Colleagues rally round California professor arrested during Ice raid on cannabis farm
John Caravello, a math and philosophy professor at California State University Channel Islands, joined a crowd of protesters who confronted immigration agents when they arrived at Glass House cannabis farm in Camarillo, a community about 50 miles north of Los Angeles.
He was among hundreds of people who were arrested at the Glass House facilities in Camarillo and nearby Carpinteria. Those swept up in the raids include protesters such as Caravello, approximately 360 farmworkers, and a US military veteran who worked as a security guard. The sweeping operation has since attracted widespread scrutiny, particularly after the death of a farmerworker who fell from a greenhouse roof while attempting to hide from agents. The action is thought to be the largest raid in terms of arrests and the first death linked to the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in California.
Caravello, who volunteered as an organizer and immigrant advocate alongside his teaching work, is accused of throwing a teargas canister at law enforcement agents and 'assaulting, resisting, or impeding' officers, according to an affidavit. But witnesses on the scene tell a different story.
Genevieve Flores-Haro, associate director of Oxnard-based Micop (Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project), knows Caravello and was among the demonstrators present when he was arrested. On Thursday morning, Flores-Haro said the phones of her team of immigrant rights activists began blowing up with reports from family and friends that agents with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) were at Glass House farms.
When they arrived on scene at the Camarillo farm just after 11am, Ice agents had already set up cones and yellow tape emblazoned with 'Customs and Border Patrol' to block off the street. According to Flores-Haro, a crowd of demonstrators that eventually grew to around 200 people began chanting 'Chinga La Migra', which loosely translates to 'Fuck US Immigration and Border Patrol'.
Demonstrators also attempted to use their bodies to block the passage of Ice vans trying to leave with farmworker detainees. Instead of employing nonviolent methods, says Flores-Haro, Ice agents brought out military-style vehicles and launched tear gas into the crowd. Later, agents used additional teargas and rubber bullets against the demonstrators.
'The only teargas canisters that I saw thrown were by Ice agents and the national guard,' said Flores-Haro, who watched Caravello's arrest. Flores-Haro said Caravello appeared to be helping a fellow demonstrator who uses a wheelchair. She said she did not see him touch a canister, but some reports say Caravello attempted to remove a canister stuck beneath the demonstrator's wheelchair.
Flores-Haro said the demonstration was largely peaceful and described use of teargas by officers as unnecessary. 'There may have been a few people acting out, but it did not merit this show of force. I'm an American citizen. I was born here. I'm a taxpayer, I'm a USC graduate. My taxpayer dollars were used by the federal government to shoot at me.' After being teargassed, Flores-Haro had difficulty breathing and is still experiencing a cough.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Ice did not respond to multiple Guardian requests for comment about Caravello's arrest and witness accounts of what happened at the farm. Bill Essayli, the recently appointed 39-year-old US attorney for California's central district, who is known as Donald Trump's enforcer in the immigration battle in Los Angeles, posted on X that Caravello was arrested for 'throwing a teargas canister at law enforcement'.
Flores-Haro said she and Caravello had spoken out at a Camarillo city council meeting the night before the raid took place. During public comments, Caravello identified himself as a CSUCI professor and a longtime organizer with Ventura County Tenants Union and, more recently, a volunteer with VC Defensa, a coalition of local organizations dedicated to protecting immigrant and refugee populations in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. He asked council members to stand up against Ice's presence in the community, noting that many of his students and their families are undocumented.
'It's my responsibility to protect them, and so I've been patrolling the city streets following armed, masked thugs trying to kidnap my neighbors,' Caravello told the council.
Caravello was released on a $15,000 bond on Monday but still faces criminal charges, and is scheduled to be arraigned on 1 August.
When he walked free from the Los Angeles Metropolitan detention center earlier this week, a small crowd of supporters cheered, 'John Caravello, you deserve a medal for standing up for the community' – a chant that brought tears to the professor's eyes.
In a statement, Cal State Channel Islands said: 'We are currently gathering additional information to fully understand the circumstances of the incident. At this time, it is our understanding that Professor Caravello was peacefully participating in a protest – an act protected under the first amendment and a right guaranteed to all Americans.'
Because his case is still pending, Caravello declined to comment, but fellow California Faculty Association colleague Theresa Montaño said her friend was relieved to be released, yet still worries for other detainees. Families are still searching for the whereabouts of some farmworkers and others have shown up in facilities as far away as El Paso, Texas.
'John is part of a labor union and activist organization,' said Montaño. 'Not everyone has those networks to fight for them.' Montaño also said she was confident Caravello, who she described as 'big-hearted', will ultimately be cleared.
'John is not guilty, and we have witnesses to attest to that,' says Montaño. 'He's a seasoned organizer. He would never throw anything at a federal agent.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
21 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Tommy Robinson 'flees Britain after station attack': Police confirm 'suspect' boarded flight out of country after man was taken to hospital following 'assault' in St Pancras
Right-wing political activist Tommy Robinson has fled Britain after an investigation was launched into an alleged assault on a man at St Pancras Station, police have confirmed. Detectives are attempting to bring the 42-year-old, from Luton, Bedfordshire, into custody for questioning after he boarded a flight out of the country in the early hours of Tuesday morning. His flight out of Britain comes just hours after footage circulating online showed him pacing back and forth beside the unresponsive man lying face-down on the station concourse. Paramedics rushed to St Pancras Station, in central London, at around 8.40pm last night and the alleged victim was taken to a major trauma centre with 'serious injuries'. In a video shared widely online, Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, appeared to be walking in the background as security were called to help the unconscious man. As stunned bystanders look on, one Good Samaritan can be heard urgently shouting: 'Can we get some help over here!' But Robinson, visibly agitated, throws his arms in the air before turning and walking away down a staircase, repeatedly protesting his innocence. 'He f***ing came at me, bruv,' he yells. 'He come at me bruv, you saw that.' He had earlier posted footage of himself handing out flyers inside the station for an upcoming 'free speech' protest on September 13. A spokesman for British Transport Police (BTP) said today: 'Following a report of an assault at St Pancras station last night (28 July), officers have confirmed that the suspect, a 42-year-old man from Bedfordshire, boarded a flight out of the country in the early hours of this morning. 'Detectives are continuing to work closely to progress the investigation and bring him into custody for questioning.' This is a breaking news story. More to follow.
The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
US lawmakers balance security and openness as threats of political violence rise
'Tell Eric Swalwell that we are coming and that we are going to handle everyone. We are going to hurt everyone. We are coming to hurt them.' The staff at representative Swalwell's California district office had heard the man's voice before. He had called twice in previous weeks to leave revolting, racist threats against the Democratic congressman and his wife in voicemails, according to an FBI criminal complaint released on Monday. 'So, I'm fine with anything at this point. I'm tired of it. I'll just set up behind my .308 and I'll do my job,' he said in one voice recording. The .308 is a reference to a rifle, according to the criminal complaint. 'You want a war? Get your war started.' Swalwell's staff reported the latest threat. This time, the FBI charged the caller with a crime. As threats of political violence escalate – and the impact of the political assassination in Minnesota reverberates across the country – lawmakers like Swalwell are re-evaluating how to manage the balance between openness and security. The instinct of security professionals may be to increase physical security and limit the availability of elected officials to the public. But that approach runs headlong into a conflict with the imperative for politicians to connect with their constituents. 'I'm not going be intimidated. I know the aim of this threat is to have me shrink or hide under the bed and not speak out,' Swalwell told the Guardian. 'This guy's terrorizing the members of Congress, law enforcement and staff, and it just has no place in our civil discourse.' Swalwell has had to spend nearly $1m on security over the last two years, he said. That money comes out of his campaign accounts. 'When they threaten you and you protect yourself, your family and your staff, you're dipping into your campaign resources,' Swalwell said. 'You have this decision calculus where you can protect your family or you can protect your re-election, but it's been costly to do both.' The caller, Geoffrey Chad Giglio, was no stranger to the FBI or to the public. Reuters interviewed him in October while looking at violent political rhetoric after the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump's life, presenting him as a provocateur and an example of the new viciousness. 'I push the envelope,' Giglio told Reuters, adding that he would never hurt anyone. 'If I have to go to jail because somebody thinks I'm really a threat, oh well, so be it.' Giglio's made his last call to Swalwell's office on 13 June according to the complaint, apparently undaunted after being interviewed by the FBI about previous threats only a few days earlier. Researchers have been tracking an increase in threats made against lawmakers for years, with the January 6 attack on the Capitol a way station on a dark road. 'We see an increase starting around 2017, 2018,' said Pete Simi, a professor of sociology at Chapman University, who in 2024 published a review of a decade of federal data on intimidation charges against federal elected officials. From 2013 to 2016, Capitol police charged an average of 38 people a year for making threats to lawmakers. By 2017 to 2022, the average had grown to 62 charges a year. 'It's hard to know whether there's an increase in threats to public officials or there's an increase in the level of enforcement that's producing more criminal investigations and ultimately more charges filed in prosecution,' Simi said. But surveys of public officials at both the state and federal level also indicate an increase in threats. In a survey of local lawmakers published last year by the Brennan Center for Justice, 'substantial numbers' said they thought the severity of the threats was increasing, said Gowri Ramachandran, director of elections and security at the Brennan Center's elections and government program. 'Lawmakers are reporting that it's kind of getting worse, the severity of what's being said in these voicemails, these emails, whatever messages people are getting,' Ramachandran said. Best security practices have begun to emerge, but the implementation is inconsistent across states, she said. One recommendation is for a specific law enforcement agency to take charge of monitoring and tracking threats against lawmakers, Ramachandran said. The US Capitol police are tasked with responding to threats to federal lawmakers, who may then refer cases to the FBI and the Department of Justice for prosecution. The responding agency at the state level is often less obvious to elected officials. 'A lot of lawmakers we spoke with didn't even know who they're supposed to report these things to,' she said. Many elected officials said they wanted to balance security with accessibility, Ramachandran said, citing interviews with dozens of local lawmakers in 2023 about security and threats. 'The vast majority of the lawmakers we talked to were really concerned about their constituents not feeling welcome, in terms of coming to visit their offices or going to the state capitol to be heard,' she said. 'There was a repeated concern, of course, for safety of their staff and their families and all of that, and the constituents themselves, but also with not wanting things to be on lockdown and wanting to be accessible to constituents.' But the assassination of state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their Minneapolis-area home last month, has provoked a reassessment of that balance. At the federal level, the committee on House administration doubled spending on personal security measures for House members last week, allowing congressional representatives to spend $20,000 to increase home security, up from $10,000, and up to $5,000 a month on personal security, up from $150 a month. The committee's chair, Bryan Steil, a Republican from Wisconsin, and ranking member Joseph Morelle, a Democrat from New York, also asked the Department of Justice to give the US Capitol police additional federal prosecutors to help investigate and prosecute threats against legislators. Federal campaign finance law, as revised in January, provides a mechanism for federal officeholders to spend campaign money for locks, alarm systems, motion detectors and security camera systems, as well as some structural security devices, such as wiring, lighting, gates, doors and fencing, 'so long as such devices are intended solely to provide security and not to improve the property or increase its value'. It also provides for campaign funds to pay for cybersecurity measures and for professional security personnel. Both Democratic and Republican legislators in Oklahoma sent a letter earlier this month to the Oklahoma ethics commission, asking if state law could be similarly interpreted, citing the assassinations in Minnesota. Lawmakers in California are also looking for ways to loosen campaign finance restrictions for candidate spending on security. California has a $10,000 lifetime cap for candidates on personal security spending from election funds – a cap that legislation doubled last year. A proposal by assemblymember Mia Bonta would suspend the cap through 2028, with a $10,000 annual cap after that. Enhanced home security for Minnesota legislators will be covered by a state budget appropriation for any member asking for it, lawmakers decided last week. This is in addition to state rules enacted in 2021 allowing $3,000 in campaign spending toward personal security. Minnesota and several other states – including Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico and North Dakota – almost immediately removed home address data from state government websites after the Minnesota assassinations. New Mexico had already largely restricted this data after a series of drive-by shootings at lawmakers' homes by a failed Republican candidate in 2022 and 2023. Restricting public information about lawmaker's residency can be a political headache in some states. Generally, an elected official must live in the district he or she represents. Residency challenges are a common campaign issue, but a challenge cannot be raised if the address of a lawmaker is unknown to the public. 'It is something that I think we as a society are going to have to grapple with,' said Ramachandran. 'It may not be the best idea to enforce those rules about residency requirements by just having the whole general public know where people live and to be able to go up to their house and see if they really live there, right?' Some states like Nevada are exploring long-term solutions. Nevada's secretary of state, Francisco Aguilar, is forming a taskforce to look at ways to restrict access to lawmakers' residential information without interfering in election challenges. 'Political violence has no place in our country,' he said in a statement. 'People, including elected officials, should be able to have differing opinions and go to work without fear of violence or threats.' The challenge for lawmakers and investigators is crafting a policy to deal with people who because of their behavior are unusual outliers. As angry as people can be about politics, only a tiny few will make a phone call to a legislator to make a threat, and even fewer will carry out that threat. 'The vast, vast majority of Americans are reporting on these surveys that they don't support political violence,' Simi said. 'So those that do are an outlier. But there's some question about whether that outlier is increasing over time. We don't have great data over time, so that's a hard question to answer.'
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Daily Mail
Pregnant Bianca Wallace insists she never had an affair with Ioan Gruffudd and accuses his ex Alice Evans of inventing the 'disgusting, vile story' and says trolls have threatened her and her unborn baby because of it
Bianca Wallace has insisted she never had an affair with Ioan Gruffudd as she accused his ex Alice Evans of inventing the 'disgusting, vile story'. The former couple are currently in a bitter legal battle and Alice, 56, previously accused her estranged husband of cheating on her for three years with Bianca, who is 21 years her junior. And now Bianca, 32, has finally responded to the accusations as she revealed she did not have an affair with Ioan after receiving threats towards her unborn baby from trolls. Taking to Instagram on Monday with a screenshot of the hate she has received as she stated the affair accusations were 'pathetic' and 'utterly ridiculous'. She penned: 'I have ignored this truly pathetic narrative for nearly 4 years now because of how utterly ridiculous and clearly insane it is. 'But threaten my innocent, unborn baby and the time for ignoring is up! Absolutely no one will ever threaten my baby over a made up story about an affair that literally never happened! No way.' Responding to Alice's claims directly she continued: 'In October 2021 my husband's ex made up a disgusting, vile story about my husband and I having an affair. 'For 3 years and 9 months the narrative as been ongoing, making people like 'rivqah2020' message me, and now my unborn baby, threats like this. 'The TRUTH has been set in black and white, in clear evidence, under oath numerous times, and all available in public record.' She added: 'I will not have my innocent baby born into this completely intentional manufactured drama. This has all got to end now, and it needs to end with the truth and facts. 'My husband and I haven't deserved one second of this, and now, our unborn baby is being threatened and attacked. Absolutely no f*****g way! 'I know that I speak for so many people out there who have lived through this kind of abuse, lies and manipulation when I say we are all sick and tired of the b******t now.' Alice previously confirmed her separation from the Welsh star in a series of furious tweets posted on Twitter in January 2021 - with Ioan moving on with his new girlfriend Bianca in the following October. Since Ioan and Bianca went public with their relationship, Alice has hit out at their relationship on social media. Back in 2022 Bianca posted a snap of her and Ioan holding hand which Alice branded 'sick' and 'evil' and claimed seeing the image was like a 'stake in the heart.' In the latest update in the case Evans filed court documents - found by - in which she claimed poverty and was so broke that she had to borrow money from friends and set up a GoFundMe account that raised $18,000 in donations. Alice has since confirmed she is doing a Meet and Greet in Covington, Georgia as she took to Instagram to share the exciting news on Tuesday. She penned: 'Guys I am coming to Covington!!!! I will be there the 8th and 9th of November to see you all die meets and greets and selfies and photo opps, hosted by the amazing Vampire Stalkers! 'More info to come - and wait for the wobbly video - but I am absolutely thrilled at this opportunity to still make it to Covington to see you all. 'Let me know if you're going to be there! (Or if you can't but would like to) Love you guys!' Last Wednesday's court appearances by all three were supposed to be an evidentiary hearing in which Ioan and Alice were to joust over her demands for him to shell out more than the $4,500 he is currently paying in support money for her and their two daughters. But instead, after a 90-minute delay during which Judge Josh Stinn huddled with their lawyers, the judge kicked the can down the road, scheduling another hearing August 12 when a date will be set for the case to go to trial. She said that she and her girls - Ella, 15 and Elsie, 11 - were recently evicted from their LA home because she couldn't afford to pay the $6,500 per month rent. Alice has since confirmed she is doing a Meet and Greet in Covington, Georgia as she took to Instagram to share the exciting news on Tuesday She contended that she had to 'burn through' her savings to pay living expenses and legal fees. And she insisted Ioan- who married Bianca in April - can afford to pay more than the $3,000 per month child support and $1,500 spousal support he now pays. But Ioan is fighting his ex's cash demands and in his own court filing, blasted Evans' claims, saying that she 'purposely got herself evicted… intentionally ceasing paying rent and instead taking the children on a vacation trip to Europe.' Her motive, he said, was to 'support her false public narrative of financial destitution in an attempt to further harm my reputation... as a fraudulent way to strong-arm me into paying more support than I can afford.' Ioan, also maintained that subpoenaed bank records show that, far from being broke, Evans made more than $130,000 in 2024 and is expected to earn a similar amount this year - a claim that Evans called 'false and misleading.' In his recent court filing Ioan told how he was 'mortified' to have received 'dozens of stressed messages from our minor children in which they have parroted Alice's false and manufactured claims of becoming homeless in the immediate future.' But in her new court documents, Alice denied manipulating the children to send plaintive messages to their father. 'I absolutely did not ask the children to send messages to (Ioan) about our eviction and pending homelessness,' she said. 'The children are well aware of our financial distress and the eviction.' Ioan and Alice met on the set of the movie 102 Dalmatians more than 20 years ago. They fell in love in real life and were married in Mexico in 2007. Ioan filed for divorce in March 2021, shortly after Alice announced on social media that her husband of 14 years was leaving her. They were divorced in July 2023.
