On a sunny morning last July, hundreds of heavily armed immigration agents in camouflage stormed a greenhouse complex in Camarillo, an hour north of Los Angeles. They came with face masks, guns, chemical munitions and armored tactical vehicles, blocking access along a road lined by produce fields.

What unfolded next would irreversibly transform the lives of many there that day.

It was after 10am when Santiago*, an undocumented farmworker from Mexico who had been working at the greenhouse for just three weeks, saw the agents flood in. As they pointed firearms at panicked, scattering workers, he thought they were army soldiers and felt raw fear.

“Fear of what could happen to me, and fear of leaving my daughters behind,” recalled the father of three US citizen girls.

As word of the raid spread, a crowd of protesters gathered outside. Among them was John Caravello, a local university professor. Around 12.50pm, he grabbed a smoking tear gas canister that a border patrol agent had tossed at the protesters and chucked it over agents’ heads – an action that would be dissected from all angles in a trial months later.

By 2.30pm, agents had deployed multiple rounds of chemical munitions at protesters, flanked by hundreds of national guard members. George Retes, a security guard at the greenhouses, drove through the chaos to report for his 3pm shift until he reached a line of agents, who he said shouted conflicting orders.

“It felt like no one was in charge,” said Retes, an army veteran who served in Iraq. “Like a bunch of Privates ... (with) no training, no coordination, no deescalation.”

Aerial footage shows his car soon engulfed in tear gas smoke as he reversed. Within minutes, officers shattered his window, pepper sprayed him and pinned him to the ground.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it picked up 14 minors and 361 adults during the 10 July raids that targeted two facilities owned by Glass House Farms, the state’s largest legal cannabis brand, in Camarillo and Carpinteria. One man died – a 56-year-old farmworker named Jaime Alanis, who fell 30ft from a greenhouse roof.

Over the following days, loved ones searched frantically for Santiago, Caravello and Retes as they suffered dread and panic behind bars. A year later, the three men are still rebuilding their lives.

“Now when I see a car with dark windows, I worry,” Santiago said. “Everything has changed.”

‘They pushed the line further and further’

The capstone to aggressive immigration sweeps in Los Angeles, the Glass House raids epitomized the high-profile, violent tactics that defined the first year of Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

The raids were a “litmus test for what the federal government could get away with,” said Genevieve Flores-Haro, associate director of Mixteco/Indígena Community Organizing Project, a local nonprofit that supports Indigenous Mexican families. “They pushed the line further and further.”

Those heavy-handed strategies backfired after immigration agents shot and killed two US citizens in Minneapolis, sparking political and public outrage. Local leaders say enforcement then pivoted to a quieter, systemic approach of targeted arrests at homes, local jails and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) appointments, echoing national trends.

But fresh funding, a recent surge in arrests and two ICE-involved killings last month have raised the specter of renewed brutality. And the fallout from the cannabis farm raids continues to ripple through this southern California agricultural hub.

Families like Santiago’s struggle to heal amid ongoing ICE arrests. While pro-immigrant networks have swelled with volunteers, activists such as Caravello say they face a federal intimidation campaign, from pre-dawn arrests and raids on organizers’ homes to ICE agents car ramming community patrollers. Meanwhile, Retes is among a handful of people seeking justice after the raids by suing the government.

In response to queries, DHS did not comment on the men’s experiences. However, Lauren Bis, a spokesperson, stated that immigration officers were “assaulted by rioters” while “dodging bullets to save children” during the Camarillo protests, referring to a suspected gunman she accused of firing at agents. She said the investigation into immigration and child labor violations is ongoing.

For all three men, the operation was just the start of grueling ordeals in detention and the courts. Several hours after he threw the gas canister, Caravello said officers tackled him to the ground and took him to an interior lot, where Retes already sat, writhing in pain from chemical irritants burning his skin.

Eventually, agents loaded Retes, Caravello, Santiago and other workers into government vehicles that sped out of the complex as protesters threw rocks. The first stop: a Ventura county naval base. Internal navy correspondence obtained through a record request shows that immigration agents used the base as a “staging area” for the operations and temporarily held around 275 workers there.

Retes and Caravello, both US citizens, were then taken to the Los Angeles Metropolitan detention center, a federal prison. After three torturous days, the security guard was let free without explanation. The professor was released a day later – on bond with pending federal assault charges.

Meanwhile, Santiago and other Glass House workers crowded into frigid basement holding cells in a federal facility in downtown Los Angeles. After four nights, Santiago was shipped to the Adelanto detention center in California, where he would remain for nearly six months.

‘That was visceral’

John Caravello’s life revolved around grassroots activism. A philosophy lecturer at California State University, Channel Islands, he had protested Israel’s assault on Gaza alongside students, and had been patrolling neighborhoods to alert residents to ICE operations in the months before the raids.

But during dark moments in the Los Angeles prison, he felt tempted to retreat from political life. Upon release, nightmares about his brief incarceration disrupted his sleep. In September, a grand jury indicted him for felony assault. He faced up to 20 years behind bars.

“That was visceral,” recalled Caravello, 38. “Whiplash.”

But a friend’s words anchored him, becoming a personal mantra: “John, we can’t operate from fear. You have to operate from a place of power.”

Nationwide, hundreds of protesters have been arrested for impeding or assaulting immigration officers, but prosecutors have struggled to secure convictions.

Caravello’s April trial was no different. Prosecutors claimed he aimed the canister at agents; his defense argued that video showed he threw it over their heads in self-defense. In body-camera footage played for the jury, an agent said: “We’ll fucking gas the shit out of them like we did earlier.”

The jury deliberated for two hours before finding Caravello not guilty. Tears streamed down his face.

With the threat of prison no longer looming, Caravello renewed his commitment to community organizing. He is helping build a cross-union legal network for workers facing political persecution, while writing a book about his experience. He joined a class-action lawsuit challenging Trump’s short-lived “anti-weaponization” fund.

But Caravello said he doesn’t “feel freer”.

“A win in court, sure, may set me free in a legal sense,” Caravello said. “But, look, we see immigration operations escalating still and people still dying at the hands of ICE.”

‘When will I hold my daughters?’

When Santiago left Mexico at 17 and settled in Oxnard, his life fell into a disciplined routine: long shifts at a tomato farm, evening soccer practices.

“I’ve been here for almost 23 years, but it feels like three. I don’t know where the time went,” said Santiago, 40. “Just working.”

In Adelanto, time slowed to a crawl. He joined a hunger strike to demand regular meals. He read the bible and spoke to his wife daily on the phone.

When his daughters visited after three months, his one-year-old had lost her baby fat. His five-year-old asked when he’d come home from this strange worksite. Back home, his seven-year-old threw tantrums, pleading for her father.

At a court hearing in December, he heard the judge say in English: “$10,000 bond.” His heart soared and then sank, wondering where the money would come from.

“All I could think was, when am I going to hold my daughters in my arms again?” Santiago said.

His wife had drained their savings to pay legal fees. Desperate, she contacted Santiago’s former soccer coach. He lent the money without hesitation.

Santiago walked free in January, but relief quickly turned to anxiety. As he waited for his work permit application to process, his ankle monitor, biweekly check-ins and distant court dates were constant reminders of his conditional freedom.

“As someone who was always working, now I feel trapped,” said Santiago, who had been saving for his daughters’ college tuition. “I am throwing away my girls’ future.”

Santiago’s return home is an outlier. Beatriz Basurto, program manager for the nonprofit 805UndocuFund, tracks ICE arrests in three counties across California’s Central coast. She said the vast majority of the Glass House families remain torn apart. Over 200 workers were deported after the raids, many within days. Basurto knows a family that has since fallen into homelessness, a nursing baby separated from his mother, deportees struggling to adapt to their rural pueblos and parents who were re-detained trying to cross back into the US.

‘I have to speak up’

Before the raids thrust Retes under a national spotlight, he led a quiet, solitary life.

Eager to leave a chaotic childhood behind, Retes joined the US army at age 18, learning discipline and problem-solving under duress. After being honorably discharged in 2022, he worked as a security guard, dedicating his free time to his two young children, the gym and video games.

The Glass House raids catapulted him into a whirlwind of interviews and meetings with politicians.

“It forced me into this situation where I have to speak up,” said Retes, 26.

He’s traveled to Washington DC, to testify before Congress twice and to attend the State of the Union address. Filing his civil lawsuit in February opened his eyes to the grim realities of the US justice system.

“(I’m) realizing how unprotected we actually are as citizens, how crazy it is to get justice,” he said, “Especially when it comes to government agencies like ICE.”

People can sue local and state police under an 1871 civil rights law – but it doesn’t cover federal officers. The supreme court has spent decades narrowing its 1971 ruling that found an implied constitutional right to sue individual federal agents, said Joanna Schwartz, a UCLA law professor. Scholars warn this lack of accountability amplifies the dangers of Trump’s aggressive deportation campaign.

“It truly seems like ICE officers are behaving with absolute impunity,” Schwartz said.

Retes’ lawsuit employs an untested legal theory that his lawyers at the Institute for Justice hope will crack open a new pathway. Their argument relies on a California law that allows people to sue anyone who interferes with their constitutional rights, but has not been wielded successfully against federal officers.

It’s not the only consequential legal battle to emerge from last summer’s raids, among a coming wave of lawsuits against immigration agents nationwide. Alanis’ wife and daughter have sued the government and Glass House Farms over his death. While DHS has denied responsibility, stating agents were not pursuing Alanis, the lawsuit alleges federal agents used excessive force that caused his fall and subsequently failed to provide medical care.

DHS did not comment on the lawsuits brought by Retes and the Alanis family. Glass House Farms, which the Alanis family accused of failing to properly secure roof access, did not respond to a query.

On 10 July 2026, exactly one year after the raid, relatives of Alanis attended evening mass. When Yesenia Duran heard the priest utter the name of her quiet, hardworking uncle, it felt unreal.

“His name is so honorable now,” said Duran. “I hope we get justice.”

Meanwhile, around 100 people – many who had been on the frontlines of the protests – gathered near an altar for Alanis at the entrance to Glass House in Camarillo, which Duran and an aunt had decorated with flowers and a fresh photo that morning.

In a speech, Caravello thanked his support network: “The people – y’all, my community – saved me.”

Retes had marked the anniversary by celebrating his daughter’s fourth birthday at the pool. He’d missed her third birthday party while in federal prison. At the last minute, he decided to attend the vigil as well. There, the memory of his violent arrest replayed like a movie.

Nearby, dozens of photos of people who’ve died in ICE custody or operations fluttered in the breeze. Among them: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Houston father fatally shot by ICE on 7 July while driving his work van.

“That could have just as easily been me,” Retes said.

Absent from the vigil were the families who packed the road a year earlier as word of ICE’s arrival spread, anxiously awaiting news of their loved ones inside. Like Santiago, many now avoid public spaces. He spent the anniversary at home, soaking up precious moments with his daughters.

Weeks later, after finally receiving work authorization, he began applying for jobs.

“Gracias a Dios, ya un peso menos,” said Santiago: one less burden to carry.

The Guardian is identifying Santiago by a pseudonym because he fears repercussions for his immigration case.*

• This reporting was made possible in part by a grant in memory of and honoring the life and legacy of David Burnham, who was devoted to holding the government to account andco-Founded the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) in 1989. Sophia Paliza-Carre contributed to this reporting