Our view: One year after Glass House, unresolved issues remain
Whatever your politics, there’s no question that the Glass House Brand raids of a year ago have had a profound effect on the region’s economy.
The July 10, 2025, raids in Carpinteria and Camarillo resulted in one death, the arrest and acquittal of a CSU Channel Islands lecturer, and lingering disruption that lingers across agribusiness and many communities.
In all, 361 people were detained at Glass House Brands cannabis facilities in Camarillo and Carpinteria. Farmworker Jaime Alanis Garcia fell off a greenhouse roof and died. The raids were large by Border Patrol and ICE standards and months later, the repercussions are still being felt in the form of so-called self-deportation by undocumented residents and the breakup of families.
If you are an immigration hardliner and law-and-order advocate, the raids underscore the risks of allowing millions of undocumented people into California and then breaking more laws to find them high-risk work in the cannabis industry.
If you are an immigration advocate, anger at ICE and Customs and Border Protection is a given. There is also anger thatlocal rules and customs were trampled, families were broken up, and thousand of people went into hiding for fear of arrest, deportation or worse.
Glass House Brands still has not been forthcoming with an explanation for how it came to hire what it described as labor contractors who employed dozens of undocumented workers. It has changed labor contractors but has left other agribusinesses scrambling to contain the damage from the raids.
One of the organizations providing a lifeline to families was the 805 Undocufund, which fielded thousands of hotline calls and texts on the day of the raid and provided more than $200,000 in assistance to families affected by the raids.
CSU Channel Islands lecturer Jonathan Caravello was found not guilty after facing felony charges over his removal of a tear gas canister from the scene of protests.
Ventura and Santa Barbara counties have strong law enforcement traditions. We have our problems with human trafficking and illegal cannabis growing. But the Glass House raids did not address these issues directly; instead, they upended a system for farm labor that has coped with an increasingly broken immigration system.
Population growth and economic well-being depend on stability in major industries, including tourism, travel and agribusiness. Bringing sanity back to our housing markets means expanding supply and that means an increase in available labor in trades and construction.
The raids of 2025 have hurt all of the above. And they have increasingly polarized our communities along political lines. The path forward lies in allowing local governments to continue to do their excellent work in fighting crime and limiting the role of government — particularly state and federal — in the businesses that are the backbone of our economy.
THE HEAT IS ON
Heat is coming back with a vengeance this month.
As we’ve written in recent weeks, that means taking care of workers, family, pets and neighbors. It’s particularly important for the elderly and sick to stay hydrated and to have a way to find some relief during the warmest parts of the day.
We’re also well aware that the heat of July produces the fuel for the fires of September, October, November and December.
We appreciate the work of nonprofit organizations that are offering aid to first responders who are helping victims of the heat. We also appreciate our firefighters who will need to be ready for another long season as dry fuels become more and more plentiful in the backcountry and along urban interfaces.
