Details emerge about pot-farm immigration raid as worker dies
The death of Jaime Alanís Garcia, 57, announced Saturday by his family, comes amid a climate of increasing tension marked by weeks of militaristic raids, street protests and violent melees involving federal agents.
Alanís' family said he was fleeing immigration agents at the Glass House Farms cannabis operation in Camarillo on Thursday when he climbed atop a greenhouse and accidentally fell 30 feet, suffering catastrophic injury.
But the Department of Homeland Security said that Alanís was not among those being pursued and that federal agents called in a medevac for him. Federal authorities said afterward that they detained 361 purported unlawful immigrants in the crackdowns at the site in Camarillo and another cannabis grow operation in Carpinteria owned by the same company, as well as protesters who allegedly sought to shut down the raid.
Four U.S. citizens were arrested on suspicion of assaulting or resisting officers, according to the DHS.
Alanís was taken to the Ventura County Medical Center, where he was put on life support. His niece announced his death Saturday on a GoFundMe page, which described him as a husband, father and the family's sole provider. The page had raised more than $149,000 by noon Sunday, well over its initial $50,000 goal.
"They took one of our family members. We need justice," the niece wrote.
In a statement, the Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs said consular staff in Oxnard were providing assistance to Alanís' family. Consular officials said they were accompanying Alanís' family both in California and in his home state of Michoacán, in central Mexico, where, according to news accounts, his wife and a daughter still reside. In addition, Mexican officials said they would expedite the return of his remains to Mexico.
Alanís was not the only Glass House worker to take to the roofs.
Irma Perez said her nephew, Fidel Buscio, 24, was among a group of men who climbed atop the high glass greenhouses. He sent her videos, which she shared with The Times, that showed federal agents on the ground below, and told her the workers had been fired at with tear-gas canisters. One image shows the broken glass of the roof. In another, Buscio has blood on his shirt and his arm is bandaged, she said. He eventually was apprehended.
Federal officials said that among those picked up in the raids were 14 minors. Several of the teens had no parent with them, officials said. Because of that, federal officials said the legal cannabis farm, one of California's largest, is now under investigation for unspecified child labor violations.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, speaking at an event Saturday in Tampa, Fla., told reporters that getting the children out of the farm was part of the plan from the start.
'We went there because we knew, specifically from casework we had built for weeks and weeks and weeks, that there was children there that could be trafficked, being exploited, that there was individuals there involved in criminal activity,' she said.
The Labor Department's regional office did not respond to questions from The Times regarding current or past investigations of Glass House Farms operations, or of the local labor contractor Glass House used.
That company, Arts Labor Services, did not respond to a request for an interview made through its attorneys. Glass House has said it did not violate labor law.
The assertion of a prior child labor investigation comes on the heels of a federal judge's order barring federal immigration officials from picking up people at random, based on their ethnicity or occupation.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott said Saturday on X that one of the men apprehended in the raid had a criminal record for kidnapping, attempted rape and attempted child molestation.
Noem decried what she called the 'horrendous' behavior of demonstrators who protested Thursday's raid in Camarillo, referencing videos showing rocks being hurled at the vehicles of federal agents, breaking windows.
'Those individuals that were attacking those officers were trying to kill them," she said.
'Let me be clear. You don't throw rocks at vehicles like that, and you don't attack them like that, unless you are trying to do harm to them physically and to kill them and to take their life.'
Decades of work helping cannabis workers through the ordeals of federal drug raids didn't prepare Ventura County activist Sarah Armstrong for the mayhem and trauma she witnessed during the Glass House Farms raid, she said.
A military helicopter swung low over fields to flush out anyone hiding among the crops, while federal agents fired tear-gas canisters at protesters lining the farm road. In the crush of events, someone shoved a gas mask into Armstrong's hands and pulled her to safety.
"It was, in my opinion, overkill," the 72-year-old woman said. "What I saw were very frightened, very angry people."
Also among those on the protest line was Cal State Channel Islands student Angelmarie Taylor, 24. She said she saw several agents jump on her professor, Jonathan Anthony Caravello, 37, after he attempted to move a person in a wheelchair after a tear-gas canister landed underneath it.
She said the agents fired the tear gas after Caravello and others refused to move out of the way of agents' vehicles. The show of force came without any warning, she said.
'They didn't gave us a dispersal order. They didn't say anything," she said.
Caravello is being held at the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center.
U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli issued a statement on X saying Caravello is being charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding an officer. The professor was arrested on suspicion of throwing a tear-gas canister at law enforcement and will appear in court Monday, Essayli said.
Friends had been trying to find Caravello since he was detained Thursday and were able to confirm his location only on Saturday, attorney Vanessa Valdez of Libre_805 told The Times after a news conference outside the detention center Sunday.
Valdez said she began helping Caravello's students and friends on Friday "who checked local jails, hospitals and couldn't find him. We had a good idea he would likely be here [the federal Metropolitan Detention Center] but they would not confirm he was there on Friday."
Valdez said she finally met briefly with Caravello on Sunday and was surprised to learn he was being held in one of the detention center's Special Housing Units.
"That's usually where they hold the more serious offenders, but my client has no criminal background and the officers who were helping me to see him were very surprised," she said.
U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong on Friday issued a temporary order finding that agents were using race, language, a person's vocation or the location they are at, such as a car wash or Home Depot, to form 'reasonable suspicion' — the legal standard needed to detain someone.
Frimpong said the reliance on those factors, either alone or in combination, violates the 4th Amendment. Her ruling also means those in custody at a downtown federal detention facility must have 24-hour access to lawyers and a confidential phone line.
Noem on Saturday accused the judge of "making up garbage."
"We will be in compliance with all federal judges' orders," said Noem, contending the judge "made up" things in the ruling.
"We're going to appeal it, and we're going to win," Noem added.
Times staff writer Patrick J. McDonnell in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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