Central Coast pot operation becomes site of massive immigration spectacle

Los Angeles Times

11-07-2025

Camarillo, Calif. — A massive show of federal law enforcement agents swept through rural corners of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties this week in the largest of the Trump administration's weeks-long campaign against undocumented immigrants in California — and the deadliest.
Farmworker advocates said Friday afternoon that one laborer had died from injuries sustained after falling from the roof of a greenhouse at Glass House cannabis operation while trying to escape federal agents — the first death as a result of an immigration sweep.
The raid by agents from Homeland Security Investigations, the California National Guard and the Drug Enforcement Administration, among others, has placed a spotlight on the well-known cannabis company, which has become central to the local economy.
The operation began when immigration agents surrounded large greenhouse facilities in Camarillo and Carpinteria Thursday and, after presenting warrants, began entering buildings. The result was hours of chaos, particularly at the company's Camarillo outpost.
As people screamed 'La migra! La migra!' workers began to run in a panic, hiding in refrigerators, containers, car trunks and on the greenhouse roofs. Protesters massed at the gates, squaring off against agents, who deployed tear gas and less-lethal bullets.
Once the gas had cleared and the riot police and hundreds of protesters had gone home, nearly 200 people, including several minors, had been detained, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
'At least 10 migrant children were rescued from potential exploitation, forced labor, and human trafficking,' the agency said in a statement. 'Federal officers also arrested approximately 200 illegal aliens.'
In addition, the FBI said it was investigating a possible shooting that had taken place amid the hurly-burly of protests outside the gates of Glass House, one of the largest legal cannabis operations in the state.
The incident, with its images of children running through fields to escape clouds of tear gas and workers hiding in terror amid panes of broken glass on greenhouse roofs catapulted across social media, and quickly fueled dueling political narratives.
The Trump administration portrayed the events as an action against 'a marijuana grow operation' that, as a Border Patrol official put it in a post on X, 'hires illegal aliens and exploits unaccompanied minors.' The White House account on X joined the fray, calling out Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) for defending farmworkers doing their jobs.
'That ain't produce, holmes. THAT's PRODUCT,' the White House post read.
Local elected officials and farmworker advocates, meanwhile, decried the action against a legal and highly regulated operation.
'It was disproportionate, overkill,' said Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara).
The United Farm Workers, in a statement, said: 'These violent and cruel federal actions terrorize American communities, disrupt the American food supply chain, threaten lives and separate families. 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 operation also put a spotlight on Glass House, one of the largest legal cannabis operations in California. The company, which counts among its founders a former Torrance police officer, has in recent years become the largest taxpayer in Ventura County and one of the area's largest employers.
It has become a big player in local politics, but now, apparently, it is in the crosshairs of the Trump administration.
Company officials have said little publicly, posting on X Friday that two of its operations, one in Camarillo in Ventura County and one near Carpinteria in Santa Barbara County, had granted agents entry after being presented with a search warrant.
'Workers were detained and we are assisting to provide them legal representation,' the company said in a statement, adding that it 'has never knowingly violated applicable hiring practice.'
Glass House occupies a controversial position in California's rough-and-tumble legal cannabis industry. Five years ago, the company bought up old vegetable and flower greenhouses across the farmland south of Santa Barbara. Its growth happened at such a large scale and at such a low production cost that many in the industry refer to it as the 'Walmart of Weed.'
The converted greenhouses at the 165-acre Camarillo site once grew cucumbers, a nod to the pattern of repurposing distressed properties employed by co-founder Kyle Kazan, a former Torrance police officer once assigned to gang detail who made his first millions building a property management empire of Orange County beach rentals.
Glass House began as a single greenhouse operation in Santa Barbara, and after a 2021 merger with a Canadian company that allowed public trading of Glass House Brands stock, established its mammoth footprint in Ventura County.
Under Kazan, Glass House has weathered allegations brought by competitors of dumping cannabis products illegally in other states. Kazan, while not heavily engaged in national political battles beyond cannabis, has been a proponent of pardons for those serving long prison sentences for nonviolent drug crimes. In a May investor presentation, Kazan praised Trump's appointee for pardon advisor.
The company also sparked a firestorm in 2019 when it donated $189,000 to the Carpinteria School District — and then got school board members to pose for a photo wearing company merchandise amid cannabis plants. At the time, many residents decried the growing influence of marijuana businesses on local politics and culture, while others defended Glass House and other operations for providing jobs and local tax revenue.
Court filings show many of Glass House's employees actually work for a Camarillo labor contractor. The company faces allegations of labor law violations — including failure to pay overtime or give meal breaks — and separate sexual harassment and discrimination complaints filed by workers paid $16 an hour (minimum wage at the time) to sweep plant trimmings, handle coconut fiber mulch and tend to other duties.
The company disputes the charges, levied in Ventura County civil lawsuits, which are still pending in court.
Numerous Trump administration officials called out the presence of undocumented minors working at the facility on Thursday. Customs and Border Patrol Commissioner Rodney Scott posted a photograph on X of young men with their faces blurred.
'These are the juveniles found in the marijuana facility — almost all unaccompanied, one as young as 14,' the post read. 'California are you ready to partner with us to stop child exploitation?'
In its statement, Glass House said it 'does not and has never employed minors.'
It also said it did not expect the raid to 'affect operations moving forward' and would 'provide additional details when applicable.'
On Friday morning, the scene outside the company's Camarillo complex was much calmer than it had been the day before. The operation is surrounded by a metal fence with green tarp; signs warn that the fence is charged with 7,000 volts.
Many who were there were trying to recover cars left behind by workers detained in the raid. Others said they believed some workers might still be hiding in the sprawling complex.
Irma Perez said her nephew, Fidel Buscio, 24, had been working at the facility and then hid on the roof before later being detained. Before he was taken, she said, he sent her videos, including one in which he stands on the roof with blood on his shirt from an injury sustained from scrambling over broken glass.
Perez said Buscio had lived with his wife in Tijuana but come to Ventura County after she became sick. She said he is undocumented and trying to obtain legal status. She said her last communication from him was a call in which he said: 'They got me.'
She was trying to pick up his car; his attorney, she added, does not know where Buscio was taken.
Two daughters of a detained worker were there Friday as well, trying to pick up their mother's car. The 19- and 20-year-old did not want to be named to protect their family's privacy, but they said their mother told them that she chose not to run when immigration agents entered the complex.
She has already signed self-deportation papers to go to Mexico and avoid being held in a detention center in another state, they said.
'It's really sad,' one daughter said. 'They're leaving a lot of people without parents.'
Another worker, who is undocumented and did not want to be named, said he hid beneath the cannabis plants for 11 hours. It was hot, more than 100 degrees. He said he could hear the sound of others being detained, and he stayed hidden until about midnight, when he finally crept out and escaped.
Griselda Reyes Basurto, program manager at the Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project which works with many of the area's Indigenous workers, said she was able to access Glass House early Friday morning to look for anyone left behind.
She said they didn't find anyone but they saw remnants of the raid: a pair of shoes, broken glass, trails of blood. Car windows were shattered, she said, a sign that people tried to hide in their cars but agents broke in anyway. She said she is coordinating with families of those taken to make sure they're able to receive their final paychecks. Thursday was payday.
The raid has terrified the immigrant populations who work in the area's farms and the executives who run California's cannabis operation.
Activists shared images of DEA agents at the Camarillo immigration raid and worried that it signaled an end to the federal ceasefire against cannabis. While most states have laws that make cannabis cultivation, sales and use legal in some fashion, it remains a Schedule I controlled substance under federal law, alongside heroin and LSD.
'DOJ knows cannabis farms are easy targets because they violate federal law, and ICE can roll with the other three-letter agencies to do a raid,' said an executive at one of California's largest cannabis operations, who did not want to be named for fear of worsening the situation.
Americans for Safe Access and the California Cannabis Industry Assn. held an emergency call Friday to prepare for more such federal actions.
'We have real enemies in Washington who are now in power,' said Steph Sherer, president of Americans for Safe Access.
The Glass House raid targeted people, not plants, but 'let's be clear, this was a warning shot and we've got to be prepared for both,' said Caren Woodson, chief executive of the Cannabis Industry Assn. 'Just because it wasn't plants this time doesn't mean it won't be next time.'
Some of the sense of vulnerability rises from memories of Trump's first term, when then-Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions in 2018 rolled back a Department of Justice memorandum that dissuaded federal prosecution of cannabis laws in states where the plant is licensed and regulated.
The threat of enforcement of federal laws criminalizing cannabis carries big risks for cannabis operators. In federal court, state legalization is not an allowed defense. Moreover, Trump's DEA has failed to act on recommendations to reduce federal prohibitions against cannabis.
'This is real. We've all lived through it, and it is happening again,' Sherer said.