Trump team defends ICE raid at California marijuana farm where children were allegedly found working
The United Farm Workers union said several workers were critically injured during the raids, while other targeted workers, including a U.S. citizen, 'remain totally unaccounted for.'
Agents are accused of chasing one worker who fell 30 feet from the top of a building. He was hospitalized and placed on life support, before dying from his injuries on Friday, according to the union.
The raids — which sparked an intense standoff between heavily armed federal officers and dozens of protesters — were condemned by California Governor Gavin Newsom, whose office accused Trump's administration of wielding an anti-immigration agenda that has brought 'chaos, fear and terror' into communities.
'There's a real cost to these inhumane immigration actions on hardworking families and communities, including farmworker communities, across America,' his office said in a statement.
Agents arrived on Thursday in military-style vehicles to execute 'criminal search warrants' inside facilities operated by Glass House Farms, according to Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.
The farms span 5.5 million square feet in California's Ventura County where it is legal for licensed operators to grow cannabis.
Firefighters were dispatched around 12.15 p.m. to provide medical aid. Five people were hospitalized, and four others were treated at the farm, according to the Ventura County Fire Department.
In a statement on social media, Glass House Farms said it 'fully complied with agent search warrants and will provide further updates if necessary.'
Video showed agents firing tear gas and crowd control munitions into a crowd of protesters near a farm house in Camarillo. Agents were also raiding another farm site roughly 30 miles away.
The FBI issued a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a demonstrator, who appeared to fire a pistol during the melee, according to federal prosecutors.
Customs and Border Protection commissioner Rodney Scott said agents found 10 undocumented children at the facility, including eight who were unaccompanied.
It is legal in California for minors as young as 12 to work on farms but only in non-hazardous jobs and outside of school hours.
Administration officials shared photos on social media showing masked agents posing with the alleged children they discovered and accused Newsom of failing to stop 'child exploitation.'
'We prosecute criminals that break child labor laws,' Newsom replied.
'You make the kids pose for photos, tear gas them, and promote laws like this,' said the governor, sharing articles about Republican-led legislation to loosen child labor laws.
The workers, which included citizens, were held by federal authorities for more than eight hours. The American citizens were only released from custody if they agreed to delete video of the operation from their phones, according to United Farm Workers.
The union also is demanding the 'immediate facilitation' of legal representation for minors at the facility.
'Farm workers are excluded from basic child labor laws and it is unfortunately not uncommon for teenagers to work in the fields,' the group said. 'To be clear: detaining and deporting children is not a solution for child labor.'
The Trump administration's 'violent and cruel federal actions terrorize American communities, disrupt the American food supply chain, threaten lives and separate families,' the union said. 'There is no city, state or federal district where it is legal to terrorize and detain people for being brown and working in agriculture. These raids must stop immediately.'
The federal operation on Thursday was the latest in a series of immigration raids that have rocked communities across California and drawn federal lawsuits to stop them.
Workplace raids spiked after the administration rescinded previous ICE policy that prohibited enforcement actions in sensitive locations such as places of worship, schools and hospitals.
Under apparent pressure from the agricultural sector, which is made up of roughly 40 percent noncitizen workers, Trump has considered limiting enforcement actions on farms and developing a program for temporary work permits.
But the president's border czar Tom Homan has said there will be 'no amnesty' for undocumented workers.
The Trump administration has deployed officers across federal law enforcement agencies to focus on immigration enforcement, with a directive from the White House to make at least 3,000 daily arrests — a quota that immigration attorneys say will almost certainly result in 'collateral' arrests that could tear apart families and communities with mixed legal status.
The president has also approved a record-breaking budget to hire more ICE officers and expand immigration detention center space across the country, making the agency one of the most expensive law enforcement agencies in the world, with a budget larger than most countries' militaries.
More than 57,000 people are currently held in ICE custody, or roughly 140 percent more than its detention capacity. A vast majority of those immigrants do not have criminal records and 93 percent have not been convicted of any violent crime.
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Lu, like other experts, believes the reference may allude to the administration's intent to revisit of content requirements and Rules of Origin, as true transshipment of finished goods is already illegal. In his view, 'The signal is very clear—the Trump administration not only wants to decouple from China, but it wants Asian countries to decouple their supply chains from China.' But the Trump administration's long-held goal of encouraging Asian nations to abandon China as a partner 'does not appear to be realistic, at least in the near to medium term,' with so much dependence on the country for inputs, he said. For example, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data from 2020 (the latest year for which insights are available) showed that about 55.4 percent of the value of Vietnam's textile and apparel gross exports contained content added from other countries—including 26.6 percent contributed by China. UNComtrade data was even more stark, showing that China accounted for 63.8 percent of the $16.6 billion in textile imports to Vietnam in 2023, a 'notable increase' from 37.4 percent in 2010. Like other developing countries with limited capabilities to manufacture certain fabrics and components, Vietnam still relies on imported raw materials. Meanwhile, the country represented the biggest apparel supplier to the U.S. in May, accounting for 21.7 percent of clothing imports. Limiting or discouraging access to the imported raw materials needed to produce apparel products could easily threaten Vietnam's stability as a sourcing base, Lu believes. 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