President Claudia Sheinbaum Friday sharply criticized U.S. military-like raids the day before on a pair of marijuana nurseries in California, and said she would make extra funds available to Mexican consulates in the United States.
“These raids are unjust,” Sheinbaum said during her Friday morning press conference. “But they will also cause severe harm to the U.S. economy.”
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Sheinbaum said that without the labor force of “Mexican [immigrants] and other… Latinos,” farms in California will go unharvested.
As a result of Thursday’s raids — led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents accompanied by National Guard troops in military-style vehicles — Mexican consulates in California received 25 calls asking for help.
This prompted Sheinbaum to increase resources for consulates in the U.S. and to order that bureaucratic procedures be simplified, specifically mentioning the certificate for importation of household goods (trámite de menaje de casa). This certificate — increasingly in demand since the immigration crackdown in the U.S. began in earnest in January — allows Mexicans returning home to import their household belongings free of import taxes.
“We are increasing budgets for our consulates, especially with regard to legal support we provide to our countrymen,” Sheinbaum said, adding that the Finance Ministry will be asked to adjust the budget and provide a report next week.
Additionally, the Foreign Relations Ministry (SRE) activated emergency protocols to attend to Mexican nationals caught up in the California raids. The actions include the publication of emergency consulate protection phone lines.
The SRE also said it is in constant communication with local authorities and is prepared to act in support of any Mexican national in need of legal assistance.
Sheinbaum said that 355 Mexicans have been detained in the California raids to date and, since Jan. 20 (the date Donald Trump was sworn in as U.S. president), more than 67,000 Mexicans have been deported home by plane.
Thursday’s raids took place at two locations operated by Glass House Farms in two California counties — one in the Santa Barbara County town of Carpinteria, about 90 miles northwest of Los Angeles, and one in the Ventura County community of Camarillo, about 50 miles from Los Angeles.
Glass House Farms, self-styled as one of the “fastest-growing vertically integrated cannabis companies in the U.S.,” said in a social media post that its greenhouse sites “were visited … by ICE officials,” adding that it “fully complied with agent search warrants.”
The news agency Reuters reported that “as word and video images of the raids spread on social media, … migrant-rights activists converged on the area … leading to face-offs with federal agents.”
About 100 farmworkers were detained before the protesters arrived. A local TV station reported that tear gas was fired at the crowds, according to Reuters.
At the Carpinteria farm, U.S. congressman Salud Carbajal, a California Democrat, published a video in which he complained that he was denied access to the scene of the raid.
I went to Casitas Pass Road in Carpinteria today after learning ICE was conducting a militarized raid targeting farm workers. As a Member of Congress, I have the right to conduct oversight, but I was denied entry. Here’s what happened. ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/bnrpv6Axot
— Rep. Salud Carbajal (@RepCarbajal) July 10, 2025
He said company officials told him 10 workers were taken into custody at that location, adding in a separate social media post that he “will be demanding answers from the Department of Homeland Security to find out who [was] detained and where the detainees [were] taken.”
The nationalities of the 10 detained workers mentioned by Carbajal have not been made public.
At the farm in Camarillo, Reuters reported that a man fleeing federal agents “appeared to open fire with a handgun in the direction of authorities as they lobbed smoke canisters at protesters.”
Approximately half of all farmworkers in the U.S. are undocumented, but the farm sector insists that mass deportation of agricultural workers would cripple the U.S. food supply chain. Reuters reported that raids on California farms in June left crops unharvested.
With reports from El Universal, UNO TV and Reuters
