Kern County immigration raid offers glimpse into new reality for California farmworkers

KERN COUNTY, Calif. — It has been more than six weeks since U.S. Border Patrol agents from the agency’s El Centro sector launched a three-day raid in rural stretches of Kern County, resulting in the detention and deportation of scores of undocumented laborers.

The unusual undertaking — carried out more than 300 miles from El Centro near the U.S.-Mexico border — came at the tail end of the Biden administration. Border Patrol Chief Agent Gregory Bovino, a 25-plus-year veteran who leads the Imperial County unit, headed up the operation without the involvement of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Three former officials with the Biden administration, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to share operational details, said Bovino “went rogue” with the January raid. No higher-ups knew about the operation before watching it unspool, two of the former officials said.

A farmworker tends vines in a Kern County vineyard.

Instead, said one, it seemed to be a play by some Border Patrol agents, on the eve of President Trump’s return to office, to “show that there was a new boss coming and that that’s where their loyalties lay.”

In official statements, Bovino has justified the raid by noting that the sector’s area of responsibility stretches from the border to the Oregon line, “as mission and threat dictates.” Border Patrol officials have said the operation resulted in the arrests of 78 immigrants in the country illegally, including a child rapist. The agency has not specified how many of the immigrants detained had criminal records.

Advocates on the scene, meanwhile, said the operation indiscriminately targeted Latino farmworkers commuting from the fields along California Route 99 and day laborers soliciting work in the parking lots of big box stores. They estimate close to 200 people were detained.

Border Patrol officials declined requests from The Times to interview Bovino and did not answer a list of emailed questions, including why Kern County was targeted, whether higher-ups at ICE had approved the operation and a request for details surrounding the logistics of the deportations.

What is not in dispute is that what played out in Kern County offers a glimpse into the “emboldened” approach to immigration enforcement that is expected to become the norm under the Trump administration.

Immigrant advocates say Border Patrol agents targeted field hands and day laborers during a January raid in Kern County, without regard to whether they had criminal offenses.

Trump ran for office promising the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, initially focusing his rhetoric on tracking down undocumented immigrants who have been accused of violent crimes. But his administration now says it considers all immigrants in the U.S. without legal authorization to be criminals, because they have violated immigration laws.

The shift has sent shock waves across the Central Valley, where a largely immigrant workforce helps harvest a quarter of the food grown in the U.S.

Undocumented workers and their advocates interviewed in the wake of the Kern County raid say that the Border Patrol agents operated on a similar rationale, rounding up field hands and day laborers without regard to whether they had criminal offenses, and sending them back across the border. In some cases, they said, the workers left behind spouses and children — many of them U.S.-born — who are now struggling to get by.

“In our perspective, it was definitely meant to terrorize the community, and especially the Latino and farmworker community,” Sofia Corona, a directing attorney with the UFW Foundation in Bakersfield, said of the operation. “And sadly, it really did have that impact.”

Some of the people deported in the January raid in Kern County were longtime farmworkers who left behind spouses and U.S.-born children.

Marta’s family is among those traumatized by the Kern County raid.

Marta said she and her husband left their village in southern Mexico about a decade ago, their first child in tow. She said they joined her sister, Victoria, and brother-in-law, who had emigrated to the Central Valley with the goal of working hard in the region’s abundant fields and orchards, and earning enough to eventually return to their home country and build a house.

The sisters shared their stories in interviews with The Times, asking that they be identified by just their first names because of concerns that their families could be further targeted by immigration authorities.

Their families have since put down roots. Along with their 11-year-old child, Marta and her husband now have three U.S.-born children — 3-year-old twins and a 4-year-old. Victoria has three children, all U.S. citizens — a 1-year-old, 2-year-old and an 11-year-old.

On Jan. 7, Marta was harvesting mandarins alongside her husband and brother-in-law when rumors started circulating that immigration agents were swarming Bakersfield. Some people reported seeing white-and-green Border Patrol vehicles on area roadways. Others were getting pinged with warnings in texts and on social media.

By the end of the shift, Marta said, she and her husband had picked enough mandarins to fill five huge crates, each earning $120 for the day. They joined her brother-in-law in his Honda sedan and started for home.

Not long after, she said, Border Patrol agents pulled them over on Highway 99.

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An agent accused Marta’s brother-in-law of driving the car without proper authorization, according to family members. The brother-in-law produced his auto insurance, they said, and the agent corrected himself.

Nonetheless, the trio were ordered to leave the vehicle, Marta said. They were taken to a makeshift processing center in Bakersfield, and the car was eventually impounded.

During the wait at the center, Marta said, she cried inconsolably, worried about becoming separated from her kids. A sympathetic agent eventually set her free, she said. But her husband and brother-in-law did not make it out.

She and her sister would learn later that their husbands had been transported to El Centro for processing.

Marta and Victoria said their husbands, though undocumented, had not been accused of any crimes in the U.S. A Times search yielded no criminal cases for the two men in Kern County Superior Court or the Eastern District of California.

But according to family members who have been in contact with the men, they were given an option: They could be held in detention for months while awaiting deportation proceedings, or they could sign a voluntary departure order and be dropped off across the border. They chose to be deported.

By the next afternoon, the two men had been deported to Mexicali. According to their wives, they have returned to their rural village, where there’s little work and minimal cellphone service, making communication sporadic.

They were among approximately 40 people arrested during the operation who consented to voluntary departure and were expelled from the country, according to the ACLU of Southern California.

“In our perspective, it was definitely meant to terrorize the community, and especially the Latino and farmworker community,” attorney Sofia Corona says of the Kern County raid.

Operation Return to Sender, as it was dubbed, “focused on interdicting those who have broken U.S. federal law, trafficking of dangerous substances, non-citizen criminals, and disrupting the transportation routes used by Transnational Criminal Organizations,” the Border Patrol said in a statement.

It differed in many ways from what attorneys and advocates had come to expect from immigration enforcement in the Biden era. The Biden administration prioritized deporting recent border crossers and those who were deemed a threat to public safety or national security.

The Kern County raid seemed to target the food markets and parking lots where farmworkers are known to gather in the morning for carpooling, said Bakersfield immigration attorney Ana Alicia Huerta.

Rather than being processed at the local ICE field office and held at one of two detention centers in the area, at least some of those who were arrested were taken to pop-up processing centers before being transported to El Centro, she said.

“It was just so aggressive,” she said, “and it really took us aback.”

In the weeks since the operation, the ACLU of Southern California has been interviewing people affected by the raid. They have heard stories of “egregious conduct,” according to staff attorney Mayra Joachín, including Border Patrol agents stopping people without reasonable suspicion that they had violated any immigration laws, and arresting people without warrants.

Although immigration enforcement officers have broad powers, their authority is limited by the 4th Amendment’s prohibitions on unreasonable search and seizure, according to a 2021 legal sidebar from the Congressional Research Service.

“We work, even when we’re scared,” one farmworker says of the looming threat of raids. “We need to work, because we need to pay rent, buy food and support our families in Mexico.”

Under federal law, an immigration enforcement officer may, without a warrant, interrogate people about their right to be in the country, as long as people are not involuntarily detained for such questioning. More intrusive encounters require reasonable suspicion that a crime is afoot, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Border Patrol agents can arrest people without a warrant if they are entering the country unlawfully in the view of an agent, or if there is reason to believe they are in the country unlawfully and likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained.

The Bakersfield operation, Joachín said, did not comply with 4th Amendment protections and other regulations governing immigration arrests.

“Generally, Border Patrol cannot go about doing what they did through Operation Return to Sender, which is that they were stopping people simply because they were a person of color who appeared to be either a day laborer or an agricultural worker, and then asking them to identify themselves and, in some instances, searching them without any warrant or without consent from the individual,” she said.

On Wednesday, ACLU attorneys representing the United Farm Workers and five Kern County residents sued the head of the Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol officials, alleging the operation amounted to a “fishing expedition.” The complaint, filed in federal court in the Eastern District of California, contends that the tactics employed in the Kern County raid violated federal law and protections afforded by the U.S. Constitution. It seeks class-action relief for anyone subjected to such practices.

Asked for comment, a Border Patrol spokesperson said the agency does not comment on pending litigation. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said the agency needed time to review the allegations.

Back in Kern County, Victoria and Marta are staying close to home, worried about what’s next for their families.

That means avoiding trips to the grocery store and no longer taking their children to play in the park.

“Every day we hear rumors about la migra,” Victoria said. “I’m very afraid to leave.”

The women have returned to the farm fields for work here and there. Each time, they weigh the risks: Should they make the lengthy drive to earn a day’s pay? Or stay holed up at home, with dwindling resources, to lessen the chance of being pulled over?

Across the region, most farmworkers are choosing to go back to the fields. But it’s a question on everyone’s minds.

“We work, even when we’re scared,” one worker said, while pruning grape vines on a recent afternoon. “We need to work, because we need to pay rent, buy food and support our families in Mexico.”

Times researcher Scott Wilson contributed to this report.

This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.