{"id":73529,"date":"2025-06-16T14:09:40","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T21:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=73529"},"modified":"2025-06-16T14:09:40","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T21:09:40","slug":"central-coast-growers-farmworkers-unite-against-ramped-up-ice-arrests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=73529","title":{"rendered":"Central Coast Growers, Farmworkers Unite Against Ramped Up ICE Arrests"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Li Lovett<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Farmworker advocates have joined with industry growers across California\u2019s Central Coast to stand up for immigrants in the fields and on the streets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A coalition of farmworkers, advocates, industry growers, nonprofits and California\u2019s ICE raid Rapid Response network spotlight the impacts of escalated workplace raids at a press conference in Santa Maria on Thursday, June 12. (Courtesy: Central Coast Alliance for a United Economy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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SANTA MARIA, CA \u2014 Farmworker advocates have joined with industry growers across California\u2019s Central Coast to stand up for immigrants in the fields and on the streets.<\/p>\n

The Central Coast agricultural region spans from Santa Cruz to Ventura County, with 35,000 workers in a $4.4 billion industry producing a significant share of the nation\u2019s fruits, vegetables and almonds. Crop production accounts for the largest share of these agricultural jobs.<\/p>\n

With recent escalations of workplace arrests and raids locally and nationwide, a coordinated response in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties is now bringing growers into efforts to protect farmworkers from being detained and, in some cases, rapidly deported.<\/p>\n

Central Coast Alliance for a United Economy (CAUSE), a regional nonprofit supporting Central Coast farmworkers and immigrant communities, has rallied these efforts in response to tactics not seen under the first Trump administration, as unwarranted Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid targets have included federal courthouses, schools, businesses, churches and community spaces.<\/p>\n

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Community members protest escalated workplace ICE raids at the Santa Maria press conference. (Courtesy: Central Coast Alliance for a United Economy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Across California and the country, pressure from the agricultural industry is already making itself felt. On Thursday, June 12, President Trump ordered ICE officials to largely pause raids on farms alongside hotels, restaurants and meatpacking plants.<\/p>\n

\u201cICE is indiscriminately attacking immigrant communities including in Oxnard and Santa Maria, trying to find anyone they can to meet their politically driven quotas,\u201d said Hazel Davalos, co-executive director of CAUSE.<\/p>\n

The united response reflects, from an alliance of groups that don\u2019t always see eye to eye, a shared interest among agricultural employers and farmers to protect vulnerable workers.<\/p>\n

Lucas Zucker, who serves with Davalos as co-executive director of CAUSE, said the efforts of the Farm Bureau in Ventura County have also contributed to preventing the indiscriminate arrests in an area where immigrants form the lion\u2019s share of the crop production and distribution workforce.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur best defense is employers knowing their rights,\u201d said Zucker.<\/p>\n

Agents cannot enter private property unless they have a warrant, yet agricultural fields and packing plants have been broadly targeted for these raids.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorkplace raids are bad politics, and they\u2019re bad for the business community,\u201d Zucker added.<\/p>\n

\u201cFamily separation is not a distant crisis,\u201d said Patricia Solorio, assistant director at The Fund for Santa Barbara, a social justice philanthropic organization. \u201cIt\u2019s happening in Santa Maria, in Oxnard, in Ventura, across this nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A community member at the press conference discusses farmworker advocates and industry growers uniting against unwarranted ICE raids. (Courtesy: Central Coast Alliance for a United Economy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In workplace raids across Oxnard and Santa Maria on Tuesday, June 10 alone, ICE agents detained 40 immigrant workers, mostly of Mexican descent as well as from other Central American countries.<\/p>\n

Yet, the number of detentions would have been much higher if the 805 Undocufund Coalition had not worked with local communities to prevent ICE agents from entering workplaces without judicial warrants to conduct the arrests.<\/p>\n

At nine of the farms that ICE attempted to enter, the farm supervisors denied them entry and gates were kept closed during the work shifts. At the end of the day, volunteers arrived to give over 100 farmworkers rides back home.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe community response and defense was very effective, demonstrating the power of brave nonviolent resistance to ICE\u2019s tactics of terror,\u201d said Primitiva Hernandez, executive director of 805 Undocufund.<\/p>\n

CAUSE joined with 805 Undocufund \u2014 the regional lead of California\u2019s ICE raid\u00a0Rapid Response<\/a>\u00a0network \u2014 and a cross-sector coalition of nonprofits to spotlight the impacts of these raids at a\u00a0press conference<\/a>\u00a0held in Santa Maria on Thursday, June 12.<\/p>\n

At the event, Maria Salguero, an attorney with the Santa Barbara Immigrant Legal Defense Center criticized the Santa Maria City Council for voting to allow an ICE facility in the majority-Latino town.<\/p>\n

She contrasted the community\u2019s position with the controversial actions of DHS, saying, \u201cWe have due process, we have the Constitution, we have community on our side. And we have years and years of resistance on our side.\u201d<\/p>\n

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ICE raid protestors hold signs at the Santa Maria press conference. (Courtesy: Central Coast Alliance for a United Economy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Several speakers at the press conference then called upon elected officials to act on behalf of immigrants under attack by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

In a press conference held in Los Angeles that same day by Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), she maintained that ICE agents were targeting the \u201cworst of the worst.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going after people that are in worksites, that are trafficking drugs, that are trafficking human beings,\u201d Noem said.<\/p>\n

The workplace raids escalated nationwide in early June, after Trump administration officials pushed ICE to make a minimum of 3,000 migrant arrests per day, up from the initial quota of 1,800 set by the administration last January. The vast majority of workplace arrest detainees have no prior criminal record.<\/p>\n

At the Santa Maria press conference, Solorio, representing The Fund for Santa Barbara, said that in response, Central Coast communities should \u201cinvest in immigrant community support, legal defense and rapid response,\u201d pointing to counties that provide these resources, including Santa Clara, Sonoma, Marin, Contra Costa, San Mateo, San Diego and Alameda County.<\/p>\n

Zucker, representing CAUSE, said at the event that the California state budget is facing cuts in resources for immigrants \u2014 $3.5 billion in state cuts overall, including a freeze on Medi-Cal for undocumented immigrants \u2014 who now more than ever need a safety net of housing, healthcare and other supports.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur communities are unified\u201d against \u201cessential workers under siege,\u201d added Davalos. \u201cGrowers and farmworkers are standing together to fight back against violations of our civil liberties by an authoritarian with no regards for due process or our human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ByLi Lovett Jun 16, 2025 Farmworker...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ca-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73530,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73529\/revisions\/73530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}