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An alarm spread to California’s agricultural centers on Tuesday as panic workers reported federal immigration officials, who had been waiting for massive enforcement measures for the farm community in the first months of the Trump administration, had appeared on farms and packaging routes from the Central Coast to the San Joaquin Valley.
“Today, we see a chaotic presence in immigration enforcement, particularly the rise in border patrols,” said Elizabeth Stratter, vice president of United Farm Workers. “We see it in multiple areas.”
Homeland Security officials refused to confirm a specific location, but said enforcement measures were being taken in the southern regions of the state. Advocates from numerous immigration advocacy groups said their calls were lit up with calls, videos and texts from multiple counties.
The Times reviewed a video showing workers sprinting through the field under early morning fog being tracked on foot, with border patrol trucks running along adjacent dirt roads. In the end, the workers were caught.
In Tulea County, near the community in Richgrove, immigration agents appeared near fields where farm workers were picking up blueberries, and some workers fled. In Fresno County, workers reported federal agents in Border Patrol trucks in fields near Kingsburg.
Also in Oxnard, Ventura County, organizers responded to multiple calls from federal immigration authorities, set in a nearby field and entering the packing house at Boskovic Farm. Hazel Davaros, the group’s cause, said there were reports of immigrants and customs enforcement agents seeking access to multiple farms in Oxnard, but in many cases they were denied entry.
Strater said he has no information yet on the number of people detained in the attack, but the fear among workers is spreading. At least half of California’s estimated 255,700 farmers have not been documented, according to UC Merced Research.
“These are people who are afraid of taking their kids to school, they are afraid of graduating, they are afraid of going to the grocery store,” Stratter said. “The harm will be done.”
Maureen McGuire, chief executive of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, said immigration agents have visited five packing facilities and at least five farms in the fertile Oxnard Plain. They tried to enter Glasshouse Farms, a cannabis greenhouse, but the owner told them it was private property and pulled them apart. She said the agents then moved to the surrounding area and tried to gain access to the property without a judicial warrant.
The agent also stopped people on the way to work, she said, adding that in her view, the agent was targeting non-white people in “beater” cars as a form of racial profiling.
McGuire said he received a call from a grower reaching out on behalf of workers who are afraid to leave the field. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t guarantee them,” she said. “That’s really sad and sad and unlawful.”
The expansion into rural communities follows days of coordinated urban attacks in Los Angeles County, with authorities targeting home improvement stores, restaurants and clothing manufacturers. Enforcement measures prompted a wave of protests, and the Trump administration responded by sending hundreds of Marines and thousands of National Guard.
Rep. Julia Brownley and Sardo Carbajal, two Democrats from Congress representing the Ventura area, issued statements denounce the attacks around Oxnard.
“We received intrusive reports of ice enforcement measures in Ventura County, including Oxnard, Port Funeme and Camarillo, where agents reportedly stopped the vehicle, lodged near the school, and tried to enter the agricultural properties and facilities on the Oxnard Plains,” they said.
They said, “These attacks are not about public safety. They are about taking away fear. They are not targeted by criminals. They are hardworking people and families, an important part of Ventura County.
Farmworkers supporters noted that the attack occurred Tuesday despite a judicial ruling stemming from a fraudulent border patrol lawsuit in Kern County this year.
ACLU lawyers representing United Farm workers and five Kern County residents sued officials from the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Border Patrol.
Judge Jennifer Thurston of the Eastern District of California, said in an 88-page ruling that evidence presented by lawyers for the American Civil Liberties established “patterns and practices” in the constitutional rights of people by violating federal law by violating people’s non-guaranteed arrests without determining the risk of broadcasting.
Thurston’s ruling required the Border Patrol to submit detailed documents of arrests without a stop or warrant in the Central Valley and provide clear guidance and training for agents on the law.
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