Federal immigration officials carrying out raids on two southern California cannabis farms clashed with protesters, firing chemical munitions that sprayed what looked like smoke into the air to disperse the crowd.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents accompanied by national guard troops in military-style vehicles turned up at two locations operated by Glass House Farms, one in the Santa Barbara county town of Carpinteria, about 90 miles (145km) north-west of Los Angeles, and one in the Ventura county community of Camarillo, about 50 miles from LA.
Television images showed dozens of demonstrators gathered on a road between fields where uniformed officers stood in a line across from them. In other images, white and green smoke could be seen as protesters retreated, and others showed protesters shouting at agents wearing camouflage gear, helmets and gas masks. It wasn’t clear why authorities threw the canisters or whether they released chemicals.
An image from KTLA showed people sitting against a wall with their hands bound in front of them; it wasn’t clear whether they were workers or protesters. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.
Writing on the social media platform X, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, shared video of children fleeing from chemical agents fired by federal agents at protesters on Thursday during the immigration raid in Camarillo.
“Kids running from tear gas, crying on the phone because their mother was just taken from the fields,” Newson commented on the images. “Trump calls me ‘Newscum’ – but he’s the real scum.”
Glass House Farms said on social media that it was visited Thursday by officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and “fully complied with agent search warrants”.
The company has a permit to grow cannabis in Ventura county, and as of last year used half of the space for cannabis and half for tomatoes and cucumbers, the Ventura County Star reported.
Judith Ramos said she received a call Thursday morning from her father, who worked in the tomato fields.
“He said immigration was outside his job, and if anything happened to take care of everything,” Ramos said, her voice cracking. The 22-year-old certified nurse assistant said she has two young siblings.
Ramos went to the farm and saw a busload of people being taken out. She was protesting alongside others when agents sprayed the deterrent.
“They didn’t want us to get any closer, and they started firing,” Ramos said. “I got some in my eyes. I had to put milk on my face.”
Ramos said she did not know where her father was and had not had contact with him for more than an hour. His truck was still at the worksite, she said.
It was not immediately known which agencies participated in the raid.
At a farm in Carpinteria, Salud Carbajal, a Democratic representative, was denied entry to the area by federal agents, a scene captured on video by the Santa Barbara Independent.
“ICE was conducting a raid using disproportionate displays of force against local farm workers and our agricultural community,” Carbajal said in a statement after the incident. “As a member of Congress and representative of the Central Coast, I have the right to conduct oversight and see first-hand what ICE was doing here. As soon as I walked up, I was denied entry and was not allowed to pass. This was completely unacceptable.”
“And let me be clear,” Carbajal added, “these militarized ICE raids are not how you keep our communities safe. This kind of chaos only traumatizes families and tears communities apart. They are also a gross misuse of limited resources and a betrayal of the values that define us as Americans.”
Two members of the Carpinteria city council, Julia Mayer and Mónica Solórzano, were also present, they told the Santa Barbara Independent. As the officers pushed the crowd back, they also threw a smoke grenade, causing Solórzano to fall and injure her right arm, she said.
“They were pushing toward each of us and we were standing,” Solórzano said. “They pushed us as a group into the ground.”
“It was loud,” Mayer said. “We were just trying to be out here to support our communities.”
The incident comes as federal immigration enforcement agents have ramped up arrests in southern California, heading to car washes, farms and Home Depot parking lots to take people into custody while stoking widespread fear among immigrant communities.
The Trump administration has had the national guard providing protection for federal immigration agents carrying out the raids, and this week it sent a large caravan with guns and horses to a park in Los Angeles.
Andrew Dowd, spokesperson for the Ventura county fire department, said his agency was dispatched around 12.15pm Thursday to the area to provide emergency medical aid. Crews took three people to nearby hospitals, he said, and the incident was ongoing.
Dowd said he had no information on the types of injuries or medical emergencies sustained, and he did not have any details of the people sent to hospitals. He said he had no information on what law enforcement was doing there.
