{"id":494031,"date":"2026-10-12T23:22:58","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T23:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/494031\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T23:22:58","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T23:22:58","slug":"what-do-fresno-area-leaders-say-about-ice-raids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/494031\/","title":{"rendered":"What do Fresno area leaders say about ICE raids?"},"content":{"rendered":"

FRESNO, Calif. \u2013 Days after federal immigration agents launched a mass raid in California, including in the Fresno metropolitan area,<\/a> leaders are already revealing the effects the operation is having on the community.<\/p>\n

At a press conference Friday, Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer said he was contacted by one of the owners of Fowler Packing Company south of the city to say a number of workers had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Others were refusing to show up to work out of fear of the same thing happening to them, Dyer was told.<\/p>\n

Alma Beltran, the mayor of Parlier, a city with a roughly 98 percent Latino population, said she received numerous messages from residents afraid to leave their homes. She has learned one of the residents in her city who was in a nursing program was detained and is facing deportation.<\/p>\n

Scenes like those are playing out in multiple cities in the San Joaquin Valley. Manuel Cunha, Jr., president of the farm advocacy group Nisei Farmers League in Fresno, said he estimates roughly 100 people have been detained in just the past few days.<\/p>\n

KVPR contacted DHS\u2019s Northern California regional office to confirm the number of detainments and the scope of enforcement operations.<\/p>\n

Spokesperson Jason B. Sweeney highlighted five men who were detained, and who had criminal histories, but said \u201cfor operational security and the safety of our officers, ICE will not disclose or discuss law enforcement operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mass operation is expected to last 45 days, according to some reports. Most people are being taken to a processing center in downtown Fresno, where residents have held daily vigils.<\/p>\n

\"Individuals<\/p>\n

Israel Cardona Hernadnez<\/p>\n

\/<\/p>\n

KVPR <\/p>\n

Individuals detained by federal immigration agents are transported to an immigration processing center in downtown Fresno, Calif.<\/p>\n

Cunha, Jr., said he was \u201cextremely disappointed\u201d that the operation seems to be targeting specific individuals, such as Latinos and those at or near work sites.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless you’re one of those folks of color, you don’t know what they\u2019re seeing and what’s going on, but it’s real,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Community leaders with the faith nonprofit Faith in the Valley, said ICE detainments have happened in Selma, Kerman, Fresno, Madera and Chowchilla. Residents have reported seeing ICE agents in streets as far as Visalia.<\/p>\n

Members of the nonprofit say they have witnessed ICE agents conducting \u201croving patrols\u201d and traffic stops. Most have happened at gas stations, construction sites and roadsides.<\/p>\n

The operation in Central California is happening as harvest season winds down for most of the season crops produced during spring and summer. Citrus harvesting \u2013 which is a year-round crop \u2013 is expected to pick up in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

Democratic Rep. Jim Costa said he\u2019s concerned about the impact the immigration raids are having on the region, and the larger economy. He said keeping a stable agriculture industry is a matter of national security, and pushed during Friday\u2019s press conference in Fresno for bipartisan legislation in Congress, such as the Dignity Act<\/a> and the Farmworker Modernization Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He said those are solutions to a broken immigration system. He urged Congress to get workers on a path to legal status to avoid inflicting greater economic pain. He said a large majority of those being detained by ICE have no criminal records.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than half of those arrested \u2013 more than half \u2013 had neither been charged nor convicted of any crimes,\u201d Costa said. \u201cFewer than four percent had a violent criminal conviction, and that’s the worst of the worst.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cato Institute, a nonpartisan public policy research firm, reported roughly similar figures last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A large majority of the agricultural workforce in the country is foreign born, and many lack legal status. One estimate by the Center for Migration Studies<\/a> suggests as many as 86 percent are foreign-born, with about 45 lacking legal status. Costa and other officials noted it has been decades since the last meaningful immigration reform under President Ronald Reagan.<\/p>\n

Costa said the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to go after \u201cthe worst\u201d in the current deportation campaign is missing the mark.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe worst of the worst are not mothers and fathers heading to work to provide an income for their families. The worst of the worst are not hardworking people who have spent years contributing to our communities and our economy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Dyer, the mayor of Fresno, a city with half a million residents, said he has seen videos of children crying as their parents were detained by immigration agents in recent days. He said those incidents will leave lasting trauma.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s something that they will remember their entire life, and it also causes them to distrust law enforcement,\u201d Dyer, the city\u2019s former police chief, said.<\/p>\n

One ICE agent was shot by a homeowner in Fresno on Friday <\/a>after he was found sleeping on the front lawn. Police said the agent appeared \u201cintoxicated and agitated\u201d during a physical confrontation with the homeowners.<\/p>\n

The immigration raids come as residents are also facing high costs for fuel and groceries and as they head to the polls in a matter of weeks for the 2026 midterms.<\/p>\n

Dyer said the economic pain is already hard enough for residents, let alone the lasting disruption the raids could have. Some images have even captured ICE agents detaining people at construction sites in Madera County.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s unnecessary and it is unacceptable, and is that really what we voted for in America? I don’t believe so. I know I didn’t,\u201d Dyer said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO, Calif. \u2013 Days after federal immigration agents launched a mass raid in California, including in the Fresno…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1752,383,112,114,113,2871,3982,14,10332,15716,192197,8996],"class_list":["post-494031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-congress","tag-economy","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-ice","tag-immigrant","tag-immigration","tag-jerry-dyer","tag-jim-costa","tag-manuel-cunha","tag-raids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494031","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=494031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}