BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) \u2014 One year after U.S. Border Patrol carried out a three-day immigration enforcement operation in Kern County, residents and advocates say its effects are still being felt across the community.<\/p>\n
The January 2025 operation, dubbed \u201cReturn to Sender,\u201d resulted in the detention of 78 people and later prompted a lawsuit by the United Farm Workers Foundation. The suit led to a federal injunction restricting similar enforcement actions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in California\u2019s Eastern District. The federal government has since moved to lift that injunction, with a hearing scheduled for Feb. 5.<\/p>\n
For Sara Fuentes, manager of a Chevron gas station near Merle Haggard Drive and Highway 65 in Bakersfield, the memory of that week remains vivid.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you kind of think back to that year and you look at sort of everything that’s happened since then, what kind of runs through your head about what that operation here really was?\u201d Fuentes said. \u201cWhat it really was? That we lived it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jan. 7, 2025, began as a typical morning at the station, with field and farmworkers stopping in for breakfast. That changed when Border Patrol agents began stopping customers outside the store, blocking vehicles and detaining people.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was just actually standing there, looking, and I asked her, what\u2019s going on,\u201d Fuentes recalled of a coworker who witnessed the arrests. \u201cShe was, \u2018I don\u2019t know, what\u2019s going on? Why are they arresting these people?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Fuentes said she initially believed the activity would pass quickly, but the enforcement continued for three days and spread widely across social media. At the conclusion of the operation, Border Patrol said agents were targeting individuals with criminal and immigration histories.<\/p>\n
But businesses reported an immediate downturn.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey didn\u2019t come in,\u201d Fuentes said of customers. \u201cSome of them, I heard, stayed home. They didn\u2019t go out the whole week. They were scared.\u201d<\/p>\n
The economic impact extended well beyond individual storefronts, according to Aaron Hedge, executive director of the Grimm Family Center for Agricultural Business.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I were to estimate, for the economy, if all these individuals stayed at home for a week, then we\u2019re looking at at least maybe a $10 million to $15 million impact onto the broader economy,\u201d Hedge said.<\/p>\n
Hedge estimates Kern County has roughly 50,000 farmworkers and believes as many as half may not have worked or gone out during that week. Some farms, he said, reported 30% to 40% of workers failing to show up, leaving crops unharvested.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo there may be an element of those farms who didn\u2019t see 30 to 40% of their workers coming in for even a week,\u201d Hedge said. \u201cThat means a lot of the fruit didn\u2019t get picked.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the months that followed, an independent investigation challenged Border Patrol\u2019s account of the arrests. The investigation found that 77 of the 78 people detained had no prior criminal or immigration history, a discrepancy that became central to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that so many individuals that were arrested as part of these raids had no prior criminal history, did not have warrants against them, signals that this has been a constitutional, unconstitutional practice,\u201d said Edgar Aguilas Ocho, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs.<\/p>\n
A federal judge ultimately issued an injunction halting similar raids. Aguilas Ocho said the Kern County operation foreshadowed recent enforcement-related incidents in other states, including Minnesota and Oregon.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was a foreseeable harm that was caused specifically by the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s unlawful, unconstitutional raid in these communities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Civil rights leader Dolores Huerta said the operation intensified fear among immigrant communities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt creates more fear about what ICE can do to our people in this community,\u201d Huerta said.<\/p>\n
She added that recent high-profile cases underscore those concerns. \u201cIf this can happen to an Anglo woman in Minnesota, then imagine how people of color and farmworkers here feel,\u201d Huerta said.<\/p>\n
Hedge said broader national trends could worsen labor shortages if enforcement actions continue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve noticed in the U.S. \u2014 about 1.2 million undocumented migrants have left the country in the last year, and not as many are coming across the border,\u201d he said. \u201cIf this continues for another three, four, or five years, it will be harder to get ag labor.\u201d<\/p>\n
The raids have also spurred legislative action in California, including Assembly Bill 49, which bars immigration agents from entering schools without a warrant, and renewed scrutiny of the federal H-2A farmworker visa program.<\/p>\n
Rep. David Valadao said agriculture\u2019s reliance on migrant labor should not be undermined by enforcement policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s huge gaps in the system that we need to resolve,\u201d Valadao said. \u201cThat\u2019s some of the things that farm worker modernization helps us with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Valadao said immigration cases can be complex and sometimes involve past criminal records, while others raise questions about enforcement priorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve heard a couple of them where it was a grandma in California that I couldn\u2019t find anything wrong and I didn\u2019t understand,\u201d he said. \u201cSo obviously we would reach out to the administration.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the injunction has reduced enforcement activity in Kern County, Fuentes said the emotional toll of the January 2025 operation lingers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever\u2019s going on out there, we already lived it,\u201d she said. \u201cNot as violently as recent activities, but we lived it. We know what they\u2019re going through. It\u2019s really sad what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s motion to lift the injunction is scheduled to be heard Feb. 5.<\/p>\n
Stay in Touch with Us Anytime, Anywhere:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) \u2014 One year after U.S. Border Patrol carried out a three-day immigration enforcement operation in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,155,153,152,162],"class_list":{"0":"post-131157","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bakersfield","8":"tag-bakersfield","9":"tag-bakersfield-downtown","10":"tag-bakersfield-headlines","11":"tag-bakersfield-news","12":"tag-kern-county-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}