ICE expands immigration raids into California’s agricultural heartland

The alarm spreads in California agricultural centers on Tuesday, while panicked workers said that the federal immigration authorities – who had largely abstained from the major application in agricultural communities during the first months of the Trump administration – presented themselves in the agricultural fields and packaging from the central coast to the valley of San Joaquin.

“Today, we note an increase in the chaotic presence of the application of immigration, in particular the border patrol,” said Elizabeth Strateter, vice-president of the United Agricultural Workers. “We see it in several areas.”

Officials of the Ministry of Internal Security refused to confirm specific locations, but said that implementation measures were held in the southern state area. Defenders of many immigrant advocacy groups said their phones lit up with calls, videos and SMS from several counties.

The Times reviewed a video that showed a worker crossing a field under the cover of fog early in the morning, with at least one agent on foot and a border patrol truck along an adjacent dirt road. Finally, the worker was taken.

In the county of Tulare, near the community of Richgrove, immigration agents emerged near an area where agricultural workers chose blueberries, fleeing certain workers. In the County of Fresno, workers reported federal agents, some in border patrol trucks, in the fields near Kingsburg.

And in Oxnard in the county of Ventura, the organizers said that they had answered several calls from federal immigration authorities by organizing near Fields and entering a packaging house on boskovich farms.

In a statement published on Thursday, Boskovich Farms said that the company “had not authorized federal immigration authorities to enter its packaging house or to one of its other facilities, and the federal authorities have not entered any of the installations of Boskovich Farms”. The company did not respond to requests for additional comments.

Hazel Davalos of the group’s cause, said that there was information reporting immigration and customs’ application agents who were trying to access Oxnard several farms, but that in many cases, they have been refused.

Strateter said she had no information on the number of people detained during the raids, but that the fear of workers was omnipresent. According to UC Merced Research, at least half of the 255,700 agricultural workers in California are undocumented.

“These are people who will be afraid of taking their children to school, are afraid of getting the diploma, for fear of going to the grocery store,” said Strate. “Evil will be done.”

Maureen McGuire, director general of Ventura County Farm Bureau, said that immigration agents had visited five packaging facilities and at least five farms in the Fertile Plaine of Oxnard. They tried to enter glass farms, a cannabis greenhouse, she said, but the owners informed them that it was private property and refused them. She said that the agents then moved around, trying to access properties without judicial terms.

The agents also prevented people from working, she said, adding that, according to him, agents were targeting non-white people in “drummer” cars, such as a form of racial profiling.

McGuire said that she had received calls from producers who stretched her hand in the name of workers who were afraid to leave the fields, asking if it was sure. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t insure them,” she said. “It’s really sad and disappointing and illegal.”

Expansion in rural communities follows coordinated days of raids in the urban areas of the County of Los Angeles, where the authorities have targeted the domiciliary renovation stores, restaurants and clothing manufacturers. The application measure caused protest waves, and the Trump administration responded by sending hundreds of navies and thousands of troops from the National Guard.

Two Democratic members of the Congress who represent the Ventura region, representatives Julia Brownley and Salud Carbajal, published a statement condemning the raids around Oxnard.

“We have received disturbing reports of ice application measures in the county of Ventura, in particular in Oxnard, Port Hueneme and Camallo, where the agents would have arrested vehicles,” these actions are completely unjustified, deeply harmful and raise serious questions on the agency’s tactics and its respect for the regular procedure. “

They added that “these raids do not concern public security. It’s about catching up. They are not targeted criminals. These are people and workers who are an essential element of the county of Ventura. Our local economy, like a large part of California and backbone of our operations, our areas, our construction industries and our services.

The defenders of agricultural workers noted that the raids on Tuesday came despite a legal decision resulting from a border patrol action see in the county of Kern this year.

ACLU lawyers representing United Agricultural workers and five residents of the County Kern continued the head of the Ministry of Homeland Security and officials of the American border patrol, alleging that the three -day raid of the border patrol in the south of the San Joaquin valley at the beginning of January was “fishing” which targets the target of colored people be agricultural workers or day workers.

Judge Jennifer Thurston of the American District Court of the Oriental District of California declared in an 88 -page decision that the evidence presented by American lawyers of the Union of American Civil Liberties had established “a scheme and a practice” at the border patrol of the violation of constitutional rights of people during the detention of persons without reasonable suspicion, then violating the federal law in work of emergency arrests without determining the risk of theft.

Thurston’s decision required that the border patrol submitted detailed documentation of any mandate judgment or arrest in the central valley and show clear advice and training for agents on the law.

This article is part of the time ‘ Actions report initiative,, funded by the James Irvine Foundationexploring the challenges faced by California’s economic divide.