It’s been a tense week for Xcel Gonzales and her family. The Ventura County woman was a farmworker. While she no longer works in the fields, some of her relatives are farmworkers, and the ICE raids throughout the county have them scared.
"I had to call some of my family members to get them to leave (work) because this is very scary for them, and for me," said Gonzales. "Today was the first day they left early to stay safe."
Community groups are working to rally support for undocumented residents of the Tri-Counties, as new reports surface of ICE operations locally. At the Ventura County Government Center, a coalition of groups held a news conference and rally Thursday afternoon to show opposition to the raids.
"This week was the first time we saw Border Patrol illegally entering some of the fields in Ventura County, Camarillo, Oxnard, Port Hueneme, and hunting our immigrant, hard-working people like they were animals," said Primitiva Hernandez, Executive Director of the nonprofit group 805 Undocufund. She said with raids stepping up, about three dozen people were detained or arrested locally in the last week. "If this is what this administration stands for, we are here to say no more, enough is enough," said Hernandez.
And the numbers are growing. The Farm Bureau of Ventura County reports that on Thursday, in the Oxnard area, ICE agents tried entering five area packing facilities and conducted operations in more than ten agricultural fields.
"This exposes more clearly than ever the Administration's claims of targeted enforcement are a bold-faced lie," said Lucas Zucker, with the Ventura County-based working-class and immigrant rights group called CAUSE. "These are indiscriminate roundups, with federal agents going from farm to farm, to seize anyone that they can to meet their insane political quotas for mass deportations."
"This is about fear, and this is about control," said Gloria Soto, a member of Future Leaders of America and a Santa Maria City Council member. "We need to stop framing immigrants as criminals or just workers. We need to lift them as essential, vibrant members of our communities."
Zucker said the one bit of good news is that there have been some successes. He said CAUSE teams have helped to turn away ICE agents at some local farms because they didn’t have warrants.
"This resistance is working," said Zucker. "CAUSE had members at nine different farms that were hit on Tuesday. At all of them, ICE was turned away because they didn't have warrants."
Community leaders at the Ventura event are calling for county and state financial aid. They say the targeted undocumented immigrants need financial support for legal aid programs. And, they say families need financial aid, because if they're forced to shelter in place, they’ll require assistance paying for food and rent.
