A farmworker at a Southern California cannabis farm died after being injured during a chaotic immigration raid by federal officers, the United Farm Workers said Friday.
The labor union did not provide the name of the employee of Glass House Farms north of Los Angeles but confirmed that the worker plummeted some 30 feet.
“These violent and cruel federal actions terrorize American communities, disrupt the American food supply chain, threaten lives and separate families,” UFW President Teresa Romero said in a statement to NBC News.
Immigration officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Federal agents lobbed less-lethal weapons and tear gas at protesters who gathered outside the Camarillo grow house Thursday while employees were being rounded up and arrested inside.
Officers pepper-sprayed a disabled U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq and works as a security guard at the facility, the man’s wife told NBC News.
George Retes complied with federal officers when he arrived to check on friends and colleagues who might have been affected by the raids, but instead he was arrested on suspicion of assault, according to immigration officials. A hearing is scheduled Monday.
“He wasn’t even a protester,” Guadalupe Torres said of her husband, George Retes. “They smashed his window, and after they smashed his window, they pepper-sprayed him.”
Aerial footage from NBC Los Angeles showed farm equipment being loaded up into tow trucks and people standing around in handcuffs.
At a cultivation center in Carpinteria owned by Glass House Farms, manager Edgar Rodriguez said federal officers assaulted and handcuffed him after he repeatedly asked them to identify themselves and provide a warrant.
Rodriguez was standing behind a window when 10 unidentified men in fatigues arrived Thursday morning in unmarked cars and one armored vehicle.
Rodriguez, a U.S. citizen, said he asked the men several times to identify themselves and provide a reason for arriving heavily armed. The officers refused and responded by saying they were “not ICE” but did not specify which agency they were from.
One of the officers can be seen in video obtained exclusively by NBC News attempting to coax Rodriquez outside by telling him he wouldn’t be harmed.
“I’m just trying to talk to you. We’re not here for you,” the officer said in the video. “We have a federal warrant. We have a right to be here. Please come out.”
“I got you,” the officer said as Rodriguez began to tentatively leave his post.
Once outside, tensions escalated.
Rodriguez was led by the federal officers toward dumpsters, where the same officer who had told him not to worry slapped Rodriguez’s cellphone from his hands.
Two other officers then pushed him to the ground, Rodriguez said. His phone fell, and voices can be heard arguing in the background.
Rodriguez said he was handcuffed for more than an hour, and one officer twisted his arm behind his back. The officers knelt on his neck and head, he said, and he began to lose feeling in his hands. He later went to a hospital covered in scratches and bruises, he said.
Rodriguez said he saw at least 10 employees get arrested, all of them in their 40s to their 60s. He said several had work visas and have been in the U.S for more than 20 years.
“They were really scared,” he said. “They kept saying they didn’t do anything wrong, that they had visas.”
The indoor cannabis farm where Rodriguez works was one of two Glass House properties raided by federal officers on Thursday.
In Camarillo, about 40 minutes away, the other enforcement operation drew hundreds of protesters outside the 5.5 million-square-foot facility.
Some 200 people were arrested in the two operations, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
At least one worker was critically injured during the raids and others, including U.S citizens, “remain unaccounted for,” the United Farm Workers said. Employees were held onsite for eight hours or more, the labor union said.
Several U.S. citizens were released only after agreeing to delete videos and photos of the raid from their phones, the UFW said in a statement.
The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information on a person who appeared to fire a pistol at federal officers. The U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, Bill Essayli, said it occurred around 2:30 p.m. Thursday outside the Camarillo grow house.
“While ICE and CBP officers are being assaulted by rioters and dodging bullets to save children, Sanctuary politicians are demonizing ICE and CBP,” Essayli said in a statement. “We will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law anyone who assaults or doxes federal law enforcement.”
U.S Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott posted a photo on X Friday of what appeared to be 10 young people detained at the Camarillo farm.
“These are the juveniles found in the marijuana facility — almost all unaccompanied, one as young as 14. California are you ready to partner with us to stop child exploitation?” the post read.
Glass House said in a statement on X that it “never knowingly violated applicable hiring practices and does not and has never employed minors.”
The UFW said it was aware of the reports and demanded legal representation for the minors.
“To be clear, detaining and deporting children is not a solution for child labor,” the union said in a statement.
Rodriguez said Glass House has a policy of only employing people who are at least 21 years old, and he could not personally identify the people in the photo, whose faces were blurred.
He said “there are no underage workers” at the two facilities he manages in Carpinteria.
“I am absolutely positive of that,” he said.
The raids Thursday came after more than a month of confrontations between the Trump administration and mass deportation protesters.
The protests have occasionally shut down parts of Los Angeles and its many immigrant-majority communities, where many residents say they are afraid to go to work.
On Friday, Mayor Karen Bass signed a directive requiring city departments to submit preparedness plans outlining how employees, including contractors, should respond if approached by federal immigration agents. The goal, she said, is to ensure that residents and city workers know their rights and can safely access services without fear.
A federal judge is expected to rule Friday on a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and immigrant rights groups calling for the Trump administration to halt stops and arrests that they say have terrorized residents and forced immigrants into hiding.
