17-Cent Ice Scrapers Are Now Protest Weapons

Because nothing says "stick it to the system" like repeat buying and returning penny tools

It was only a matter of time before America’s protest culture ran out of actual villains and had to start improvising. The newest target? Home Depot. Yes—the orange-apron “you can do it, we can help” DIY supercenter. The store where you can buy lumber, a toilet flapper, and occasionally a hot dog in the parking lot. The company’s unpardonable sin? Existing within the same ZIP code as ICE agents. That’s it. That’s the whole indictment.

The hysteria kicked off when protesters swarmed a Home Depot in Monrovia, California this week, staging what they proudly called a “buy-in”—a sort of activism performance art in which hundreds of people lined up to buy 17-cent ice scrapers in order to immediately return them. The goal was to “bring capitalism to a halt” by—wait for it—forcing employees to ring up purchases and refunds and actually do the jobs they were hired to do.

(The idea was so seductive to part-time martyrs that of course it’s spread to other cities. Also, I was today-years-old when I learned there was literally anything on earth you could still financially adopt for 17 cents.)

As one might imagine, ICE was shaken to its core by this bold maneuver. Tyranny has never felt more threatened than by a long line of Californians politely waiting to purchase plastic windshield accessories.

This is the new era of protest. It’s not sit-ins, marches, boycotts, or even semi-coherent chants. It’s Mad Libs activism: pick a corporation, fill in a grievance, add some colorful adjectives, and voilà—a cause. The logic seems to be, “If something bad happens in the vicinity of a place, the place is complicit.” And in this case, the “place” is Home Depot, which megaphone hobbyists claim is hosting immigration raids inside its stores, employing undercover border agents disguised as stockboys, and basically functioning as the Pentagon’s unofficial suburban field office.

Except—and this is the part that never makes it onto the TikTok infographics—none of that is true.

Home Depot has not coordinated with ICE. Home Depot has not rolled out any red carpets for ICE agents. Home Depot has not assisted, aided, abetted, alerted, encouraged, endorsed, blessed, consecrated, or spiritually aligned itself with the agency. The company isn’t even notified of ICE operations in advance. Most of the time, they find out a raid happened the same way the rest of us do: when someone posts a shaky vertical video on X with 16 siren emojis.

I’m good, thanks.

The “involvement” of Home Depot is geographic, not ethical. Day laborers gather outside home improvement stores across America—not because Home Depot is some kind of shadowy suburban detention camp, but because that’s where contractors pick up workers. ICE, whose existence and authority Home Depot cannot legally override, goes where undocumented labor is likely to be found. Home Depot’s role in all this is about as intentional as a tree branch that obstructs a speed trap.

Protesters, however, insist the company “has a responsibility” to stop raids. And this is where the conversation swan-dives into pure fantasy. Because what exactly would activists like Home Depot to do? Body-check federal agents at the door? Build a barricade out of Husky tool storage drawers? Hide workers behind sheets of beadboard? Conduct a corporate exorcism to banish ICE from the appliance aisle?

Facts though.

Home Depot’s actual legal options in the face of federal law enforcement are:

1. Follow the law.

2. Get out of the way.

3. Offer employees the choice to go home if they’re distressed.

That’s the entire menu. There is no obscure “Stop ICE” protocol built into the employee training manual between “how to operate the paint mixer” and “chainsaws are NOT toys.”

Complicating the situation is a fatal August incident in Monrovia, where day laborer Carlos Roberto Montoya Valdez was struck by a vehicle and killed while fleeing ICE agents. It was tragic and heartbreaking and the grief in the community is real. But Home Depot wasn’t responsible for it. If workers happened to be gathering at a Jiffy Lube, a CVS, or a Cheesecake Factory, that’s where ICE would have shown up. Home Depot simply happened to be the place where people were trying to earn a living that day.

But nuance has no place in Protest Culture. Someone must be blamed, and that someone must be a corporation. So now Home Depot has become “Home Deport,” the new symbol of cruelty, oppression, and—apparently—homicidal complicity.

The punchline is that even if Home Depot bent over backwards to please the demonstrators, nothing would change. If they put up “We Do Not Work With ICE” signs, the cause-of-the-week crowd would call it performative. If they created safe waiting areas for day laborers, they’d be accused of consolidating detainees. If they tried to negotiate advance notice of raids, ICE would laugh. If they offered legal aid, activists would say it’s not enough. There is no winning here because this isn’t actually about policy—it’s about frustration. It’s about catharsis. It’s about pretending a hardware store is responsible for managing law enforcement directives or fixing a broken immigration system.

What’s happening at Home Depot isn’t a scandal. It’s a symptom—of a political landscape that no longer protests to fix something; it protests to feel something. To feel righteous. To feel outraged. To feel like they’re “fighting back,” even if the only casualties are a few miles of receipt tape and one very confused cashier.

The saddest part is that all this energy—the signs, the rallying, the righteous fury—could have been directed at elected officials, lawmakers, Congress, DHS leadership, or literally anyone who has actual power over immigration policies. Instead, they’re clogging the Home Depot checkout because ICE showed up and the DIY giant didn’t deploy any secret underground escape tunnels.

A nation in decline? Maybe. A nation with too much free time and a shocking shortage of civic literacy? Absolutely.

You can now pre-order this in Spanish, too!