The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that authorities executed criminal search warrants in Carpinteria and Camarillo, California, on Thursday. They arrested immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally and there were also at least 10 immigrant children on site, the statement said.

Four U.S. citizens were arrested for “assaulting or resisting officers,” the department said. Authorities were offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of one person suspected of firing a gun at federal agents. At least one worker was hospitalized with grave injuries.

During the raid, crowds of people gathered outside Glass House Farms at the Camarillo location to demand information about their relatives and protest immigration enforcement. A chaotic scene emerged outside the farm that grows tomatoes, cucumbers and cannabis as authorities clad in helmets and uniforms faced off with the demonstrators. Acrid green and white billowing smoke then forced community members to retreat.

On Friday, about two dozen people waited outside the Camarillo farm to collect the cars of their loved ones and speak to managers about what happened. Relatives of Jaime Alanis, who worked picking tomatoes for 10 years, said he called his wife in Mexico during the raid to tell her immigration agents had arrived and that he was hiding with others inside the farm.

“The next thing we heard was that he was in the hospital,” Juan Duran, Alanis’ brother-in-law, said in Spanish, his voice breaking.

It was not immediately clear how Alanis was injured. A doctor told the family that others who brought Alanis to the hospital said he had fallen from the roof of a building.

Alanis had a broken neck, fractured skull and a rupture in an artery that pumps blood to the brain, said his niece Yesenia, who didn’t want to share her last name for fear of reprisal.

Maria Servin, 68, said her son Rafael Ortiz has worked at the farm for 18 years and was helping build a greenhouse when federal immigrations agents arrived Thursday.

Servin said she spoke to her son, who is undocumented, after hearing of the raid and offered to pick him up. “He said not to come because they were surrounded and there was even a helicopter. That was the last time I spoke to him,” Servin, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, said in Spanish.

She said she went to the farm anyway Thursday, but agents were shooting tear gas and rubber bullets, and she decided it wasn’t safe to stay.

On Friday, she returned with her daughter and was told her son had been arrested. The family still doesn’t know where he is being held or how to contact him. “I regret 1,000 times that I didn’t help him get his documents,” Servin said.

Glass House said in a statement that the company does not violate “applicable hiring practices” and does not employ children.

The post Authorities say 200 immigrants arrested in raids on 2 Southern California farms appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

On June 20 federal agents picked up a longtime parishioner of Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Montclair on church property, according to the National Catholic Reporter. In a separate incident that day, agents chased several men onto the church parking lot of St. Adelaide parish in Highland. 

Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin disputed what she said were news reports that agents had entered the church hall. 

“The accusation that ICE entered a church to make an arrest are FALSE,” she stated in an email to CalMatters.  “ICE conducted a traffic stop on an illegal alien on June 20 in the general proximity of Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Montclair, California. The illegal alien chose to pull into the church parking lot. Officers then safely made the arrest.”

For almost a decade and a half, U.S. immigration officers steered clear of churches, complying with a directive by former President Barack Obama that limited immigration enforcement at sensitive locations, including schools, hospitals and places of worship. Former President Joe Biden maintained those guidelines to deter immigration action in areas that provide essential services.

On his inauguration day Jan. 20, President Donald Trump revoked that protection, stating that the Biden-era restrictions “thwart law enforcement in or near so-called ‘sensitive’ areas.” 

Catholic leaders have denounced ICE’s aggressive enforcement tactics and protested that many detained immigrants are denied the right to plead their cases.

“Authorities are now seizing brothers and sisters indiscriminately, without respect for their right to due process and their dignity as children of God,” wrote Bishop Alberto Rojas, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino, in a letter to parishioners June 23.

John Andrews, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino, said the man detained at Our Lady of Lourdes is a longtime parishioner whose family is involved in the ministry. 

“There was no one present at Our Lady of Lourdes when he was taken into custody,” Andrews told CalMatters in an email. “He was doing some landscaping work there. He is in custody so there is no one who can really speak to what transpired in that apprehension.”

The men arrested at St. Adelaide Church didn’t appear to have a connection to the parish, Andrews said: “Neither the parish nor the diocese has any information about them, their whereabouts or whether or not they were arrested.”

Rojas stated in his letter that church leaders respect law enforcement efforts to keep communities safe from violent criminals, but raiding homes, workplaces and churches creates fear and confusion: “It is not of the Gospel of Jesus Christ — which guides us in all that we do.”

He asked elected leaders to “reconsider and cease these tactics immediately, in favor of an approach that respects human rights and human dignity and builds toward a more lasting, comprehensive reform of our immigration system.”

The Catholic Church has been increasingly vocal on the plight of immigrants and refugees in recent years. The late Pope Francis traveled to Sicily to meet with immigrants from Libya on his first pastoral visit outside Rome and later rescued 12 Syrians from a refugee camp in Greece. As Trump took office in January, Pope Francis denounced his mass deportation plans as “a disgrace.”

On June 20, the day of the Inland Empire church arrests, also World Refugee Day, Michael Pham, the newly appointed bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, joined a group of clergy to witness immigration proceedings at the federal building in San Diego. 

Pham came to the U.S. as a refugee from Vietnam in 1981. He told reporters that he prayed for “wisdom and insight to help our poor brothers … through the crises in their lives.”

The raids also are beginning to draw criticism from some California Republican lawmakers. Six signed a June 27 letter calling for more moderate immigration action, arguing that raids are hurting communities and businesses.

The lawmakers — including state Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, a Redlands Republican — endorsed the letter by Senator Suzette Martinez Valladares, a Santa Clarita Republican, asking Trump to “focus deportations on criminals” and modernize immigration policies.

While they support immigration enforcement against violent criminals, they said, immigrants without criminal records are being swept up in raids, “creating widespread fear.”

ICE workplace raids at farms, construction sites, restaurants and hotels, “are harming the communities we represent and the businesses that employ our constituents,” the letter states.

The lawmakers are asking for comprehensive immigration reform, expansion of work visas and a path to legal status for non-criminal immigrants.

The post ICE targets men on Inland Empire church grounds appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.