Federal Agents Target Immigrant Rights Volunteers With 3 A.M. Home Raids
Dozens of federal agents raided the homes of immigrant rights volunteers around 3 a.m. on Wednesday, an escalation of what the volunteers’ lawyer described as a year-long harassment and intimidation campaign by government officials against people who patrol immigration enforcement operations in Ventura County, California.
The raids targeted members of VC Defensa, a group of volunteers who conduct daily patrols of immigration enforcement operations and provide support to immigrants in the community. Members of VC Defensa plan to file a civil lawsuit in federal court, accusing government officials of “targeted, deliberate, unadulterated harassment,” their attorney Reem Yassin said in a press conference on Thursday outside a Los Angeles immigration courthouse.
Ventura, located about 70 miles up the coast from Los Angeles, has faced a consistent and heavy federal immigration presence as part of President Donald Trump’s second-term mass deportation campaign. Last July, 56-year-old Jaime Alanas García became the first known person to die during the Trump administration’s immigration raids after he fell from a 30-foot roof during an immigration raid of Glass House Farms, the cannabis farm where he worked. During that raid, U.S. Border Patrol agents deployed tear gas at peaceful protesters and observers, including VC Defensa volunteers.
VC Defensa volunteer Leo Martinez typically wakes up at 4:45 a.m. to patrol immigration enforcement agents, he told HuffPost in an interview. But on Wednesday, a loud noise jolted him awake around 3 a.m. He saw lights through the window and heard his name and address blaring over a PA system. He woke up his mom, told her to get dressed, went to the bathroom, put on a sweater. If he was about to be detained, he wanted to be as comfortable as possible, he said.
As Martinez and his mom approached the door, he says, Department of Homeland Security agents kicked in the door, pointed guns at them and handcuffed Martinez while they searched the home. After the raids concluded around 5 a.m. and Martinez was released, he headed to the shop he owns and saw that the door had been broken down and the security cameras destroyed. Agents confiscated Martinez’s mother’s home computer and both of their cell phones from their home, and T-shirts and skateboard decks with the VC Defensa logo from the shop, Martinez said.
Agents also searched the homes of two other current and former VC Defensa volunteers. The 16-year-old child of one of the volunteers was handcuffed during the search, Yassin said.
Yassin described the search warrants as “general, broad, and boilerplate” and “carelessly drafted.” She has repeatedly asked government officials what they are investigating her clients for, but has not received answers, she said.
In response to a detailed list of questions from HuffPost, a DHS spokesperson who declined to identify themselves by name wrote, “On May 13, [Homeland Security Investigations] executed several search warrants on individuals associated with an anti-ICE organization. Several members of this organization have been previously arrested for ambushing federal law enforcement and destruction of government property. Several items were seized as part of the search warrants. This remains an ongoing investigation. To protect its integrity, we are unable to provide additional details at this time. Under President Trump, if you assault law enforcement officers, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
DHS did not respond to a follow-up request for information about the arrests and whether they resulted in criminal charges.
“These raids are nothing more than an intimidation tactic to suppress free speech under the guise of the government executing a search warrant,” Yassin said, estimating there were at least 100 agents across the raid locations on Wednesday morning.
“Some may ask why these resources are being wasted for these raids,” she said. “The government does not view this as a waste if it works. If it’s scaring you, it has worked. If it’s silencing you, it has worked. If it’s intimidating you, it has worked. But it’s not going to do that. You’re not going to stop exercising our legal rights,” she continued. “Look at everyone here. It is not working, and it will never work, because we are better together.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly charged people who protest its mass deportation and detention operations with baseless criminal charges — although it has failed to secure convictions in many of these cases.
Still, they can have a chilling effect.
Last year, prosecutors charged Jonathan Caravello, a Ventura County philosophy lecturer who has volunteered with VC Defensa, with assaulting a federal agent after he threw a tear gas canister deployed by agents during the Glass House raid away from the crowd of civilians and over the heads of agents. A jury acquitted Caravello last month, but he spent much of the past year wearing an ankle monitor he had to pay for and adhering to a curfew and travel restrictions as conditions of his pre-trial release.
Even being on ICE’s radar can have physical, emotional and financial costs for activists. During a VC Defensa patrol of the ICE Camarillo office last year, agents called out the name of one of the volunteers, Martinez said. “They knew his full name. They knew the name of his parents. They knew the name of us as volunteers.”
In October, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer was filmed appearing to intentionally ram an SUV into Martinez’s car multiple times, KEYT reported at the time. After a brief hospital visit, Martinez was taken to a federal detention facility in Los Angeles, before he was released in the afternoon. His vehicle was totaled.
Agents “tried to box me in again in December, but I weaseled out of that one and they gave up,” Martinez told HuffPost.
During another patrol in March, three vehicles blocked and rammed into Martinez’s minivan as he attempted to reverse and pull away, the independent media outlet LA Taco reported. Martinez told LA Taco at the time that agents broke his window, dragged him out of the car and threw him to the ground, despite his efforts to cooperate. His minivan was impounded, and he still has injuries from the violent arrest, he said.
“We’re the ones that are left behind tending to those children with no parents. We’re the ones left behind figuring out how to pay people’s rent.”
– Leo Martinez, VC Defensa volunteer
Martinez spoke towards the end of Thursday’s press conference, delivering impassioned remarks from memory, first in Spanish, and then in English. He described how VC Defensa volunteers are vigilant about following the law because “we know that if we did a fraction of the things that they do to us, we would immediately all get rounded up and thrown in federal facilities.”
When members of his community get detained or deported, Martinez said, “We’re the ones that are left behind tending to those children with no parents. We’re the ones left behind figuring out how to pay people’s rent. Eighty percent of the work we do as an organization is family support,” he continued, describing the work of teaching kids how to drive, finding people work, and driving people to Tijuana because they can’t safely travel from a U.S. airport.
“We do this because it’s our calling, and we are dedicated to this because we grew up watching our parents get mistreated,” said Martinez, whose mother is from Mexico. “We have to do something with the privilege of citizenship, and what better use of that than to put it at the disposal of our community. We are here not to be heroes, but to give as much information and spread as many resources amongst our people as possible so they could defend themselves.”
