Alarm spread through California agricultural centers Tuesday as panicked workers reported that federal immigration authorities — who had largely refrained from major enforcement action in farming communities in the first months of the Trump administration — were showing up at farm fields and packinghouses from the Central Coast to the San Joaquin Valley.
“Today we are seeing an uptick in the chaotic presence of immigration enforcement, particularly the Border Patrol,” said Elizabeth Strater, vice president of the United Farm Workers. “We’re seeing it in multiple areas.”
Department of Homeland Security officials declined to confirm specific locations, but said enforcement actions were taking place across the southern area of the state. Advocates from numerous immigrant advocacy groups said their phones were lighting up with calls, videos and texts from multiple counties.
The Times reviewed a video that showed a worker running through a field under the cover of early morning fog, with at least one agent in pursuit on foot and a Border Patrol truck racing along an adjacent dirt road. Eventually, the worker was caught.
In Tulare County, near the community of Richgrove, immigration agents emerged near a field where farm laborers were picking blueberries, causing some workers to flee. In Fresno County, workers reported federal agents, some in Border Patrol trucks, in the fields near Kingsburg.
And in Oxnard in Ventura County, organizers responded to multiple calls of federal immigration authorities staging near fields and entering a packinghouse at Boskovich Farms. Hazel Davalos of the group Cause, said there were reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents trying to access multiple farms in Oxnard, but that in many cases, they were denied entry.
Strater said that she did not yet have information about the number of people detained in the raids, but that the fear among workers was pervasive. At least half of the estimated 255,700 farmworkers in California are undocumented, according to UC Merced research.
“These are people who are going to be afraid to take their kids to school, afraid to go to graduation, afraid to go to the grocery store,” Strater said. “The harm is going to be done.”
Maureen McGuire, chief executive of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, said immigration agents visited five packing facilities and at least five farms in the fertile Oxnard Plain. They attempted to enter Glass House Farms, a cannabis greenhouse, she said, but the owners informed them it was private property and turned them away. She said the agents then moved into the surrounding area, attempting to gain access to properties without judicial warrants.
Agents also stopped people on their way to work, she said, adding that in her view, the agents were targeting nonwhite people in “beater” cars, as a form of racial profiling.
McGuire said she received calls from growers reaching out on behalf of workers who were afraid to leave the fields, asking if it was safe. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t assure them,” she said. “It’s just really sad and disappointing, and unlawful.”
The expansion into rural communities follows days of coordinated raids in urban areas of Los Angeles County, where authorities have targeted home improvement stores, restaurants and garment manufacturers. The enforcement action has prompted waves of protest, and the Trump administration has responded by sending in hundreds of Marines and thousands of National Guard troops.
Two Democratic members of Congress who represent the Ventura area, Reps. Julia Brownley and Salud Carbajal, released a statement condemning the raids around Oxnard.
““We have received disturbing reports of ICE enforcement actions in Ventura County, including in Oxnard, Port Hueneme, and Camarillo, where agents have reportedly stopped vehicles, loitered near schools, and attempted to enter agricultural properties and facilities in the Oxnard Plain,” they said. “These actions are completely unjustified, deeply harmful, and raise serious questions about the agency’s tactics and its respect for due process.”
They added that “these raids are not about public safety. They are about stoking fear. These are not criminals being targeted. They are hardworking people and families who are an essential part of Ventura County. Our local economy, like much of California’s and the country’s as a whole, depends on undocumented labor. These men and women are the backbone of our farms, our fields, our construction and service industries, and our communities.”
Farmworker advocates noted that Tuesday’s raids came despite a judicial ruling stemming from a rogue Border Patrol action in Kern County this year.
ACLU attorneys representing the United Farm Workers and five Kern County residents sued the head of the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Border Patrol officials, alleging the Border Patrol’s three-day raid in the southern San Joaquin Valley in early January amounted to a “fishing expedition” that indiscriminately targeted people of color who appeared to be farmworkers or day laborers.
Judge Jennifer Thurston of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California said in an 88-page ruling that evidence presented by the American Civil Liberties Union lawyers established “a pattern and practice” at the Border Patrol of violating people’s constitutional rights when detaining people without reasonable suspicion, and then violating federal law by executing warrantless arrests without determining flight risk.
Thurston’s ruling required the Border Patrol to submit detailed documentation of any stops or warrantless arrests in the Central Valley and show clear guidance and training for agents on the law.
