‘The areas were lonely’: Immigration raids leave rural California cold. migration news
Los Angeles, California – A recent raid by United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in a rural county in California has stoked fear in immigrant communities as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House.
CBP says a three-day operation in Kern County in early January resulted in the detention of 78 people. The United Farm Workers (UFW) union says it believes the number is closer to 200.
“The farms were almost deserted the day after the raid,” a 38-year-old undocumented farmworker named Alejanda, who declined to give her last name, said of the outcome.
He told that many employees stayed at home due to fear. “At this time of year, the gardens are usually full of people, but when I returned to work I felt as if I was alone.”
The raids are being seen by local labor and organizations like the UFW as a blow to immigration enforcement agencies ahead of Trump’s inauguration on Monday.
His second term as president is expected to usher in a new era of increased sanctions and deportation efforts.
While the number of people arrested represents a small portion of the millions of undocumented workers working in California’s agricultural sector, the concerns caused by such raids extend far beyond those detained.
“On Wednesday (the day after the raid), I stayed home from work. I barely left my house,” Alejanda said, adding that she kept her five-year-old son home from daycare rather than risk driving to drop him off.
“Everyone is talking about what happened. Everyone is scared, even me. I haven’t actually seen any agents myself, but you still feel the tension.
The morale of agencies increased
After a presidential campaign in which he regularly portrayed undocumented immigrants as “criminals” and “animals”, Trump is likely to follow through on his promise to carry out “the largest deportation program” in the country’s history on his first day in office. Will try to complete it.
Approximately 11 million people live in the United States without legal documentation, some of whom have worked for decades to build families and communities in the country.
The January arrests in Kern County appear to be the first large-scale Border Patrol raids in California since Trump’s victory in the November election, raising speculation about the potential impact of mass deportations on immigrant communities and economic sectors dependent on their labor. Planted.
About 50 percent of California’s agricultural workforce is made up of undocumented immigrants.
In California, undocumented status has been cited as a source of persistent concern for workers – as well as a means of leverage for employers, who often underpay such workers and provide them with less protection in the fields. .
But Alejanda says workplace raids like the one in Kern County are not common in the area.
“I have been here for five years and have never experienced anything like this before,” he said, adding that workers were detained as they left the fields to go home.
CBP said in a statement that the operation, codenamed “Return to Sender,” targeted unidentified individuals with criminal backgrounds and ties to criminal organizations.
#we feed you pic.twitter.com/8e6GE9RRkK
– United Farm Workers (@UFWupdates) 11 January 2025
The raid was conducted more than five hours by car from the site of the raid by agents from the CBP El Centro Sector, located near the border between Mexico and Southern California.
“El Centro Sector takes all border threats seriously,” Chief Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino said in a press release. “Our area of responsibility extends from the U.S./Mexico border north to the Oregon line, depending on the mission and threat.”
UFW spokesman Antonio de Loera-Brust said the operation shows that agencies like CBP will become more aggressive once Trump takes office.
He also disputed CBP’s description of the raids as focused on people with criminal records, saying the operation cast a wide net and profiled people who looked like farmworkers.
Two of those arrested were UFW members, whom the organization described as fathers who had lived in the area for more than 15 years.
“By operating more than 300 miles north of the Mexican border, and by conducting this untargeted sweep clearly based on profiling on its own initiative and authority, the Border Patrol has shown itself to be a disservice to hard-working immigrant communities.” are clearly encouraged by the national political climate of hostility,” De Loera-Brust told Al Jazeera.
“It is certainly extremely concerning that this kind of operation may become the new normal under the incoming Trump administration.”
