By AMY TAXIN, DAMIAN DOVARGANES and OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press

CAMARILLO, Calif. (AP) — Federal immigration authorities said Friday they arrested about 200 immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally in raids a day earlier on two California cannabis farm sites. Protesters engaged in a tense standoff with authorities at one of the farms during the operation.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that authorities executed criminal search warrants in Carpinteria and Camarillo, California, on Thursday. They arrested immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally and there were also at least 10 immigrant children on site, the statement said.

Four U.S. citizens were arrested for “assaulting or resisting officers,” the department said. Authorities were offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of one person suspected of firing a gun at federal agents. At least one worker was hospitalized with grave injuries.

Federal immigration agents toss tear gas at protesters during a raid in the agriculture area of Camarillo, Calif., Thursday, July 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Owen Baker)

During the raid, crowds of people gathered outside Glass House Farms at the Camarillo location to demand information about their relatives and protest immigration enforcement. A chaotic scene emerged outside the farm that grows tomatoes, cucumbers and cannabis as authorities clad in helmets and uniforms faced off with the demonstrators. Acrid green and white billowing smoke then forced community members to retreat.

On Friday, about two dozen people waited outside the Camarillo farm to collect the cars of their loved ones and speak to managers about what happened. Relatives of Jaime Alanis, who worked picking tomatoes for 10 years, said he called his wife in Mexico during the raid to tell her immigration agents had arrived and that he was hiding with others inside the farm.

“The next thing we heard was that he was in the hospital,” Juan Duran, Alanis’ brother-in-law, said in Spanish, his voice breaking.

Arturo Rangel hugs Judith Ramos whose father works at the greenhouse in the background as federal immigration agents block access during a raid in the agriculture area of Camarillo, Calif., Thursday, July 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Owen Baker)

It was not immediately clear how Alanis was injured. A doctor told the family that others who brought Alanis to the hospital said he had fallen from the roof of a building.

Alanis had a broken neck, fractured skull and a rupture in an artery that pumps blood to the brain, said his niece Yesenia, who didn’t want to share her last name for fear of reprisal.

Maria Servin, 68, said her son Rafael Ortiz has worked at the farm for 18 years and was helping build a greenhouse when federal immigrations agents arrived Thursday.

Related Articles

Alligator Alcatraz evokes racist trope of ‘gator bait’

Think Democrats and Republicans can’t work together? On eviction records, they do

Son of ‘El Chapo’ pleads guilty in US drug trafficking case

Here are some things you can do to be better prepared for major flooding

Texas floodwaters damaged crops and endangered livestock. Now farmers and ranchers are cleaning up

Servin said she spoke to her son, who is undocumented, after hearing of the raid and offered to pick him up. “He said not to come because they were surrounded and there was even a helicopter. That was the last time I spoke to him,” Servin, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, said in Spanish.

She said she went to the farm anyway Thursday, but agents were shooting tear gas and rubber bullets, and she decided it wasn’t safe to stay.

On Friday, she returned with her daughter and was told her son had been arrested. The family still doesn’t know where he is being held or how to contact him. “I regret 1,000 times that I didn’t help him get his documents,” Servin said.

Glass House said in a statement that the company does not violate “applicable hiring practices” and does not employ children.

Taxin reported from Orange County, Calif. and Rodriguez reported from San Francisco.

By Raisa Habersham, Miami Herald

MIAMI — On Sunday, two men stood in front of Alligator Alcatraz to show support for the detention center. One held a sign that read, “Welcome to Paradise. Don’t feed the animals.”

The jokes about alligators attacking immigrants while in detention have been casually tossed around by President Donald Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis and conservative and far-right influencers. The Florida GOP and Attorney General James Uthmeier are cashing in on “Alligator Alcatraz” merchandise, some that prominently feature alligators, to fundraise for campaigns. The ‘gators, in this case, are the good guys. The folks inside the detention center, no matter their story or status, are tempting treats for Florida’s newly deputized reptilian law enforcement.

The mocking of immigrant detainees harks back to “the worst parts of our history” when similar jokes and tropes, such as “gator bait,” were used to dehumanize Black people and desensitize people to the harm and violence inflicted upon them, says ACLU Florida Executive Director Bacardi Jackson.

The “gator bait” trope, which has been well-documented by the Jim Crow Museum in Big Rapids, Michican, implied that Black people don’t deserve protection against the hazards of nature. In the museum’s archive are articles detailing how Black babies, referred to by the slur pickaninnies, were used as bait to lure and kill Florida alligator.

Related Articles

Think Democrats and Republicans can’t work together? On eviction records, they do

Son of ‘El Chapo’ pleads guilty in US drug trafficking case

Here are some things you can do to be better prepared for major flooding

Texas floodwaters damaged crops and endangered livestock. Now farmers and ranchers are cleaning up

Walmart recalls 850,000 water bottles after two consumers suffer vision loss from ejecting lids

The National Museum of African American History and Culture’s archive features postcards depicting Black children sitting near swamps to lure alligators. And the same disregard for humanity is now being applied to detainees who will be housed in the detention center, historian Marvin Dunn told the Miami Herald. “Basically, the same kind of anger, the same kind of resentment is now being transferred to immigrants,” he said.

“These kinds of tropes and jokes were made as a way to keep people from thinking of Black people as human. And now, when we are in this situation where what is happening to immigrant people, who are largely Black and brown people, it’s the same exact thing. It’s the dehumanization,” said Jackson. “It’s the desensitizing [of] folks in the hopes of not having people rise up against such cruelty and treatment of others.”

Jackson said when people see political leaders make light of real danger to people, it gives others permission to be “callous, cold and hateful,” similar to when Gov. Ron Desantis told drivers it was OK to hit protesters during the recent No Kings protests against Trump if they felt they were being endangered.

“You have a right to flee for your safety, and so if you drive off and you hit one of these people, that’s their fault for impinging on you,” DeSantis told a podcast last month.

“It’s the invitation for others to see people as less than human,” Jackson said. “That one creates the environment where a government can come up with more cruel and harmful policies.”

Dunn said the term “gator bait” never left the lexicon, particularly in the South. White nationalists use the term all the time and it is an “inside” joke among certain groups. “Gator bait” entered the national conversation in 2020 amid George Floyd protests nationwide when University of Florida president Kent Fuchs issued a statement saying the university would no longer do their “Gator bait” cheer, which involved fans doing the Gator chomp with their arms to taunt opponents.

Concern about the treatment and conditions the detainees were facing at the detention center caused several state officials to appear outside Alligator Alcatraz and demand entry last week.

Florida state Sen. Shevrin Jones was among five elected state officials who attempted to enter the facility but were shut out. He will return Saturday during a scheduled visit for state legislators. Jones said he’s refusing to call the site “Alligator Alcatraz,” and questions the treatment of immigrants who are kept at the facility.

“It’s baffling to me that individuals have made this a Democrat or Republican issue when we’re talking about humanity and ensuring that individuals are being treated humanely,” said Jones, a Democrat who represents Miami Gardens and other areas in northern Miami-Dade. “It has turned so political where now individuals are justifying inhumane treatment for human beings.”

Jackson said the dehumanization of one group opens the door for more harm to come to everyone.

“Silence is consent. We have to pay attention to what’s happening,” she said.

©2025 Miami Herald. Visit at miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The Science Museum of Minnesota recently announced a $7 million reduction to its operating budget had forced 43 lay-offs, including the discontinuation of an entire department dedicated to program evaluation and another dedicated to equity, access and community outreach.

Add another casualty to that list: summer camps.

Dozens of popular day camps have been a draw for members, who received first crack at sign-ups for week-long, half-day and full-day sessions targeted to kids in different age levels, from pre-kindergarten through sixth grade. Located on Kellogg Boulevard in downtown St. Paul, the Science Museum is offering 42 distinct camps this summer, ranging in topic from cooking and chemistry to carpentry, coding and marine biology and dinosaur artifacts. Most filled up months ago.

“Get ready to think like a chemist while experimenting with gassy reactions, exploring the properties of dry ice, and manipulating some messy mixtures and silly solutions,” reads the description to a camp titled “Reaction Lab.”

Those summer camps will be discontinued next year, confirmed Emma Filar, senior director of communications for the museum, on Friday. The Omni Theater will continue its regular schedule, she said.

Museum officials announced this week that institution’s budget has been buffeted by a drop in visitors, forcing them to rely heavily on their endowment to make ends meet. Four general divisions will be restructured into three. “Museum Infrastructure” will span human resources, accounting, finance and information technology; “Science, Education and Equity” will include exhibit development and STEM education; and “mission advancement” will include marketing, membership and visitor services, as well as exhibit sales to other museums.

While the museum has eliminated a four-person department related to equity and community outreach, Filar noted those tasks will remain interwoven “into everything that we do,” and are explicitly highlighted in the mission of the new “Science, Education and Equity” division.

“We’ll still be focusing on that as an institution,” Filar said.

Related Articles

‘Stuff the Bus’ collects school supplies for Stillwater area students

Science Museum of Minnesota lets go 43 people, downsizes by $7 million

Richard D. Thompson has stepped down as History Theatre’s artistic director

St. Paul Rookies Fastpitch ‘most likely’ ending after more than 40 years

New artists at Pine Needles include an illustrator, a mapmaker and a storyteller

A group of scouts descended on the Twin Cities from out of town and members from across the organization — the scouting department, player development staff, research and development team and more — came together this week to kick draft preparation into a higher gear.

On Sunday, the Twins will add the next wave of talent to the organization when the draft begins, making their first selection at No. 16 overall with another pick coming at No. 36 overall, a Competitive Balance Round A selection.

Unlike some drafts, there seems to be no consensus at the top of the draft, which opens up the door for any number of scenarios for the Twins with their pick midway through the first round.

“We’re always going into the draft ready for things to not go the way we think they will or even (according to) the Plan B that we come up with,” assistant general manager Sean Johnson, who oversees the draft, said. “I think that will be the case again this year, just because we know inside the top-10, those names are somewhat interchangeable and depending on who takes certain deals and who doesn’t, it may push some players toward us that may get closer to us than we would have imagined.”

That’s what this past week of draft prep was for.

They ran through their board with names falling off randomly, Johnson said, or used a third-party list to go through the players and different situations so that when they’re faced with a certain scenario Sunday, they’ve likely already talked about it.

“That’s something you couldn’t do 25 years ago with a magnetic board,” Johnson said. “We can run about anything we want to now to help us mentally prepare for the real exercise.”

There’s also plenty of room for discussion amongst the room as talent evaluators sift through their lists and the Twins try to set their board.

With the strength of this draft class, Johnson believes the Twins were “right in the sweet spot” of the draft.

“Once we get past the top 10, we feel like there’s really good depth at our first pick and our second pick and maybe not a huge delta between the talent level or upside of those players, so we feel like we’re in a really good spot picking,” Johnson said.

Since Johnson took over the scouting department in 2017, there’s been no true pattern to whom the Twins select in the first round. They’ve drafted high school position players (like Royce Lewis and Walker Jenkins), a couple high school pitchers (since-traded Chase Petty, Charlee Soto) and plenty of college bats (now-Athletics all-star Brent Rooker, Trevor Larnach, Matt Wallner, Brooks Lee and last year’s No. 21 overall pick, Kaelen Culpepper).

Middle and later rounds are often more stacked with college pitchers. Some of those arms — Bailey Ober was a 12th-round pick, David Festa was selected in the 13th round and Zebby Matthews in the 8th — are currently impacting the team.

Recent mock drafts have connected them to Tennessee infielder Gavin Kilen (ESPN), UC Santa Barbara right-handed pitcher Tyler Bremner (MLB.com) and Arizona outfielder Brendan Summerhill (The Athletic).

“We’ve learned that you just can’t predict how these things are going to go … even when they seem straightforward, which this draft is not, more so than most,” Johnson said. “We’ll be ready for how the chips fall and try to stay nimble.”

Related Articles

Twins can’t complete sweep as Cubs’ bats finally wake up

Byron Buxton misses Cubs series finale with hand bruise. Will he be back this weekend?

Byron Buxton leaves game with injury, Twins beat Cubs once again

Joe Ryan is an All Star for Twins after initially getting snubbed

Inver Grove Heights turns out for Simley star Michael Busch’s homecoming