Silence = Death: How Walmart's Complicity in ICE Raids Betrays the Workers Who Built Their Empire

When corporate silence enables state violence against the very workers companies depend on

The Pattern is Clear

Across America in 2025, a disturbing pattern has emerged at Walmart locations: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are conducting violent raids while company management either facilitates or turns a blind eye to the terrorizing of their own workforce. From California to New Mexico to Tennessee, Walmart stores have become hunting grounds where immigrant workers—the backbone of the company's operations—are being brutalized and disappeared.

This isn't happening by accident. This is happening with corporate complicity.

When "Private Property" Becomes a Weapon

In Albuquerque this July, viral video captured ICE agents using a taser on Deive Jose Molina-Pena inside a Walmart store. But what happened off-camera was equally revealing: a Walmart manager was caught on video "getting in the way" of people trying to document the arrest, declaring "it's private property" and "fighting to stop the recording."

Think about that for a moment. A company manager's first instinct wasn't to protect a human being from state violence on their premises. It was to protect the corporation from bad publicity.

When asked about these incidents, Walmart declined to comment on "whether Walmart knew in advance or approved either ICE operation." That's not a denial—that's a tacit admission of guilt. If Walmart truly had no knowledge or involvement, a simple "we do not cooperate with ICE operations" would suffice.

Instead, we get corporate lawyer speak. We get silence.

The Human Cost of Corporate Cowardice

Adrian Andrew Martinez learned the cost of that silence firsthand. The 20-year-old U.S. citizen was working his shift at a Pico Rivera Walmart when he saw ICE agents violently detaining an elderly janitor in the parking lot. Martinez—still wearing his blue Walmart vest—approached the heavily armed agents to defend his coworker.

For this act of basic human decency, Martinez was thrown to the ground, brutalized, and detained for three days in conditions he described as worse than animal shelters. He was held in a cage-like room with 20 other men, chained at the ankles and wrists, forced to stand barefoot in urine because there was no bathroom.

Walmart's response? They fired him the day after his arrest.

Let that sink in: Walmart terminated an employee for defending a coworker from state violence. The message is crystal clear—corporate profits matter more than human dignity.

The Hypocrisy of Exploitation

Here's what makes this even more unconscionable: Walmart's entire business model depends on immigrant labor. The "deliveristas" being targeted in these raids? They're the ones fulfilling Walmart's grocery delivery services. The janitors being hunted? They're the ones keeping Walmart's stores clean. The workers disappearing after 12-hour shifts? They're the ones stocking shelves and serving customers.

Walmart takes their labor, takes their value creation, takes their contributions to American communities—and then stands by silently while ICE agents terrorize them with military-style raids.

This is exploitation in its purest form.

From Christian Values to Corporate Greed

There was a time when Walmart positioned itself differently. The company once carried Christian flags in their stores, marketed themselves as a values-driven organization rooted in small-town American principles. But somewhere along the way, those stated values were sacrificed on the altar of corporate greed and risk management.

Today's Walmart represents everything that's wrong with American capitalism: a company that extracts maximum value from vulnerable workers while accepting zero responsibility for their welfare or safety.

Silence = Death, Then and Now

During the height of the AIDS crisis, ACT UP coined the phrase "Silence = Death" because they understood that institutional silence in the face of crisis is itself a form of violence. When those with power choose not to speak, people die.

The same principle applies today. When Walmart chooses silence over solidarity, when they prioritize corporate image over human lives, they become complicit in a system that treats immigrant workers as disposable.

The raids have already had their intended effect. Employees at multiple Walmart locations report fewer "deliveristas" showing up to work, afraid they'll be the next ones tasered in an aisle or disappeared after a shift. Families are being torn apart. Communities are being terrorized.

And Walmart? Walmart says nothing.

Your Money, Your Values

Here's what every American consumer needs to understand: when you shop at stores that profit from immigrant labor while enabling ICE raids, you're funding a system of exploitation and terror.

Every dollar spent at Walmart is a vote for a business model that says immigrant workers are good enough to build corporate profits but not worthy of basic protection or human dignity.

You have choices. You can shop at businesses that take clear stances protecting their workers. You can support companies that refuse to cooperate with immigration raids. You can choose to spend your money at places that treat all workers—regardless of immigration status—as human beings deserving of safety and respect.

The Path Forward

Walmart and companies like it will only change when the cost of complicity exceeds the cost of taking a stand. That means:

• Consumer boycotts of businesses that enable ICE raids
• Worker organizing to demand protection from immigration enforcement
• Public pressure campaigns that make corporate complicity as toxic as it should be
• Legal challenges to corporate cooperation with warrantless raids
• Legislative action to protect workers from workplace immigration enforcement

The workers who stock our shelves, deliver our groceries, and clean our stores deserve better than corporate silence in the face of state violence. They deserve solidarity, protection, and basic human dignity.

Walmart built its empire on the backs of workers who now live in fear. The least the company can do is stand up for the people who made their success possible.

But they won't do it voluntarily. They'll only do it when we make silence more expensive than speech.

When corporations choose silence in the face of human suffering, it's up to the rest of us to make some noise.

Because silence, now as then, equals death.