Hunted, Not Hidden: Defending Undocumented Day Laborers from ICE Terror and Exploitation
Host Mimi Rosenberg is joined by Nadia Marin Molina of the National Day Labor Organizing Network and Gonzalo Mercado of La Colmena Community Job Center to confront the intensifying ICE terror campaign against undocumented day laborers under the Trump administration. The discussion exposes how ICE raids, racial profiling, and a militarized deportation force are weaponized to criminalize workers seeking survival. The guests detail the systemic violence—enabled by corporate complicity and political inaction—and illuminate a path forward through grassroots organizing, solidarity campaigns like "Adopt a Corner," and demands to get ICE out of Home Depot and local communities. They call on all of us to resist fear with action and to organize with the essential workers who build and sustain this nation.
00:00 Introduction: ICE raids, day laborers hunted, and a call to organize
02:15 Guests introduced: Nadia Marin Molina and Gonzalo Mercado
03:08 Wildfire cleanup crews raided in California — day laborers at risk
04:50 Gonzalo Mercado on organizing against unprecedented ICE terror
06:55 Solo el Pueblo Salva el Pueblo: building community resistance
08:30 Nadia Marin Molina on ICE racial profiling and mass arrests
12:22 Stephen Miller’s ICE quotas and targeting Home Depots & 7-Elevens
15:15 Constitutional rights violated—citizens and TPS holders detained
18:42 Strategy of fear: systemic racial profiling and deportation quotas
21:19 Gonzalo Mercado on xenophobia, fascism, and international solidarity
25:00 Transnational organizing: networks from El Salvador to Guatemala
28:43 Guest worker exploitation: legalized labor without rights
32:00 Trump's anti-immigrant bill: expanding ICE, stripping protections
35:48 Deportation quotas and Proud Boys in ICE? The danger of expansion
38:00 Workers’ rights enforcement gutted, wage theft unpunished
41:11 Industries built on immigrant labor—and the growing repression
42:35 Organizing under attack: turning outrage into grassroots action
46:00 Home Depot complicity: ICE raids on private property
47:32 Democratic silence: NY fails to pass New York for All Act
49:20 Collusion between local police and ICE: Nassau County case
51:50 The Dodger Stadium scandal and corporate pressure campaigns
54:18 ICE out of everywhere: from Home Depot to schools and firehouses
56:11 Adopt a Corner: solidarity through coffee, conversation, and support
59:45 How to join the movement: toolkits, hotlines, and rapid response
01:02:03 Gonzalo and Nadia’s closing thoughts: fight fear, build power
01:04:15 Final words: organize, resist, and defend those who build the nation
Rough TRANSCRIPT:
I'm Mimi Rosenberg, and with Ken Nash, we build bridges, not walls. Building bridges, a space where we confront the truth.
Too often buried beneath headlines and political spin, today we shine a light on a community that has long carried the weight of this nation's labor. With blistered hands and unshakable resolve, they do the work. Oftentimes, no one else will. While ICE stalks their corners like a modern-day Gestapo, undocumented workers are not hidden. They are hunted. Undocumented workers are pushed into the shadows by the relentless surveillance and
raids of a system designed to criminalize survival by a system that profits from their labor and punishes their presence. Under the Trump administration, undocumented workers, especially day laborers, face a campaign of terror. Raids at dawn, families torn apart,
protections stripped away, the machinery of ICE supercharged, and fear becoming a daily companion for those who dare to work, to live, to survive. But this story isn't just about cruelty. It's about resilience. It's about organizing.
It's about the people who refuse to be silent. Today, we're talking about the fight for dignity, the call for justice, and the power of community. I'm joined by two powerful voices from the front lines of this struggle. We spotlight Nadia Marin Molina, executive director of the National Day Labor Organizing Network,
whose decades of advocacy have empowered day laborers across the country to fight for fair treatment and immigrant reform. That is really immigration reform. Joining her is Gonzalo Mercado, founder of La Colmina Community Job Center and a driving force behind grassroots organizing, building bridges between communities and creating pathways to economic democracy. Together, Nadia and Gonzalo bring powerful stories together.
bold visions, and unwavering commitment to uplifting the voices of those too often left unheard. Nadia Gonzalo, welcome to Building Bridges. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mimi. Thank you for having us here. Thank you very much, Mimi. It's entirely my pleasure.
I was awakened to a morning newspaper newspaper that had the following introduction, and this was from Altadena, California. For months, the day laborers had decontaminated homes that survived the Los Angeles wildfires. sweating in masks and protective suits. They vacuumed toxic soot and ash, wiped down books and framed photos, and disposed of clothes and furniture that could not be salvaged. One morning last month,
they crammed into a small job center in Pasadena, California, ready for more work. But on this day, the situation left too many dangers. It wasn't the contaminants of toxic fumes. It was the federal immigration agents that had detained six people who were reported now to be only blocks away. So with that introduction,
Gonzalo, Nadia, give us a picture of an additional picture, a more comprehensive picture of of who day laborers are. And I know that you function in at least 70 states now. Who are these workers? What's the work that they do?
Gonzalo, why don't we open by you? Sure. Thank you very much for this opportunity. We are, you know, the National Day Labor and Organizing Network. We've been doing this work for a long time. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that many of the workers that we always say, you know,
could not be in the shadows because they've been out there this whole time, have been harassed by people in other times, you know, by Minutemen. And now we have an entire police state going after people who are standing in the corner trying to get a job to feed their families, either here or back home.
So what we're seeing right now is something that at least in my experience, in my over 15 years working with the immigrant community, we have never seen. The level of attack, the intensity on how they're going after everyone without following a warrant or following due process is just absolutely stunning. And of course, we couldn't sit still while our community is being targeted. So we've been organizing this whole time in different ways in different parts of the country,
obviously, specifically in L. A. right now, because that's where most of the issues are going on. But this is how we respond. We always say we're not going to wait for anybody to come and save us. We have to do it ourselves. We have a slogan called Solo el Pueblo, Salva el Pueblo, Only the People Save the People.
And that's really the motto of what we're responding right now in a always conversation. peaceful way. We're calling for peaceful resistance and especially to call on folks who are either friends, families, allies to come and join us in this fight, to come and join in the different areas like Adopt a Corner, Eyes Out of Home Depot and other campaigns that we're working right now.
Nadia, if you could also amplify this. One of the things that just – it's so egregious. It's so painful. It's so ugly. We just got information that one of the workers – I don't know for sure if it was a day laborer, but an immigrant worker who had climbed to a roof to escape ice in his work in the fields fell and has since died.
So we're working on different levels of harassment. And it would seem to me all of this is based as well, aside from Gonzalo saying no warrants and so on, But it's all about racial profiling. Give us your thoughts and your image of what's going on to terrorize these workers. Absolutely. It is racial profiling. And I mean,
if you think back to the beginning of this administration, they had said originally that they were going to go after, you know, only specific people, they were going to go after people who, you know, had criminal convictions, etc.
And while, you know, most of us never believe that anyway, and it's And we're pretty certain that the situation was going to be used against everybody. I think it's become more clear to everybody or more obvious to anybody who has eyes to see that. . . That whatever pretense they had about making their immigration enforcement targeted in any way has gone completely out the window.
So at this point, what what we know is, for example, that there was the news about Stephen Miller. speaking to ICE agents and in frustration, I believe it was in May or the beginning of June, in frustration about the numbers that they had and supposedly that the numbers that they had detained were not enough,
said to them, Specifically, why aren't you going to the Home Depots? Why aren't you going to the 7-Elevens? And set a goal, a target for them of 3,000 people per day to be arrested. And so. . . This kind of goal,
first of all, you know, to say this about the Home Depots and 7-Elevens, obviously targeting day laborers because day laborers are going to be out looking for work and are well known to do that, are very visible in local communities. And so from their point of view, these are easy targets for them. And it's really important.
It's terrible, right, to think that people are being targeted in this way simply because they're going out and looking for work, not doing anything more than that. And it's been clear that what ICE has been doing has been racial profiling, right? They go to a day labor corner, Home Depot, 7-Eleven, CVS, multiple places. And this has happened in Los Angeles, but it's also happened here in New York.
where they go, they basically round up the workers that they can, arrest anybody who runs, question people regardless, again, regardless of immigration status. They question everybody. And it seems to be they're just grabbing people based on the color of their skin,
their accent, the fact that they're in front of a 7-Eleven. And that's racial profiling. That's abuse of power. you know, we're supposed to have in this country constitutional rights that apply to everybody who is in the country, regardless of immigration status,
and that protect us from arbitrarily being questioned by agents with masks in the street, right? And yet, people who are citizens, people who are permanent residents, people who have different types of temporary status,
like TPS holders and others, have also been questioned, arrested, and taken away. And so it's becoming more and more clear that what the administration was saying was never true. that they were targeting in any way. And on the contrary, you know,
there is now a very clear agenda of mass deportation, no matter against who, no matter who they need in order to fill their quotas. And also that they're, you know, trying to take away documentation, de-document people who have had it. So there's the situation with TPS holders,
for example, who've had temporary protected status, and some have been in the country for decades, you know, 25 years or even more, who are suddenly being told they have 60 days to pick up and leave the country. And, you know,
despite having been here and built their lives here over the course of all of these years. And so there's no. . . There's no legality, there's no pretense at due process, and there's certainly no humanity. As Gonzalo said, it's,
you know, it's the worst that I've seen in decades worth of this work at the intersection of labor, right, workers' rights and immigrants' rights. Right. The situation is worse than I had imagined. Gonzalo,
how do you, given what you opened with and what Nadia has just said, how do you understand the politics of this? On one hand, we have a nation that exploits, that needs democracy. and then exploits these day laborers. And we're talking not just about New York or California, certainly the situation exists in Washington and throughout the country. So what is it about the Stephen Millers?
What is it, who I think is the real ideologue behind all this, and Trump as the ever opportunistic politician careerist, What is it that has driven them to such hatred and the cause of such immiseration of hard-working people whom we need in our various industries? Yeah, that's a very good question. We probably can be here for a long time trying to understand. We actually have been as a country, no doubt.
Yeah, I mean, there is a historical context. And, you know, if you put that into perspective, you know, xenophobia has been used for political reasons. you know, means all throughout history. We go back to the Know Nothing Party in the United States that was the first.
They used the fear of others to win political elections. And not only here in the United States, but, you know, most recently, the anti-immigrant sentiment and the far right and fascism have been using immigrants, especially low-income immigrants, immigrants of color in every country. This is not just happening here.
It's not just happening in Europe. It's happening in Central America. It's happening in Chile. It's happening everywhere because these people are connected, and they know that right now people are moving to elect folks through emotion more than rationality. So I feel that they are. .
. preying on people's fears and and also on people's prejudices and you know that's a recipe that unfortunately works for for winning elections we all know what happens afterwards and unfortunately we've been here before and I think you know remembering history and understanding what is the connections behind this not only in terms of xenophobia and hate and fascism, but also in terms of money,
because people are making money off preying on vulnerable workers. There are entire industries that run on following up the tactics, the Sinophobic tactics of this government and others. There are multinationals who provide technology, who provide the resources, the armor, everything that they're using right now. So I think there is multiple fronts on how this is happening and how this is spreading.
I think it's important, though, that people understand that this is not a thing of the United States, it's not a thing of now. And then because of this is something that is spread around the world, we also need an international response. We also need people to connect with other folks in other parts of the world who are fighting similar fights, who are being targeted by police state. And one of the things that we started doing a few years ago, actually, after
the mass deportations of Barack Obama is that we started connecting with folks in El Salvador because after all these mass deportations were happening, nobody was worried about what was happening to these families and workers returning to their homes after decades. So we partnered with some allies and we developed and incubated a worker center in El Salvador back in 2018, 2019 And through that work,
we also started connecting with folks in Guatemala, in Honduras, in Costa Rica, in Mexico. They were going through similar things around deportation and the effects of people being deported to their own countries. of origin after, in some cases,
living their whole life here in the United States and not having family. Those are, I think, some of the worst cases when you come to a country that you've never known, that you have no connections, that you have no networks. And unfortunately, we. .
. are seeing this now started to happen again. And the flights, you know, we just had a conversation with our network today. They were telling us that in El Salvador alone, the flights doubled in the last couple of weeks. And that in the next couple of months, they're going to see an increase, not only in El Salvador, but in all of the other countries.
We've seen that folks from the government have been traveling down there. Nobody knows what really the governments of those countries are committing to. Of course, all of the horrible things that have happened and continue to happen at the jail, at the prison in El Salvador. And so we really believe and we really value the importance of organizing transnationally or translocally, like to say better,
because this is the same fight and the issues are connected. Through the same work of understanding and actioning around the plight of people returning and being deported to the countries, we also learned that one of the other big issues in Central America is the issue of guest workers. And guest workers who are supposedly, you know, according to the narrative of many administrations,
not just this one, is the quote unquote legal right to come and work here. But in reality and in practice, what we're seeing is literally, you know, spaces where workers have absolutely no rights. They've never seen a contract before they leave. They don't know what their job is going to do.
When are they going to get paid? The living and working conditions while they're here. And then, unfortunately, we are going to see an increase of this program and not an increase in protections, which is what really needs to happen. So I think we are in front of a big issue. But like I said before,
we also need to get out of our U. S. -centric, you know, understanding and really bring our hands and our solidarity back to other countries with allies, with workers and unions and people organizing also for working people in other parts.
Yeah. Nadia, we offline discussed a little bit about Trump's big, ugly, beautiful bill, if you will. And to pay for Trump's domestic agenda, Congress imposed cuts to Medicaid and the social safety net, which was already seriously frayed. But immigrants will now have to pay a one percent tax, one percent tax to send money back to family and friends in their home countries and a hundred dollars.
Now, these asylum seekers will have to pay an additional $100 annually while they wait for a decision on their application, roughly more than $800 more also to appeal a rejection of their application. The entire classes of legal immigrants will also now be ineligible for Medicare and food stamps, for example. So can you also talk about within this bill.
. . Just to get an idea of how oppressive it is to the immigrant populations, the different categories of immigrant populations, talk about what else the bill does to expand ICE and, frankly, terrorize immigrant workers so we can find out and understand what people are up against just to be able to live and to do what?
To build this economy. And then, of course, we'll get into some of the strategies that Gonzalo was referencing to what do we do when we're under attack? Fight back, fight back. But talk a little bit about what this bill does in terms of expanding ICE. Yes.
So the bill set aside about $170 billion. for immigration enforcement and border security, specifically $75 billion in extra funds for ICE, which makes it the highest funded law enforcement agency in the federal government. So this includes money for detention to expand detention, which already is a huge system with both public and private governments. private contractors, right, who are benefiting from detention, as Gonzalo mentioned. The estimates are that the amount of money that they put into it would allow ICE to
at least double the current capacity to about $100,000. Detainees or people who are being held at any at any moment. And, you know, they're they're clearly using that they're they're clearly seeking to increase the number of space that they have in order to be able to arrest more people. But they're also putting money in to fund the actual process of finding and arresting people,
in particular hiring additional deportation officers, increasing the numbers of officers that are out there. So those officials that we see out there with the masks and masks, And, you know, no identification might be from ICE or they might be from some of the other agencies that are already collaborating and giving personnel to ICE. But they're going to increase those numbers of people who are out there on the
streets terrorizing local communities. You know, they're going to put more money into the whole system, right? So that includes planes, it includes prosecutors in the judicial system, etc. Now, part of the question is, it's easy to say they're going to hire 10,000, you know, additional deportation officers,
right, or agents. But another question is, like, how do they get to that number of people? in a way that actually follows the internal rules, right? They need to have people who are trained. They can't take people just off the street or they shouldn't, right? Take people off the street. And more and more,
you know, there have been articles or coverage of the sort of loss and morale of ICE agents because they know that the work they're doing is shameful and unwarranted. And so, So, you know, ICE is going to have to hire people who like the idea of going after immigrant community members.
I mean, the fear that we have is they're going to end up hiring people from the Proud Boys and from other sort of groups that are, you know, more clearly have a racist and fascist agenda. And so as they try to sort of, as they say, scale up,
those are the things that are going to happen because they don't have any guardrails in place and they don't really care. Right. As long as they're. expanding their ability to arrest people. Now, at the same time, just to make the connection,
right, at the same time, what they're also doing simultaneously is reducing the workforce in other areas of the administration. And so to go back to the issue that we were talking about before of workers' rights, Right. The Department of Labor, both wage and hour and health and safety,
you know, other areas of health and safety training, all of that has been has been reduced. And they have they they they have never had even under Democratic administrations, they have never had the resources necessary to really enforce workers rights. in the way that they need to. They've never had the resources. But now they have much,
they have less resources to be able to, and they don't have the political will to go after employers. And so what that means is that. . . at the same time that all of this is happening, employers also have and are taking the opportunity to increase their exploitation of workers.
So those employers who steal workers' wages, who make workers work in unsafe working conditions where workers die on the job or are exposed to chemicals and things which make them sick, All of those employers take advantage of this in order to say, well, you know, if you are going to complain about your about your wages or about your lack of rights,
you know, I can always call immigration. And unfortunately, at this point, workers have a, you know, a justified fear of what will happen and about those threats. And so,
you know, as Gonzalo was saying, these industries are sustained by immigrants, industries like construction, agriculture, landscaping, you know, restaurants.
I mean, the list goes on. of entire industries that are sustained by the labor of immigrant workers and which, you know, where the economy benefits from their labor. And right now, the attack is going to be, as I said,
used by unscrupulous employers, but it's going to actually, you know, have a negative impact on the entire industry. because of the level of contribution that workers have. And we're speaking with Nadia Marine Molina, Executive Director of the National Day Labor Organizing Network, and Gonzalo Mercado,
founder of La Comina Community Job Center. And I'm, you know. . . I mentioned before Stephen Miller, who just brings horror to my mind's eye when I even say his name. When we look at the intensified hostility towards immigrant workers, especially under the Trump administration,
it's impossible. to ignore the real deliberate strategy, I think, behind it. From Stephen Miller's architecting of anti-immigrant policies to the weaponization of ICE that's been described as a tool of fear. This wasn't just about border enforcement. It was about reshaping the identity of this country through exclusion and Tara, this is the backdrop to this invaluable group of hardworking,
calloused and intrepid workers. Gonzalo, how in the world? You had talked a little bit about it, but let's delve more into it. How do you and how do Nadia take this conversation? pervasive and deliberate fear and policy to reshape the identity of this country and turn that into organizing because these workers must live and they will not back down. How do you begin to do that?
Talk about the building of this incredible network in over 70 cities Endlon has set up and what is to be done and how we in local communities can ally with these hardworking people that service our communities. Yeah, so I think, you know, in a way, we have been preparing for this moment. Even though we say that we've never seen this type of violence and abuse, it doesn't mean that it's a surprise. I think that right now, again,
it is a surprise that we got to this moment, not only with figures like Stephen Miller, who, you know, everyone knows what his real thoughts are, but I think in a lot of times, for example, when we started with the narrative of the good immigrant and the bad immigrant in
order, you know, to get some Republicans to support immigration reform, I think that also. . . were things that, you know,
in some way took us to this moment because we kept giving away things to the other side like it's, you know, traditionally said. Instead of really standing by, you know, workers who are, like Nadia was saying,
you know, an integral part not only of our communities but also of our economies, you know, especially local economies. I forget someone that said once that, especially when towns, you know, don't like or cities don't like to see workers congregating on the streets seeking
for work. I remember someone saying that actually having day laborers in that corner, it means that there is an economic activity going on. So they're assigned people. that there is a vibrancy in terms of economics because there are work and there are things happening. Why are day laborers in a corner and not in somewhere else? That's obviously a long discussion.
But I think, in a way, the lack of providing documentation for people to freely work and live in this country, you know, it's a purpose. You know, they want to keep this workforce,
like Nadia was saying, you know, not asking questions, not complaining if they don't pay you, not complaining if you have an accident. And it's really an entire economy that was built on this. I believe that also these times of so much darkness and so many horrible things happening every day brings us opportunities and brings us the spaces to come
together, maybe with folks that we've never have or never talked to in the past, people that are outraged about what's going on. Let's turn that outrage into organizing. Let's turn that outrage into into bringing solidarity, not from a perspective of charity, but from a perspective of solidarity to one another,
to see each other in the same community, to see whether that is happening to a person in the corner, for example, in some ways always is gonna affect me. And let's not forget that this administration is starting with day laborers and Home Depots, but, you know, that's not their target. You know, that we even have heard about them denaturalizing people who are current citizens. So I think this is just a sign.
It's like the cannery, in a way, of worse things to come, that if we're not organizing, we're not fighting back, and we're not building bridges with other communities, you know, non-traditional allies even,
to come together and respond in a way that we, one, can protect our communities. Number two, we build that solidarity and then eventually can fight back these horrible policies that are being imposed, not just on immigrant communities, like I said, but, you know,
they're not going to start. stop with their laborers. And that's something that we know. We've seen in the news that even threatening to send American citizens to this horrible prison in El Salvador. So I think, again, it's time for us bringing together,
like I said, we have different ways where people can get involved. Adopt a Corner is one of the workshops that were given to different folks across the country, which showed you how can you identify a day labor corner near you. How can you bring solidarity to the workers? How can you create a rapid response? in case something happened in that corner, provide legal assistance, provide community.
I think those are, you know, very clear things that folks can be doing now. And, you know, obviously with Home Depot's now being raided, there is a campaign to get eyes out of Home Depot. And I think the most public pressure we can have, especially in businesses like Home Depot, who not only benefit from day laborers,
You know, but benefit from many immigrant workers who are also their own employers or contractors. Many day laborers are also contractors themselves. They have different employers. They do different jobs, but they also go and shop there. You know, so I think it's important to bring all of those things together,
to come together, bring community. make sure that we are protecting the most vulnerable workers among us and try to find a way to push back against this horrible policy. Nadia, building off of what Gonzalo was just talking about, one of the ugly things that has occurred to me in the context of his discourse was the fact that local and national democratic leaders have not responded.
And of course, Obama himself was known as. . . you know, the deporter-in-chief. But we're not focusing on that. But what we're not focusing on, in some ways, in terms of dealing with the Home Depots and Adopt-a-Corner,
which I want you to talk more about, is this outrage that the National Democratic leaders have really been virtually silenced. The New York State Legislature Failed to pass the New York for all act. I mean, fundamental things. So how against this reality do you focus? Who are you focusing on to really build?
to work with undocumented labor, and that includes, I would hope, getting on board, the organized labor movement, and maybe we can talk about that as well, in terms of really working to support undocumented workers whether it's adopting a corner focusing on Home Depot and
getting them to not permit ICE on their private headquarters space or whatever is being done so talk to us more about some of the things that Gonzalo was laying out a moment ago Yes, from what you were mentioning about the Democratic elected officials, I mean, they have been, it's become more and more obvious that the Democratic elected officials have been
absolutely silent and are not doing enough to defend immigrant communities. In some cases have been silent. have disappeared from view in order to avoid talking about issues like immigration. New York is a perfect example. The New York for all legislation, which you mentioned, Mimi, would have prohibited the collusion of local police or other agencies of government
in with ice right would have prohibited them from doing what they're doing now or at least doing it with local resources so in a county like nasa county which has what's called a 287g agreement um they they made this agreement with ice which then assigns officers um to work as ice agents so they're being trained and are going to be deployed as ice agents um what they're doing is they're giving ICE resources and multiplying ICE capacity. And so at the local level, communities don't want them to do that, right?
At the local level, communities know that the police needs to be able to help people. And if they're believed if they are working with ICE, nobody is going to trust them. Nobody's going to call the police when there is any kind of issue in their community. So that loss of trust is already happening or has already happened. And And New York state legislators could have brought this legislation, which,
by the way, was proposed during the first Trump administration. It's not a new piece of legislation. The New York state legislators failed to to bring it up for a vote. And, you know, I'll remind your listeners that we have a Democratic Assembly, a Democratic Senate,
and a Democratic governor in New York State. And yet this piece of legislation, which would have served to protect the immigrant community, was not even brought up for a vote. And so it's really shameful. to see that our elected officials are not doing what they can. And unfortunately, too often are saying that there's nothing that we can do, right? They sort of throw up their hands and say the federal government is going to do
whatever they want. And the truth is, no, that, you know, there's. . . There's a way in which we all have to look at what are the pillars of power, like what's holding up and facilitating what the federal government is doing right now, what is allowing
them to do what they do. And they can't do what they do without all of us in some way sustaining the system that they're using in order to persecute, as Gonzalo said, immigrant communities, but it's everybody and it affects everybody. Yeah, and I want you to mention,
because as part of that and continue that theme, I was thinking about what happened at Dodges Stadium. recently, because as I listen to you and Gonzalo, I'm thinking, oh, my God, what a difficult,
difficult, difficult task. But you folks are intrepid, always have been. And as I said, you've now managed to build, which is just astronomic and so important, 70 cities, Washington,
D. C. , aside from Los Angeles and places like Pasadena and Altadena and so on, networks of Immigrant labor, day laborers, which is incredible. Talk about one of the things that was accomplished while I almost get overwhelmed by thinking,
my God, how do you do? What do you do? How do you make the Home Depots respond to what's in their own interest in this industry? particularly since they have a very, very conservative head and so on. So within that, I wanted you to mention something, and we can take it from there,
of what happened at Dodges Stadium to reflect the power of business to support or suppress immigrant labor. Yes, in Los Angeles, which is actually where Andilan headquarters is. And I should mention that I do have a co-executive director along with me. His name is Pablo Alvarado. And he's based in Los Angeles. And the fight that they have been, you know,
the fight back that they have been waging in Los Angeles, the city has been used as a target. and an example by the administration. And so it's been very intense there. And one of the things that happened among many was that ICE used the parking area of Dodger Stadium in order to prepare to deploy for some of their raids. And people were very angry to see that the Dodgers were allowing their stadium to be used or were allowing their area to be used.
And there were protests and pushing back on the Dodgers for allowing this to happen. And eventually they had to respond. They came out to say that they were going to put, I believe it was a million dollars into a fund to support immigrants who were affected by the raids, which anyone who saw this said, well, it's too little,
right? And for them, it's certainly far too little. But it's something. And I think the important lesson that I see from that, and that I think we should take from that, is that we can't let anyone say that you know, there's nothing that we can do. There's nothing to be done, and especially a large corporation, right?
Like the Dodgers or like Home Depot, which is the other example. Right now, as Gonzalo mentioned, we're pushing for At a national level for ICE to get out of Home Depot and for everyone who is a who supports day laborers in their community or supports immigrant workers to tell Home Depot, you know, you can write a letter and just bring it to Home Depot. You can call them.
You can, you know, pressure them. They need to hear from their customers and they need to hear from their community members. There are groups which have done protests at different Home Depots across the country, both inside and outside. We've done them here on Long Island as well, protesting Home Depot so that they know that the community is seeing that they're allowing people
When it's convenient, they allow ICE to conduct raids or to use their parking lots. When it's convenient, they say that their parking lots are public, for example, public to ICE. And yet, for years, day laborers have been persecuted. By Home Depot and by Home Depot security guards, in some cases, even with dogs patrolling to keep them out of their out of their parking lots, because they would say that their parking lots were private. And so it's not enough for Home Depot to sort of throw up its hands and say there's
nothing that we can do. Of course, they can do something to support the workers who are such an important part of their economy, the workers who are customers themselves and who work for the contractors who are their customers and work for the homeowners who are also their customers. And I think we've been, as I mentioned,
supporting ICE out of Home Depot across the country, but it's also ICE out of everywhere. Ice out of our communities, ice out of our schools, ice out of our fire departments. They've used a fire department parking lots to deploy. Ice out of right now anywhere where they are in our communities because we're not going to sit back and allow them to use these spaces without a fight. And against the backdrop, of course,
of the revocation of temporary protected status, TPS for countries like Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, I mean, there is a full onslaught opportunist. mechanism that had been brought to the courts and endorsed by the Supreme Court, which is now fully and comprehensively in the hands of the Trump administration to
really torment The very labor that has helped to build this country. So in this context, in this context, again, Nadia and Gonzalo are undaunted. They are organizers. And we've got to become organizers. So tell us, Gonzalo, whether it's in D.
C. , whether it's in L. A. , whether it's in New York or any other place, how do we begin the process of adopting a corner? How do we begin the process of getting organized labor to stand with their sisters
and brothers in the day labor community? How do we make Home Depot work? And Lowe's and other institutions like that, other businesses, do right by the people who work, shop there, and actually help build their businesses as well. What do we do?
Yeah, so, well, first of all, we've been doing a lot of calls and workshops, online workshops, where people can sign up. There's a few coming up.
We invite you to go to our website, andlon. org. That's it, andlon. org. And you're going to do that one more time as a good organizer that I know you are. Yeah. It's N-D-L-O-N dot O-R-G. And by the way,
they have a great website, not to mention the music groups that are part of it and the beautiful graphics. So, yeah, go and learn on it. Yeah. Tell us more. In our website, we have various toolkits. Also, in our Instagram,
Day Labor Network, also, we put a lot of information about not only what's going on every day, but also how can people get engaged. We've done different. . . Like I said,
workshops in different parts, some local, some more national, and people are coming together. We are forming groups in every area where people are interested in supporting. They're calling their friends, their families. A lot of people, you know, they have their own local networks. So people are coming up.
People want things to do. People want to support. People want to express solidarity. And in all of these workshops that we do, you're going to find something to do. We understand that sometimes people may be constrained with time or other things. And there's always something for you to do, like managing a rapid response phone line, for example.
That's something that you can do from your home. Or do, like Nadia said, an action at a Home Depot with your friends because you know that there are day laborers that are being targeted. And even if they're not, just sending a message that people in the community are not okay with with Home Depot or any other entity supporting the work of ICE at this moment, I think is the most important thing to do.
And like I said, this is. . . And how do I adopt a corner? What would that look like, just to give us an idea, so people can start thinking about that? Yeah. So some of the tips that we give, for example,
is, you know, just to get a group of folks that we don't want people like, you know, 100 people to show up at a corner because then workers are going to get afraid. But we always say, you know, if you have four or five people come to the corner that,
you know, workers congregate, bring, you know, coffee and pastries, for example, and establish. relationship.
I think that's the first step. Just, you know, when workers see that people come in, immediately they're going to think they're going to hire them. So that's something else that you can do. You can hire a day laborer. You know,
if you have an incomplete project in your home that you've been, you know, procrastinating for a while, workers can do everything from, you know, helping you move to paint a room to fix a staircase. There's always something that you want to do in your home, in your apartment. And I think now more than ever is the time to
to support workers because many of them are now afraid to go to the corners. But guess what? They have nothing. They have no alternatives. So they have to do it. So I think, you know, coming to the corners, making solidarity. If you have a day labor center near you, call them because they also have ways that they can,
you know, send workers out to you. And I think, again, making community support. And making sure the workers are there, you're there for them. And then obviously if someone gets detained or there is a raid and something like that happens, there's, you know,
other levels of support, like, for example, money for bail or, you know, money for the family who was left without their breadwinner. I think there's just various things that people can do, and there's always,
you can always going to find something, your little sand, a little poquito de arena, a granito de arena, like we say in Spanish, that you can contribute to this fight. You know, the work of undocumented laborers is,
especially in disaster recovery, has been so vital to the U. S. economy. And when I think of the health consequences and the like for these workers, it's just shame, shame, and shame that organized labor.
whose back was built on immigrant labor organizing and so on, going back to before, but thinking about the demands of the first Labor Day, which was largely immigrant workers that helped organize the union movement. So in the very little time that we have left just for this day, but we'll continue to look at the issue. Your final thoughts, Nadia,
and your final thoughts, Gonzalo, on what is to be done systemically. to get the how out of our community, ICE, to stop this, to stop demonizing the very people who built this country are some of the workers that have built it.
And, of course, continuing this racist, xenophobic process that, again, vile politicians have built their careers on throughout the history of this country. What.
. . Where do we go from here? Nadja. . . And then, Gonzalo? I mean, I don't know that anyone has the answer.
Yes, you do. I know you do. You sure have the energy all these years. We certainly have the energy to come together and fight. I mean, I think that's the first thing, right? Is that they. . .
They want us to be overwhelmed, to feel that there is nothing that we can do, that they have the overwhelming force, and that nothing that we're going to do will make a difference. And I think it's so important for us to remember that we absolutely do have. . . The ability to take actions that are going to make a difference.
And we can make the stuff that we do at the local level can make the work of ICE more difficult. Even are we going to be able to stop or prevent every raid? No. But we can support each other, as Gonzalo was mentioning, in solidarity. We can fight and help people fight so that they're not deported so easily, so that they're not arrested so easily. And all of this is, you know,
it will take much, much more than what we, our current abilities right now, which is why we're trying to organize and bring in new people. The idea of the Adopt a Corner initiative, which Gonzalo mentioned, is that this is for people who maybe have never gone to a day laborer corner before,
maybe have never met, you know, a day laborer. but can get together with a couple of friends, you know, maybe get some coffee and go and meet workers on the corner and can bring some Know Your Rights materials. And that's it.
And begin to sort of establish that relationship. And we're doing that because we know that, you know, we're an organization relatively small compared to the task, right? We cannot reach all of the day labor corners. or be there every day to prevent what's happening, right? And the level of the onslaught is big.
But with. . . more people, right, with people who are in those communities everywhere where those workers are, we can organize to be able to fight back. And we are.
And we are. Yes, we are. And we're going to unfortunately have to leave it there. As we close today's conversation, let's remember the people who rebuild after fires, who clean our streets, who care for our homes and our families, who
They are not invisible. They are essential, and they deserve more than silence. They deserve justice. Nadja Marin Molina, Executive Director of the National Day Labor Organizing Network, Gonzalo Mercado, founder of La Colmina Community Job Center. Thank you for your courage, your clarity, and your commitment.
And to our listeners, thank you. The bridge between justice and injustice is built by action. Adopt a day labor corner. Speak out. Show up. This has been Building Bridges. Until next time, stay informed, stay engaged, and stay human.
Nadja Gonzalo, we'll see you on one of those corners, and we'll continue to build bridges.
Thank you so much. We'll see you there.
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