WASHINGTON, July 11 (Reuters) - A California farmworker died on Friday from injuries sustained a day earlier when U.S. immigration agents raided a cannabis operation and arrested hundreds of workers, according to a farmworker advocacy group.
Dozens of migrant-rights activists faced off with federal agents in rural Southern California on Thursday. It was the latest escalation of President Donald Trump’s campaign to deport all immigrants in the U.S. illegally.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that approximately 200 people in the country illegally were arrested in the raid, which targeted two locations of the cannabis operation Glass House Farms.
Agents also found 10 migrant minors at the farm, the statement said. The facility is under investigation for child labor violations, said Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott in a post on X.
If I dont think people should be able to stay here illegally, but I dont think its right to deport them or make them citizens, then what’s the solution? I can’t tell if people here are simply arguing the system should be left as it was before trump and ICE caused all this or if there is a goal to work towards.
Why shouldn’t they be allowed to be citizens? They already live here. They have jobs and pay taxes. They have lives here
Why is it they can’t live here, or even be citizens? They’re already here, the “right way” is a bureaucratic maze to justify the life you’re already living.
At the very least, they should get resident status here if they’ve been here more than a year. Why not?
The reality is, they’re part of our society already. The only reason to deny them status is to make them even more exploitable
They’re not really here illegally though. Just in a technical sense. It’s only a law.
But who gives a fuck about paper? Americans demand undocumented workers should get to stay. We demand they work our businesses. We vote for / bribe politicians to carve out our own “legality.”
The people brutally raiding immigrants have stated that they will leave farms alone. You have paper that says they’re here illegally, but our entire system says they’re allowed to be here.
Off the top of my head, I can think of two solutions - one obvious one, and one you probably won’t like.
Use due process to find and prosecute the people who are here illegally.
Get rid of the laws that make it illegal for people to stay here.
The system as it was before Trump was certainly favorable to the concentration camp solution we’re using now, so yeah, I think going back to that would be a good start. After that, we can continue improving to one of the other solutions I suggested (or maybe even a third one I didn’t pull out of my ass).