Day laborers protest noise machines installed at Home Depot
latimes.com
latimes.com
There's so much unnecessary noise pollution in our society, it makes me really sad.
I was in my garage with my keys in my back pocket, checking the tire pressure on my truck, when it started honking at me. My butt triggered the panic button.
I have acute hearing. That was painful and hardly deliberate!
So in the 2000s, this was fairly common in India. Then one day a installation mechanic told me the sensor had various calibration settings. You could get the trigger to be as sensitive as you wanted.
At times a rodent or a crow could trigger the alarm.
Once you first notice it you'll realize these machines are kinda everywhere
Lots of illegal immigrants desperate for work
Then you'd need to prove your identity and pay taxes on what you earn. This is for illegal immigrants working under the table.
I go to Home Depot more than is reasonable, and I’ve never been approached by them. You typically would need to solicit them yourself. In general I find them to be respectful and pleasant - I imagine otherwise they would get customer complaints and Home Depot would have them trespassed immediately.
From others experiences I’ve talked to, they usually form “crews” with one main “crew chief” guy who speaks English you negotiate a rate and number of workers you need, and any specific skills like concrete, framing, etc. beyond simple labor. You generally are expected to provide any tools needed to complete the job beyond what fits in a standard tool belt.
You need to go to the home improvement store to get materials for your job anyway, you can also pick up some people to help, too.
Why fuss on an app trying to figure out who to hire, when you can head over, say 'hey, who knows how to dig a foundation' or 'who can help me hang a door' or whatever your job is. Maybe find the worker first and they can help you shop for the stuff you need.
Drive them back to the lot at the end of the job.
They go in to grab materials, leave with materials and some potentially new workers. If it works out (and it often does) they may use them for other projects, too.
Source: My father in law was a carpenter for about 40 years
It is frequently referenced in American media, like South Park (in "D-Yikes") and Mike Judge's Beavis and Butthead (in "The Day Butt-Head Went Too Far"). And well, probably some other media that isn't adult cartoons, but for some reason that was what first immediately came to mind.
I was aware of the stereotype of Hispanic day laborers hanging out in Home Depot parking lots for a long time, but it was interesting to see the degree to which it seems to be true in California, where I often saw fairly large groups of people that I believed to be day laborers in the parking lot. I'm sure there are also day laborers at home improvement stores in the Midwest too, but I don't really pay that much attention, so I haven't noticed it much.
edit: I see I took too long to reply and now am the sixth or so person to point this out, sorry. Race condition.
Stereotype Accuracy is One of the Largest and Most Replicable Effects in All of Social Psychology - https://spsp.org/news-center/character-context-blog/stereoty...
In fact, quite shockingly to many, that prevailing twofold sentiment, which sees stereotypical thinking as faulty cognition and stereotypes themselves as patently inaccurate, is itself wrong on both counts. - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/2018...
Most stereotypes that have been studied have been shown to be approximately correct. Usually, stereotype accuracy correlations exceed .50, making them some of the largest relationships ever found in social psychology. - https://www.cspicenter.com/p/the-accuracy-of-stereotypes-dat...
You also don't actively prove this claim, which means that we may know that it's "more likely to be true than not" based on your shared information, but could still absolutely be false.
Which leads me to my question, "Why would you make a comment about the correctness of stereotypes, rather than just finding actual data about the stereotype in question?"
Nor did I aim to. I only wanted to dispel the mistaken belief that stereotypes are mostly false in general. That you think I should have instead addressed some other point that in your opinion matter more is irrelevant - you are free to address it yourself.
So... Their original point stands without direct evidence against it. As you have not provided direct evidence, your point is moot.
> Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology
> some stereotypes are malevolent and destructive:
> ...
> Jews as grasping hook-nosed Nazis perpetrating genocide on innocent Palestinian babies.
Very underhanded way to paint the widely held accusations of genocide in Gaza as antisemitic...
Looking into it further: the CSPI is a right wing think-tank headed by Richard Hanania (from the website's bio, a thinker on the Right interested in culture wars, who has published vile stuff on Palestine, and has the infantile authoritarian viewpoints on politics that have unfortunately become synonymous with the "new right"). So take some salt with you if you're visiting that website...
They don't really tolerate legal immigration, or legal immigrants, either.
For the apparenly many people who are baffled by this, it's not like this is some unrelated activity that Home Depot doesn't benefit from. It's super convenient to go pick up both the paint and the painters from the same place at the same time without even any planning. No emails or phone calles or coordinating schedules.
Noise Pollution Clearinghouse - https://nonoise.org/
Acoustilog Incorporated - https://acoustilog.com/ Of special note are the legal caveats one must consider to prevail in a lawsuit. (https://acoustilog.com/daniel.html) Consistent documentation is key.
Maine Code of Rules - Control of Noise https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/maine/06-096-C-M-R-c... Note document search terms "tonal" and "one-third octave".
I'd love to know the tech (and company) that provided the devices.
Home Depot's hands aren't totally clean here.
It is really no different than having drug dealers set up shop on your corner and sharing footage with police. You have people who are likely committing criminal activity (multiple crimes in the day laborer case) and are sharing footage with the relevant authorities.
The politicization of enforcement doesn’t change that as a business owner I would not want to own the location people facilitate illegal transactions.
But that's what you get with a fear-based political leadership. ICE targets day laborers not because of the horrible damage they do to the US economy, but because they have been selected as the scapegoats du jour.
In your world view immigrants working jobs you find beneath you is the same as someone selling drugs?
> likely committing criminal activity
You understand that exploiting day laborers to circumvent labor laws puts the, mostly civil though vanishingly rare criminal, liability on the employer rather than the employee, right?
We use laws rather than your own personal hatred of immigrants to define criminality.
Working under the table without work authorization is actually spectacularly illegal as an employer and employee. Tax evasion is also spectacularly illegal as an individual.
What are you talking about?
https://www.dir.ca.gov/DIRNews/2025/2025-53.html
"The Labor Commissioner is reminding all workers that California’s labor laws protect every worker in the state, regardless of immigration status."
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU01/20250122/117827/HHRG...
"A new study shows that undocumented immigrants paid nearly $100 billion in federal, state and local tax revenue in 2022 while many are shut out of the programs their taxes fund."
California does not dictate federal labor law and I’m sure that you already know that. Your arguments are bad and aggressive.
You’d have way more influence and agreement if you argued about immigration processes as a whole (“why are these people with jobs not given visas already?”) than these contrived obviously ridiculous and irrelevant excerpts.
You’re arguing with me like I won’t actually think about what you say, which is the “not the HN style” comment I gave you before. I will.
> The Home Depot leveraged Flock Safety’s technology to close a case involving a multi-state gift card tampering ring, resulting in fraud and property theft charges exceeding $300,000. This type of success underscores how powerful connected data can be in mitigating fraud risks. [0]
Aside from that, Home Depot has been dealing with massive, multi-state, organized theft campaigns. Earlier this month, NY prosecutors lodged 780 counts of theft against thirteen suspects who stole millions of dollars of merchandise from Home Depot stores in nine states [1].
Not everything is about illegal immigrants.
[0] https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/combating-retail-fraud-with... [1] https://queenseagle.com/all/2025/12/12/retail-theft-ring-tha...
Gift cards are a huge fraud vehicle by their nature. Home Depot is just noticing because it fraud against them, rather than the more usual money laundering for scams. Retailers turn a bit of a blind eye, since they make so much money from gift cards that never get used or end up with leftover balances. But really gift cards are an attractive nuisance, and add no value for the (non-sucker) consumer.
And the cameras will have small effectiveness after the first few arrests anyway. "Don't let the LPR catch your car" just becomes part of the tradecraft for these organized operations. Whereas sporadic, opportunistic, individualized ripoffs won't create much of a signature in the LPR stream.
Nothing? Why should they do anything?
They put up deterrents for day-laborers who might otherwise shop for the projects they're getting hired for at home depot...
I find it misleading to add this line in the article without mentioning if the decibels exceed the applicable noise ordinances, or situation this is just people on HD's property complaining about the noise they are making on their own property. In that case people are free not to visit.
That sounds like an excellent plan. It's nice to find an article containing information that lets one make that decision, eh? The free market in action.