US Edition‘It penetrates your bones’: Day laborers protest noise machines installed at Home Depot
Day laborers and advocates say Home Depot’s high-frequency devices cause pain and are used to push workers off the lot amid immigration raids, with around 50 detained this year.
- On November 24, day laborers at the Cypress Park Home Depot parking lot called on The Home Depot Inc. to remove noise machines installed days after an early November raid.
- Home Depot says the devices installed November 24 at the Cypress Park location prevent illegal overnight parking and protect store safety, while activists link them to recent ICE enforcement including the November 5 raid.
- Manufacturers advertise the speakers emit 16 to 18.5 kilohertz, but Dustyn Hi‑8 from vvundertone registered an 8 kilohertz tone and distorted recordings under the I‑5 freeway overpass where day laborers report headaches and nausea.
- The store temporarily switched off the speakers during IDEPSCA's press conference but workers say they were turned back on about an hour after it ended, while yellow gates and barriers now restrict access near the worker center.
- Across the nation, the Boycott Home Depot Network has grown from immigration raids at store parking lots, as activists and Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez say the anti-loitering speakers `are used as torture against our people` and `weaponize sound literally` targeting immigrant and Latino communities.
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10 Articles
Anti-ICE protestors target Home Depot to denounce immigration arrests
Demonstrators gather at the Ewing Home Depot on Dec. 19, 2025, to protest what they said is the store's cooperation with federal immigration officials. (Photo by Sophie Nieto-Munoz/New Jersey Monitor)EWING — Dozens of activists lined up inside The Home Depot in this Mercer County town Friday, cash in one hand and an ice scraper in the other, to protest what they claim is the company’s cooperation with federal immigration agents. Roughly 50 peopl…
L.A. Home Depot Is Using Noise Machines to 'Torture' Day Laborers and Customers Alike
Is there any more apt a piece of imagery to depict late-stage capitalism than a Home Depot installing sonic weaponry and then training those irritating sound waves against not only the day laborers it wants to see gone from its parking lot, but also its own customers and employees? This kind of carelessly blunt, scorched-earth move speaks to a corporation that seemingly wants to remove itself from headlines revolving around ICE raids at its stor…
Day laborers protest noise machines at Cypress Park Home Depot
Day laborers are calling for Home Depot to remove noise machines from a parking lot at a Cypress Park location that the store says is part of an effort to prevent overnight parking at the business north of downtown Los Angeles. The machines have been installed at the light poles and play a high-pitched tone. Some say the noise gives them headaches and nausea. Day laborer advocates say the noise is meant to keep them from looking for work at the…
Noise machines at L.A. Home Depot used to harass day laborers, advocates claim
Immigrants' rights advocates are sounding the alarm about noise machines placed high above the parking lot on light poles at a Home Depot in Cypress Park. The machines put out a constant high-pitched beeping noise that has day laborers, like Jose De La Torre, who goes there in hopes of finding work, reaching for [...]
Day laborers beg for silence as Home Depot weaponizes sound
Deals on duct tape and the peals of institutional cruelty are the current Home Depot ambiance in Los Angeles. Day laborers, who've weathered pandemics, government abduction, and everything short of a plague of locusts, now have to contend with a nonstop industrial whine pumped directly into their skulls while waiting for jobs. — Read the rest The post Day laborers beg for silence as Home Depot weaponizes sound appeared first on Boing Boing.
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