On January 7th, over 65 Border Patrol agents traveled roughly 320 miles from their headquarters to Bakersfield to conduct what they called a “highly targeted” raid on immigrants with criminal and deportation records.
Two days ago, we brought you a must-watch 16-minute documentary – with a detailed analysis of 50+ civilian videos and Department of Homeland Security data – that exposes significant discrepancies between official accounts and the reality of the immigration raid.
And we just published a follow-up story: The Department of Homeland Security told a federal court it will retrain more than 900 California-based Border Patrol agents after a lawsuit challenged the way the Kern County sweep was conducted.
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The Department of Homeland Security response follows an ACLU lawsuit, filed on behalf of the United Farm Workers and those detained, asking a judge to issue an injunction to prevent the Border Patrol from any similar sweeps in California in the future.
Our new investigation, in partnership with Evident Media and Bellingcat, directly challenges U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s claims about the raid.
In our interview — Sergeant Gregory Bovino, leader of the Border Patrol’s El Centro sector, which conducted the raids — maintained that his agents targeted specific people with criminal and deportation histories.
“Every single one of the 78 that we arrested were criminals. Eight U.S.C. 1325 – illegal entry into the United States,”
he said, citing federal code for what is a misdemeanor offense.
Our investigation showed that the California Border Patrol had no prior knowledge of any criminal or immigration history for 77 of the 78 individuals detained during the three-day raid, information revealed in Department of Homeland Security data that we obtained through public records requests.
Casey Creamer, CEO of California Citrus Mutual, who represents the citrus growers, said he has a different definition of criminal activity. He said the people who work in their operations have been there as long as 30 years, describing them as “hard-working people that don’t deserve to be harassed.” He continued, “If we don’t have a workforce, we don’t have a domestic food supply.”
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