Jovana Perez scanned her phone in a panic, heart sinking at an Instagram post showing armed officers forming a line outside Glass House Farms.
Her mother was inside the farm. She had called her eldest daughter a moment earlier trying to confirm the rumor ricocheting across the massive cannabis complex outside of Camarillo: La Migra was here.
Perez called her mother.
“I told her there are people outside,” she said.
Smoke from gas fills Laguna Road during an immigration raid at Glass House Farms near Camarillo on July 10.
It was 10:15 a.m. The next 12 hours would bring one of the largest immigration raids since President Donald Trump was inaugurated. Federal authorities said hundreds were detained at Glass House sites near Camarillo and in Carpinteria.
One farmworker died. Hundreds of protesters and scared family members of farmworkers filled Laguna Road near the local farm. Some hurled rocks at enforcement vehicles as lines of armed personnel blocked off the road on either side of the farm. The FBI initiated a search for a man they said fired a gun.
Agents unleashed tear gas and smoke bombs on the crowd in flurries that erupted throughout the day. They fired pepper bullets and other non-lethal projectiles, injuring protesters. Inside Glass House, workers scared of being separated from their families hid in underground water tanks and on roofs.
To piece together what happened, Ventura County Star reporters interviewed protesters, family members, workers at the farm, advocates, firefighters and others. Authorities from the U.S. Immigration and Customs enforcement did not respond to a request for interview.
Jaime Alanís Garcia died July 12 from injuries suffered during an immigration raid two days earlier at Glass House Farms near Camarillo.
7 a.m.: Leo Martinez sat in his truck and checked messages on his phone near Las Posas Road close to Naval Base Ventura County Point Mugu. The print shop operator volunteers for an immigration enforcement response network called VC Defensa and spends much of his spare time trying to track ICE agents.
Martinez sat there for more than two hours. Then he spotted a line of military trucks and vehicles form a convoy on Pacific Coast Highway.
Pulse quickening, Martinez followed the vehicles up Rice Avenue, then to the 101. He shadowed them all the way to Carpinteria and an exit near Glass House Farms. That’s where they were headed, he said.
At the same time, a motorist heading to Point Mugu spotted a convoy of maybe 50 vehicles driving up Las Posas just north of the Pacific Coast Highway. In Carpinteria, Martinez’s phone was lighting up with reports that ICE was also amassing at Glass House’s licensed cannabis complex outside of Camarillo.
9:30 a.m.: The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office received notification about an immigration enforcement operation, officials said. Local authorities believe warrants were executed roughly 15 minutes later.
10:15 a.m.: “ICE is in GLASSHOUSE,” read VC Defensa’s alert. Minutes later, another ready response network issued its own alert. “Citizens show up to protect workers,” it said.
Afraid of being left alone
10:20 a.m.: Jovana Perez’s mother told her other workers had seen what appeared to be federal police running onto the site. She decided not to hide because she had a work permit and a temporary visa.
Some of the agents came with dogs, Perez’s mother said. They led farmworkers to a holding area and then a packaging facility.
The workers were sorted into groups depending on whether they had legal documents.
“She said people were getting screamed at,” Perez said.
Her mother told her to stay at home, then called back and asked her to come. She wanted to see what was happening outside.
Perez and her 15-year-old sister, Xiomara, rushed to the scene and posted videos on Facebook. Mostly, they worried about their mother.
“I was more scared of being left alone than being hit by a smoke thing,” Perez said, noting the fear made it hard to breathe. “I started crying.”
Mitch Lillie of VC Defensa shows a facial wound he said was caused by a fired projectile during an immigration protest near Camarillo on July 10.
10:30 a.m.: Mitch Lillie grabbed a borrowed bullhorn and walked to the line of people facing the yellow Border Patrol caution tape and the row of armed personnel.
“You don’t scare us. We’re not leaving,” he and others yelled across the caution tape barrier. The officers on the other side carried guns and wore helmets and gaiter masks. There were maybe a dozen of them in front of Lillie.
About 50 people stood with Lillie on the west side of Laguna Road. Some were protesters. Others were family members of farmworkers who cried as they watched what they feared were loved ones being led past distant greenhouses.
People held up their phones to record what was happening. Some hurled profanities at the armed men and demanded they leave.
Lillie, a software operator who volunteers with VC Defensa, stood at the center of the line and told the other protesters they needed to make room for ambulances and paramedics.
But do not let ICE pass through the line, he said.
“The ultimate purpose was not to keep (ICE) in but trying to show up to defend our community from being brutalized,” he said.
11:29 a.m.: Oxnard Fire Department responded to a 911 call for someone needing medical assistance in the 600 block of Laguna Road, and a patient was taken to a local hospital. Less than an hour later, the Ventura County Fire Department responded to a second 911 call.
With the potential for additional calls, engines, ambulances and other emergency medical vehicles headed to the area.
Federal agents blocked Laguna Road outside Camarillo July 10 during an immigration raid on a Glass House Farms facility.
12:08 p.m.: Lillie watched as each of the armed men in front of him put on gas masks. It was a bad sign.
Canisters that emitted streams of yellow and white gas were thrown into the crowd. Agents fired pepper bullets and other projectiles into the smoke.
People ran, ducking behind cars and fences. Some hopped and yowled when they were hit.
“My thought was honestly shock and anger,” Lillie said.
In the first flurry and the ones that followed, Lillie was hit once in the temple, twice in the chest and once in the back.
Bleeding and hiding
12:45 p.m.: The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office received a request for assistance from federal agencies. Local authorities readied to respond to help keep the peace between protesters and federal agents, authorities said.
1:30 p.m.: More canisters were deployed. Carol Godfrey, 71, of Camarillo, ran with the crowd in her flip-flops. Some of the people near her yelled “tear gas.” Others shouted “smoke bombs.”
Whatever it was, the substance hit Godfrey in the face.
“It felt like someone reached in and pulled your eyeballs out,” she said.
Hours earlier, the retired Vons worker had been in the pool at her mobile home community in Camarillo. Her daughter-in-law told her about the raid and the call for community members to show up in support of the workers.
Godfrey raced to the scene wearing a cover-up over a bathing suit.
A tear gas canister is left behind in the agricultural field on Laguna Road outside Camarillo after authorities deployed tear gas on a crowd of demonstrators protesting an immigration raid at Glass House Farms July 10.
2 p.m.: Alicia Flores stood at the edge of the road in a red dress, cell phone in hand. She talked to a man who was hiding on the roof of a greenhouse. He was bleeding from his arm
Flores, an immigration activist and executive director of the Hank Lacayo Family Centers in Oxnard, told him to come down and find someone who could help him.
“He said, ‘No.’ He was going stay up there until they leave,” she said.
Their connection died. Flores called back. No answer. A large white bus carrying detained farmworkers sped down Laguna as armed personnel deployed more gas canisters and fired nonlethal projectiles.
Flores winced. She thought the man on the roof had been captured and was on the bus.
More than a week later, Flores still didn’t know exactly what happened. But she was told the man was deported to Tijuana.
2:30 p.m.: Glass House security guard George Retes drove west down Laguna Road, heading toward the roadblock east of the farm.
“I was just trying to get to work,” said Retes, father of two and Army veteran from Ventura.
He’d been at the greenhouse complex gate in June when federal agents tried to enter without a warrant and were turned back. By the time Retes, a U.S. citizen, arrived on July 10, federal agents had been onsite for hours, but he said all he knew was traffic was a mess.
Choppy video, some of it news footage, posted to social media showed a white hatchback, which Retes said was his, slowly reversing away from helmeted and masked agents. A cloud of white smoke billowed behind the vehicle as a convoy of what appeared to be federal vehicles emerged from behind the roadblock.
George Retes
Retes, 25, said he told the officers he was U.S. citizen and Glass House employee, but was ignored.
Some of the officers barked at him to reverse his vehicle. Others tried to wrench his door open, Retes said. One smashed his car window and he felt a burning substance — which he believes to be pepper spray — hit his face.
Retes said he was disoriented by the chemical agent and not sure exactly what happened next. “I didn’t know how far they were going to take it,” he said.
Agents took him to Naval Base Ventura County he said, then to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Downtown Los Angeles. His hands burned from the chemical agents, keeping him awake through his first night in custody.
He was released on July 13. No charges were filed against Retes, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesperson. He threatened to sue.
Professor arrested
2:32 p.m.: A man running in the crowd appeared to point a weapon and possibly fire, news footage showed. The FBI reported an investigation was ongoing.
3:45 p.m.: “This is the police,” a man on a loud speaker announced to the crowd. “Please make way for emergency vehicles or chemical agents will be deployed.”
A siren blared. A truck and several SUVs made their way along Laguna Road, accompanied by more tear gas and pepper bullets. Protesters threw rocks at the vehicles.
The military presence had grown in the form of what appeared to be National Guard soldiers. Some in the crowd began to disperse. Godfrey, still in flip-flops, was one of them. She drove back to Camarillo.
“I was scared,” she said. “It just got angrier. I realized I’m out here in my bathing suit.”
5:53 p.m.: Three Border Patrol agents at the roadblock east of Glass House approached CSU Channel Islands philosophy professor Jonathan Caravello.
Caravello had been with protesters at the line earlier in the day when Border Patrol agents threw canisters of tear gas into the crowd. One of them allegedly fell at his feet.
Federal authorities later alleged body-worn camera footage shows Caravello picking up the canister and hurling it in the direction of the Border Patrol agents. It flew several feet over their heads, according to an unidentified agent in court documents.
When agents spotted Caravello later, they took the professor to the ground and into custody.
The California Faculty Association union said the Caravello was trying to help a bystander when agents dragged the professor into an unmarked vehicle.
Caravello faces federal charges involving assault on officers. The professor was released from custody July 14 on a $15,000 bond and is scheduled to be arraigned in August.
Hugs and water
8 p.m.: Jovana Perez’s mother and others with documents were released from the farm. She stayed there, walking with a friend around one of the buildings. They looked for other workers.
When they heard a helicopter overhead, they ducked into a bathroom to hide. She went home, returned to the farm twice more in hopes of finding people, finally leaving for good early the next morning.
Jovana Perez, left, and her sister, Xiomara Perez, 15, wait for word about their mother and uncle who work at Glass House Farms, targeted in immigration actions on July 10.
8:04 p.m.: Atticus Reyes held out a water bottle for a Glass House worker driving down Laguna, a two-lane road that cuts through the Oxnard Plain.
Word had spread that federal officers had started to let some workers leave the facility, opening up the east side barricade, letting cars pass a few at a time. One of the protesters started running back and forth, guiding the cars through the crowd of hundreds, said Reyes, a political staffer and Ojai resident.
He would yell ahead to clear the road; a chant Reyes picked up farther down Laguna.
“Cars coming. Clear the road,” Reyes called out loudly, as the stop-and-go caravan moved through.
As one car started to pass, an older man, standing next to Reyes, called out a name. He ran up to the car, throwing his arms around someone through an open window. Reyes could hear him crying.
Farther down the line, a group of protesters later set up a sort of impromptu station, offering water and snacks through open windows as workers drove by.
Some in the cars wiped away tears as they drove away. A few held up their hands in a sort of prayer signal as they passed. Others looked exhausted, traumatized, Reyes said. They stared straight ahead or kept their heads down.
10 p.m.: Clara Jimenez waited outside Glass House hoping for a chance to search for the workers who had hidden everywhere – on the roof, in underground tanks and in nooks and crannies across the farm.
Jimenez had worked for years in the greenhouse complex when tomatoes were the primary crop. She left the site but her husband’s brother-in-law still worked there. He was in the middle of a shift when federal agents arrived.
She held out hope he was still there, tucked away in a hiding spot.
After five hours, she and others coaxed their way into the facility around 3 a.m. The lights were out, making it difficult to see.
“It was so sad for us,” she said in Spanish. “But at the same time it made us enraged.”
One man found a worker in an air vent who had been hiding since 10 a.m. Another searcher found a worker who remained too afraid to come out.
Jimenez didn’t find her brother-in-law. She worried he may have been the man rumored to have fallen from the roof. She left for home around 4 a.m.
Hours later, his name appeared in a federal immigration database. Days after that, he was deported to Tijuana.
“They took him. But at least I knew he was fine,” she said.
‘Everyone was terrified’
Midnight.: A hundred or so people crowded around the Glass House gate – moms, dads, daughters and sons searching for family they hoped stayed hidden inside.
Word had circulated federal officers had left but the people hunkered down inside the property may not have known. Some in the crowd yelled out their loved ones’ names, said Maria Navarro, who stood at the gate to support the workers or their family members.
People pleaded to get inside to look, but most weren’t allowed, she said. They gathered around the gate, waiting as some workers slowly trickled out.
Most left in cars, said Navarro, Oxnard policy advocate for the nonprofit Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy. A few spotted someone they knew in the crowd, running to them. Others sprinted through a pedestrian walkway, zigzagging their way through the crowd.
“Everyone was terrified,” Navarro said.
The pain in the voices of family members is the thing she will never forget. They stood there for hours, asking if one building or another had been searched. They yelled out names of loved ones into the darkness.
Staff writer Ernesto Centeno Araujo contributed to this report.
Tom Kisken covers health care and other news for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tom.kisken@vcstar.com. Cheri Carlson covers the environment and county government for the Ventura County Star. Reach her at cheri.carlson@vcstar.com or 805-437-0260. Isaiah Murtaugh covers Oxnard, Port Hueneme and Camarillo for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at isaiah.murtaugh@vcstar.com or on Signal at 951-966-0914.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Families divided, rage, tear gas: How the Glass House raid went down