After weeks of lawless sweeps and racial profiling, even the “model” raids can’t escape suspicion. In President Trump’s America, the erosion of trust is the point—and the consequences are deadly.
July 11, 2025
By Nick Valencia
CHICAGO — The raid at the Glass House cannabis facilities in Ventura County and Santa Barbara County, California, should’ve been the model. A properly executed operation. A targeted investigation. Warrants in hand. A company known to employ undocumented labor. By the book.
But these are not normal times.
In an era defined by chaos and cruelty, even legitimate law enforcement actions—like the one at Glass House—are drowned in public distrust. What happened yesterday wasn’t a flashpoint because ICE raided a marijuana farm. It was a flashpoint because ICE, under President Donald J. Trump, has obliterated the line between enforcement and persecution.
Many people— even some who “voted for this”— no longer believe the raids are being conducted in good faith. That’s the administration’s own doing. When you send agents into neighborhoods without warrants, when you round up people without cause, when you detain U.S. citizens because of the color of their skin or the language they speak—you lose the benefit of the doubt. You lose the room.
The backlash in Ventura and Santa Barbara County wasn’t inevitable. It was earned.
Had the last five weeks not been filled with unlawful street-level sweeps, had we not seen alleged federal agents with no badges and no body cameras stuffing day laborers into unmarked vans, maybe the public would’ve seen yesterday’s raid for what it was: a focused operation against a business that broke the law. But after weeks of fear and spectacle, even the “good” raids look like war.
And now, people are literally dying trying to get away.
In the chaos that followed, a farmworker fleeing the area fell—badly. According to KTLA, an immigration activist who spent the night outside the farm assisting families said that one undocumented man who was hiding fell from a building and was taken to a hospital with severe injuries. The man’s family later made the decision to take him off life support.
A close friend who grew up in this region told me there have always been immigration raids here. But people "don’t usually die in them," he said. "Not like this."
Critics of President Trump will be quick to blame the death as a symptom of the campaign of terror the administration has admitted—proudly—is the point. To make life so unbearable for undocumented immigrants that they self-deport. To make fear the policy.
That fear has metastasized.
It’s no longer just about getting picked up. It’s about where you end up—and whether your loved ones ever find out.
There are now whispered stories of a "black site" prison in El Salvador, and something even more dystopian-sounding: a newly constructed detention complex dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz." Whether those places are exactly as described is almost beside the point. What matters is that people believe they exist. And people are now willing to risk their lives to avoid being taken.
This is how trust dies. And with it, the ability to govern.
Even if yesterday’s raid at Glass House was justified on paper, it played out on a stage soaked in suspicion. A raid like that, carried out in different times, under a different administration, might have drawn praise. But under Trump, it triggered chaos.
That’s the paradox of this moment. The administration’s obsession with domination has gutted its own credibility. It is so deeply mired in its own cruelty that even sound policy is seen as persecution. Even the textbook raids now feel like show trials.
In a recent Fox & Friends interview, Border Czar Tom Homan said, "[ICE] agents are trained. What they need to detain someone temporarily is not probable cause, it's reasonable suspicion."
No probable cause.
When ICE stops playing by the rules, the public stops believing they ever will. And that may be the biggest self-own of all.
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