Kern County immigration sweep halts citrus harvest

By Caleb Hampton

Scores of farmworkers stayed home last week amid an immigration enforcement operation conducted in Kern County by U.S. Border Patrol. Immigration experts said it was the largest operation by an immigration enforcement agency in the Central Valley in years. 

The operation was carried out by Border Patrol’s El Centro sector, which is based in the Imperial Valley along the U.S.-Mexico border and has authority to enforce immigration laws in the country’s interior. The Kern County operation involved “dozens of agents spread out over several hundred square miles,” Gregory Bovino, chief patrol agent of the sector, said last week in a comment on social media. 

During the three-day operation, footage circulated widely on social media of Border Patrol SUVs cruising past orchards and agents apprehending people in parking lots, sowing fear among the largely immigrant farm workforce and bringing work on some farms nearly to a halt.  

“The crew didn’t show up,” said Peter Belluomini, who grows and packs lemons, mandarins and navel oranges east of Bakersfield, and is in the middle of harvesting all three crops. “Instead of 30 people, there were like five,” said Belluomini, referring to workers hired through a farm labor contractor for his citrus harvest. “The rest were hiding at home.”

For a few days, Belluomini said, “we just didn’t get our harvest in the volume we expect.”

Typically, harvest crews put Belluomini’s citrus fruit in bins that are hauled to his packing shed. From there, they are shipped to a distribution point in Southern California, where the fruit is packaged for retail and shipped to grocery stores such as Kroger’s and Trader Joe’s. 

Belluomini, a former president of the Kern County Farm Bureau, said the disruption to his harvest lasted a few days, and he was able to fill his orders with fruit that he had in cold storage. 

“We always have a little inventory,” he said. “If this went on for a whole week instead of two or three days, it would start to have more of an impact on us.”

Work also slowed in the county’s vineyards, which produce much of the nation’s table grapes, with winter pruning crews losing some of their ranks as workers stayed home. “A few people haven’t shown up the last three or four days,” a table grape grower who asked not to be named said Friday. 

The grower said conversations in the vineyards and at coffee shops last week revolved around Border Patrol sightings and rumored arrests. “People are nervous,” he said. 

“It has had an impact throughout the community and throughout the county,” said Rosa Lopez, a Bakersfield-based senior policy advocate for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. She said parents were keeping children home from school, and small business owners were temporarily closing shop. “We don’t want to spread fear,” she said, “but remind folks to stay calm and exercise their rights.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that “Operation Return to Sender” targeted people with criminal
records. The operation led to 78 arrests, the agency said, including people previously convicted of sexual assault, drug offenses, driving under the influence, petty theft, burglary, vandalism and other crimes. Agents seized 36 pounds of marijuana and 7 grams of methamphetamine. 

As agents spread out across Kern County, immigrant advocates said, they also detained people without any criminal history. Lopez said last week she received reports of Border Patrol cars stationed along routes commonly used by farmworkers to commute to work in orchards, vineyards and packinghouses.  

“When farmworkers left their work sites, cars were being pulled over and people were detained,” Lopez said, adding she had spoken with one farmworker who was in a carpool that got pulled over by Border Patrol. “Those who were able to
demonstrate their legal status were not impacted, but their colleagues were.”

An estimated 25 people were detained at a Home Depot in Bakersfield, said Lopez, who has gathered reports from a network of organizations working on the ground with families impacted by the operation. Another seven people—reported to be farmworkers—were arrested at a gas station where workers often gather before and after work in the fields. 

Lopez said Friday she had not received any reports of raids on farm worksites or properties during the Kern County operation. 

Kevin Johnson, professor of immigration law and former dean of the University of California, Davis, School of Law, said the enforcement action appeared to be “more of a dragnet than a targeted operation” based on the numerous collateral arrests in public places. 

“I think a lot of people are surprised that this is taking place right now,” Johnson said last week, noting the ripple effects on Central Valley agriculture. 

The timing of the operation, conducted less than two weeks before Donald Trump is set to begin his second term as president, resurfaced concerns in California’s agriculture sector about an immigration crackdown promised by the president-elect. Trump has vowed to carry out the “largest mass deportation” in U.S. history. 

Bovino, the Border Patrol sector chief, prompted further alarm by commenting last week that additional operations were planned in other Central Valley locations “such as Fresno and especially Sacramento.” In response to criticism of farmworker arrests, Bovino said, “I would highly recommend that anyone without documents get them.”

Industry groups such as the California Farm Bureau have long advocated for legislation that would create legal status and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented farmworkers. No such path currently exists. 

Farmers, elected officials and immigrant advocates have cautioned that deportation of farmworkers, an estimated half or more of whom are undocumented, could imperil farms and threaten the country’s food supply. More than a third of the country’s farmworkers live in California, where the state’s labor-intensive specialty crop sector produces much of the country’s fruits, nuts and vegetables. 

“The success of our local agriculture industry depends on a stable and reliable workforce,” Kern County Farm Bureau President Jenny Holtermann said last week in a statement. “At a time when many local farms are already facing labor shortages, disruptions like these adversely affect local agricultural production.”

Bryan Little, senior director of policy advocacy for the California Farm Bureau and chief operating officer at Farm Employers Labor Service, last week advised employers to “be prepared to do what they can to address employees’ likely concerns” during the Kern County operation. Little said farm employers should ensure that employees are familiar with the farm’s policies for managing visitors at the worksite.

“The Kern County Farm Bureau stands with and supports our local farmworker community,” Holtermann said. She added that she agreed “criminals do not belong in our community.” But, she said, “those two groups—farmworkers and criminals—are not synonymous. Period.”

(Caleb Hampton is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. He may be contacted at champton@cfbf.com.)