US Border Patrol arrests migrants during latest enforcement operation [View all]
Source: ABC News
January 9, 2025, 5:05 PM
Immigrant communities in Kern County, California, are on edge as the U.S. Border Patrol has been seen conducting enforcement operations throughout the region this week. Videos and images that surfaced online appear to show Border Patrol agents apprehending people at various locations throughout the region. United States Customs and Border Protection has confirmed the operations, which officials describe as “targeted.”
“The USBP conducts targeted enforcement arrests of individuals involved in smuggling throughout our areas of operations as part of our efforts to dismantle transnational criminal organizations,” a CBP spokesperson said in a statement. However, Sarah Fuentes, a manager at a Chevron station in Bakersfield, told ABC News she saw Border Patrol officers and agents in plain clothes go up to several of her customers, ask them about their immigration status, and arrest multiple people.
Fuentes says she thought the officers were serving a warrant, but noticed “it was only Hispanics and field workers that they were putting aside.” “Then we seen it again, and we're like, wait a minute, this is a raid, they're picking up random people like the field workers. They don't have an order to do that,” she said in a phone interview. “It's just random people that are walking in that work in the field.”
Fuentes shared photos and videos she took of the incident, including one she says shows a woman who locked herself in her car as a person in plain clothes allegedly urged her to open her door. “10-15 minutes after she refused, they got a Border Patrol truck to park behind her vehicle so she wouldn’t be able to leave,” she said. When press arrived, the agents allegedly let the woman go, according to Fuentes. United Farm Workers members were detained throughout Kern County as part of the operation , the union said in a post on X.
Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-border-patrol-arrests-migrants-latest-enforcement-operation/story?id=117515205
= new reply since forum marked as read