LOS ANGELES — At a Home Depot parking lot, a man patrols on a bicycle for federal immigration agents, toting a megaphone on his hip so he can blast a warning to day laborers waiting to land a landscaping or construction job.

The workers from Mexico, El Salvador and elsewhere carry whistles to also sound the alarm, while activists swap details over two-way radios about whether cars whizzing by could be unmarked vehicles carrying officers preparing for a raid.

Agents raided the lot outside the 108,000 square-foot Home Depot store in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles at least five times since June, rounding up immigrants and sending others fleeing.

The stores in Southern California were long an informal job-seeking hub for day laborers in the United States both legally and illegal

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