His family said workers who fell from the roof of greenhouses during federal immigration raids are now dead.
Trump administration officials defended the aggressive campaign Saturday, even as amid the chaos of a Ventura County raid, he fell off the roof for two days, even as a marijuana farm worker evacuated and deported unauthorized immigrants from lifelong support.
His family announced the death of 57-year-old Jaime Alanís Garcia in increasing tensions, an atmosphere of weeks of military attacks, street protests and violence involving federal agents.
Alanís’ family said he fled the immigration agent Thursday during Operation Glass House Marijuana in Camarillo, when he climbed onto a greenhouse and accidentally fell 30 feet and suffered catastrophic injuries.
However, the Department of Homeland Security said that Ellanis was not the one to be hunted down and federal agents quickly called for MEDEVAC in a hope of saving him. Afterwards, federal authorities said that during the large-scale operation, they detained more than 300 people known as illegal immigrants and a large number of protesters trying to close the operation.
Ellanis was taken to Ventura County Medical Center, where he received life support. His niece announced her death on a GoFundMe page Saturday, which described him as the sole provider of her husband, father and family. The page has raised more than $133,000 late Saturday.
“They have occupied one of our family members. We need justice,” the niece wrote.
The Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretariat said in a statement that Oxnard’s consular personnel were providing assistance to Ellanis’s family. Consular officials said they accompanied their family in central Mexico in California and his hometown of Michoacán, where his wife and a daughter still live, according to news reports. In addition, Mexican officials said they will speed up the process of returning his body to Mexico.
Alanís isn’t the only glass house worker riding on a rooftop.
Irma Perez said her nephew Fidel Buscio, 24, was a group of men climbing onto a high-glass greenhouse. He sent a video she shared with the Times, which showed federal agents below and told her that the workers had been fired from tear gas cans. An image shows broken glass on the roof. In another case, Busio had blood on his shirt and his arms were tightened, she said. He was eventually arrested.
Federal officials said 10 minors were taken over in the raid, aged over 14. Eight teenagers have no parents. So, federal officials say the legal cannabis farm is the largest in California and is currently investigating unspecified child labor violations.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters at an event in Tampa, Florida that children were taken out of the farm from the beginning.
“We went there because we knew, especially from the case work we built for weeks and weeks, that children there could be trafficking, exploitation and other criminal activities,” she said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Labor Regional Office did not answer questions about current or past investigations in the Times, or the glass houses of the local labor contractor.
The company Arts Labor Services did not respond to interview requests conducted through its attorneys. Glass House said it did not violate labor laws.
The claims of previous child labour investigations were followed by a federal judge’s order, prohibiting federal immigration officials from taking random pickups based on their race or occupation.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott also said on Saturday that a man arrested in the raid had a criminal record of kidnapping, attempting to rape and attempting to harass a child.
Noem condemned the “terrible” behavior of her so-called demonstrators, who protested Thursday’s raid in Camarillo, showing videotapes showing rocks thrown at federal agents’ vehicles, breaking windows.
“Those who attacked these officers tried to kill them,” she said.
“Let me know. You won’t throw stones at vehicles like this, nor attack them that way unless you try to harm them and kill them and take their lives.”
She said decades of work helped marijuana workers not prepare for the chaos and trauma she witnessed during the federal drug raids, Sarah Armstrong, a Ventura County activist, to bring the chaos and trauma she witnessed during the Glass House Farm Raid.
A military helicopter fell down in the field to wash away anyone hiding in the crops, while federal agents opened tear gas jars to protesters and lined the farm road. In the obsession of the incident, someone pushed the gas mask into Armstrong’s hands and pulled her to safety.
“I think it’s too much,” the 72-year-old woman said. “What I see is someone who is very scared and very angry.”
Angelmarie Taylor, a student from the California State University Islands, is also a line of protests. She said she saw several agents Jonathan Anthony Caravello jump on her professor Jonathan Anthony Caravello after she tried to retrieve the tear gas can from under her personal wheelchair.
She said agents fired tear gas after Caravello and others refused to move out of the agent’s vehicle. She said there was no warning about the performance of force.
“They didn’t give us a dispersion order. They said nothing,” she said.
Caravello, 37, was held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles.
U.S. District Court Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued an interim order Friday to find that agents are using race, language, a person’s career or location, such as a car wash or Home Depot, to form “reasonable suspicion”, the legal standard required to detain someone.
Frimpong said that dependence on these factors, both individually and in combination, does not meet the requirements of the Fourth Amendment. Her ruling also means that those detained in downtown federal detention centers must have 24 hours of attorney and confidential telephone lines.
Norm accused the judge of “make up for the trash” on Saturday.
“We will comply with the orders of all federal judges,” Nome said.
“We will attract it, we will win,” Nome added.
Mexican Times worker Patrick McDonnell contributed to the report.
