Farmworker dies Saturday after fleeing raid this week in Southern California
Advertisement
On Saturday evening, a lawyer retained by the family through the Mexican consulate said in a text message that Alanis had died Saturday afternoon. The lawyer, Jesus Arias, added that the family decided to 'disconnect' after tests for brain function yielded 'no good results.' Arias said arrangements were being made to transfer Alanis' body to his family in the Mexican state of Michoacán.
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
Elizabeth Strater, vice president for the United Farm Workers union, said in an interview Friday that during the chaos of the raid, Alanís 'fell 30 feet or more, and experienced devastating spinal and skull injuries.'
An official who was briefed on the situation said Alanís was from Michoacán, had been working at the farm for more than a decade and had been trying to flee from agents when he fell. He was in his late 50s.
Advertisement
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, said Friday that Alanís had not been in federal custody and denied that the agents involved in the raid were the reason he climbed the greenhouse. 'Although he was not being pursued by law enforcement, this individual climbed up to the roof of a greenhouse and fell 30 feet,' she said in a statement. Agents called for help, she added, 'to get him care as quickly as possible.'
Andrew Dowd, a spokesperson for the Ventura County Fire Department, said that eight people had been transferred to area hospitals in response to 911 calls Thursday and that four other people had been treated at the scene.
In a statement, Teresa Romero, president of the UFW, said that several farmworkers had been critically injured in the enforcement actions and that others, including U.S. citizens, remained unaccounted for. She said those citizens who were detained 'were forced to delete photos and videos of the raid from their phones' before being released.
The Trump administration last month began to aggressively target worksites in California, including farms, as it seeks to sharply bolster the number of arrests and deportations of immigrants in the country without legal permission. President Donald Trump has said that he wanted to allow some farmworkers to stay in the country legally. However, raids in agricultural areas have persisted.
Federal agents, backed by National Guard troops in military-style vehicles, raided two locations operated by Glass House Farms on Thursday. One was in Camarillo, a Ventura County town about 50 miles outside Los Angeles, and another was in Carpinteria, a town in Santa Barbara County.
Advertisement
News of the raids Thursday rapidly spread, prompting protesters and community members to rush to the scenes. Clashes broke out between hundreds of protesters and the agents.
During the confrontation in the Camarillo area, one protester was seen on video appearing to fire a pistol at officers. The Department of Homeland Security said Friday that the protester fired a gun at law enforcement officers and that the FBI was offering $50,000 for information leading to the person's arrest. The agency said four U.S. citizens were being criminally processed for assaulting or resisting officers and that the protesters had damaged vehicles.
'At least 10 migrant children were rescued from potential exploitation, forced labor and human trafficking,' Homeland Security officials said in a statement.
Glass House Farms said late Thursday that its greenhouses had been visited by federal authorities with search warrants and that the company had fully complied. It is legal for licensed companies to grow cannabis in California.
This article originally appeared in
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
44 minutes ago
- The Hill
I was once an ICE prosecutor. What I see now in immigration courts is disturbing.
I hadn't heard the rattling of chains in a courthouse since 2012, when I was a prosecutor for the Department of Homeland Security at the Varick Immigration Court in New York City. Back then, shackles were reserved for individuals deemed a public safety threat or flight risk by ICE as they were being escorted from their holding cells. They often already had arrests or convictions. But in 2025, it's a whole new world. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and other elected officials have been arrested for bearing witness to immigration enforcement. Last month, ICE agents handcuffed New York City Comptroller Brad Lander at 26 Federal Plaza after he linked arms with an immigrant during what should have been a routine court appearance. Each day, ICE raises the stakes –– even targeting Americans who dare to show solidarity. I no longer work for ICE, but I still advocate for immigrants. And what I'm seeing representing clients at ICE check-ins and court hearings is seriously disturbing. Courtrooms that once served as venues for justice are now used to intimidate and remove those who challenge policy. President Trump's militarized immigration enforcement has produced shocking due process violations, chaos and widespread fear. The chains are back, but this time they serve a different purpose. Detainment is no longer about controlling security threats or managing who enters the country. Instead, courtroom arrests are part of a broader effort to restructure the immigration system by force and without debate or legislation. With each new policy, principled professionals inside the courtroom resign, leaving fewer voices willing to question what's happening. This quiet exodus should alarm us all, not just noncitizens. If no one within the system challenges this overreach now, we will soon witness the collapse of immigration courts as we know them. It is hard to ignore the growing sense of danger inside today's immigration courts. Since 2017, more than 300 immigration judges have resigned, retired or been pushed out, many citing political pressure and the erosion of judicial independence. Earlier this year, the Department of Justice abruptly fired 20 immigration judges, including five assistant chief judges and an entire incoming class, a purge widely condemned as politically motivated. Newer judges, trained under Trump-era protocols, now operate under intense scrutiny and are instructed to deny even the most basic continuances, including the standard 10-day extension attorneys typically receive to prepare a response. In April alone, immigration judges closed more than 11,000 asylum cases, a new record high. They also set another record: denial rates exceeded 80 percent. These denials often serve one purpose: to fast-track cases. This advances Trump's novel strategy of dismissing cases to expedite deportation, and to clear dockets to comply with ICE's removal quotas. The loss of judicial expertise coincides with a staggering funding imbalance: from fiscal 2023 through 2024, Congres s spent roughly $24 on ICE and Border Patrol for every dollar spent on immigration courts. This leaves judges overwhelmed and under-resourced, while enforcement agencies received hundreds of billions in support. With arrest quotas at 3,000 per day, and ICE surpassing its 41,500 funded bed spaces, the administration isn't seeking neutral arbiters. It is demanding compliant 'yes' judges to carry out its agenda of expedited removals. Fewer independent voices on the bench, rushed court proceedings and a courtroom culture that now prioritizes handcuffs over hearings have created another urgent crisis: There aren't enough immigration lawyers left to meet the needs of a ballooning docket. And the lack of oversight around ICE's tactics inside courthouses has had a chilling effect on those who remain. A national survey of asylum attorneys found that immigration lawyers experience levels of burnout and secondary traumatic stress higher than those seen in social work, prison care or nursing. Many report symptoms like depression, insomnia, intrusive thoughts and emotional detachment — signs that often mirror PTSD. For those representing unaccompanied children or trauma survivors, the emotional weight is compounded by a sense of moral injury — the psychological damage done by witnessing injustice while feeling powerless to prevent it. While data on government workers — particularly ICE attorneys — is scarce, the signs are troubling. There is no official count of how many have resigned or been pushed out, but those who remain face mounting political pressure and growing caseloads, and they are given no discretion. ICE's legal arm, the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, is tasked with prosecuting millions of immigration cases, yet, unlike federal prosecutors in criminal courts, its attorneys operate with little public accountability. While the departures of immigration judges have drawn concern, attrition within the office remains unnoticed and unexamined. Yet its impact is felt as experienced, ethical attorneys quietly exit, leaving behind many who are less experienced or less ethical, and who at any rate are expected to implement policies without regard to their legality or the dictates of their consciences. One of them, James Joseph Rodden, an ICE attorney in Dallas, was recently exposed for running a white supremacist social media account while actively prosecuting immigrants in court. ICE declined to comment in late March on whether Rodden remains employed. We need courage from within the system –– judges, attorneys and officials willing to uphold the rule of law –– and meaningful reform to guard against the erosion of due process. When defenders of the Constitution resign and those like Rodden stay behind, loyalty to equal justice is replaced by loyalty to power. For the sake of our nation, we must do better. We must demand a system where immigration courtrooms are guided by principle. Veronica Cardenas is a former prosecutor with the Department of Homeland Security. She is the founder of Humanigration, a digital platform serving immigrants and their legal advocates.
Atlantic
an hour ago
- Atlantic
How to Tell If Someone Is a Criminal (According to the DHS)
Confronted with the bald fact that, of the people in Florida's just-constructed swamp internment facility for the ' worst of the worst,' more than 250 had neither criminal convictions nor pending charges, the Department of Homeland Security was untroubled. 'Many of the individuals that are counted as 'non-criminals' are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more; they just don't have a rap sheet in the U.S.,' DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told the Miami Herald / Tampa Bay Times. 'Further, every single one of these individuals committed a crime when they came into this country illegally. It is not an accurate description to say they are 'non-criminals.'' Except for the fact that they have not technically committed any crimes, these are criminals. Except for the tiny, tiny, minuscule (I hate to even mention it) quibble that we have no evidence they've done any crimes, these people deserve to be locked up. Except for the minor, minor technicality that they haven't violated any laws, other than by arriving here—which might not even have violated a law! We have asylum, or used to, before we decided to pull the rug out from under thousands of people—these are the worst of the worst. The total lack of any evidence against them, except that Trump border czar Tom Homan thought they seemed suspicious, is just proof of what good criminals they are. Evidence, schmevidence! All you need to do is look at them, listen to them! (Homan has subsequently walked this back, or tried to.) You can simply tell when someone is a criminal, even when they keep trying to abide by the law, showing up for immigration hearings and paying taxes on time. Perhaps especially then. So many neighbors of serial killers say that the killers were quiet, kept to themselves, and seemed like productive members of their community. If these detainees' neighbors say the same, that's so much more proof that they are some of history's greatest monsters, or would be, if they ever took up crime. These would be hardened assassins if they had ever killed anyone. If they had done a single war crime, it would have been worse than those of Slobodan Milošević. The only reason these serial killers' names don't ring in the ear with the horror of Jeffrey Dahmer's and Ed Gein's is because they have not killed or eaten anyone. But we'd better keep them behind bars to be safe. They could start at any time! Indeed, all that stands between them and crime is means, motive, and opportunity. That's why it's good that in addition to the preemptive measure of putting some of these all-but-criminals behind bars, the DHS has also taken the extraordinarily un-racist precaution of collecting immigrant DNA into a large database for the ease and convenience of suspecting them of crimes. If these toddlers weren't criminals, would their DNA already be in this Usual Suspects Database? Unlikely. These are almost certainly terrorists, human-rights abusers, gangsters, and more! And some of them even have parking tickets. That's why they belong in a facility that we laughingly refer to as 'Alligator Alcatraz.' ('If there's alliteration, it's not a human-rights violation.') They are probably human-rights abusers, which is why we have locked them up without due process or any kind of publicly posted list to let anyone know their whereabouts. Remember, criminals are to be found around other criminals. ('I think we all know that criminals tend to hang out with criminals,' Deputy ICE Director Madison Sheahan noted.) And there they all are now, in a facility that we have insisted is for the worst of the worst. Sounds pretty dispositive. If they weren't the worst of the worst, what would they be doing there? You can tell they are human-rights abusers because they are sleeping on cots 32 to a room in a just-constructed internment camp. The human-rights abusers are the ones who have been seized by masked men because they looked or sounded a certain way. The human-rights abusers are the ones packed into cages in the oppressive heat. The human-rights abusers are the ones brushing their teeth with toilet water, unable to shower for days, crammed together in a mosquito-infested swamp, struggling to access lawyers. You can tell they are criminals because of the side of the fence they're on.
The Verge
2 hours ago
- The Verge
Salt Typhoon hacked the National Guard too.
Salt Typhoon hacked the National Guard too. A Department of Homeland Security memo, obtained by Property of the People through a freedom of information request, reveals the group — suspected to have links to China — 'extensively compromised a U.S. state's Army National Guard network' for nine months last year.
