Jan. 7, 2026, 1:18 p.m. MT
The Phoenix area could see a dramatic escalation in immigration enforcement and deportation operations by the Trump administration in the coming months, similar to the aggressive, high-visibility tactics seen in Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities in 2025, according to immigrant advocates and media reports.
The escalation could have already begun. On January 4, federal agents showed up at a Home Depot store in Phoenix, where many day laborers usually gather, and began chasing and trying to arrest people, including at least one U.S. citizen, according to advocates and interviews with day laborers.
Federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have conducted numerous operations in Home Depot parking lots in the Los Angeles area and other metropolitan areas. But the Jan. 4 operation was the first time federal agents carried out a similar action at a Phoenix-area Home Depot since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025 and launched a massive deportation campaign, according to immigrant advocates.
Advocates hope the operation at Home Depot is the first of many, as ICE has received billions of dollars in additional funding to step up immigration enforcement and ICE’s Phoenix office is under pressure to increase immigration detentions.
“We believe there will be more enforcement operations, given that the agency has more resources,” said Raquel Terán, interim executive director of Progress Arizona, a progressive advocacy group.
In October, ICE removed John Cantú, the person in charge of immigration and deportation operations in Arizona, and reassigned him to another office. The reassignment was part of a shakeup to replace ICE officials with Border Patrol agents in several cities deemed underperforming, under pressure from Trump administration officials who favor arresting as many undocumented immigrants as possible rather than prioritizing resources on immigrants with serious criminal records.
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official confirmed on January 7 that ICE had conducted a enforcement operation at the Home Depot, but said it was a targeted arrest, not a widespread raid. “On January 4, ICE conducted a targeted immigration enforcement operation in Phoenix, Arizona, near a Home Depot store, which resulted in the arrest of two undocumented immigrants from Mexico,” DHS Undersecretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement.
One of the people arrested, Juna Esquivel Moreno, is an “undocumented immigrant with a criminal record from Mexico who chose to commit a serious crime by illegally reentering the United States after being deported at least FOUR times,” McLaughlin said.
The other person, Fernando Molina Mendoza, also does not have legal status to remain in the United States, McLaughlin said.
Both arrested people were in ICE custody awaiting deportation, he added.
“We encourage all undocumented immigrants to manage their departure with the CBP One application. The United States is offering undocumented immigrants one thousand dollars and a free flight to voluntarily deport. We encourage all people who are in the country illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the opportunity to return to the United States legally to live the American dream. Otherwise, they will be arrested and deported with no possibility of return.”
Immigrant advocates who went to Home Depot and arrived when the arrests were being made, and interviews with the day laborers, offered a different version of events. They said the operation took place around 10 a.m. in the parking lot of the Home Depot store on Thomas Road, near 36th Street.
“First they approached in a very friendly way” and then they began to grab and arrest the day laborers, many of whom fled, explained Salvador Reza, organizer of the Neighborhood Defense Committees, a local immigrant defense organization.
At least one laborer managed to break free and escape, Reza said. ICE agents detained three people, but released one after he was able to prove he was a U.S. citizen, Reza said. Two of the laborers were detained, Reza said.
One of the day laborers arrested was a 60-year-old man with diabetes who has been in the United States for more than 30 years, said Erika Andiola, political director of the National Day Labor Organization Network.
“He wasn’t the target. They basically chased anyone who ran, and he was one of the people who was arrested and thrown to the ground,” Andiola said.
US citizen claims to have been briefly detained
Table of Contents
- US citizen claims to have been briefly detained
- A larger center for migrant deportation operations?
- Why Stepping Up Immigration Enforcement in Arizona ‘Makes Sense’
- Big bill could fund more arrests and deportations
- “It’s like a game of cat and mouse.”
- The company claims to have no control over immigration control actions
Victor Manuel Sanchez, 30, a U.S. citizen, said he was briefly detained by ICE agents in the Home Depot parking lot on Jan. 4 after he initially tried to flee. While returning to his location, he was approached by ICE agents who arrived in an unmarked vehicle and began questioning him about his place of birth and the reason for his escape. They also asked him if he had been drinking, according to Sánchez.
Sánchez said he told them that he had been born at Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix and that he had fled because all the other day laborers were fleeing. He said he hadn’t been drinking.
ICE agents ordered him to put his hands on the vehicle. He said he was detained for about six minutes. He said ICE agents let him go after he pulled out his wallet and showed them his Arizona ID card.
Sanchez said that since he was laid off from his job at the restaurant in May, he has been going to Home Depot to wait for someone to hire him for the day.
“Why do they do this if people are just struggling to get jobs?” Sánchez lamented.
A larger center for migrant deportation operations?
Sunday’s action at Home Depot came two days after The Bulwark, a center-right news and analysis website on Substack, reported that Department of Homeland Security officials had selected Phoenix to become a larger hub for immigration and deportation operations because of its location in a border state.
Citing three former Homeland Security officials in contact with current DHS officials, The Bulwark article said Phoenix was “poised to become the next hotspot for arrests, detentions and deportations.”
The Washington Post also reported on Dec. 24 that the Department of Homeland Security was seeking contractors to renovate seven industrial centers across the country into large immigration detention centers with the capacity to hold up to 80,000 people at a time, including one in Glendale.
A former DHS official told The Bulwark that adding thousands more beds in the Phoenix area would allow the Trump administration to turn the city into a “deportation hub” in the Southwest.
Glendale officials were aware of the Washington Post report about a possible ICE storage facility in Glendale, city spokeswoman Lesley Miller said.
“However, the city has not received any information or notification from the federal government about the plan,” Miller said in an email.
McLaughlin, the DHS deputy secretary, confirmed ICE’s plans to expand immigrant arrests and detention space with funding from HR 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill” budget legislation signed in July. But he said there were no new detention facilities to announce at this time.
The planned detention facilities are not “warehouses,” he said. “They are detention centers. Every day, DHS conducts law enforcement activities across the country to keep Americans safe. It should come as no surprise that ICE is making arrests in states across the United States and is actively working to expand detention space,” he noted.
He also claimed that ICE was going after the “worst of the worst, including murderers, rapists, criminals, gang members and more.”
He said 70 percent of ICE arrests were of undocumented immigrants accused or convicted of a crime in the United States.
“Thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, ICE has new funding to expand detention space and keep these criminals off American streets before they are permanently removed from our communities,” he said.
Arizona already operates as an immigration and deportation center, but the creation of a facility with the capacity to hold up to 5,000 more people would greatly expand that capacity.
The state currently has four large immigration detention centers, with a combined capacity of approximately 3,300 beds.
The facilities include a 400-person facility in Florence, central Arizona, and a 700-person facility in San Luis, southwestern Arizona, operated by ICE.
Arizona also has a 1,500-person immigration detention center in Eloy, operated under contract to DHS by the private prison company CoreCivic. CoreCivic also houses several hundred immigration detainees in prisons it runs in Florence under contract with DHS, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Immigration detention centers are used to house immigrants arrested in Arizona, along with immigration detainees who are flown to Arizona by ICE from other states. ICE also deports immigration detainees at land ports in Nogales and other cities along Arizona’s border with Mexico.
Several airlines have also operated deportation flights under contract with ICE and DHS from Mesa Gateway Airport in the Mesa metropolitan area, east of Phoenix, including Avelo Airlines, which had operated deportation flights domestically, and Eastern Airlines, which has been operating deportation flights to Venezuela.
Adding thousands of beds for immigration detainees in the Phoenix area would allow the Department of Homeland Security to “significantly expand its operations in other Western cities, including Denver, Las Vegas and Los Angeles,” the former DHS official told The Bulwark. Additionally, Management and Training Corporation, a Utah-based private for-profit prison company, acquired a 500-bed closed state prison in Marana in July 2025, with possible plans to convert the facility into an immigration detention center. Uncertainty over the company’s plans for the former prison has drawn criticism from residents.
Why Stepping Up Immigration Enforcement in Arizona ‘Makes Sense’
Expanding immigration enforcement operations in Arizona “makes sense” considering the state’s significant undocumented population, said Andrew Arthur, resident researcher at the Center for Immigration Studies, a research center that advocates for greater enforcement of immigration laws and less immigration.
Arizona has about 307,000 undocumented immigrants, Arthur said, citing data from the Migration Policy Institute. About 14 percent of Arizona’s undocumented population has lived in the United States for less than five years, Arthur said, citing data from the institute.
“Even if only those 14 percent, the 43,000 people who are in the country illegally, are pursued, that would have a significant impact on Arizona’s total undocumented population. Therefore, it would be a smart use of resources,” Arthur said.
However, the majority of the state’s undocumented population, 57 percent, have lived in the United States for 20 years or more, according to the institute.
Arizona’s undocumented population represents about 4 percent of the state’s total population of 7.1 million, according to census data.
Arthur said it makes sense for immigration agents to go to workplaces to look for people known to have violated immigration laws because “workers typically return to a workplace or a specific location where they regularly pick up their work tools or necessary materials.”
But he said conducting immigration raids on home improvement stores without a specific target “is generally not a wise use of resources.” U.S. Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., did not directly respond to questions about whether he supports using ICE resources to arrest day laborers at Home Depot stores. His congressional district covers the area where, according to immigrant advocates and day laborers, ICE carried out the January 4 operation.
“I have long supported enforcement of our existing immigration laws so we can secure our border and stop illegal immigration,” Schweikert said in an email statement.
Big bill could fund more arrests and deportations
The “Big Bill,” the Republican-led federal budget bill signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4, 2025, includes $170 billion in additional funding for the Department of Homeland Security to step up immigration enforcement, deportations and border security. The $170 billion includes $45 billion to increase immigration detention capacity, a massive increase over the $3.5 trillion Congress appropriated for immigration detention in fiscal year 2024.
The huge increase in additional funding could provide ICE with the personnel and resources needed to significantly ramp up arrests and deportations of immigrants over the next three to six months in Arizona, said Kevin Appleby, a senior researcher at the New York Center for Migration Studies.
The Trump administration has targeted Democratic-controlled cities over the past year, including Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago and Minneapolis, where thousands of federal immigration agents and National Guard troops have intervened to conduct large-scale, high-visibility, military-style immigration enforcement operations.
Focusing on the Phoenix area could be part of a political strategy by the Trump administration to solidify support among Republican voters in Arizona, a swing state, ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, Appleby said.
Trump won Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, and also Arizona, against Democrat and former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
“They are now targeting states that the administration won in 2024, but that could go Democratic, either in the midterm elections or in the next presidential election,” Appleby said. “This could reflect his attempt to consolidate that base, because there have been fissures, political fissures in the base in recent months.” And this could be an attempt to consolidate that base of support to show them, ‘Look, we’re delivering on what we promised.’”
According to Appleby, the increased enforcement of federal immigration laws in Arizona is reminiscent of what happened in 2010 with the passage of Arizona’s immigration law, Senate Bill 1070. This law sought to strengthen enforcement of immigration laws in Arizona by requiring local police to question people they encountered about their immigration status if they had “reasonable suspicion” that they were in the United States without legal status.
“We saw American citizens and green card holders (lawful permanent residents) detained because local law enforcement was not well trained in immigration law. So this could also be a consequence. We could see the same results that we saw during the period when Senate Bill 1070 was being debated, not only in the state, but across the country,” Appleby said.
“It’s like a game of cat and mouse.”
On Tuesday, January 6, two days after the ICE raid at the Home Depot store on Thomas Road and 36th Street, dozens of day laborers were in the parking lot waiting to be hired for the day.
One of them, Alexander Murcia, a 34-year-old migrant, said he feared ICE would return, but he needed to work to send money to his family in Florencia, a city in Colombia.
He explained that he planned to flee again if he saw ICE agents again.
“It’s like a game of cat and mouse,” Murcia said.
The company claims to have no control over immigration control actions
Reza, an organizer of the Neighborhood Defense Committees, assured that he is asking customers to boycott Home Depot stores for not speaking out against the Trump administration’s immigration control actions in the parking lots of their stores.
He reiterated that he was concerned that immigration control actions at Home Depot stores would result in discrimination against Latino customers, in addition to day laborers.
“We’re asking people not to go to their Home Depot, not only because we want the stores to know they need us, but also because it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous to go to Home Depot right now,” Reza said.
Home Depot spokesman George Lane said the stores have no control over the immigration enforcement actions taking place there and cannot interfere with them.
“We are not notified that immigration control activities are going to be carried out, and we do not participate in the operations,” Lane said in an email statement. “We are not coordinating with ICE or the Border Patrol. Legally we cannot interfere with federal enforcement agencies, or even prevent them from entering our stores and parking lots.”
Meanwhile, immigrant advocates are encouraging immigrants to know their rights given the possibility of an escalation in ICE enforcement actions in the coming months, said Terán of Progress Arizona.
“What we share with our community is that we have to be prepared, we have to be attentive, we have to be informed, we have to inform our community so that it is not in a state of alarm,” Terán reiterated.
(This story was updated with new information.)
