Waiting for jobs outside the Home Depot in Chatham is a game of patience. Each morning, day laborers arrive from all over the city to the shopping center’s bustling parking lot to compete with one another for the scarce number of jobs offered by contractors who drive by seeking them out.
But Tuesday, at around 8:30 a.m., the job search took a violent turn when a parking lot security guard shot a migrant outside the store. The guard had been escorting several men from private property when he was punched in the head, a police report said. An off-duty police officer came over to help put the man in custody when a different man approached and pushed the guard to the ground. The guard shot back twice, hitting the 28-year-old man in the ankle and wrist.
Migrants told the Tribune it was a verbal and physical altercation that went too far.
The man shot was not a day laborer, migrants said. Rather, he was one of the various vendors who frequent the migrant gathering spot, in his case to cut migrants’ hair, according to several men who knew him. He was transferred to the University of Chicago Medical in serious condition, police said.
“Sometimes it can be hard here,” said Andres Hurtado, a 22-year-old from Caracas, Venezuela, who said he comes to the site in Chatham every morning to beg for work. “People can act in crazy ways toward us.”
The shooting underscores the growing tension between migrants and law enforcement officers outside Home Depot stores across the city. Indeed, the same morning the shooting occurred, a group of migrant day laborers filed a lawsuit against Home Depot, the Chicago Police Department and the city of Chicago in federal court, alleging ethnically motivated harassment by off-duty Chicago police officers working as security guards at a Home Depot store in the New City neighborhood.
In Chatham, the security guard who shot the migrant was not an off-duty CPD officer, according to Cassio Mendoza, a spokesman for Mayor Brandon Johnson. He was identified in a police report as an employee of a contract security firm and was later arrested and charged with aggravated battery with discharge of a deadly weapon. An email to the security company was not immediately returned Friday night.
But migrants at the shopping center where the shooting occurred, which includes Home Depot and other chain stores, said they are not unfamiliar with being corralled by security and told to leave the parking lot adjacent to 87th Street.
“We have a non-solicitation policy, which prohibits anyone from selling goods or services of any kind on our private property,” said Home Depot spokeswoman Beth Marlowe in a statement. “Our priority is to provide a secure work and shopping environment that’s safe for everyone.”
Over 46,000 migrants, mostly Venezuelan, have passed through the city in the past two years, sent on buses by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in an effort to wreak havoc on cities with liberal immigration policies. Many migrants can’t work legally, so they’re forced into desperate situations where they have to find jobs under the table.
As migrants struggle to obtain legal work authorization — a process that takes months — many look for work in Home Depot parking lots. They come in the early morning and swarm around cars and trailers that drive by to pick them up. If they’re lucky, they’ll be hired for a few hours to fix roofs or paint fences, but they often try and come home empty-handed.
Fleeing economic and political turmoil in their country of origin, migrants walk across several countries intending to work in the United States for a better life. But they say they face discrimination from security and police for just standing in a parking lot waiting to be picked up for a job.
And the situation is getting worse at the hands of off-duty officers who are now cracking down at higher rates than before, according to immigration lawyers.
Miguel Alvelo Rivera, executive director of Latino Union of Chicago, said the crackdown is caused by a convergence of increasingly anti-immigrant rhetoric and a lack of systems to support a large number of individuals with high need. He worries about what will happen when there are even fewer day jobs available in the winter.
“It points to a structural failure,” Rivera said.
Since migrants started arriving in the fall of 2022, the New City Home Depot at 4555 S. Western Blvd. ramped up its security efforts, five plaintiffs alleged in Tuesday’s lawsuit. Home Depot hired CPD officers looking for secondary employment — or “moonlighting” — to enforce security efforts.
The plaintiffs claim to have been handcuffed by off-duty CPD officers and brought into a private back room inside the Home Depot. There, they allege the officers struck and choked them, and often berated them with ethnically motivated insults, saying things like “this country was better without Venezuelans.”
Lawyers involved in the case are demanding that the city end its practice of allowing officers to moonlight as security and use its force against community members.
On Wednesday, Home Depot released a statement that it is investigating the allegations.
“We take allegations of violence very seriously and are investigating this issue,” the statement said. “We believe in respecting all people, and we don’t tolerate violence or discrimination.”
Meanwhile, arrests for trespassing in the block of the Chatham Home Depot jumped from none in the previous two years to 13 alone in 2024, according to police data.
Hurtado has a 2-year-old girl and he needs to pay for her food, he said. He needs enough money for the apartment his family is renting nearby. As he waits every day for a job, he says he receives pushback from Home Depot employees and police officers who say he’s trespassing.
“They tell us we can’t be here, that we should go over there,” Hurtado said, pointing to the other side of the lot.
Tension between migrants and security in the Home Depot parking lot was palpable Friday morning. Multiple security and CPD officers patrolled the area where migrants gathered on the sidewalk looking for day jobs, calling out “Work! Work!” to passing cars. Some of the migrant men smoked weed.
Across the parking lot, a tow truck was called to remove a migrant’s car. But as the driver started towing the car across the lot, dozens of migrants ran after it, yelling expletives. They pulled the car down off the towing block. A police officer separated the migrants from the tow truck driver. The migrant drove the car away, and a police officer separated the crowd of outraged migrants from the tow truck driver.
A worker for the towing company confirmed to the Tribune over the phone that someone had called for the tow, but declined to specify who.
Earlier, city officials had been at the site doing outreach to mitigate future altercations. They handed out informational packets to the group, explaining how federal laws affect migrant rights in Chicago.
Reynaldo Garcia, 28, who is staying at a shelter downtown, said he wakes up at 5 a.m. every day to go out to find a coveted job. He said he won’t be deterred.
“If you’re threatening me, I’m still going to work,” Garcia said. “Whether you give me permission or don’t give me permission.”
Rey Najera Wences, the city’s first deputy mayor of immigrant, migrant and refugee rights, asked Garcia where he was in his work permit process. Garcia said he was still waiting for one.
“What is your plan to find work when your permit arrives?” Wences asked him. “Will you come back here?”
Garien Gatewood, Chicago’s deputy mayor of community safety, said he has been focused on ensuring local businesses feel supported as migrants crowd the streets outside their stores.
“We can see folks are being impacted not just here, but all around the city,” Gatewood said.
Kimberly Blue, the store manager for AutoZone, which backs onto the corner where migrants stand, expressed concerns about increased violence and loitering in the area affecting her business. She said she’s worked as a manager at the store in Chatham for 19 years and has never seen customers so scared to come inside.
“They leave trash everywhere. They stand around harassing people,” she said of the migrants.
Police officers bring food for day laborers at the Home Depot in Chatham to mitigate crime, several officers told the Tribune over the winter. When the migrants are less hungry, they’re less likely to cause trouble, they said.
Thursday afternoon, 76-year-old Doresa Reed pulled up to the Home Depot parking lot with her car trunk stuffed with boxes of apples and nonperishables. Migrant men swarmed the car, hungry and desperate. They eagerly took the goods she offered them.
Reed lives in Morgan Park and distributes food for the pantry associated with her church, she said.
“We have to hope that we can live together, and respect one another,” she said. “Regardless of what color you are, how much education you’ve had, or how much money you’ve made.”
nsalzman@chicagotribune.com