One Year After Glass House Farms Raid, Residents Say Fear and Trauma Remain
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
OXNARD, Calif. – It was a year ago this month that Javier’s life changed instantly. The 41-year-old had been working at Glass House Farms along California’s Central Coast when federal immigration agents conducted what was then the largest enforcement operation in the state’s history.
Five days after being detained Javier was deported back to Mexico, where he says he has yet to overcome the trauma of what he lived through.
“I wouldn’t wish on anyone what we experienced that day,” said Javier, who asked that we only use his first name. He spoke from his home in Chiapas, in southern Mexico. “I’m still dealing with the psychological damage.”
On July 10, 2025, hundreds of masked agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) executed a militarized search of the marijuana farm, which spans the communities of Carpinteria and Camarillo.
The operation involved heavily armored vehicles, helicopters and drones and resulted in the detention of more than 360 farm workers, among them 14 minors and four U.S. citizens.
‘We remain concerned’
This past Saturday, July 11, activists and immigrant rights advocates in Oxnard, about 25 miles south, held a vigil in remembrance of the raids and to honor the memory of Jaime Alanis García, the 57-year-old farm worker who died while trying to avoid detention.
“July 10 was very traumatizing for us,” said Leo Martinez with the rapid response network, VC Defensa, which organized the vigil.
He spoke as residents lit candles at a makeshift memorial nearby featuring images of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the Texas construction worker killed July 7 by an ICE agent in Houston. A similar ICE involved shooting on July 13 took the life 26-yer-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero of Colombia.
Martinez added that after the raids, the community was transformed “in a way I have never seen before.”
Neighbors joined WhatsApp groups to keep each other informed about the presence of immigration agents. They formed volunteer networks to patrol neighborhoods. Agents, he said, no longer “have space to operate here.”
Still, he added, the fear remains.
“There are kids who no longer go to school, parents who don’t work,” said Martinez. “The terror is still present.”
Luis, 52, is originally from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca and has worked fields in and around Ventura County for more than 30 years. He said he still carries the fear from that day and worries something similar could happen again.
“We remain concerned,” said Luis, who also requested that we only use his first name. He added, “We look out for each other, and if we see anything unusual … we spread the word.”
Others at the vigil voiced similar worries.
“My wife and I leave every day for work without knowing if we’ll be able to come back home to our kids,” said Pedro, 48, adding all four of his children were born in the US.
A memorial for Jaime Alanis Garcia, the 57-year-old farmworker who died while trying to evade immigration agents dyring a raid at Glass House Farms. (Credit Araceli Martinez)
Aggression and malice
On the day of the raid, Javier remembers parking a company van in front of one of the farm’s warehouses when he first noticed a large contingent of immigration agents.
“I got out of the van and hid in a dark room in the warehouse,” he said. “I covered myself with plants to avoid being seen. There were about 20 of us in there hiding. We hid for around 40 minutes until they found us.”
According to Javier, the agents aimed tasers at the men and women who were hiding before forcing them to their knees.
“People were crying, screaming,” he recalled. “There were couples who worked together, and their children had been left with a babysitter.” The agents, he said, acted with extreme aggression and “malice.”
Javier was eventually loaded onto a van with others detained that day, among them men and women with open asylum cases and work authorization, or workers who had spent more than 30 years in the country “without even a single traffic violation.”
The detainees were brought to the ICE detention center in Downtown Los Angeles. Javier was crammed into a small, dimly lit room with around 50 others. He would spend the next five days being fed half-frozen burritos and taking turns sleeping on the cold floor.
“I didn’t eat, so that I wouldn’t need to use the bathroom,” Javier said. “We only had one toilet in full view of everyone, with no privacy whatsoever.”
ICE agents gave detainees two options: fight their cases in detention — which would mean months of confinement — or deportation.
“They told me that if I signed my voluntary exit, when I returned to Mexico, they would send me a check for $1,000. I signed the exit,” said Javier. “The $1,000 never arrived.”
Still, he echoed Martinez, noting how the community rallied in response to the raids. He pointed to the work of VC Defensa and 805 UndocuFund, another rapid response network, and described how “friends and acquaintances organized car washes, food sales, and raffles” to raise funds to support him.
In the wake of the raids, he said, the community “was more united than ever.”
This story was produced as part of “Aquí Estamos/Here We Stand,” a collaborative reporting project of American Community Media and community news outlets statewide
Comments