More details emerged about raid on pot farm as worker dies
The death of Jaime Alanís Garcia, 57, announced by his family, comes in a climate of increasing tension marked by weeks of militaristic raids, street protests and violent melees involving federal agents.
Alanís' family said he was fleeing immigration agents at the Glass House cannabis operation in Camarillo on Thursday when he climbed atop a greenhouse and accidentally fell 30 feet, suffering catastrophic injury.
But the Department of Homeland Security said Alanís was not among those being pursued, and that federal agents quickly called in a medevac in hope of saving him. In the aftermath, federal authorities said they detained more than 300 purported unlawful immigrants in the massive operation, and detained an unannounced number of protesters who sought to shut down the operation.
Alanís was taken to Ventura County Medical Center, where he was put on life support. His niece announced his death Saturday on a GoFundMe page, which described him as a husband, father and family's sole provider. The page had raised more than $133,000 by late Saturday.
"They took one of our family members. We need justice," the niece wrote.
In a statement, the Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs said consular staff in Oxnard were providing assistance to the family of Alanís. Consular officials said they were were accompanying Alanís' family both in California and in his home state of Michoacán, in central Mexico, where, according to news accounts, his wife and a daughter still reside. In addition, Mexican officials said they would expedite the process to return his remains to Mexico.
Alanís was not the only Glass House worker to take to the roofs.
Irma Perez said her nephew, Fidel Buscio, 24, was among a group of men who climbed atop the high glass greenhouses. He sent her videos, which she shared with The Times, that showed federal agents on the ground below, and told her the workers had been fired at, with tear gas canisters. One image shows the broken glass of the roof. In another, Buscio has blood on his shirt and his arm bandaged, she said. He eventually was apprehended.
Federal officials said that among those picked up in the raid were 10 minors, ages 14 and up. Eight of the teens had no parent with them. Because of that, federal officials said the legal cannabis farm, one of California's largest, is now under investigation for unspecified child labor violations.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, speaking at an event Saturday in Tampa, Fla., told reporters that getting the children out of the farm was part of the plan from the start.
'We went there because we knew, specifically from casework we had built for weeks and weeks and weeks, that there was children there that could be trafficked, being exploited, that there was individuals there involved in criminal activity,' she said.
Spokespersons for the Department of Labor's regional office had no response to questions from The Times regarding current or past investigations at the Glass House Farms operations, or of the local labor contractor Glass House used.
That company, Arts Labor Services, did not respond to a request for an interview made through its attorneys. Glass House has said it did not violate labor law.
The assertion of a prior child labor investigation comes on the heels of a federal judge's order barring federal immigration officials from picking up people at random, based on their ethnicity or occupation.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott also said on X Saturday that one of the men apprehended in the raid had a criminal record for kidnapping, attempted rape and attempted child molestation.
Noem decried what she called 'horrendous' behavior of demonstrators who protested Thursday's raid in Camarillo by referencing videos showing rocks being hurled at the vehicles of federal agents, breaking out windows.
'Those individuals that were attacking those officers were trying to kill them," she said.
'Let me be clear. You don't throw rocks at vehicles like that, and you don't attack them like that, unless you are trying to do harm to them physically and to kill them and to take their life.'
Decades of work helping cannabis workers through the ordeals of federal drug raids didn't prepare Ventura County activist Sarah Armstrong for the mayhem and trauma she witnessed during the Glass House Farms raid, she said.
A military helicopter swung low over fields to flush out anyone hiding in the crops, while federal agents fired tear gas canisters at protesters lining the farm road. In the crush of events, someone shoved a gas mask into Armstrong's hands and pulled her to safety.
"It was, in my opinion, overkill," the 72-year-old woman said. "What I saw were very frightened, very angry people."
Also among those on the protest line was California State University- Channel Islands student Angelmarie Taylor, 24. She said she saw several agents jump on her professor, Jonathan Anthony Caravello, after he attempted to retrieve a tear gas canister from under an individual's wheelchair.
She said the agents fired the tear gas after Caravello and others refused to move out of the way of agents' vehicles. The show of force came without any warning, she said.
'They didn't gave us a dispersal order. They didn't say anything," she said.
Caravello, 37, is being held at Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center.
U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong on Friday issued a temporary order finding that agents were using race, language, a person's vocation or the location they are at, such as a car wash or Home Depot, to form 'reasonable suspicion' — the legal standard needed to detain someone.
Frimpong said the reliance on those factors, either alone or in combination does not meet the requirements of the 4th Amendment. Her ruling also means those in custody at a downtown federal detention facility must have 24-hour access to lawyers and a confidential phone line.
Noem on Saturday accused the judge of "making up garbage."
"We will be in compliance with all federal judges' orders," said Noem, contending the judge "made up" things in the ruling.
"We're going to appeal it, and we're going to win," Noem added.
Times staff writer Patrick McDonnell in Mexico contributed to this report.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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San Francisco Chronicle
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