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VENTURA COUNTY, California ‒ Juan Reyes lay flat on the greenhouse roof, hiding. Federal immigration agents milled through the Glass House farm below.
Reyes moved to the U.S. from Mexico at 10 years old, and though he never secured legal status, Oxnard became his home. As he hid, he thought of his wife, who is also undocumented, and their newborn daughter, a U.S. citizen.
After several hours on July 10, he surrendered. Agents bound his wrists roughly with zip ties.
Reyes, 25, was one of hundreds of immigrant farmworkers arrested by federal agents in a massive raid on a pair of Glass House Farms cannabis greenhouse facilities in Carpinteria and outside Camarillo. It was one of the largest raids nationally during President Donald Trump's current immigration crackdown.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said its agents arrested 361 alleged undocumented immigrants including six with prior convictions and 14 teen minors during the all-day operation. One worker died after falling from a greenhouse roof.
Few of those people have returned to local communities, according to data gathered from regional nonprofits and federal immigration detention records.
Together, the numbers indicate that just under half of the 361 immigrants arrested in the Glass House raid have been deported in the months since. Many others remain in federal custody, immigration advocates say, and a scattered few were released on bond. No follow-up information has been made available on the teenagers.
Primitiva Hernandez, head of the nonprofit 805 UndocuFund, said the ramifications of the raid will be felt far beyond the individuals arrested and for "generations to come."
"Many of these people had established deep roots, had children who were U.S. citizens," Hernandez said. Now, she said, some of those children will be forced to follow their families to unfamiliar places, to "grow away from the place of their birth."
Federal officials themselves have released scant information about what happened to the people they detained during the months after the raid.
The homeland security department denied a Freedom of Information Act request for information about the whereabouts of the detainees in August, saying that an investigation connected to the raid was still open.
Immigration officials have also ignored congressional requests for information. U.S. Reps. Julia Brownley, D-Westlake Village, and Salud Carbajal, D-Santa Barbara, signed letters to the homeland security department over the summer asking for details of the Glass House raid and other federal operations. Spokespeople for their offices said those letters have yet to receive a response.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson Luis Alani did not answer questions about the raid or its aftermath. He responded instead on Oct. 9 with a statement directing further questions to the U.S. Attorney.
Ciaran McEvoy, spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, said the office could not comment on the investigation. He declined to provide a copy of the search warrant used by federal agents during the Glass House operation, saying it remains under a court seal. The agency said in July that the operation was targeted toward potential immigration and child labor law violations.
Hernandez said a network of advocacy groups and nonprofits called the 805 Immigrant Coalition has connected with the families of 335 of the 361 people arrested in the raid. The coalition has identified 150 individuals deported to date.
Detention records for an ICE field office in Camarillo also captured a snapshot of the raid’s aftermath.
Within a week, deportation
The night of the raid, Reyes was taken to an ICE facility in downtown Los Angeles.
Detainees and attorneys described conditions at this LA facility as bleak. The underground bus station and basement-level processing center have a series of gated holding areas. The wait typically would be a matter of hours at the temporary stop with no beds or showers. This time, some were kept there for up to two weeks.
Detainees said they had no water and little food. They were forced to sleep on the floor and were not provided with changes of clothes.
In Reyes' case, he was finally interviewed four days after arriving. Agents asked Reyes where he was born and told him he could either sign a voluntary departure form or fight to stay.
Reyes signed the form. He didn’t have enough money to hire an attorney.
Three days later, he was placed on a bus to Tijuana, where he knew no one.
Tactics turn aggressive
Vanessa Frank, a longtime Ventura immigration attorney, described increasingly aggressive tactics by ICE and a tone of intolerance over the past several months. People with lawful claims to remain in the country become collateral damage in the sweeps, she said.
In the court system, the pressure for speed has made it more difficult to assure people receive due process, she said. The haste not only makes it challenging for someone to find an attorney but for attorneys to prepare the case, translate documents, request reports and secure witnesses.
“The overriding message has been ‒ and people have received the message ‒ to box people out, so that they don't come," Frank said. "And if they are here, even with lawful status, push them out."
After the Glass House raid, some may have faced immediate deportation. Others, who had previously been released while their case moved through immigration courts, were sent to detention centers after the raid.
Still others were given paperwork to sign. They could either waive their rights and leave the country or head to detention if they pursued their case. They likely did so knowing detention could happen anywhere in the country and chances for bond were few and far between, attorneys said.
“They use a lot of pressure tactics to convince people to just leave,” Ventura immigration attorney Gabriella Navarro-Busch said of the government. “Then, the people that do decide they want to fight their case ‒ they’re just making it really miserable for them.”
The raid's effects continue to ripple out.
On Oct. 29, dozens of federal agents descended on downtown Oxnard to arrest a 31-year-old man who authorities allege interfered with the Glass House raid while protesting. His 32-year-old sister is also being sought for arrest for her role at the farm, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles.
'Pablo no habla'
Pablo Cruz Vásquez, another undocumented Glass House worker, was also among the detainees taken to downtown Los Angeles.
The 35-year-old is severely hearing impaired and has limited ability to speak. He recalled his experience in detention through a text message sent from Oaxaca, typed in Spanish with the help of a sister. Federal agents, he said, made few attempts to accommodate his disability. “Pablo no habla,” he remembered one of them saying, or, in English, "Pablo doesn’t speak."
Three days after the raid, he was taken to a room in a federal detention facility in downtown Los Angeles.
Agents brought out a pile of papers, Cruz Vásquez said. “Put your name,” they told him. On one page ‒ typed out in English and full of legal jargon ‒ an empty line waited for a signature.
Cruz Vásquez, who said he lived in the U.S. for 13 years, is limited in his ability to read Spanish and cannot read English. He said he did not understand that the document was discussing plans for his deportation. He still had not been able to contact his family in Oxnard and did not know they’d retained an attorney the same day.
He signed the form. The next morning, family said, he was moved to Tijuana.
Cruz Vásquez's family said they got in touch with the office of Brownley, whose congressional district covers most of the county. She said by email that her office had heard from the family of a Glass House worker "who was detained and deported after ICE took advantage of his disability and language barriers."
At least two other deaf immigrants detained by federal officials in recent months have been held without access to translators, according to media reports. Brownley and 31 other members of Congress penned a letter to the homeland security department in August asking for information on the treatment of detainees with disabilities. The agency has not responded, Brownley said.
Detention logs depict general trends
ICE detention logs acquired through public records requests by the Deportation Data Project tell stories similar to those of Cruz Vásquez and Reyes.
The night of the raid, 73 people were booked into detention in the agency’s Camarillo facility, the logs show.
Graeme Blair, political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and one of the data project’s leaders, said the detention logs are helpful for depicting some general trends. As administrative records, he said, they are likely to have some omissions and errors.
Alani, the ICE spokesperson, did not answer questions about the detention logs.
Within days of July 10, 45 of the people booked into the facility had been removed from the country. Some had prior deportation orders from courts, but more than half, federal agents recorded in the log, departed voluntarily.
Still in ICE custody
It was four days after the Glass House operation that Shada Mejia first heard her husband’s voice, piped through a phone from a federal detention center in El Paso, Texas.
Miguel Mejia-Echeverria, a Glass House janitor and El Salvadoran citizen arrested during the raid, would be relocated 10 days later to the Torrance County Detention Facility in New Mexico.
He told his wife that he had limited access to water, and his cell was so cold his hands ached. Officers would not provide him a jacket, so another detainee gave him his before being deported. Mejia said her husband remains there.
The federal detention log shows roughly half of the people booked into the Camarillo office remained in custody after the initial wave of deportations.
The half that were not immediately deported from Camarillo, downtown Los Angeles or other facilities were, like Mejia, pinballed across the southwest U.S., according to the most recently available log, updated in late July. Most had already passed through two to four facilities.
After the Glass House operation, the only names of the 361 arrested individuals made public by the homeland security department were six the agency said had prior criminal convictions and seven the agency said had previously been arrested. One of those names was Mejia-Echeverria, who the agency said was once arrested in connection with a hit-and-run.
The agency did not provide any other information, including whether he had been charged with the incident. The Star could not independently verify Mejia-Echeverria’s alleged arrest, and Mejia said her husband was never convicted.
'Separating families is really hard'
Mejia expects her husband to remain in custody until at least his next court date, which is set for Dec. 11.
Mejia-Echeverria was the family’s sole provider. Unable to afford their Oxnard rent in his absence, Mejia moved in with a family member in Camarillo so she could continue caring for their toddler, who has intellectual disabilities. Mejia-Echeverria moved to the U.S. to better support his mother and siblings in El Salvador, and they have also struggled financially during his detention without the payments they relied on.
Mejia thought their son was too young to understand his father’s absence, but she has watched the 2-year-old change since July 10. He misses evening bath time and weekend playtime with his daddy, asking for him constantly.
“Separating families is really hard,” Mejia said through tears. “It’s not just the immigrant who’s involved.”
Reyes and Cruz Vásquez, the two workers dropped off in Tijuana, also left family behind.
Cruz Vásquez said via text message in Spanish that with help from family, he was able to make it the 2,000 miles from Tijuana to his family’s home in Oaxaca in southern Mexico.
He hasn’t yet found work. With a disability, he said, it’s more difficult to find work in Oaxaca than in the United States.
Cruz Vásquez still hopes to return to the United States. He tries not to show his sadness to the people around him, he said, but in reality, he’s afraid for his future.
Reyes, who immigrated to Oxnard to be with his parents, has no family in Mexico. He moved to Zacatecas, in the central part of the country, to live with his wife’s parents, whom he had never met before. He found a job in construction.
His wife and newborn daughter left behind their life in Oxnard and joined him in Mexico shortly after he arrived, and though he is relieved to be reunited with them, he fears the violence in Zacatecas.
Reyes said he is homesick for Ventura County. He spends his days in a town he’d never been to and with people he’d never met before this summer.
But as far as he can tell, there’s no clear path back to Oxnard.
“As much as I want to go back to the U.S. because that’s where I feel like my homeland is, I’ve got to adapt here now," he said.
Cheri Carlson contributed to this report.
Isaiah Murtaugh covers Oxnard, Port Hueneme and Camarillo for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at isaiah.murtaugh@vcstar.com or on Signal at 951-966-0914.
Makena Huey is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach her at makena.huey@vcstar.com. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation's Fund to Support Local Journalism.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: ICE arrested 361 migrants at Glass House farms. Bleak confinements, deportations followed
Reporting by Isaiah Murtaugh and Makena Huey, USA TODAY NETWORK / Ventura County Star
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