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Yahoo
6 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
ICE Is Making an Example of California
In California, well before federal immigration agents reach their targets, their regular, brutal raids are sometimes augured by a video. 'They passed Ventura, entering Santa Barbara, 10am,' read the caption on an Instagram post the morning of Thursday, July 10. Shot through the windshield of a moving car on the freeway, it showed a line of vans, SUVs, and other large vehicles, the type often spotted at raids. 'Fucking caravan, you guys—fucking caravan,' a voice in the car added. The footage was reposted by two immigrant rights groups in Ventura County, 805 Immigrant Coalition and VC Defensa. Then it spread over social media. A few hours later, an ABC7 news chopper hovered over the scene as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents descended on farms near Camarillo. It was late afternoon on the East Coast when I opened the news station's live feed on YouTube. Almost instantly, I felt sick. From high overhead, the chopper's camera zoomed in on ICE agents in an apparent standoff, their vehicles parked in dusty brown earth at the roadside, as if abandoned. Striding around casually while dressed for war, agents could be seen lining up farm workers. Some agents stood a few feet from a stretcher with a person lying on it. All told, the arrests a week ago may add up to the largest single roundup yet by this administration. According to the Department of Homeland Security, more than 300 people were arrested in the raids on farms in Camarillo and Carpinteria. But the arrests did not target only workers. Additional federal agents, their faces covered with neck gaiters and reflective sunglasses, launched smoking canisters into the group of witnesses and community members gathered behind a length of flimsy yellow police tape drawn across the road. Stacks of water bottles appeared roadside, to drink and as an eye flush in case of tear gas. This was direct action more than protest; few, if any, signs could be seen. People were putting their bodies in ICE's way, a rolling vigil over hours. Periodically, different witnesses raised their phones aloft, pointing them at officers blocking the road. The whole thing was recorded from so many angles. At times, individuals stood motionless, inches from the front of the federal agents' vehicles. The live feed of the arrests and protests, almost completely silent except for an eerie mechanical buzz, went on for hours, too. It was numbing to watch until those moments when the scene seemed to mark itself for future inclusion in a documentary series or a civil rights case (or a news story). That quantity of footage may be too much to consume, especially on top of the myriad videos that demonstrators themselves shot and shared on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky. As available as all of this material was, a record right at our fingertips, the simple facts of the raid could get submerged. Breaking news stories euphemistically described an 'immigration enforcement action' and 'clashes'—a disingenuous term that suggests equal force on both sides—between protestors and federal agents. But the story is both clear and simple: Federal agents arrested workers at a large commercial farm near Camarillo, and federal agents also arrested the people who came out to defend the workers. Defending workers is something Californians have been doing in rising numbers for weeks now, ever since Trump's close advisor, Stephen Miller, and Trump's 'immigration czar,' Tom Homan, selected California residents as the people to be made an example of in their contemptible national crackdown. This week marked the fortieth day of ICE raids in California, during which an estimated 3,000 people have been arrested, and 2,000 National Guard and 700 active-duty Marines remain stationed in Los Angeles. In mid-June, Border Patrol released a video of its agents, also faceless and in full gear, making arrests in Los Angeles. The video, titled 'A Relentless Mission – LA Protests – U.S. Border Patrol,' underlines the extent to which these 'immigration enforcement actions' are deliberately choreographed displays of power, meant to suppress and shrink immigrant communities and political opposition alike. The raids are spectacles, designed for the rest of the country to applaud or fear, in which immigrants are scapegoated and dissenters are punished for the cameras: a cautionary action-horror movie playing out in real time. In addition to the Border Patrol, National Guard and police blockaded access to the farms, reported Mel Buer, an independent journalist in Los Angeles who has been covering the response to ICE raids. 'But people,' she wrote, 'came anyway.' Arriving as the sun set, Buer could hear them chanting well before she reached them. She saw more than 100 demonstrators facing down 'a thick line of Border Patrol agents and National Guard kitted out in riot gear–helmets, gas masks, and shields.' Angelmarie Taylor, a student at California State University Channel Islands and part of 805 Immigrant Coalition, was one of those demonstrators. 'We are average community members who have been volunteering our time to patrol our own streets to keep each other safe from these ICE agents,' Taylor said on Democracy Now on Friday. While the federal agents harmed the demonstrators and violated their rights, she said, those agents used 'even more intense violence' on the farmworkers themselves. Also among the witnesses and protesters was Jonathan Caravello, a professor at California State University, whom Taylor said had been targeted for speaking out in defense of the immigrant community. After he was arrested on Thursday, Caravello vanished for days. The California Faculty Association, Caravello's union, condemned his 'abduction and disappearance,' and said they were still working to locate him. 'The Trump Administration's barbaric attacks on peaceful observers aim to force people of good conscience into silence and complicity while Trump tears our nation apart,' said Arnulfo De La Cruz, President of SEIU Local 2015 and Executive Board Member of SEIU California. CFA and SEIU California jointly called for the release of all the people who were taken by immigration agents in the raid on Thursday and for 'a stop to all immigration raids, immediately.' Late Monday afternoon, Caravello was released from federal detention. Unusually, federal prosecutors did not announce the charges against him until Sunday, and when they did, it was in a post on X by Bill Essayli, the interim U.S. attorney for the Central District of California. The same office is pursuing federal charges against an activist who brought face shields to distribute at a protest, to protect people from chemical agents used by police. In the Department of Justice, such overreach is now par for the course: The day after Caravello was released, federal prosecutors in Spokane, Washington, charged a group of protestors, including the former city council president, for 'conspiracy to impede or injure officers.' Most of those who were charged in Spokane had merely blocked a bus carrying people whom ICE had detained, a type of intervention we are seeing now across U.S. cities. 'This politically motivated action is a perversion of our justice system,' said Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown. In bringing such specious prosecutions, the Trump administration is hunting for ways to criminalize people who oppose the ICE raids, including those engaging in nonviolent self-defense. Protestors are not a monolith. In opposing the raids, they offer a range of arguments and tactics. Some defend the contributions of immigrant workers. Some do practical work like documenting ICE raids. But the point of these raids is to demonstrate that no one, no matter what they contribute to the community, will be spared arrest. In fact, some, including citizens and elected officials, were targeted precisely for their contributions. Ultimately, neither 'good' immigrants nor 'good' protestors can use their goodness as a shield from ICE's violence. Trump's campaign of 'mass deportations' was never just about carrying out more immigration raids. We knew this campaign would reach far beyond those immigrants who are living in the country without authorization—not just because the number of people he said would be deported exceeds the numbers of undocumented, but because his plans also involve making more and more people deportable. Sure enough, some of the workers who were detained in the July 10 raids were citizens, the United Farm Workers said in a statement. George Restes, a disabled veteran and American citizen, was arrested and held for three days without a phone call, he said, and without treatment after agents pepper sprayed him. These detentions may have been aimed at managing perceptions of the raid. The UFW pointed out that many of those detained reported being released only 'after they were forced to delete photos and videos of the raid from their phones.' ICE's project goes well beyond the violent scenes of the raids: It has transformed everyday life in California. Family pets are filling Southern California shelters, given up by owners who have been forced to leave the United States. At a Glendale hospital, ICE agents camped out for days, scaring people away from seeking care; National Nurses United shared Know Your Rights guides for all health care workers. Countless children are left waiting for parents to return, like 16-year-old Alexa, whose pregnant mother was arrested Thursday, forcing Alexa to become the caretaker for her younger siblings until their mother returns. Other family members of missing workers, including their young children, went to the farm the next day, hoping to be reunited. The family of Jaime Alanís, one of the workers gravely injured in the chaotic raid, reunited with him in the hospital, where he died on Saturday. His surviving family members have said that he will be brought to Huajumbaro, Michoacán, his hometown: 'His wife and daughter are waiting for him.' People have long asked themselves what they would do when faced with something like these mass roundups and detentions—an injustice of historic proportions. Until recently, this question may have seemed to be asking you to imagine yourself into the past. But then the Trump administration opened an American concentration camp in the Everglades. What would you do? You would do what you're doing right now. Now it is becoming routine in California for armed agents, without warning or cause, to arrest and detain and deport the people who have, for years, been vilified by an unpopular regime leader. That's why any resistance to these raids is being met with such fierce repression and reprisal. Seeing the evidence of the roundups in front of us doesn't necessarily lead people to do anything differently. But seeing other people push back sometimes does. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
13-07-2025
- Yahoo
Federal immigration agents, protesters clash during raid at California cannabis farm
VENTURA, CA — A Southern California community was on edge after protesters and federal agents carried out immigration sweeps at one of the largest cannabis farms in the state, blocking off a road outside the facility and firing projectiles in the crowd. Reports flooded social media of federal agents arriving at a Glass House Farms facility outside Camarillo, an agricultural region of coastal Southern California, on July 10. Video posted by 805 Immigrant Coalition, a group that tracks U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity, showed men in tactical gear blocking off a roadway. Federal agents also raided a Glass House Farms greenhouse facility in Carpinteria, California, on July 10, according to the Santa Barbara news site Noozhawk. Protesters there faced off with agents in a similar situation to the one near Camarillo. At the scene, yellow crime scene tape with U.S. Border Patrol markings stretched across Laguna Road. On one side stood what appeared to be masked and armed federal agents while a crowd of more than 100 people amassed at the other end, taunting the agents and yelling expletives. Agents fired projectiles into the crowd, striking several people and hitting at least one in the face. Agents lobbed canisters that emitted yellow or white gas. Protesters stomped on several of the canisters until they went out. The masked agents continued to deploy gas canisters through 1:30 p.m. local time. Some people in the crowd left while others poured milk on their faces to counteract the gas. Ventura County Fire Department spokesman Andrew Dowd said three people had been transported to area hospitals. He did not know the extent of their injuries but said crews were on site to help people who were injured. The Glass House Farms greenhouse complex is one of the largest licensed cannabis farms in California, with more than 5 million square feet of growing space. The company bought the property from Houweling's Tomatoes in 2021. Glass House Farms, which describes itself as one of the "fastest-growing vertically integrated cannabis companies in the U.S.," said on X that its facilities "were visited today by ICE officials." The company added that it "fully complied with agent search warrants and will provide further updates if necessary." ICE raids in Southern California: Bishop suspends weekly Mass obligation over immigration raid fears Some of the gathered crowd were protesters. Others were family members of farmworkers. Jessica Lopez was leaning against a vehicle. She said she got a call from her husband at about 9:30 a.m. local time saying ICE was in the facility. Lopez, a U.S. citizen, said her undocumented husband worked at Glass House. "Last time I talked to him, he said he was hiding somewhere," she said. "They're taking hardworking people who have had no problems with the law." Adrian Garcia, 25, from Oxnard, California, previously worked at the farm. He held a sign handed to him by another protester that read "We are essential" in Spanish. Garcia, like others who gathered in the crowd, said he rushed to the scene after hearing from family inside the facility. Oxnard Police Chief Jason Benites said the initial operation appeared to be entirely composed of federal agents. Steve Auclair, president of the Ventura County Democratic Party, described the situation at Glass House Farms as "totally outrageous." His mother, who is in her mid-60s, was hit by the gas and struck by a projectile. He called it "a military attack on our community." "First they came for the farmworker, and now, they're taking all of us," Auclair said. Jacqui Irwin, who represents California's 42nd Assembly District, wrote in a statement that she was heartbroken by images of what she called 'senseless' raids at local farms. Her district covers a swath of Ventura County, including Camarillo, and portions of Los Angeles County. "Deporting our field workers does nothing to strengthen the safety of our community but rather, serves to instill fear in immigrant communities and make them less likely to involve law enforcement when crimes do occur.' Teresa Romero, the president of United Farm Workers, said union members at the farm have been in contact with staff during the incident, but that details on the operation are still unclear. "All we know is that it's happening," Romero said. "There's no good reason to do this to agricultural areas, to the agricultural industry. These workers are working very hard, and they are just living in panic." Shortly after 2 p.m. local time, a large white bus rolled down Laguna Road from the facility, accompanied by what appeared to be a National Guard vehicle. Gas and pellets were used on the waning crowd. Small puddles of milk dotted the road where protesters had treated their eyes from the gas. Federal agents had moved the line of protesters back, but demonstrators also hurled objects at their vehicles. Family members of workers kept vigil outside, waiting for word of their loved ones. Dalia Perez, 30, of Oxnard, said she last heard her mother was in a room at the facility with ICE agents and that her phone was taken away. "Upset. Helpless," Perez said of how she was feeling. "(Her mom) hasn't done anything wrong. She just worked for us to have a better life here." Perez said her mother, who is undocumented, has lived in Oxnard for more than 30 years. "We just want to know if our family is OK," she said. In recent months, the Trump administration has ramped up deportation efforts in California by conducting immigration raids at workplaces, traffic stops, and routine legal check-ins. The federal immigration sweeps have sparked fear and protests, including in Los Angeles County, which is south of the cities of Camarillo and Carpinteria. Isolated but intense demonstrations erupted in downtown Los Angeles in June after immigration agents carried out a series of raids across the county. The raids and Trump's actions during the protests, including calling in the 4,000 California National Guard troops and 700 Marines, prompted a legal and social media standoff between state leaders and the administration. The administration has changed its position several times in recent weeks on whether farmworkers will be subject to its campaign to deport all immigrants living in the United States without legal status. In June, Trump ordered ICE to halt enforcement activities on farms, but the agency reversed that position days later. The president then said in early July that he was willing to let migrant workers stay in the country if farmers could "vouch" for them. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins later said there would be "no amnesty" for farmworkers from deportation. About 42% of farmworkers from 2020 to 2022 were in the country without legal status, according to the Department of Homeland Security. In California, immigrants make up about one-third of workers and comprise an outsize share of the workforce in physically intensive sectors like construction and agriculture, USA TODAY previously reported. Contributing: Tony Biasotti, Makena Huey, and Cheri Carlson, USA TODAY Network; Bailey Schulz and Medora Lee, USA TODAY; Reuters This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Immigration agents and protesters clash during California farm raids
