The nearest entrance to the Home Depot in Monrovia is marked by two memorials. The first marks the spot near the 210 East freeway where Carlos Roberto Montoya Valdez was struck and killed by a car in October last year while trying to flee ICE agents. The second memorial, which was added in mid-November last year, covers a small portion of grass at the entrance to the store’s parking lot. Both memorials commemorate Valdez as well as numerous day laborers who died in federal custody.

It’s a grim reminder of how many public areas have been converted into potential sites of domestic terror by federal law enforcement, which has grown exponentially worse since last June. It also maintains the unnerving connection between The Home Depot, a decades-old corporation that conquered the market on home improvement to become an inescapable piece of modern Americana, with the new reality of Trump administration’s daily assaults on the American public.

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