By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press

A U.S. Army veteran who was arrested during an immigration raid at a Southern California marijuana farm last week said Wednesday he was sprayed with tear gas and pepper spray before being dragged from his vehicle and pinned down by federal agents who arrested him.

George Retes, 25, who works as a security guard at Glass House Farms in Camarillo, said he was arriving at work on July 10 when several federal agents surrounded his car and — despite him identifying himself as a U.S. citizen — broke his window, peppered sprayed him and dragged him out.

“It took two officers to nail my back and then one on my neck to arrest me even though my hands were already behind my back,” Retes said.

Massive farm raids led to hundreds being detained

The Ventura City native was detained during chaotic raids at two Southern California farms where federal authorities arrested more than 360 people, one of the largest operations since President Donald Trump took office in January. Protesters faced off against federal agents in military-style gear, and one farmworker died after falling from a greenhouse roof.

The raids came more than a month into an extended immigration crackdown by the Trump administration across Southern California that was originally centered in Los Angeles, where local officials say the federal actions are spreading fear in immigrant communities.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom spoke on the raids at a news conference Wednesday, calling Trump a “chaos agent” who has incited violence and spread fear in communities.

“You got someone who dropped 30 feet because they were scared to death and lost their life,” he said, referring to the farmworker who died in the raids. “People are quite literally disappearing with no due process, no rights.”

Retes was taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, where he said he was put in a special cell on suicide watch and checked on each day after he became emotionally distraught over his ordeal and missing his 3-year-old daughter’s birthday party Saturday.

In this image taken from video provided by United Farm Workers, George Retes speaks about being arrested at an immigration raid at a Southern California marijuana farm during a press conference held over Zoom in Oxnard, Calif., Wednesday, July 16, 2025. (United Farm Workers via AP)

He said federal agents never told him why he was arrested or allowed him to contact a lawyer or his family during his three-day detention. Authorities never let him shower or change clothes despite being covered in tear gas and pepper spray, Retes said, adding that his hands burned throughout the first night he spent in custody.

On Sunday, an officer had him sign a paper and walked him out of the detention center. He said he was told he faced no charges.

Retes met with silence when seeking explanation

“They gave me nothing I could wrap my head around,” Retes said, explaining that he was met with silence on his way out when he asked about being “locked up for three days with no reason and no charges.”

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed Retes’ arrest but didn’t say on what charges.

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“George Retes was arrested and has been released,” she said. “He has not been charged. The U.S. Attorney’s Office is reviewing his case, along with dozens of others, for potential federal charges related to the execution of the federal search warrant in Camarillo.”

A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to halt indiscriminate immigration stops and arrests without warrants in seven California counties, including Los Angeles. Immigrant advocates accused federal agents of detaining people because they looked Latino. The Justice Department appealed on Monday and asked for the order to be stayed.

The Pentagon also said Tuesday it was ending the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops in Los Angeles. That’s roughly half the number the administration sent to the city following protests over the immigration actions. Some of those troops have been accompanying federal agents during their immigration enforcement operations.

Retes said he joined the Army at 18 and served four years, including deploying to Iraq in 2019.

“I joined the service to help better myself,” he said. “I did it because I love this (expletive) country. We are one nation and no matter what, we should be together. All this separation and stuff between everyone is just the way it shouldn’t be.”

Veteran pledges to sue federal authorities for his ordeal

Retes said he plans to sue for wrongful detention.

“The way they’re going about this entire deportation process is completely wrong, chasing people who are just working, especially trying to feed everyone here in the U.S.,” he said. “No one deserves to be treated the way they treat people.”

Retes was detained along with California State University Channel Islands professor Jonathan Caravello, also a U.S. citizen, who was arrested for throwing a tear gas canister at law enforcement, U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli posted on X.

Milk is poured on a protester’s face after federal immigration agents tossed tear gas at protesters during a raid in the agriculture area of Camarillo, Calif., Thursday, July 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Owen Baker)

The California Faculty Association said Caravello was taken away by agents who did not identify themselves nor inform him of why he was being taken into custody. Like Retes, the association said the professor was then held without being allowed to contact his family or an attorney.

Caravello was attempting to dislodge a tear gas canister that was stuck underneath someone’s wheelchair, witnesses told KABC-TV, the ABC affiliate in Los Angeles.

A federal judge on Monday ordered Caravello to be released on $15,000 bond. He’s scheduled to be arraigned Aug. 1.

“I want everyone to know what happened. This doesn’t just affect one person,” Retes said. “It doesn’t matter if your skin is brown. It doesn’t matter if you’re white. It doesn’t matter if you’re a veteran or you serve this country. They don’t care. They’re just there to fill a quota.” ___ Associated Press writer Jamie Ding contributed from Los Angeles.

By STEVE PEOPLES and LINLEY SANDERS, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Only about one-quarter of U.S. adults say that President Donald Trump’s policies have helped them since he took office, according to a new poll that finds underwhelming marks for him on key issues, including the economy, immigration, government spending and health care.

In fact, the Republican president fails to earn majority approval on any of the issues included in the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. He’s even slipped slightly since earlier this year on immigration, which has consistently been a strength for him in his second term.

And while a majority of Americans do see Trump as at least “somewhat” capable of getting things done following the passage of his sprawling budget bill, fewer believe he understands the problems facing people like them.

Most don’t see positive impact from Trump’s policies

Roughly half of U.S. adults report that Trump’s policies have “done more to hurt” them since his second term began six months ago, the survey found. About 2 in 10 say his policies have “not made a difference” in their lives, with about one-quarter saying his policies have “done more to help” them.

The vast majority of Democrats and about half of independents say Trump’s policies have had a negative impact, while even many Republicans say they haven’t seen positive effects.

President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Bahrain’s Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, July 16, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

“As it sits today, I don’t know his policies have made much of a difference in my day-to-day life,” said Landon Lindemer, a 29-year-old logistics manager from suburban Atlanta who voted for Trump three times.

Lindemer said he generally approves of Trump’s job performance, even if he has concerns about the massive spending in the big bill the president signed into law on July 4.

“I’m not sold it’s really going to help,” he said.

Low but steady presidential approval ratings

The mixed reviews on Trump’s policies come as he struggles to follow through on key campaign promises, including lowering costs for working-class Americans, preserving popular social welfare programs like Medicaid, ending foreign wars and lowering government spending.

Inflation rose last month to its highest level since February as Trump’s sweeping tariffs push up the cost of everything from groceries and clothes to furniture and appliances. Separately, Trump’s budget bill included Medicaid cuts that will lead to 11.8 million more Americans becoming uninsured and add $3.3 trillion to the national debt, the Congressional Budget Office estimated.

President Donald Trump holds his signed his signature bill of tax breaks and spending cuts at the White House, Friday, July 4, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

At the same time, violent conflicts still rage in Israel and Ukraine.

Overall, the new poll finds that about 4 in 10 U.S. adults approve of Trump’s job performance, a figure that’s in line with his June approval but historically weak compared with recent presidents. Closer to half of U.S. adults approved of President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama at roughly the same point in their Democratic presidencies, according to polls from AP-NORC and Gallup, although Biden’s approval rating declined in the second half of his first year and remained low for the rest of his time in office.

Poll respondent Bailey Neill, a 42-year-old attorney from San Antonio, said he was “terrified” of Trump.

Neill, a Democrat who describes himself as a “student of history,” cast Trump as an authoritarian who has followed the controversial playbook outlined in Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for transformative changes across the federal government that Trump tried to distance himself from before the November election.

“In terms of my day-to-day life, I really haven’t seen a change, except for the general fear and anxiety I feel at a core level,” Neill said.

Most disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration, economy and more

Trump earned less than 50% approval on every issue included in the new AP-NORC poll, including the economy, government spending, trade, taxes, immigration, health care and his handling of the conflict in the Middle East.

Only 43% of U.S. adults said they approved of his handling of immigration, down slightly from the 49% who supported his work on the issue back in March.

Trump also appears to have lost some support for his spending decisions. About 4 in 10 Americans approve of Trump’s handling of government spending, down from 46% in March.

On the economy overall, roughly 4 in 10 adults approve of Trump’s performance, which hasn’t changed measurably in the last few months.

Timothy Dwyer, of Dyersburg, Tennessee, a 26-year-old self-described independent who works in retail sales and leans Republican, said Trump’s work on the economy, especially his tariffs, has “really sucked.”

“He’s turned us into a toilet and has absolutely made us the laughing stock of the world,” Dwyer said of Trump’s trade policies, while also lamenting the president’s work on reducing grocery prices and health care.

Most view Trump as effective, but fewer think he understands their needs

Despite such criticism, most U.S. adults think Trump is at least somewhat effective.

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About 6 in 10 say “capable of getting things done” describes Trump at least “somewhat” well. And about half of U.S. adults say the same about the phrases “good negotiator” or “capable of handling a crisis.”

That doesn’t mean they believe Trump can see things from their perspective.

Most Americans, 56%, say “understands the problems facing people like you” is a phrase that describes Trump “not very well” or “not well at all.” His numbers on the question are relatively weak even among those in his party: Just about half of Republicans say he understands the problems facing people like them “extremely” or “very” well.

“I think he’s doing quite well. He could be doing a hell of a lot worse,” said poll respondent Levi Fischer, of Marshalltown, Iowa, who voted for Trump three times.

Still, Fischer acknowledged that he hasn’t seen the economy improve as quickly as he hoped. Trump’s policies, he said, “don’t make much difference in my life.”

Peoples reported from New York.

The AP-NORC poll of 1,437 adults was conducted July 10-14, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

It was a typical busy summer weekend for me.

But less typical, especially lately, was that I attended soft openings for two east metro restaurants! Dare I say things are looking up in the restaurant world?

Dark Horse Bar & Eatery

The Dark Horse Burger at Dark Horse Bar & Eatery in St. Paul. (Jess Fleming / Pioneer Press)

I really loved this West Seventh bar and was so sad to lose its adorable, urban patio and comfortable atmosphere when it closed this winter.

Happily, the owners of Can Can Wonderland and St. Paul Brewing have teamed with chef Shane Oporto and his fiancée Sarah McDonough to bring Dark Horse back from the dead.

Oporto, who was the chef de cuisine when La Belle Vie closed and helmed the kitchen at Octo Fish Bar in Lowertown, also developed the excellent burger at DeGidio’s on West Seventh.

The new menu is full of great bar food — lots of bar snacks, pizza and sandwiches — including a burger and the excellent lobster roll that was on the Octo menu. McDonough is a front-of-the-house maven whose most recent position was general manager at Can Can Wonderland. The pair met while Oporto was working at La Belle Vie.

The space has been brightened a bit, and some funky gold booths and a gorgeous mural added. But it has kept its vibe (and many of the previous tall wooden booths).

We started our meal with some elote shishito peppers, which are your basic fried shishitos, tossed with Tajin spice, crumbly cotija cheese and cilantro. In a brilliant move, the elote sauce, which tends to make things messy, is offered as a dipping sauce so that you can still comfortably pick up the peppers by the stem and eat them as God intended — no fork required.

We ate a lot of pizza at the previous iteration of Dark Horse, so it only felt right to get one here.

The crust is an airy Neapolitan style, and it’s excellent. We ordered the Paisano, which is topped with a generous amount of house-made sausage, pepperoni and spicy Calabrian peppers.

Wondrous Punch at Dark Horse Bar & Eatery in St. Paul’s Lowertown. (Jess Fleming / Pioneer Press)

And yes, we did order the burger. It is a Very. Serious. Burger. Oporto and his crew are grinding brisket, sirloin and chuck fresh every day. It’s a smash burger so it has those crispy edges, but it’s still incredibly juicy. And the cheese! It’s a slow-melted combo of Taleggio and two-year Vermont cheddar that envelops the patty in the very best way. There are caramelized onions for a little sweetness and tasty burger sauce all on a pillowy brioche bun. It was worth every calorie.

The cocktails here are excellent, too. If you were ever a patron of the Red Dragon, you should order the Wondrous Punch, which comes with a surprise mini order of cream-cheese wontons. The punch tastes very close to the Red Dragon version, but in an upscale way.

I also adored my Spanish G&T, made with Skaalven yuzu gin and house-made tonic.

As I told Oporto, I’ll be back. Often. You should go, too. It’s open to the public now, for dinner Tuesday-Sunday and lunch and dinner on the weekends.

Dark Horse Bar & Eatery: 250 E. Seventh St., St. Paul; 651-313-7960; darkhorsestp.com

Liliana

You could argue that the Twin Cities does not need another Italian restaurant.

But in the case of Liliana, the new Woodbury restaurant from the people behind St. Paul’s Estelle, you would be wrong.

I attended a soft open for this crisp, clean, yet cozy restaurant this weekend, and I brought along some picky eaters (my adult children) to put it to a true test.

Liliana’s chef, Kenzie Edinger, previously worked as the chef de cuisine at Mucci’s in St. Paul (and at Saint Dinette before its closure), so she knows her way around pasta, all of which is being made in-house. There’s a window into the kitchen so you can see chefs extruding the dough while you’re dining.

My kids weren’t leaving without garlic bread, which in the hands of pastry chef Nok Piyamaporn is far beyond the usual Italian bread slathered in garlic butter. This airy milk bread is sliced into triangles, kissed with garlic butter and tangy cream cheese, then showered in salty grana padano cheese. I got exactly one small wedge before the kids devoured the rest — it was a good sign of things to come.

The crew should apply for a State Fair booth and serve nothing but the sausage-stuffed deep-fried olives here, which make for a lovely beginning snack. The kids didn’t want any but hey, more for us. And the pickiest eater of the bunch didn’t know that the tonnato sauce on the broccolini had tuna in it and ate several stalks anyway. Who could blame her? It was delicious.

We all ordered pastas for our main course. After watching them come out of the kitchen, there really was no other choice.

Mafaldine at Liliana in Woodbury. (Jess Fleming / Pioneer Press)

I ordered the mafaldine pasta, which is long and thin like papardelle, but has fancy curly edges to soak up the bright pomodoro sauce. Those noodles are topped with three giant spicy meatballs, given their kick and slight smokiness by guajillo peppers. I ended up taking more than half of it home, so if you’re not a fan of leftovers, you might want to split it with a friend.

My daughter went with the rotolo, which are pasta roll-ups stuffed with spinach and mozzarella floating in a puddle of slightly spicy arrabiata sauce. She was a fan, and I have a new idea for family dinners.

My husband’s occhi, ricotta-stuffed pasta, was super flavorful. The jalapeno pesto it’s bathed in transports the dish from ho-hum to oh, yum! And a fresh corn salsa makes it feel like summer.

My son, a picky, yet adventurous eater (yes, you can be both), went for the farfalle, which we didn’t realize would be stuffed. He was a fan, though, of the lobster and pork filling, and the creamy fonduta, given a touch of sweetness by calvados (French brandy).

I would have called it a day after all the pasta, but the offspring have sweet tooths, so we ordered the tiramisu and the carrot cake, and both were out-of-this-world delicious. The house-made ladyfingers in the tiramisu were doused with just the right amount of coffee, and the feuilletine (crispy crepe flakes) added the perfect crunch to the light, whipped mascarpone.

Carrot cake is my husband’s favorite dessert, and it’s a minefield of possible mistakes — cake too dry, frosting too sweet, underbaking, too much spice … the list goes on. Thankfully,  Piyamaporn’s version, which employs brown butter and miso to add a savory touch, suffers from none of the above. My husband said it was the best he’s had, and that is a true compliment.

Liliana: 10060 City Walk Drive, Woodbury; 651-493-9089; lilianamn.com

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Two groups must be especially thrilled by the prospect of Zohran Mamdani becoming New York’s next mayor.

The first: young, progressive-leaning voters who gave the charismatic 33-year-old state Assembly member his come-out-of-nowhere victory in last month’s Democratic primary. They want what he wants: rent freezes, free public buses, city-owned grocery stores, tax hikes for corporations and millionaires, curbs on the police, a near doubling of the minimum wage to $30 an hour and the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu.

The second: Republicans who want to make sure that Democrats remain the perfect opposition party — far-left, incompetent, divided, distrusted and, on a national level, unelectable. Remember when Ronald Reagan ran against the “San Francisco Democrats” in 1984 and carried 49 states? Get ready for the GOP to run against “Mamdani Democrats” for several election cycles to come.

That’s a thought that ought to give moderate Democrats pause before they accept Mamdani’s mayoralty as a political fait accompli, or even think of getting behind him. Among the reasons the Democratic Party’s brand has become toxic in recent years is progressive misgovernance in places like Los Angeles; San Francisco; Oakland, California; Portland, Oregon; Seattle; and Chicago. If Mamdani governs on the promises on which he’s campaigned, he’ll bring the same toxicity to America’s biggest city.

How so?

Some of Mamdani’s proposals, like the city-owned groceries, are almost too foolish to mention: Public grocery stores struggle to stock their shelves, can’t compete with private groceries, lack economies of scale and have a recent record of failure in the United States. Other ideas, like free buses, would merely exacerbate the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s shaky finances, which is one reason Kathy Hochul, New York’s Democratic governor, didn’t renew a free bus ride pilot program last year.

Turns out, socialism works no better in Brooklyn than it does in Havana.

But those ideas won’t be as destructive as Mamdani’s other brainstorms. “Freeze the rent,” his popular campaign slogan, applies only to rent-stabilized apartments, which account for about half the city’s rental units. But a rent freeze would have precisely the same effects in New York as it has everywhere else: Particularly in a time of inflation, it would lead landlords to cut costs on maintenance, jack up prices on non-stabilized units, convert rental buildings to condos or co-ops and stop new developments that would require affordable housing.

The upshot won’t be a renter’s paradise. It will be decaying and abandoned buildings, middle-class flight to the suburbs and urban blight.

Then there’s Mamdani’s disdain for corporations and the very rich, epitomized by his view that “I don’t think that we should have billionaires.” For billionaires, that needn’t be too much of a problem: The oysters at Caravaggio will be missed, but there’s always a jet at Teterboro to whisk them to safety, and permanent residency, in Palm Beach.

But for New Yorkers less fortunate, it will be a problem: Roughly 50% of New York City’s income taxes are paid by the top 2% of earners, who already labor under one of the highest city and state tax burdens in the country (15.9% in 2022). When New Yorkers pack up and leave, they take billions in taxable income with them.

As for the other geese laying golden eggs, large corporations employing thousands of workers and paying hefty Manhattan property taxes, they also have exit options: Consider Illinois, which marquee employers like Boeing, Citadel and Caterpillar have all left in recent years.

What about other urban necessities, like public safety? Mamdani has backed away from his earlier support for defunding the police and has made positive noises about Jessica Tisch, the well-regarded police commissioner. But her views on issues like bail reform, the handling of pro-Hamas demonstrations and quality-of-life policing against minor crimes are diametrically opposite to his. It’s a political marriage that, were it to come to pass, would be destined for rapid annulment.

All of this is a shame for New York, which spent decades working its way up from the policy fiascos of the 1960s and ’70s. For Democrats especially, it’s worth remembering that the state of so much of urban America in those decades is part of what fueled years of Republican ascendancy, including all the tough-on-crime policies that progressives later sought to overturn. History doesn’t repeat as farce. It simply repeats as a predictable kind of tragedy.

There’s talk of President Donald Trump offering the incumbent, Mayor Eric Adams, or the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa — or both — jobs in his administration to unite the anti-Mamdani vote behind Andrew Cuomo, the former governor. Why would Trump do that? A Mamdani mayoralty would be the political gift that keeps on giving. The state of the city would become a reflection of the Democratic Party writ large. Every Mamdani utterance would become a test for every Democratic politician, starting with Sen. Chuck Schumer on Israel.

Marxists often counsel: “Sharpen the contradictions.” With Mamdani as mayor, it would be Trump who’d be doing the sharpening.

Bret Stephens writes a column for the New York Times.

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