Petty Ranch is home to more than 50 acres of avocado trees just off Highway 126 in Ventura. The harvest is complete for this year, and despite the wave of immigration raids in Ventura County, farmer Chris Sayer says they managed to get through it okay.
"It's been relatively quiet. At this point in the season, we don't actually need a lot of help. We're fortunate from that standpoint. But, the general level of anxiety in the community is still very high," said Sayer.
However, Sayer admits that with the threat of raids looming over everyone, the future remains a question mark.
"If we get into a market window where we want to send our fruit to market, and if there is not enough labor available, or the labor is in the area but nobody wants to come out, yeah, that becomes a big concern," said the rancher.
Sayer opened up his ranch to some state lawmakers for a tour, allowing them to see and hear firsthand about the state of the agricultural industry in Southern California. They discussed everything from the impact of tariffs to agricultural innovation. But the big topic was the impact of immigration raids.
"As we've experienced over the last year under this Trump Administration, and the unprecedented changes we have seen in immigration enforcement, it's caused a lot of fear and chaos. It's destabilized the agricultural industry," said State Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas.
He said the people being swept up in ICE raids aren’t the ones the Trump Administration said it would target. "If there are dangerous criminals, undocumented in this state, they should be deported. That's always been a long-standing policy of every President in this country. But that's not what we are seeing here," said Rivas.
"I know President Trump made that commitment that they are going to go after really bad people, and hence criminals. But that's not what we have experienced in the first few months of his new administration."
State Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limon, who represents Santa Barbara County and part of Ventura County, said families are continuing to live in fear.
"It is impacting our farmworker community in a broad way. It's not just the aspect of being at work, I think we are hearing more and more that it is ripple effects, like questioning whether they are going to pick up their kids from school, questioning whether they should take an extra trip to the doctor," said Limon. "It's a deeper concern, the ripple effect."
The raids in Ventura County have shifted focus since the huge one in July, which targeted a cannabis growing operation in Camarillo. Hundreds of workers were arrested and deported.
"Since July, we haven't seen on-farm immigration enforcement activities, which means that the vast majority of enforcement has been happening in the community," said Maureen McGuire, CEO of the Farm Bureau of Ventura County. "Farmers are really focusing on making sure that people feel safe at work."
"All of a sudden, the Glass House (cannabis farm) raid comes, and the amount of anxiety in this county has gone way up," said Democratic State Assemblyman Steve Bennett of Ventura. "That has a toll on everybody. It has a toll on how many farmworkers are willing to stay, how many farmworkers are willing to come to Ventura County to replace those who are moving on, and the ability of Ventura County to keep agriculture profitable has become much more challenged as a result of what the Trump Administration is doing."
