BAKERSFIELD— Maria Casarez was washing dishes at noon Tuesday in her three-bedroom duplex, tidying up before her four children got home from school when her husband's nephew called.
“My uncle just got caught – immigration,” he said. They just got my uncle, immigration.
The two had been talking in a Home Depot parking lot, less than a mile from their home in Bakersfield when Border Patrol agents appeared and began asking questions.
Casarez ran to the scene, where he said he saw a dozen officers. “It was ugly,” he said. They had already taken her husband.
The Border Patrol operation near Bakersfield lasted several days and led to 78 arrests this week, raising alarm bells across the Central Valley, where a largely immigrant workforce helps harvest a quarter of the food grown in the United States. .
Immigrant advocates say it was the largest police operation in the Central Valley in years and fear it could be a prelude to what is to come under President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised mass deportations, a move many fear will wreak havoc. in the agricultural and processing industries of the region.
The Border Patrol confirmed that agents conducted a targeted enforcement operation in Kern County, saying it was aimed at dismantling transnational criminal organizations. U.S. Border Patrol Chief Agent Gregory K. Bovino said in statements on social media that dozens of agents had detained two child rapists and “other criminals,” in addition to recovering 36 pounds of narcotics, as part of Operation Return to Sender.
Bovino, who heads the agency's El Centro sector that spans 71 miles of the Imperial Valley along the border with Mexico, said agents arrested other people found during the course of the operation who were in the United States. Illegally united.
In the small farm towns on the outskirts of Bakersfield, at the gas stations and in the miles and miles of fields, everyone seemed to know about the arrests that had quickly spread on social media, sowing fear among immigrant families, many of them who had children or spouses who were born here. And amid the panic, even the routine presence of law enforcement at shopping malls and freeway off-ramps was sometimes mistaken online for immigration raids.
It is unclear how long enforcement actions could last; Bovino said agents are planning additional operations in Fresno and Sacramento.
“With our border under control in El Centro, we are going where the threat is,” Bovino wrote in response to someone on Instagram who said they were baffled as to why the Border Patrol was conducting operations so far north of the border.
The enforcement of the law has perplexed local immigrant advocates, who questioned why the Biden administration was using its final weeks to deport migrant workers from the Central Valley.
“I understand that the border has to be protected,” said Manuel Cunha Jr., president of the Nisei Farmers League, which represents agricultural employers and their workers. “Stay away from our farms. Go after the cartels, raid those people.”
Producers reported that workers had stayed home for fear of arrest, he said.
He fears that the consequences of the operation could have repercussions on the entire economy that drives farms, dairies and food processing plants. Vines and trees will lose their harvest if they are not pruned in time. Cows could die if workers don't show up to milk them.
“It has effects on the food chain, without a doubt,” Cunha said. “But it has the biggest effect on those families because they can't feed their children if they can't work.”
Casarez said he knew many people who were afraid to leave the house. A friend's daughter hurt her arm at school. The woman was so afraid to take her to the hospital that Casarez offered to accompany her.
Just one day before her husband was arrested, she had met with a lawyer to sort out her legal situation. He had been in the country for more than a decade working in construction.
Attorney Parvin Wiliani spent the next three days searching for him. She asked that her name not be revealed for fear of reprisals.
“He is the sole breadwinner of the family and no one knew his whereabouts,” she said. When she called the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, which normally holds detainees, she was told he was not there. He then called at least a half-dozen ICE processing centers along with Customs and Border Patrol detention centers. Nothing. Three days passed before his name appeared in the system.
Wiliani said he only recently learned that he was detained at “an unknown location” near the border. “That is very unusual. I can usually reach my clients within 24 hours.”
Other immigration attorneys reported similar problems, adding to collective anxiety. Throughout the week, immigrants filled community rooms as advocates held packed sessions with attorneys and offered legal support if they were detained or detained by agents.
Carina Sánchez attended one of those meetings in Delano, with her 5-year-old son. As a counselor at a nearby elementary school, she said many of the students or their parents do not have legal status.
“It makes me think about my children, my students.”
It is not clear exactly how many people have been detained, where they were held or why El Centro agents were conducting operations so far from the border. And the Border Patrol did not provide details.
The Border Patrol has the authority to conduct vehicle searches within a 100-mile radius of the United States border. Bakersfield is more than 200 miles from the border but about 100 air miles from the coast.
Elected officials on both sides of the political aisle expressed concerns about coercive action.
Bakersfield Mayor Karen Goh, a Republican, said cartel members involved in criminal activity (who she understood were the focus of the operation) should fear arrest. But he expressed concern about “people who are unnecessarily afraid.”
“I am extremely concerned that these arrests took place randomly or based on racial profiling,” said state Assemblyman Joaquín Arámbula (D-Fresno). “Everyone in our state and nation deserves to be treated with dignity and respect; everyone is entitled to due process and constitutional rights.”
U.S. Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) said Customs and Border Protection had told him they were detaining criminals or people with ties to criminal organizations.
“I urge the Biden administration to ensure that CBP prioritizes criminals and not those responsible for producing our nation's food supply,” he said. “We urgently need commonsense immigration reform that creates a path to legal status for hard-working people who contribute to our economy and eliminates those who threaten the safety of our communities.”
The United Farm Workers Foundation urged residents, if detained, to exercise their right to remain silent before speaking with an attorney. Ambar Tovar, the organization's managing attorney, said the community was recovering from days of growing fear and uncertainty.
Tovar questioned whether border agents were meeting the legal standard of reasonable suspicion required for such arrests without a warrant and said he plans to investigate whether Border Patrol agents had inland jurisdiction like some of the arrests they made.
“There's no reason to stop a car full of farmworkers on the way to work,” he said.
On Thursday night, a border agent called Wiliani.
“He told me he received an order to call me and then let my client talk to me,” he said. He was still in a processing center somewhere in Imperial County, but would be released the next day, when he called Casarez to tell him he had a bus ticket to return home.
“I was free,” he said. “It was a great joy.”
