At 6 a.m. on Wednesday, a tense atmosphere enveloped the agricultural landscape of Ventura County as local director Juvenal Solano drove cautiously past the cracked roads that meander through fields abundant with strawberries and celery.
Unlike typical mornings filled with bustling workers, a startling silence pervaded the farms, with entry gates closed and locked.
Solano, a director with the Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project, found a sliver of solace in this unusual calm compared to the turbulence that erupted on Tuesday when federal immigration agents raided fields in Oxnard and conducted operations throughout communities in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.
The raids targeted an area pivotal to California’s agricultural output, which includes a significant portion of the state’s strawberries, avocados, and celery.
“Reports started flooding in from local residents,” Solano revealed, indicating that the organization had not anticipated such a broad and fierce crackdown by federal agents.
Group leaders confirmed that at least 35 individuals were detained during the raids, with ongoing efforts to determine the full extent of detentions.
Solano observed that this new escalation in immigration enforcement marked a significant shift from previous weeks when they had received scattered reports of immigration authorities apprehending undocumented residents.
Now, with vigilance, he notes, “If they didn’t show up in the morning, it’s possible they’ll show up in the afternoon. We’re going to stay alert to everything that’s happening.”
The federal activity swept across food production sites ranging from the Central Coast to the San Joaquin Valley, with much of the enforcement concentrated on the Oxnard Plain.
Maureen McGuire, chief executive of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, stated that agents visited multiple packing facilities and farms, stopping individuals as they traveled to work.
In a significant number of instances, farm owners resisted granting access to agents who lacked judicial warrants, highlighting a notable constitutional pushback against immigration enforcement tactics.
California’s agricultural sector has long relied on undocumented labor to sustain its vast fields, with the state producing over one-third of the nation’s vegetables and more than three-quarters of its fruits and nuts.
Amidst a rising trend of employing temporary migrant workers through the controversial H-2A visa program, at least half of California’s 255,700 farmworkers remain undocumented immigrants, according to research from UC Merced.
Many have established long-term lives in the state, becoming integral parts of their communities and families.
Surprisingly to some agricultural stakeholders, until recent events, large-scale raids had largely eluded California’s farming sectors, which had enjoyed some degree of reprieve from the mass deportations championed by President Donald Trump in urban areas like Los Angeles and Orange counties.
California farmers, many sympathetic to President Trump’s policies, appeared complacent despite his threats of mass deportations, perhaps confident that the administration would ensure the preservation of their labor force, knowing the dramatic ramifications should crops go unharvested.
However, the recent actions by immigration officials delivered a sobering wake-up call.
Addressing concerns over recent enforcement in agricultural regions, Tom Homan, a key policy adviser to President Trump, emphasized that growers should transition to a legal workforce.
“There are programs — you can get people to come in and do that job,” Homan stated, advising farmers to collaborate with immigration authorities to comply with legal hiring practices.
In response, California’s two U.S. senators, Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, jointly condemned the raids, arguing that targeting dedicated farmworkers jeopardizes both businesses and families.
“Targeting hardworking farmworkers and their families who have been doing the backbreaking work in the fields for decades is unjustified and unconscionable,” the senators declared.
The California Farm Bureau echoed these sentiments, warning that heightened immigration enforcement could severely disrupt agricultural production.
“We want to be very clear: California agriculture depends on and values its workforce,” proclaimed Bryan Little, senior director of policy advocacy at the California Farm Bureau.
Little, noting the importance of a reliable labor force as the harvest season ramps up, cautioned against continued enforcement actions that would challenge the stability of food production.
Arcenio Lopez, executive director of MICOP, expressed particular concern for Indigenous workers, many of whom speak only their native languages and lack the literacy skills necessary to navigate the legal complexities of their situations.
Lopez emphasized the urgency to locate many detained Indigenous individuals to prevent them from signing documents for voluntary deportation that they might not fully understand.
Providing crucial legal assistance, their organization encourages anyone facing arrest to reach out immediately through their hotline.
Rob Roy, president of the Ventura County Agricultural Association, had forewarned growers of this potential situation and organized training on their legal rights, empowering them to request search warrants from agents.
“Overall, they’re fairly safe on the farms,” Roy noted, adding, “But when they leave work, they’re very concerned.”
Community organizers like Elaine Yompian of VC Defensa are urging families to remain at home whenever possible to mitigate exposure to potential raids.
“We actually told a lot of families, if you can potentially not work today, don’t go,” she stated, mentioning the limited support available through donations for families affected by the situation.
Moreover, for families with detained loved ones, uncertainty and fear looms.
“People are terrified; they don’t know at what point they’re going to be targeted,” Yompian lamented, emphasizing the flawed narrative of these enforcement actions.
“The narrative that they’re taking criminals or taking bad people off the streets is completely false. They’re taking the working-class people that are just trying to get by.”
image source from：https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-06-12/eerie-silence-hangs-over-central-coast-farm-fields-in-wake-of-this-weeks-ice-raids
