Standing outside the Glass House Farms exactly a year later, Noemi Tungüi remembered using a bullhorn to yell out phone numbers for people being arrested to call.
Tungüi of Oxnard was one of many people who came to the Camarillo-area farm on July 10, 2025, to help the hundreds of people detained in what ranked as one of the Trump administration’s largest immigration raids.
She remembered the buses used by immigration police to take undocumented people away. She talked too of the wash stations set up along Laguna Road outside the farm to help people hit by tear gas.
Most powerful are the memories of people who came to Laguna Road that day because they had family members inside and were worried they wouldn’t see them again.
“I remember a kid coming up to me crying,” Tungüi said. “He said my parents are in there.”
More than 100 people gathered outside the cannabis farm for a vigil on the night of July 10. Many wore orange to show their support for immigrants. Some wore paper monarch butterflies of the same color in their hair.
Many of people were on the same road exactly a year ago on the morning of July 10, 2025, when federal authorities raided the Glass House operation here and a sister farm in Carpinteria. More than 360 people were detained, most of them from the Camarillo area site.
During the raid, terrified workers hid in underground water tanks. Others, including Jamie Alanis Garcia, hid on greenhouse roofs. Garcia, 56, fell to the concrete and died two days later. At the vigil, his photo sat on a pedestal framed by flowers.
A year ago, hundreds of protesters, family members of workers and others amassed on Laguna Road during the raid, creating a standoff with federal personnel who blocked off the road on either side of the farm.
The federal agents released tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd. Some of the protesters hurled profanities at the agents. Some threw rocks at vehicles. Federal authorities alleged someone in the crowd shot a gun.
Jonathan Caravello, a professor at CSU Channel Islands in Camarillo, was arrested during the raid on suspicion of assaulting federal agents by throwing a tear gas cannister at them. He was acquitted after a trial in April.
Caravello came to the vigil too. And though he is legally free, sometimes he doesn’t feel like it because of the ongoing immigration crackdown.
“I don’t feel like I’ll be free until people can go to work without fear that they’re going to be kidnapped,” he said.
During the vigil, activists and others talked about the solidarity that was born out of the Glass House raid and other immigration enforcement.
People realized the reality of the crackdown and decided they had to do something, said Leo Martinez, a longtime volunteer with the VC Defensa coalition of groups that support the immigrant and refugee communities. He said the number of people offering to help surged.
“The community came together,” he said.
Denae Lassen of Camarillo volunteers with VC Defensa and with the 805 UndocuFund nonprofit that also supports the undocumented community and organized the vigil. She came to help at the raid a year ago and was there all day and most of the night.
She remembered the tear gas and the people being detained. She also remembered the feeling of helping and the bonds that formed.
“It was like fierce community,” she said. “We are together to the very end.”
After the speeches and the tears, the people gathered at the vigil walked to the edge of Laguna Road. Each held a small battery-operated candle.
To show they will continue to stand together, they stretched along the road with their candles glowing.
Tom Kisken covers health care and other news for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tom.kisken@vcstar.com.
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This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Pain of Glass House immigration raid still lingers one year later
Reporting by Tom Kisken, Ventura County Star / Ventura County Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Tom Kisken, Ventura County Star | USA TODAY Network
