Farmworker Dies After Fleeing a Federal Raid in Southern California

During a chaotic raid in Ventura County on Thursday, the worker fell from a greenhouse at a cannabis farm, suffered spinal and skull injuries, and died on Friday.

A Mexican farmworker died on Friday from injuries sustained during a federal immigration raid the day before in an agricultural region north of Los Angeles, according to the United Farm Workers union.

The farmworker, Jaime Alanís, fell several stories to the ground from a greenhouse on Thursday, when federal agents raided a state-licensed cannabis farm in Ventura County.

“During the chaos, he fell 30 feet or more, and experienced devastating spinal and skull injuries,” Elizabeth Strater, a United Farm Workers vice president, said in an interview.

An official familiar with the circumstances of the farmworker’s death said he was from the Mexican state of Michoacán, had been working at the farm for more than a decade and had been trying to flee from agents when he fell. He was in his late 50s.

Ms. Strater said that after the fall, he was transported to a hospital, where he was on life support for a time, and he died on Friday.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said he had not been in federal custody and denied that the agents involved in the raid were the reason he climbed the greenhouse. “Although he was not being pursued by law enforcement, this individual climbed up to the roof of a greenhouse and fell 30 feet,” she said in a statement. Agents called for help, she added, “to get him care as quickly as possible.”

The Ventura County coroner’s office said that it had yet to receive a death report in Mr. Alanís’ name.

Andrew Dowd, a spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department, said that eight people had been transferred to area hospitals in response to 911 calls on Thursday, and that four other people had been treated at the scene.

In a statement, Teresa Romero, president of the U.F.W., said that several farmworkers had been critically injured, and that others, including U.S. citizens, remained unaccounted for after the enforcement actions. She said those citizens who were detained “were forced to delete photos and videos of the raid from their phones” before being released.

The Trump administration last month began to aggressively target work sites in California, including farms, as it seeks to sharply bolster the number of arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants. President Trump has said that he wanted to allow some farmworkers to stay in the country legally. However, raids in agricultural areas have persisted.

Federal agents, backed by National Guard troops in military-style vehicles, raided two locations operated by Glass House Farms on Thursday. One was in Camarillo, a Ventura County town about 50 miles outside Los Angeles, and another was in Carpinteria, a town in Santa Barbara County.

Yesenia Duran, who described herself as Mr. Alanís’s niece on a GoFundMe page she created before his death, said her uncle “was just a hard-working, innocent farmer. He has his wife and daughter waiting for him.” Ms. Duran wrote that her uncle was his family’s provider, adding, “We need justice.”

News of the raids on Thursday rapidly spread, prompting protesters and community members to rush to the scenes. Clashes broke out between hundreds of protesters and the agents.

During the confrontation in the Camarillo area, one protester was seen on video appearing to fire a pistol at officers. The Department of Homeland Security said on Friday that the protester fired a gun at law enforcement officers and that the F.B.I. was offering $50,000 for information leading to the person’s arrest. The agency said four U.S. citizens were being criminally processed for assaulting or resisting officers and that the protesters had damaged vehicles.

“At least 10 migrant children were rescued from potential exploitation, forced labor, and human trafficking,” homeland security officials said in a statement.

Glass House Farms said late Thursday that its greenhouses had been visited by federal authorities with search warrants and that the company had fully complied. It is legal for licensed companies to grow cannabis in California.

Our Coverage of U.S. Immigration

• Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia: The Justice Department has insisted that the indictment filed against Abrego Garcia was a necessary tool to seek accountability against someone who was supposedly a dangerous criminal. But recent developments suggest that the department is not quite as committed to pursuing the prosecution as it initially seemed.
• Showing Their Faces: Elected officials in New York and California are trying to upend President Trump’s deportation campaign by banning law enforcement officers from wearing masks in public.
• Raids at Church: The Diocese of San Bernardino has told its parishioners that they do not have to attend Mass for fear of federal raids. The lifting of the obligation for Catholics is a rare step usually reserved for extenuating circumstances.
•  Venezuelan Deportations: The Trump administration has insisted in court that it has no control over the nearly 140 Venezuelan immigrants it deported to a prison in El Salvador. Lawyers for the Venezuelan men produced a document seeming to undermine that assertion.
• A New Perspective: One of the reasons Chris Allred voted for Trump was his opposition to illegal immigration. His wife, who is in the country illegally, bumped up against these views.
• Deportation Protections Ended: The Trump administration ended protections for migrants from Honduras and Nicaragua that shielded them from deportation and allowed them to work.

Related Content