On June 10th, during violent immigration raids at two farm sites in Carpinteria and Camarillo, California, several workers were critically injured and one, Jaime Alanis, has died as a result of his injuries. Elizabeth Strater, national vice-president of the United Farm Workers, said Alanis was injured after a 30ft fall from a building during the raid. I haven't yet seen the specific circumstances that led to his falling or the other injuries.
Community members and family of workers responded to the raid, federal vehicles were pelted with rocks and other objects, no reports of officers injured. Four US citizens were arrested for “assaulting or resisting officers”. Feds have offered a $50,000 reward for information of one person suspected of firing a gun at federal agents. In a statement regarding the incident yesterday, the United Farm Workers have said several US citizens remain unaccounted for.
The mother of an American worker said her son was held at the worksite for 11 hours and told her agents took workers’ cellphones to prevent them from calling family or filming and forced them to erase cellphone video of agents at the site.
The woman said her son told her agents marked the men’s hands with ink to distinguish their immigration status. She spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because she feared reprisals from the government.
I saw it reported by someone on bluesky that a community member detained without charges was not allowed to be released until they deleted footage of the raid from their phone.
It’s wild to me that when they have full power to change the law they’re still incapable of following it.
Will there be any follow up on this? Will democrats, if and when they return to power, actually prosecute agents and members of the Trump regime who’ve broken the law? Certainly not, but they could and should if they wanted to.
Like, why not pass laws to make it so the sketchy shit ICE agents are doing is actually legal? Ban filming law enforcement, asking law enforcement to identify themselves or show warrants, shit like that. You have full control over what is and isn’t “legal” and you still can’t avoid breaking the law? Are you fucking stupid?
They are working on manipulating a good amount of legislation through the supreme court and executive orders, but I would guess they would justify the legality of any action during immigration enforcement as necessary for "national security", preserving "public order", protecting federal agents or other reasons that essentially make any action legal if argued well enough when challenged. It seems to me though they aren't necessarily worried about the legality or long-term consequences such as lawsuits that might come at this stage, but appeasing their base and agitating specific resistant areas to justify further crackdowns on activists and immigrants that would be more likely to cause issues in a widespread conflict.
I would think too that wide-sweeping legislative action could trigger push back from a broader range of people across the country. In many areas of the country people aren't seeing any sort of ICE action or militarized police crackdowns, it's hard to gauge the severity of the anti-immigration campaign if you aren't tuned into the sources on the ground. By keeping more of the violence "spontaneous" rather than top-down through legislation, they can claim more plausible deniability, attempting to keep the 'simmer' of unrest at a manageable level.
If anything, democrats will expand this fascist police state