CAMARILO, Calif. — A massive show of federal law enforcement agents took the countryside of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties this week, the biggest campaign in the Trump administration’s weekly multi-week campaign against undocumented immigrants in California.
Farmworker advocates said one worker was killed in injuries after attempting to escape federal agents after falling from the roof of a glasshouse cannabis operation Friday afternoon.
Attacks by agents from the Homeland Security Investigations, the California State Guard and the Drug Enforcement Agency have particularly highlighted the well-known cannabis companies.
The business began when immigration agents began entering the building on Thursday after they surrounded the large greenhouse facilities in Camarillo and Carpinteria and presented warrants. The result was a few hours of confusion, especially at the company’s front post base.
Workers began to run in panic as people cried out “Ramigra!Ramigra!”, hiding in the fridge, containers, car trunks, and greenhouse roofs. Protesters gathered at the gates and squared against the agents who deployed tear gas and non-fatal bullets.
Nearly 200 people, including several minors, were in custody after the gas was cleared and riot police and hundreds of protesters returned home, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
“At least 10 immigrant children have been rescued from potential exploitation, forced labor and human trafficking,” the agency said in a statement. “Federal officials have also arrested about 200 illegal aliens.”
Additionally, the FBI said it is investigating a shooting that could have happened amid a fierce protest outside the gates of Glass House, one of the state’s largest legal cannabis operations.
The incident quickly promoted the political narrative of duels as images of children running through the fields to escape clouds of tear gas, and workers hiding in terrorism among broken glass sticks on greenhouse roofs, as all over social media.
The Trump administration portrayed the incident as an action against a “marijuana cultivation operation.” This, as Border Patrol officials put in X’s post, “hiring illegal aliens and exploiting unaccompanied minors.” X’s White House account joined the fight and called on Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) for defending farm workers at work.
“It’s not producing, Holmes. It’s a product,” reads the White House post.
Meanwhile, local elected officials and farm workers advocates have condemned lawsuits against legal and highly regulated businesses.
“It was disproportionate and overdone,” said Rep. Sardo Carbajal, D-Santa Barbara.
In a statement, United Farm workers said: “These violent and cruel federal actions have terrified American communities, disrupt American food supply chains, threatened lives, and separate separate families.
The work also highlights Glass House, one of California’s largest legal cannabis businesses. The company, which counts the former Torrance police officers among its founders, has in recent years become Ventura County’s largest taxpayer and one of the region’s largest employers.
It became a big player in local politics, but now, obviously, it’s on the Trump administration’s cross.
Company officials say on Friday, two businesses near Camarillo in Ventura County and Carpinteria in Santa Barbara County have not posted X saying they have allowed agents to enter after being presented with a search warrant.
“The workers are detained and we are helping them provide legal representatives,” the company said in a statement, adding that “they have not intentionally violated any applicable employment practices.”
Glasshouse holds a controversial position in California’s ravaged, legal cannabis industry. Five years ago, the company acquired an old vegetable and flower greenhouse across the farmland south of Santa Barbara. Its growth is such a large scale and has very low production costs, so many of the industry’s production costs are called “Walmart of Weeds.”
The converted greenhouse of 165 acres of Camarillosites once grew cucumbers. This nodded to the pattern of reusable bad facilities adopted by co-founder Kyle Kazan, a former Torrance police officer assigned to detailing the gang that once created the first millions of people to build the Orange County beach rental property management empire.
Glass House began as a single greenhouse operation at Santa Barbara and established the Mammoth Footprint in Ventura County after a 2021 merger with a Canadian company that allowed public trade in Glass House Brands stocks.
Under Kazan, Glass House has overcome allegations brought on by competitors who illegally dump marijuana products in other states. Kazan has not been much involved in the national political battle beyond cannabis, but has been a supporter of pardons for those who serve long sentences for non-violent drug offences. In an investor presentation in May, Kazan praised Pardon Advisor’s Trump appointee.
The company also sparked a fire in 2019, when it donated $189,000 to Carpinteria School District, and then got the company’s products worn with photos inside the cannabis plant. At the time, many residents condemned the growing influence of marijuana businesses on local politics and culture, while others defended Glasshouse and other businesses to provide employment and local tax revenue.
According to court applications, many of Glass House employees actually work for Camarillo labor contractors. We are facing allegations of violating labor laws (such as failure to overtime or food breaks), and separate sexual harassment and discrimination complaints submitted by workers tend to pay $16 per hour (then minimum wage), clean plant trimming, handle coconut fiber mulch, and lean towards other duties.
The company has challenged the charges collected in the Ventura County civil lawsuit, which is still pending in court.
Many Trump administration officials called for the presence of undocumented minors working at the facility on Thursday. Customs and Border Patrol Director Rodney Scott posted a photo on X of a young man with a blurred face.
“These are boys found at a marijuana facility. Almost all of them are 14-year-olds, unaccompanied,” the post read. “Is California ready to partner with us to stop the exploitation of children?”
Glass House said in its statement that it “does not employ minors and has never hired them.”
He also said he did not expect the attack to “impact future operations” and did not expect it to “provide additional details if applicable.”
On Friday morning, the scene outside the company’s Camarillo complex was much more subdued than the previous day. The operation is surrounded by a metal fence with a green tarp. The sign warns that the fence is charging 7,000 volts.
Many people there were attempting to retrieve the vehicles left by workers detained in the attack. Others said they believe some workers may still be hiding in the vast complex.
Irma Perez said her nephew Fidel Bucio, 24, worked at the facility and later hid on the roof before being detained. He said he sent her a video before he was taken. He included one standing on the roof with blood on his shirt from an injury scrambled on broken glass.
Perez said Bucio lived in Tijuana with his wife, but came to Ventura County after he got sick. She said he was undocumented and was trying to gain legal status. She said the last communication from him was the call he said: “They got me.”
She was about to pick up his car. She added that his lawyer doesn’t know where Buscio was taken.
The two daughters of the detained workers were also there on Friday, trying to pick up their mother’s car. The 19 and 20-year-olds didn’t want to be named to protect the privacy of their family, but their mother said they chose not to run when immigration agents entered the complex.
She has already signed a self-abolition letter to go to Mexico and is avoiding being held in another state detention center, they said.
“I’m so sad,” one daughter said. “They leave many people without parents.”
Another worker that has not been documented and doesn’t want to name it said he hid under the cannabis plant for 11 hours. It was hot, over 100 degrees. He says he can hear the sounds of others being detained and remains hidden until around midnight, when he finally creeps up and runs away.
Griselda Reyes Basurto, program manager for the Mixteco Indigena Community Organization Project, which works with Indigenous workers in many areas, said he was able to visit Glass House early Friday morning to find the people left behind.
She was found none, but they said they saw the remains of the attack. The car windows were shattered, she said, signs that people tried to hide in their cars, but the agent was broken anyway. She said she is coordinating with the families of the people filmed to make sure they can receive their final pay. Thursday was payday.
The attack terrified immigrants working on local farms and executives running California’s cannabis operations.
Activists were worried that they would share images of DEA agents in the Camarillo immigrant raid and mark the end of a federal ceasefire against cannabis. Most states have laws that somehow make the cultivation, sale and use of cannabis, but along with heroin and LSD, they remain on a controlled substance schedule under federal law.
“We know that cannabis farms are a simple target because cannabis farms are violating federal laws, and ICE can do raids alongside other three-letter agencies,” said an executive at one of California’s biggest cannabis businesses who don’t want to be named for fear of making the situation worse.
Americans and California Cannabis Industry Assn for Secure Access. An emergency call was held on Friday to prepare for such federal actions.
“We have a real enemy in Washington, and we’re in power now,” said Steph Sherer, the American president for Safe Access.
Glass House Raid targeted people rather than plants, but “Let’s be clear. This is a warning shot and we have to prepare for both,” said Caren Woodson, CEO of Canabis Industry Assn. “Just because it wasn’t a plant this time doesn’t mean it won’t be the next time.”
Some sense of vulnerability rises from the memory of Trump’s first terminology at the time. General Jeff Sessions in 2018 developed a memorandum of Justice that discourages federal prosecution of state cannabis laws where factories are licensed and regulated.
The threat of federal law enforcement criminalizing cannabis poses a great risk to cannabis operators. In federal courts, legalizing a state is not an authorized defense. Moreover, Trump’s DEA was not acting on recommendations to reduce federal bans on cannabis.
“It’s real. We’ve all lived through it. It’s happening again,” Scheller said.
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