, Homman was yelling at passing cars through a megaphone, urging people to attend a previously scheduled afternoon “Good Trouble” rally at the state Capitol.
Inside the Home Depot, Calvin King, a 65-year-old handyman from Elk Grove, was buying materials for laminate flooring. He said he had not heard about the raid that occurred outside hours earlier, but that he had been anticipating one.
King said that as a Black man he has long perceived bias from law enforcement officials, but stories about federal detentions during the Trump administration have created a different atmosphere.
“It’s anxiety, because we don’t know,” he said. “You can’t say what you used to say: ‘Well, if I do this, then this will happen, or this won’t happen.’”
“You can’t say that anymore.”
Some people still ordered lunch at Maria Lopez’s window.
After picking up his food, Luis Puga, 53, said he had not seen an immigration raid similar to Thursday’s in 24 years of living in Sacramento since he emigrated from Mexico. He said it did not scare him, despite some residents’ fears that no immigrants are protected.
“I show my papers, they have to let me go,” Puga said. “Maybe you’re afraid if you don’t have documents.”
