SEATTLE — They arrive hoping someone needs a fence repaired, a room painted or a yard cleared. Increasingly, the men waiting outside Seattle-area Home Depot stores also worry that looking for work could end with detention and separation from their families.

Immigration arrests have turned familiar gathering places for day laborers into places of fear, according to workers and volunteers interviewed by KUOW. Neighborhood groups say they documented at least 40 arrests at Seattle-area parking lots in two months.

For workers who depend on being hired each morning, the choice is painfully simple: Stay home and lose income, or show up and risk being taken away.

One man, whom KUOW did not identify because he lacks legal immigration status, described the panic that spreads when agents arrive.

“Your heart is pounding,” he said. “Everything makes you nervous.”

Standing near a Home Depot parking lot, he pointed toward a roughly 6-foot fence. He said he had watched people scramble over it to escape arrest.

The workers gathering at these stores include men who have lived in the United States for decades. Some are in their 70s. They wait in work clothes, offering the skills that have supported their households for years.

Since August, Home Depot parking lots around Seattle have become increasingly frequent sites of immigration enforcement, KUOW reported. Similar operations have been reported in Los Angeles, Portland and other cities where day laborers gather outside home improvement stores.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to tell KUOW whether the Seattle-area arrests were part of a specific operation.

As enforcement has intensified, neighbors have begun showing up alongside the workers.

Through an adopt-a-corner program associated with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, volunteers bring breakfast, learn workers’ names and stay for several hours. They watch for immigration agents, document encounters and help families when someone is detained.

Volunteer Chris Megargee said their presence is intended to offer welcome and respect to people facing rejection and uncertainty.

The volunteers acknowledge the limits of what they can do.

“We have no illusions about stopping ICE from doing what they do,” Megargee told KUOW.

Instead, they film enforcement activity, remind workers of their rights and support those taken into custody.

They also encourage neighbors who need work done to hire the men.

For someone with a repair project or an overgrown yard, it may be an ordinary transaction. For a worker afraid to remain in a parking lot, it can mean income and a few hours away from the place where arrests are occurring.

One September arrest illustrates how quickly the consequences extend beyond the person detained.

The man had spent about 30 years finding jobs in these parking lots. During that time, he built a life with his longtime partner and helped raise their son, now a U.S. citizen in his early 20s.

His partner, a green card holder, told KUOW she had urged him not to seek work that day. Reports of nearby immigration enforcement had frightened her.

She has a hip injury that limits her ability to work. A walker stood nearby as she recounted what happened.

Their son received the first call about his father’s arrest from the volunteer watch group. He rushed out, hoping to find him.

When he returned, he told his mother that officers had taken his father away. She said their son was not permitted to see him following the arrest.

In detention, the father chose to return to El Salvador. Ten days later, he was back in the country where he was born, separated from the household he had spent decades helping sustain.

His partner and son remain in the United States and hope to pursue a legal path for his return. Whether that will be possible, and how long it might take, remains uncertain.

For the men still waiting outside the stores, his departure is another reminder of what a morning’s search for work can cost.

The need for wages has not disappeared. Neither have the household bills or the families depending on them.

Now, alongside their tools and work clothes, the workers bring the fear that they may not make it home.

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MichCon

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