On Jan. 10, 2025, the Californian nonprofit news organization CalMatters published an article including a claim that U.S. Customs and Border Protection was confronting and detaining undocumented farmworkers in Bakersfield, a city north of Los Angeles.
The article featured a quote by Casey Creamer, president of a farming industry group called California Citrus Mutual. Creamer told CalMatters:
"We're in the middle of our citrus harvesting. This sent shockwaves through the entire community. People aren't going to work and kids aren't going to school. Yesterday about 25% of the workforce, today 75% didn't show up."
It was not clear how Creamer had arrived at this 75% figure; however, the number appeared in the reports (archived) of multiple Californian news media websites and on social (archived)
On Jan. 21, 2025, one X user wrote (archived): "75% of immigrant farm workers didn't show up yesterday in Bakersfield because of fears of ICE raids under the new presidency. America's rural and agricultural regions will be the hardest hit from
Though the raids took place during the Biden administration in the week starting Jan. 6, according to Californian news media outlets, posts like the one above continued to circulate after Jan. 20, when President Donald Trump was inaugurated, and incorrectly attributed the raids and the resulting alleged worker absences to Trump.
However, there was
Abby Peltzer, communications manager for California Citrus Mutual, said via email that the group and Creamer did not have "any additional comments" on the figure.
We have also reached out to CBP, Kern County, Kern County Farm Bureau and U.S. Rep. David Valadao, who represents California's 22nd District where Kern County and Bakersfield are located, to understand more about this claim. We will update this article if any of them reply.
CBP carried out "
ICE specifically describes "Operation Return to Sender" as an "interior enforcement initiative that applies an organized and methodical approach to the identification, location and arrest of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) fugitive aliens."
United Farm Workers (UFW), a labor union for farm workers, said via email that though the fear and anxiety caused by CBP actions in Bakersfield was significant, "an industrywide absence of 3/4 of the labor force did not occur," according to their local farming sources.
Elizabeth Strater, national vice president of UFW, said:
I talked with contacts in citrus harvest and almond/pistachio/wine grape pruners in Kern County about this claim. This claim is not accurate.
There was no day where 75% of workers stayed home. The fear and anxiety is significant, people are downright terrified, but they still need to feed their families. An industrywide absence of 3/4 of the labor force did not occur. It is plausible to me that perhaps at a single employer a specific rumor or threat could significantly impact attendance and operations, but not industrywide.
Valadao published a statement on Jan. 13 saying he hoped future sweeps would be better communicated to the public:
I think we can all agree known criminals should be expelled from the United States, but it is crucial that future operations are communicated clearly to avoid causing any further alarm among our farmworkers. I urge the Biden Administration—and future administrations—to ensure CBP prioritizes targeting criminals rather than those responsible for producing our nation's food supply.
Claims about the Biden-era CBP sweeps in Bakersfield amplified fears that Trump's administration would carry out promised mass deportations of immigrants in the country illegally. The U.S. Department of Agriculture published data in November 2024 saying that in 2022, roughly