On Thursday federal immigration agents joined by National Guard soldiers carried out two brutal immigration raids in Carpinteria and Camarillo, California, which left at least one worker dead and several others hospitalized. Reports indicate as many as 200 people have been taken by the immigration Gestapo.

In a post on social media, the United Farm Workers union confirmed that a “farm worker” died of injuries “sustained as a result of yesterday’s immigration enforcement action.”

In a GoFundMe, Yeseni Duran said her uncle Jaime Garcia, “was chased by ICE agents and we were told he fell 30 [feet].” In an interview with ABC 7, Garcia’s family confirmed he had broken his neck and skull.

Duran wrote that her “uncle Jaime” was “just a hard-working, innocent farmer. He has his wife and daughter waiting for him.”

Duran wrote that her uncle lived in Mexico with his family but worked in the US to help provide for them: “He was his family’s provider. They took one of our family members. We need justice. We are still investigating what happened. More details to come.”

In an expression of the massive anger the fascist raids have provoked among large sections of the population, less than 24 hours after the GoFundMe for Jaime was established it has already exceeded its $50,000 goal.

The UFW confirmed that several farm workers were “critically injured” during the raid and that “US citizens remain unaccounted for.”

Pointing to a massive government cover-up, the UFW reported, “Many workers—including US citizens, were held by federal authorities at the farm for 8 hours or more. US citizen workers report only being released after they were forced to delete photos and videos of the raid from their phones.”

The fascist raids have produced mass anger throughout the region. Carpinteria and Camarillo are both located north of Los Angeles County in the agriculture and industrial Central Coast. Between Carpinteria and Camarillo is Oxnard, the largest city in Ventura County, with over 200,000 residents. Hispanic and Latinos are by far the largest ethnic group in Oxnard, making up 77 percent of the population.

As of this writing, some 1,000 protesters are marching on Oxnard City Hall calling for the release of those detained by the immigration Gestapo, and for ICE to leave California.

The raids took place on property owned by Glass House Farms, which claims to be the largest marijuana grower in the world. While marijuana farms are legal in the state of California, they are not legal on a federal level.

The raids mark a massive escalation in the Trump administration’s assault on the working class. These heavily militarized operations, targeting unarmed immigrant workers and their families, reveal the true character of the US government: an instrument of the capitalist class that relies on armed terror to suppress and terrorize the population.

Witness accounts and video footage from the scenes show masked, heavily armed agents storming the Glass House Farms worksites, firing tear gas and chasing down terrified workers across the fields. Estimates indicate that as many as 200 workers were seized between the two locations. The “crime” of these workers was nothing more than selling their labor in an economy built on exploitation.

That the raids targeted agricultural workers—one of the most exploited layers of the American working class—exposes the lie that these operations are about “public safety” or “criminal aliens.” The reality is that the Trump government is targeting the working class as a whole. The same militarized tactics used against immigrant workers today will inevitably be used against any section of the working class that resists.

Despite lying claims by the Trump administration and its criminal propagandists in the Department of Homeland Security that all those taken were “illegal aliens,” multiple US citizens have been confirmed to have been kidnapped. This includes 25-year-old George Retes, a disabled US Army veteran. In interviews with ABC 7, Retes’ sister and wife confirmed that he worked on the farm as a security guard and that he is a US citizen.

Through tears, Destinee Majana, Retes’ sister, explained: “I thought he was part of the protests. He wasn’t. He was just trying to reverse his car. They broke his window, they pepper sprayed him, they grabbed him, threw him on the floor. They detained him. His wife has been trying to call and ask where he is. They don’t know where he is apparently.”

The California Faculty Association confirmed on Friday that one of those taken during the raid was Jonathan A. Caravello. In statement addressed to Democratic Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff among others, CFA President Margarita Berta-Avila wrote the Dr. Caravello was “abducted by federal immigration authorities ... approximately 5 minutes from the campus of CSU Channel Islands. Dr. Caravello is a lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at CSUCI, an active member of our union, and a citizen of the United States.”

Berta-Avila wrote that witnesses saw a federal immigration agent fire a tear gas canister “in the direction of a wheelchair user lawfully overseeing immigration enforcement activities, which then became lodged underneath the wheelchair. While attempting to assist the bystander who could not see or breath, Dr. Caravello was abruptly taken down by immigration agents, dragged into an unmarked vehicle, and taken to an unknown location.

“In the hours after his abduction, CSUCI faculty, staff and students engaged in an exhaustive search for his whereabouts. Despite visiting every hospital and local police station, CFA members and Dr. Carvello’s students were unable to locate or contact him. In the early morning of July 11, 2025, we are still confirming whether Dr. Caravello is being held at the Ventura County Federal Detention Facility. His charges are still unknown.”

The statement called for the release of Dr. Caravello and all those taken by immigration agents. However, instead of appealing to the working class to fight independently for the release of the kidnapped through strike action, the CFA president only directed members to ring “our Congressmembers and legislators.”

In contrast to the impotence of the trade union apparatus, Thursday’s raid was met with independent resistance from the community. Hundreds of workers, family members, and supporters gathered at the Camarillo site, protesting the raid for more than 12 hours. At one point during the standoff, a DHS Blackhawk helicopter was forced to land in farm field to “resupply” the soldiers.

Reports and video evidence suggest that one protester may have fired a pistol at the immigration agents. The FBI has put out a $50,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

Though no agents appear to have been injured, the government itself described the Camarillo raid as a “multi-casualty event”—a direct result of the government’s own use of “less-lethal” weapons and chemical agents against civilians.

On Fox News Friday morning, Trump’s “Border Czar” Tom Homan rejected efforts by the courts to limit the immigration Gestapo’s ability to disappear whoever they want based on “probable cause.”

“Look, people need to understand ICE officers and Border Patrol, they don’t need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them. They just need the totality of the circumstances, right.”

Through stammers and stutters, Homan declared, “They just go through the observation, you know, get articulable facts based on their location, their occupation, their physical appearance, their actions.”

Homan argued that running or simply walking away from masked immigration police conducting a raid in a public setting was enough of a pretext for the agents to detain someone on “reasonable suspicion.”

Justifying the raids, which caused the death of Jaime Garcia and has led to the mass abduction of US citizens and immigrant workers alike, Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, spouted a variation of the racist “Great Replacement Theory” during his appearance on Fox News Friday. Miller claimed the Trump administration was “liberating children” from “industrial slavery” and “sex trafficking” overseen by the “Democrat Party.”

“California and Los Angeles are waging insurrection against the federal government, they are protecting those who traffic in the suffering of children,” Trump’s neo-Nazi adviser hissed. “The Democrat Party is funneling ... profits from rape, profits from exploitation, and yes, profits from murder into the hands of the cartels.”

The response of the Democratic Party only underscores their complicity. On Friday morning, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced an “Executive Directive to support immigrant communities” that does nothing to stop the raids or protect workers. Instead, it establishes a toothless “working group” led by the Los Angeles Police Department—the same force that has repeatedly defended ICE and Border Patrol as they disappear workers. This “feedback group” is a cynical maneuver to give the illusion of action while the raids continue unchecked.

The working class cannot rely on the Democrats, the trade unions or any institution of the capitalist state to defend them. The police, ICE, and the military exist to protect the interests of the ruling class—the billionaires and financial oligarchs who dominate every aspect of social and political life.