ICE arrested 361 migrants at Glass House farms. Bleak confinements, deportations followed
VENTURA COUNTY, California ‒ Juan Reyes lay flat on the greenhouse roof, hiding. Federal immigration agents milled through the Glass House farm below.
Reyes moved to the U.S. from Mexico at 10 years old, and though he never secured legal status, Oxnard became his home. As he hid, he thought of his wife, who is also undocumented, and their newborn daughter, a U.S. citizen.
After several hours on July 10, he surrendered. Agents bound his wrists roughly with zip ties.
Reyes, 25, was one of hundreds of immigrant farmworkers arrested by federal agents in a massive raid on a pair of Glass House Farms cannabis greenhouse facilities in Carpinteria and outside Camarillo. It was one of the largest raids nationally during President Donald Trump's current immigration crackdown.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said its agents arrested 361 alleged undocumented immigrants including six with prior convictions and 14 teen minors during the all-day operation. One worker died after falling from a greenhouse roof.
Few of those people have returned to local communities, according to data gathered from regional nonprofits and federal immigration detention records.
Together, the numbers indicate that just under half of the 361 immigrants arrested in the Glass House raid have been deported in the months since. Many others remain in federal custody, immigration advocates say, and a scattered few were released on bond. No follow-up information has been made available on the teenagers.
Primitiva Hernandez, head of the nonprofit 805 UndocuFund, said the ramifications of the raid will be felt far beyond the individuals arrested and for "generations to come."
"Many of these people had established deep roots, had children who were U.S. citizens," Hernandez said. Now, she said, some of those children will be forced to follow their families to unfamiliar places, to "grow away from the place of their birth."
Federal officials themselves have released scant information about what happened to the people they detained during the months after the raid.
The homeland security department denied a Freedom of Information Act request for information about the whereabouts of the detainees in August, saying that an investigation connected to the raid was still open.
Immigration officials have also ignored congressional requests for information. U.S. Reps. Julia Brownley, D-Westlake Village, and Salud Carbajal, D-Santa Barbara, signed letters to the homeland security department over the summer asking for details of the Glass House raid and other federal operations. Spokespeople for their offices said those letters have yet to receive a response.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson Luis Alani did not answer questions about the raid or its aftermath. He responded instead on Oct. 9 with a statement directing further questions to the U.S. Attorney.
Ciaran McEvoy, spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, said the office could not comment on the investigation. He declined to provide a copy of the search warrant used by federal agents during the Glass House operation, saying it remains under a court seal. The agency said in July that the operation was targeted toward potential immigration and child labor law violations.
Hernandez said a network of advocacy groups and nonprofits called the 805 Immigrant Coalition has connected with the families of 335 of the 361 people arrested in the raid. The coalition has identified 150 individuals deported to date.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ice-arrested-361-migrants-glass-110149177.html