BAKERSFIELD — Maria Casarez was washing dishes at noon Tuesday in her three-bedroom duplex, tidying up before her four children arrived home from school when her husband’s nephew called.
“Acaba de agarrar a mi tío — inmigración,” he said. They just got my uncle, immigration.
The two had been talking at a Home Depot parking lot, less than a mile down the road from their home in Bakersfield when Border Patrol agents showed up and began asking questions.
Casarez dashed to the scene, where she said she saw a dozen agents. “It was ugly,” she said. They had already taken her husband away.
The Border Patrol operation near Bakersfield lasted for several days and netted 78 arrests this week, raising alarm bells across the Central Valley, where a largely immigrant workforce helps harvest a quarter of the food grown in the U.S.
Immigrant advocates say it was the largest enforcement operation in the Central Valley in years and fear that it could be a prelude of what’s to come under President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised mass deportations — a move that many fear will wreak havoc on the region’s agricultural and processing industries.
Border Patrol confirmed that agents conducted a targeted enforcement operation in Kern County, saying it was aimed at dismantling transnational criminal organizations. U.S. Border Patrol Chief Agent Gregory K. Bovino said in statements on social media that dozens of agents had detained two child rapists and “other criminals,” as well as retrieved 36 pounds of narcotics, as part of Operation Return to Sender.
In the small farming towns outside Bakersfield, at gas stations and in the miles and miles of fields, everyone seemed to know about the arrests that had quickly spread across social media, sowing fear among migrant families, many of whom had children or spouses that were born here. And in the panic, even routine law enforcement presence at strip malls and freeway off-ramps was, at times, conflated online with immigration roundups.
Bovino, who leads the agency’s El Centro sector that spans 71 miles of the Imperial Valley along Mexico border, said agents arrested others encountered during the course of the operation who were in the U.S. unlawfully. It’s unclear how long the enforcement actions could last; Bovino said agents are planning additional operations in Fresno and Sacramento.
“With our border under control in El Centro, we go where the threat is,” Bovino wrote in response to someone on Instagram who said they were puzzled as to why Border Patrol was conducting operations so far north of the border.
The enforcement has perplexed local immigrant advocates, who questioned why the Biden administration was using its final weeks to target Central Valley migrant workers for deportation.
“I understand you’ve got to protect the border,” said Manuel Cunha Jr., president of Nisei Farmers League, which represents agricultural employers and their workers. “Stay out of our farms. Go after the cartels — do your raids on those people.”
Growers reported that workers had stayed home out of fear of being arrested, he said.
The consequences of the operation, he fears, could ricochet across the economy that powers farms, dairies and food processing plants. Grape vines and trees will lose their crop if they aren’t pruned in time. Cows could die if workers don’t show up to milk them.
“It does have effects on the food chain, without any question,” Cunha said. “But it has the greatest effect on those families because they can’t feed their children if they can’t work.”
Casarez said she knew many people afraid to leave their house. A friend’s daughter hurt her arm at school. The woman was so scared to take her to the hospital that Casarez offered to accompany her.
Just a day before her husband was detained, she had met with a lawyer so that they could fix his legal status. He had been in the country for more than a decade working in construction.
The attorney, Parvin Wiliani, spent the next three days searching for him. She asked not to share his name out of fear of retaliation.
“He is the sole provider for the family and nobody knew his whereabouts,” she said. When she called the local field office for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which usually holds detainees, she was told he wasn’t there. She then called at least half a dozen ICE processing centers along with Customs and Border Patrol detention centers. Nothing. It took three days before his name even popped in the system.
Wiliani said she only learned then that he was being held in “an unknown location” near the border. “That’s very unusual. I can normally locate my clients within 24 hours.”
Other immigration attorneys reported similar issues, adding to the collective anxiety. Throughout the week immigrants filled community rooms as advocates held packed sessions with attorneys and offering legal support in case they were pulled over or detained by agents.
Carina Sanchez, attended one of those meetings in Delano, with her 5-year-old son. As a counselor at a nearby elementary school, she said many of the students or their parents don’t have legal status.
“It makes me think about my kids, my students.”
It’s not clear exactly how many people have been detained, where they were held or why agents from El Centro were conducting operations so far away from the border. And Border Patrol would not provide details.
Border Patrol has authority to conduct vehicle searches within 100 miles of the U.S. boundary. Bakersfield is more than 200 miles from the border but about 100 air miles from the coast.
Elected officials from both sides of the political aisle expressed concern about the enforcement action.
Bakersfield Mayor Karen Goh, a Republican, said that cartel members engaging in criminal activity — whom she understood to be the focus of the operation — should fear arrest. But she expressed concern for “persons who are unnecessarily in fear.”
“I am extremely concerned that these arrests may have taken place at random, or based on racial profiling,” said state Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula (D-Fresno). “Everyone in our state and nation deserves to be treated with dignity and respect — everyone is entitled to due process and constitutional rights.”
U.S. Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) said Customs and Border Protection had told him they were apprehending criminals or those with ties to criminal organizations.
“I urge the Biden administration to ensure CBP is prioritizing criminals and not those responsible for producing our nation’s food supply,” he said. “We urgently need common-sense immigration reform that creates a pathway to earned legal status for hardworking individuals contributing to our economy and removes those who threaten the safety of our communities.”
The United Farm Workers Foundation urged residents, if detained, to exercise their right to remain silent before they speak with an attorney. Ambar Tovar, directing attorney for the organization, said the community was reeling from days of mounting fear and uncertainty.
Tovar questioned whether border agents were meeting the legal standard for reasonable suspicion required for such stops without a warrant and said she plans to investigate whether Border Patrol officers had jurisdiction as far inland as some of the stops they conducted.
“There’s no reason to stop a car full of farmworkers on their way to work,” she said.
Late Thursday, a border agent called Wiliani.
“He told me he got an order to call me and then he let my client talk to me,” she said. He was still in a processing center somewhere in Imperial County but would be released the next day, when he called Casarez to tell her that he had a bus ticket to come home.
“He was free,” she said. “It was such a joy.”
