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Several people taken away by masked federal agents at Sacramento Home Depot

Rosalio Ahumada, Mathew Miranda and Stephen Hobbs, The Sacramento Bee on

Published in News & Features

SACRAMENTO, Calif — A woman said her husband was taken Thursday morning by masked federal immigration agents from the parking lot of a Home Depot store in south Sacramento, the first high-profile enforcement raid in the county.

The incident was reported about 8 a.m. at the Home Depot at 4641 Florin Road just west of Highway 99.

Andrea Castillo said her husband — a U.S. citizen — was among several people taken into federal custody Thursday morning at the south Sacramento Home Depot.

“He was just on his way to work. That’s all he was doing,” Castillo told The Sacramento Bee. “He wasn’t breaking the law.”

Sgt. Amar Gandhi, a spokesperson for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, said deputies received a call from Home Depot employees about a report of masked people in the store’s parking lot. He said deputies responded to the call and found a woman who waved them down and told them her husband had been taken.

Shortly after, the Sheriff’s Office was notified by federal officials who confirmed immigration agents were in the Home Depot parking lot earlier Thursday morning had since left the area, Gandhi said.

Initially, the agents seen in the store parking lot were believed to be from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE. Gandhi later said he’s received confirmation that the agents at the Home Depot were from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, also known as Border Patrol.

The sheriff’s spokesperson said deputies “did not assist in any way” the federal agents in this apparent immigration enforcement operation in the Home Depot parking lot. The deputies stayed in the parking lot to speak to the woman reporting her husband was taken.

The Sheriff’s Office on Thursday received another call for help from a resident in a neighborhood on A Parkway, a residential street just a few blocks south of the Home Depot. Gandhi said the resident told sheriff’s officials they were asked to call 911 after a masked man reportedly went into their neighbor’s house.

The Sheriff’s Office said that another 911 call was made to dispatchers at 7:57 a.m. from the 4500 block of A Parkway, two blocks south of Home Depot for a burglary call. Sheriff’s officials said the caller stated that armed individuals were “burglarizing” a neighbor’s home, and deputies said that those suspected intruders were federal agents.

The Bee reviewed publicly available radio traffic that revealed additional details about the the incident as it unfolded Thursday in the Home Depot parking lot:

—At 7:49 a.m., a Sacramento sheriff’s dispatcher said a caller reported seeing 15 people, masked and armed with guns, who were “grabbing people and putting them into vehicles,” according to the radio traffic. The Sheriff’s Office confirmed a 911 call was placed from the Home Depot two minutes before.

—At 7:51 a.m., the dispatcher said the Sheriff’s Office had received a call from Border Patrol, notifying deputies about enforcement action at the Home Depot on Florin Road. A spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office confirmed federal law enforcement officials notified them of the action at that time.

—Shortly after 8 a.m., the dispatcher said a caller reported seeing two federal agents walking a handcuffed person outside of a house.

—Minutes later, a man on the radio — apparently a sheriff’s deputy at the scene — said a woman whose spouse had been “taken by ICE” was “demanding a supervisor.”

 

After the federal agents left, Castillo remained at the Home Depot parking lot fighting back tears as she used her cellphone to call family and friends to tell them what happened to her husband.

She told The Bee she got a call from her husband at roughly 7:50 a.m. that he saw masked men in the parking lot.

He had arrived at the store that day to pick up materials for work. He works for a heating and air conditioning company in Sacramento, Castillo said. His company van titled “Authority HVAC” remains in the parking lot.

She lives nearby and drove to the Home Depot. When she arrived, Castillo said she saw a group of immigration agents chasing her husband across the parking lot.

She used her cellphone to record video of the incident while the agents brought him to the ground and detained him, Castillo said. She kept telling the federal agents that her husband was a U.S. citizen, but she said the immigration agents took him away.

At one point, while asking for the agents’ names, Castillo said one agent told her “Google me.” She said the agents took her husband away in a van without saying anything else.

A man whose name is being withheld because he is undocumented said he saw the federal agents shortly before 8 a.m. Thursday. He’s a day laborer who has been going to the Home Depot parking lot for years in search of work.

He said he saw immigration agents take about 10 day laborers on the other side of the Home Depot parking lot. He ran away from the area immediately, leaving behind his bicycle.

“They don’t have a right to take people,” he told The Bee.

He and other day laborers had returned to Home Depot Thursday morning after the immigration agents left. He said he returned to the parking lot Thursday because of necessity.

“I need to find work to get keep getting ahead,” he said.

Jessie Mabry, the chief executive officer of Opening Doors, an organization that supports immigrants and refugees, said she wasn’t surprised after hearing of the Sacramento immigration raid. Mabry was at a news conference Thursday announcing the creation of a regional initiative to coordinate legal help, education and other support for immigrants in the face of more aggressive enforcement.

“We’ve known this is coming,” said Mabry. “We’ve seen this play out in other communities and we’ve been working hard to get prepared and be ready to support our community.”

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©2025 The Sacramento Bee. Visit at sacbee.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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