#johncaravello — Public Fediverse posts
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On a sunny morning last July, hundreds of heavily armed immigration agents in camouflage stormed a greenhouse complex in Camarillo, an hour north of Los Angeles.
They came with face masks, guns, chemical munitions and armored tactical vehicles, blocking access along a road lined by produce fields.
What unfolded next would irreversibly transform the lives of many there that day.
It was after 10am when Santiago*, an undocumented farm worker from Mexico who had been working at the greenhouse for just three weeks, saw the agents flood in.
As they pointed firearms at panicked, scattering workers, he thought they were army soldiers and felt raw fear.“Fear of what could happen to me, and fear of leaving my daughters behind,” recalled the father of three US citizen girls.
As word of the raid spread, a crowd of protesters gathered outside.
Among them was John Caravello, a local university professor.
Around 12.50pm, he grabbed a smoking teargas canister that a border patrol agent had tossed at the protesters
and chucked it over agents’ heads
– an action that would be dissected from all angles in a trial months later.By 2.30pm, agents had deployed multiple rounds of chemical munitions at protesters, flanked by hundreds of national guard members.
George Retes, a security guard at the greenhouses, drove through the chaos to report for his 3pm shift until he reached a line of agents, who he said shouted conflicting orders.
“It felt like no one was in charge,” said Retes,
an army veteran who served in Iraq.
“Like a bunch of privates … [with] no training, no coordination, no de-escalation.”Aerial footage shows his car soon engulfed in teargas smoke as he reversed.
Within minutes, officers shattered his window, pepper-sprayed him and pinned him to the ground.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it picked up 14 minors and 361 adults during the 10 July raids
that targeted two facilities owned by Glass House Farms,
the state’s largest legal cannabis brand, in Camarillo and Carpinteria.One man died – a 56-year-old farm worker named Jaime Alanis, who fell 30ft from a greenhouse roof.
Over the following days, loved ones searched frantically for Santiago, Caravello and Retes as they suffered dread and panic behind bars.
A year later, the three men are still rebuilding their lives.
“Now when I see a car with dark windows, I worry,” Santiago said.
“Everything has changed.”The capstone to aggressive immigration sweeps in Los Angeles,
the Glass House raids epitomized the high-profile, violent tactics that defined the first year of Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.The raids were a “litmus test for what the federal government could get away with”,
said Genevieve Flores-Haro, associate director of Mixteco/Indígena Community Organizing Project,
a local non-profit that supports Indigenous Mexican families.
“They pushed the line further and further.”Those heavy-handed strategies backfired after immigration agents shot and killed two US citizens in Minneapolis,
sparking political and public outrage.
Local leaders say enforcement then pivoted to a quieter, systemic approach of targeted arrests at homes, local jails and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) appointments, echoing national trends.But fresh funding, a recent surge in arrests and two ICE-involved killings last month have raised the specter of renewed brutality.
And the fallout from the cannabis farm raids continues to ripple through this southern California agricultural hub.Families like Santiago’s struggle to heal amid ongoing ICE arrests.
While pro-immigrant networks have swelled with volunteers,
activists such as Caravello say they face a federal intimidation campaign
-- from pre-dawn arrests and raids on organizers’ homes to ICE agents’ car ramming community patrollers.Meanwhile, Retes is among a handful of people seeking justice after the raids by suing the government.
In response to queries, the DHS did not comment on the men’s experiences.
However, Lauren Bis, a spokesperson, stated that immigration officers were “assaulted by rioters” while “dodging bullets to save children”
during the Camarillo protests, referring to a suspected gunman she accused of firing at agents.
She said the investigation into immigration and child labor violations was ongoing.For all three men, the operation was just the start of grueling ordeals in detention and the courts.
Several hours after he threw the gas canister, Caravello said officers tackled him to the ground
and took him to an interior lot, where Retes already sat, writhing in pain from chemical irritants burning his skin#ice #GlassHouseFarm #camarillo
#JohnCaravello
#GeorgeRetes
#JaimeAlanis
#Santiago
#MixtecoIndígenaCommunityOrganizingProject