Resistance in Ventura County
The assault on American freedoms came to Ventura County, California, this week. Resistance is rising.
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Single Man Confronting Military Presence
Top: From ABC7 News, July 11, 2025: “…a man tried to stop a military vehicle by stepping in front of it, but the vehicle kept moving. Eventually, the man moved to the side but not before throwing what appeared to be a bottle of water at the windshield.” [1]
Bottom: A Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks heading east on Beijing's Cangan Blvd. in Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989. The man, calling for an end to the recent violence and bloodshed against pro-democracy demonstrators, was pulled away by bystanders, and the tanks continued on their way. (Jeff Widener/AP, FILE) [2]
ICE Raids in Camarillo Farms
Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) came to Ventura County this week with a more dramatic presence than in previous weeks, [3] conducting raids, arresting hundreds of workers and using tear gas on protesters in attendance.
Two Groups of Faceless Armed Troopers
Top: From KTLA5 News, July 11, 2025: Federal troops in Camarillo, CA [4]
Bottom: Imperial Stormtroopers from Star Wars [5]
From reporting by local television station KTLA: [4]
Federal officials announced that around 200 workers were arrested in two raids on cannabis farms in Southern California on Thursday — likely the largest single-day immigration crackdown in the state’s history.
“On July 10, 2025, federal law enforcement officers executed criminal warrant operations at marijuana grow sites in Carpinteria and Camarillo,” reads a statement issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “During the operation, at least 10 migrant children were rescued from potential exploitation, forced labor, and human trafficking. Federal officers also arrested approximately 200 illegal aliens from both sites in Carpinteria and Camarillo.”
DHS says that during the operation, over 500 demonstrators congregated at the two Glass House Farms sites in protest of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers taking workers and family members from the farms.
The protests at the Ventura County farm escalated when, at around 12:35 p.m., officers deployed tear gas and less-than-lethal rounds into crowds of protestors who had blocked roadways on both north and southbound Laguna Road. Paramedics responded to the scene and set up a triage system for people injured by tear gas at a safe distance from the ongoing operation.
One worker sustained critical neck and skull injuries after falling 30 feet from the building roof. Initially, a statement from the United Farm Workers indicated that the worker died from his injuries, which was inconsistent from a statement from the family through the hospital. [6]
From New York Times reporting: [7]
The farmworker, Jaime Alanís, fell several stories to the ground from a greenhouse on Thursday, when federal agents raided a state-licensed cannabis farm in Ventura County.
“During the chaos, he fell 30 feet or more, and experienced devastating spinal and skull injuries,” Elizabeth Strater, a United Farm Workers vice president, said in an interview.
An official familiar with the circumstances of the farmworker’s death said he was from the Mexican state of Michoacán, had been working at the farm for more than a decade and had been trying to flee from agents when he fell. He was in his late 50s.
Ms. Strater said that after the fall, he was transported to a hospital, where he was on life support for a time, and he died on Friday.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said he had not been in federal custody and denied that the agents involved in the raid were the reason he climbed the greenhouse. “Although he was not being pursued by law enforcement, this individual climbed up to the roof of a greenhouse and fell 30 feet,” she said in a statement. Agents called for help, she added, “to get him care as quickly as possible.”
In a post shared on social media, Jaime Alanís Garcia's niece said he died on Saturday afternoon. [8]
More on the ground, local reporting came from the Ventura County Star: [9]
Federal immigration agents descended on a farm outside of Camarillo on July 10, blocking off a road outside the facility and clashing with protesters.
Reports flooded social media in the morning of federal agents arriving at a Glass House Farms facility at 645 Laguna Road. Video posted by 805 Immigrant Coalition, a group that tracks Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity, showed men in tactical gear blocking off a roadway.
The raid marked one of Ventura County's largest since the Trump administration has ratcheted up its deportation efforts across the state and country. Days earlier, a large caravan of military vehicles drove through Los Angeles' MacArthur Park, sparking outrage from politicians.
At the scene in Ventura County, yellow crime scene tape with U.S. Border Patrol markings stretched across Laguna Road. On one side stood what appeared to be masked and armed federal agents. On the other, a crowd of more than 100 people amassed, taunting the agents and yelling expletives.
The face-off was tense. Agents fired projectiles into the crowd, striking several people and hitting at least one in the face. Agents lobbed canisters that emitted yellow or white gas. Protesters stomped several of the canisters until they went out.
…
Steve Auclair, president of the Ventura County Democratic Party, described the situation at Glass House Farms as "totally outrageous."
His mother, who is in her mid-60s, was hit by the gas and struck by a projectile. He called it "a military attack on our community."
"First they came for the farmworker, and now, they're taking all of us."
Federal authorities stated that they were executing warrants for “potential exploitation, forced labor, and human trafficking.” [10] However, other arrests took place of those observing and protesting the law enforcement actions.
On social media, Auclair shared a post from the California Faculty Association about the disappearance of California State University-Channel Islands professor Jonathan Caravello: [11]
One of our union leaders, Jonathan A. Caravello, Ph.D., was arrested during an ICE raid in Camarillo, CA, while he was lawfully observing immigration enforcement activities. Dr. Caravello was one of nearly 100 people who were detained by immigration authorities.
We are calling for the immediate release of Dr. Caravello from federal custody with no charges, calling for the immediate release of the nearly 100 people who were taken by immigration agents, and urging the Trump administration to put a stop to all immigration raids immediately.
As of this writing, local news provides the latest on the whereabouts of Dr. Caravello - from Pacific Coast Business Times reporting: [12]
In a statement, the California Faculty Association said that Caravello, according to witnesses, was arrested on July 10 after attempting to help a person in a wheelchair who had a tear gas canister lodged underneath their wheelchair.
CFA President Margarita Berta-Ávila said in the July 10 statement that while attempting to help the bystander, who could not see or breathe, Caravello was “abruptly taken down by immigration agents, dragged into an unmarked vehicle and taken to an unknown location.”
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website, Caravello is currently being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles.
And from local television station KTLA reporting: [13]
Editor’s note: KTLA reached out to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for comment on this matter prior to publication. As of publishing, DHS has not responded. KTLA will update this article with any new information as it becomes available.
…
Caravello has not been seen or heard from since then and as of 10 a.m. Saturday, was still unaccounted for.
I share the sentiment of my fellow Save Open Space & Agricultural Resources (SOAR) board member California Assemblyman Steve Bennett: [14]
One of the first steps towards fascism is to normalize the militarization of domestic life. Today’s raids at a farm field by masked, unidentified people using tear gas and rubber bullets is one more step in that concerted effort.
Judge Stops Unwarranted ICE Stops
The recent military presence in Southern California and the use of roving teams conducting sweeps to make their arrest quotas reminds me of a scene from the Star Wars series Andor. The main character, Cassian Andor, is wrongly arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time: [15]
At least temporarily, these “roving patrols,” [16] focusing on places such as Home Depots, car washes, and strawberry fields, should stop. From CNN reporting, a federal judge has been a stop to these warrantless stops: [17]
A federal judge on Friday found that the Department of Homeland Security has been making stops and arrests in Los Angeles immigration raids without probable cause and ordered the department to stop detaining individuals based solely on race, spoken language or occupation.
US District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, ordered that DHS must develop guidance for officers to determine “reasonable suspicion” outside of the apparent race or ethnicity of a person, the language they speak or their accent, “presence at a particular location” such as a bus stop or “the type of work one does.”
Friday’s ruling comes after the ACLU of Southern California brought a case against the Trump administration last week on behalf of five people and immigration advocacy groups, alleging that DHS — which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement — has made unconstitutional arrests and prevented detainees’ access to attorneys.
The ruling is limited to the seven-county jurisdiction of the US Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles and surrounding areas.
Frimpong said in her ruling that the court needed to decide whether the plaintiffs could prove that the Trump administration “is indeed conducting roving patrols without reasonable suspicion and denying access to lawyers.”
“This Court decides—based on all the evidence presented—that they are,” Frimpong wrote.
Frimpong went on to say that the administration “failed” to provide information about the basis on which they made the arrests. The temporary restraining order also applies to the FBI and the Justice Department, which were also listed as defendants in the lawsuit and have been involved in immigration enforcement.
In Friday’s ruling, Frimpong also ordered DHS to maintain and provide regular documentation of arrests to plaintiffs’ counsel.
Specifically, from Judge Frimpong’s ruling: [18]
As required by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution, [the Government] shall be enjoined from conducting detentive stops in this District unless the agent or officer has reasonable suspicion that the person to be stopped is within the United States in violation of U.S. immigration law.
…[the Government] may not rely solely on the factors below, alone or in combination, to form reasonable suspicion for a detentive stop, except as permitted by law:
· Apparent race or ethnicity;
· Speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent;
· Presence at a particular location (e.g. bus stop, car wash, tow yard, day laborer pick up site, agricultural site, etc.); or
· The type of work one does.
Americans disapprove of ICE and ICE agents are miserable
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement is becoming increasingly unpopular due to their recent activities under the Trump administration. From a recent Quinnipiac University poll: [19]
Nearly two-thirds of voters (64 percent) say they prefer giving most undocumented immigrants in the United States a pathway to legal status, while 31 percent say they prefer deporting most undocumented immigrants in the United States, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll of registered voters released today.
Voters 56 - 39 percent disapprove of the way U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, is doing its job.
Republicans (77 - 17 percent) approve of the way ICE is doing its job, while Democrats (89 - 9 percent) and independents (64 - 32 percent) disapprove of the way ICE is doing its job.
Voters 55 - 43 percent disapprove of President Trump's decision to send National Guard troops to respond to protests in Los Angeles.
Voters 60 - 37 percent disapprove of President Trump's decision to send U.S. Marines to respond to protests in Los Angeles.
As a result, ICE agents don’t seem to like their jobs very much at the moment, given the combination of being “vilified by broad swaths of the public and bullied by Trump officials demanding more and more.” From Nick Miroff of The Atlantic (here’s a gift link to the article): [20]
The reality of Trump’s mass-deportation campaign is far less glamorous. Officers and agents have spent much of the past five months clocking weekends and waking up at 4 a.m. for predawn raids. Their top leaders have been ousted or demoted, and their supervisors—themselves under threat of being fired—are pressuring them to make more and more arrests to meet quotas set by the Trump adviser Stephen Miller. Having insisted for years that capturing criminals is its priority, ICE is now shelving major criminal investigations to prioritize civil immigration arrests, grabbing asylum seekers at their courthouse hearings, handcuffing mothers as their U.S. citizen children cry, chasing day laborers through Home Depot parking lots. As angry onlookers attempt to shame ICE officers with obscenities, and activists try to dox them, officers are retreating further behind masks and tactical gear.
“It’s miserable,” one career ICE official told me. He called the job “mission impossible.”
I recently spoke with a dozen current and former ICE agents and officers about morale at the agency since Trump took office. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity, for fear of losing their job or being subjected to a polygraph exam. They described varying levels of dissatisfaction but weren’t looking to complain or expecting sympathy—certainly not at a time when many Americans have been disturbed by video clips of masked and hooded officers seizing immigrants who were not engaged in any obvious criminal behavior. The frustration isn’t yet producing mass resignations or major internal protests, but the officers and agents described a workforce on edge, vilified by broad swaths of the public and bullied by Trump officials demanding more and more.
Despite Trump’s public praise for ICE officers, several staffers told me that they feel contempt from administration officials who have implied they were too passive—too comfortable—under the Biden administration.
Even within this environment, there are some ICE officers who feel good about their ability to now be less careful about following the law: [21]
Some ICE officers have been thrilled by Trump’s changes and what they describe as newfound free rein. They chafed at rules set under the Biden administration, which prioritized the deportation of serious offenders but generally took a hands-off approach to those who hadn’t committed crimes. Officers said they used to worry about getting in trouble for making a mistake and wrongly arresting someone; now the risk is not being aggressive enough.
Other ICE veterans, who long insisted that their agency was misunderstood and unfairly maligned by activists as a goon squad, have been disturbed by video clips of officers smashing suspects’ car windows and appearing to round up people indiscriminately. They worry that ICE is morphing into its own caricature.
“What we’re seeing now is what, for many years, we were accused of being, and could always safely say, ‘We don’t do that,’” another former ICE official told me.
…
One former ICE official told me that the Biden administration treated the agency’s workers with more basic decency and appreciation, even as their caseload grew.
“Giving people leave, recognizing them for small stuff, that kind of thing. It went a long way,” the official said. “Now I think you have an issue where the administration has come in very aggressive and people are really not happy, because of the perception that the administration doesn’t give a shit about them.”
Some actually feel the mission of ICE is “no longer about protecting the homeland from threats.” [22]
Several career officials have been pushed out of leadership roles. Other employees have decided to quit. Adam Boyd, a 33-year-old attorney who resigned from ICE’s legal department last month, told me he left because the mission was no longer about protecting the homeland from threats. “It became a contest of how many deportations could be reported to Stephen Miller by December,” Boyd said. He told me that he saw frustration among ICE attorneys whose cases were dismissed just so officer teams could grab their clients in the hallways for fast-track deportations that pad the stats. Some detainees had complex claims that attorneys have to screen before their initial hearings, to ensure due process. Others with strong asylum cases were likely to end up back in court later anyway. The hallway arrests sent the message that the immigration courts were just a convenient place to handcuff people. Some ICE attorneys “are only waiting until their student loans are forgiven, and then they’re leaving,” he said.
Recognition to the Founders
This increased militarization of America seems very much against what the Founders wanted when breaking away from the British Crown. We’re reminded of one of the original grievances from the Declaration of Independence: [23]
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
There is certainly rightful critiques of the imperfect nation the Founders established in the late eighteenth century; for example, the Founders didn’t recognize the full citizenship rights of women and punted the moral issue of slavery off for nearly a century, requiring a civil war to resolve.
But, as historian Heather Cox Richardson discusses from a 2023 forum on America’s Declaration of Independence, [24] these Founders, albeit wealthy white men, put their lives on the line for the right to govern ourselves and secure freedoms for “ourselves and our posterity”: [25]
So there’s an old trope in American history that if you have rights, you rest on the Constitution, and if you want rights, you rest on the Declaration.
Because… the Declaration is nothing other than an explanation to the nations of the world why the American rebels were in fact acting properly and why they weren’t people who simply should be hanged as they would have been if the Revolution failed.
I was thinking something that I like to emphasize to my students because of course the way it turned out, it turned out well for them. Had it gone a different direction… they were not lying when they said, “if we don’t hang together, we shall all hang separately.” Signing their names on that document was literally signing their own death warrants if it didn’t go the way that they were hoping.
And I certainly have my issues with the Founders and if you ever listen to the podcast that Joanne Freeman and I did, there’s one in particular that keeps me up at night, but when I think of the courage it took to write your name on that and how easy it would have been not to, and I think of some of the people who represent us today, I feel like we owe the Founders the recognition that they at least had the courage of their convictions.
John Mack Faragher is an American historian, author, and professor emeritus of history at Yale University.
From the book overview on Amazon: [26]
A concise and lively history of California, the most multicultural state in the nation
“A masterful history.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Faragher takes the reader on a captivating journey through myriad twists and turns of California’s multicultural history, enlivened by stories of people who rarely penetrate our traditional state chronicles.”—Carlos E. Cortés, University of California, Riverside
California is the most multicultural state in America. As John Mack Faragher explains in this new history, California’s natural variety has always supported such diversity, including Native peoples speaking dozens of distinct languages, Spanish and Mexican colonists, gold seekers from all corners of the globe, and successive migrant waves from the eastern United States and from Europe, Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific Islands.
Faragher tells the stories of a colorful cast of characters—some famous, others mostly unknown—including African American Archy Lee, who sued for his freedom; Sinkyone Indian woman Sally Bell, who survived genocide; and Jewish schoolgirl Marilyn Greene, who spoke up for her Japanese friends after the attack on Pearl Harbor. California’s diversity has often led to conflict, turmoil, and violence but also to invention, improvisation, and a struggle to achieve multicultural democracy.
California: An American History has a nice chapter on Archy Lee’s story: [27]
On the evening of January 6, 1858, Officer Nathan Coon of the Sacramento police strode into Hackett House, a small hotel operated by free people of color, and presented the night clerk with a warrant for the arrest of Archy Lee, a Black man accused of being a fugitive slave by his alleged master, Charles Stovall of Mississippi. Lee surrendered and Coon hauled him off to jail. Later that night, one of the hotel’s proprietors made a call on his attorney, and by two in the morning they had obtained a writ of habeas corpus from a county judge, ordering the city marshal to show cause why Lee should not be released.
A reporter interviewed Stovall. He had come to California with his bondsman Archy Lee several months before, he said, “with a view of recovering my health.” Stovall hired Lee out and collected his wages while recuperating. Slavery might be illegal in California, but as a citizen of another state Stovall claimed the right to the continuing service of his slave. Lee had been happy and content, he said, until conniving men, “moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil,” inspired him to run away.
Archy Lee told a different story. Stovall had come to California to settle, he said, purchasing land and opening a private elementary school. He had been Stovall’s slave in Mississippi, but upon arriving in California he had, he insisted, become “a free person.” He ran away after Stovall hired someone to escort him back to Mississippi. That man forced him aboard a riverboat docked at the K Street wharf in Sacramento, but Lee gave him the slip and raced up the throughfare to Third Street, a mixed neighborhood of Chinese, Mexicans, and Blacks. His friends at Hackett House hid him for several weeks, and now they were helping with the cost of the legal fight to secure his freedom.
Lee’s supporters retained attorney Edwin Crocker, an antislavery Republican, to represent him in court. Charles Stovall chose James Hardy, a strong proslavery Democrat. Ex parte Archy was not the state’s first fugitive slave case, but it would become the most famous, marking a turn in California’s political history.
Over the course of several months, Lee was arrested numerous times and found guilty and innocent in various cases in state and federal courts. In the final ruling where the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was considered, U.S. Commissioner William Penn Johnson ruled that, since Lee did not cross state lines in his attempt to escape, the Fugitive Slave Act did not apply. Therefore, local law prevailed, and since slavery was illegal in California, Lee was a free man. [28]
GIF Game
From Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens
Notes and Sources
[1] “Federal agents clash with protesters after immigration raid at farm near Camarillo,” ABC7 News, July 11, 2025, https://abc7.com/post/federal-agents-conduct-immigration-raid-camarillo-farm/17056098/
[2] Paul H.B. Shin and Meghan Keneally, “Tiananmen Square 'Tank Man': 30 years later, his memory lives on,” KTLA5 News, July 3, 2019, https://abcnews.go.com/International/tiananmen-square-tank-man-30-years-memory-lives/story?id=23965993
[3] Mic Farris, “A Hopeful Message (+No Kings!)” June 15, 2025, https://www.micfarris.com/articles/a-hopeful-message-no-kings
[4] Lily Dallow, “Federal officials announce 200 workers arrested in Carpinteria, Camarillo farm raids,” KTLA5 News, July 11, 2025, https://ktla.com/news/local-news/federal-officials-announce-200-workers-arrested-in-carpinteria-camarillo-farm-raids/
[5] “Stormtrooper Corps,” Wookieepedia, retreived July 12, 2025, https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Stormtrooper_Corps/Legends
[6] “Farmworker hospitalized with critical injuries suffered during SoCal immigration raid, family says,” ABC7 News, July 12, 2025, https://abc7news.com/post/ventura-county-california-immigration-raids-jaime-garcia-life-support-injury-during-camarillo-raid-family-says/17071639/
[7] Miriam Jordan, “Farmworker Dies After Fleeing a Federal Raid in Southern California,” New York Times, July 11, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/us/immigration-raids-farmworker-death.html
[8] “Farmworker injured during Ventura County immigration raid dies, family says,” ABC7 News, July 12, 2025, https://abc7.com/post/jaime-alans-garcia-death-farmworker-injured-during-ventura-county-immigration-raid-glass-house-farms-dies-family-says/17092373/
[9] Tom Kisken, Ernesto Centeno Araujo, Isaiah Murtaugh, Cheri Carlson, and Dominic Massimino, “Federal immigration agents blockade Camarillo farm, clash with demonstrators,” Ventura Country Star, July 10, 2025, https://www.vcstar.com/story/news/local/2025/07/10/immigration-raid-near-camarillo-sets-up-clash-with-ice-protesters/84540242007/
[10] Lily Dallow, “Federal officials announce 200 workers,” KTLA5 News
[11] Steven T. Auclair [@stauclair], Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/reel/10074236772632014
[12] Jorge Mercado, “CSUCI Professor arrested among Glass House raids,” Pacific Coast Business Times, July 12, 2025, https://www.pacbiztimes.com/2025/07/12/csuci-professor-arrested-among-glass-house-raids/
[13] Will Conybeare, “Labor union says California university professor was taken during Camarillo immigration raid protest,” KTLA News, July 12, 2025, https://ktla.com/news/local-news/labor-union-says-california-university-professor-was-taken-during-camarillo-immigration-raid-protest/
[14] Assemblyman Steve Bennett [@asmstevebennett], Facebook, July 10, 2025, https://www.facebook.com/asmstevebennett/photos/one-of-the-first-steps-towards-fascism-is-to-normalize-the-militarization-of-dom/1265044808967808/?_rdr
[15] “Narkina 5,” Andor, Season 1, Episode 8, October 26, 2022, https://youtu.be/TEvn1Fe6_5M?si=gPT045HB6sqRDXZy&t=90
[16] Pedro Vasquez Perdomo v. Kristi Noem, 2:25-cv-05605, (C.D. Cal.), Document 87, July 11, 2025, https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.975351/gov.uscourts.cacd.975351.87.0_1.pdf
[17] Kaanita Iyer, “Judge orders Trump administration to stop immigration arrests without probable cause in Southern California,” CNN, July 12, 2025, https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/11/politics/california-immigration-arrests-probable-cause
[18] Perdomo v. Kristi Noem
[19] “Support Rises For Giving Most Undocumented Immigrants A Pathway To Legal Status vs. Deportations, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; More Than 9 In 10 Voters Say Politically Motivated Violence In The U.S. Is A Serious Problem“, Quinnipiac University Poll, June 26, 2025, https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3926
[20] Nick Miroff, “Trump Loves ICE. Its Workforce Has Never Been So Miserable.,” The Atlantic, July 10, 2025, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/07/trump-ice-morale-immigration/683477/?gift=Ut5zkH9vG00uzi0vmoT5f32Ss1DoqhmajtrKchMeLps&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
[24] “Heather Cox Richardson on America's Declaration of Independence,” The Progressive Forum, YouTube, November 2, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=8qTid766F8c
[25] United States Constitution, Preamble, https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/preamble
[26] John Mack Faragher, California: An American History, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2022, https://www.amazon.com/California-American-John-Mack-Faragher/dp/0300225792
[27] Ibid., p 213-214.
[28] “CALIFORNIA IN TIME: The Fight over Slavery through the Civil War,” California State Parks, retrieved July 12, 2025, https://www.parks.ca.gov/pages/735/files/ca%20timeline--civil%20war--with%20images%20draft2.pdf
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