Residents of Poplar, an unincorporated community in Tulare County, say the raids have paralyzed the town.
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POPLAR, Calif. – In the early 1970s, county officials called this unincorporated town in California's agricultural heartland “awithout authentic future”. That rating, which involved drastic cuts in basic services, was maintained until 2023.
Now, after a series of immigration raids that began Jan. 7 in neighboring Kern County, residents here say the future really looks bleak.
“People are scared. They don’t want to go out. We’re all scared,” says Gregorio, a seven-year resident of Poplar and owner of a local business that caters to the community’s farmworker population. (We’re not using Gregorio’s last name to protect his identity.)
“If you don’t have papers, it’s not safe to walk down the street,” he added. “And this is just the beginning. The situation is going to get worse in the next four years.”
Just days before Donald Trump takes office as president, the raids, dubbed “Return to Sender” by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), are seen here as a dress rehearsal for his promised campaign of mass deportation of unauthorized immigrants.
CBP agent Gregory Bovino, who led the raids, said in a social media post that CBP officers reserved the right to make arrests of anyone suspected of being in the country illegally without regard to due process. He promised “there will be more.”
Here in the #PremierSector we go the extra mile—or 500 of them—to protect our nation and communities from bad people and bad things. Two child rapists were caught the first day with more to eat.#KernCounty #LongArmOfTheLaw #USBP #BorderPatrol #NewYearNewArrest #Bakersfield pic.twitter.com/n7CJ4DyPZM
— USBP Chief Patrol Agent Gregory K. Bovino (@USBPChiefELC) January 8, 2025
CBP reports that approximately 78 arrests were made over the course of the three-day operation, including individuals with outstanding warrants for crimes ranging from sexual assault of minors to illegal possession of drugs and firearms, as well as DUI and other misdemeanors.
CBP says the raids were limited to Kern County, but several Poplar residents say they saw CBP officers patrolling local gathering spaces in and around the city. Several people who asked not to be identified described how officers stopped a person on private land.
Requests for comment from CBP to confirm the statements were not returned by the time of publication. A spokesperson for the Tulare County Sheriff's Office said they were not aware of any operations or arrests in the county.
CBP spokesman David Kim initially told reporters that Operation Return to Sender was targeted at specific individuals and was not a sweeping raid. However, he acknowledged that people who had not been previously identified for apprehension because they had criminal records were also detained.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9J3RfTv18U[/embedyt] Migrant farmworkers in Poplar, Tulare County, speak out about the fear that has gripped the community in the wake of recent immigration raids.
“We don’t know what’s going on with the raids,” Gregorio said, adding that the whirlwind of online misinformation is exacerbating the panic experienced by residents. “People are posting all kinds of lies on social media. Everyone is confused about what’s true and what’s not.”
The fear gripping the community of Poplar and the wider region is also affecting the local economy. Silvia (her last name is being withheld to protect her identity) says sales at her bakery have dropped by 70% since last week's raids, as residents and families fear leaving their homes to buy even the most basic necessities.
“It’s stressful,” she said. “If I don’t see someone for a day, let’s say a regular day, I worry about what might have happened to them. Did they get arrested, deported…?”
Down the street at Sabroso Poplar, a local Mexican restaurant, waitress Angelica Rana points to the empty dining room. “Normally, this place would be packed. Today, there’s no one here,” she says, adding that in her 18 years living in Poplar she’s never seen anything like it.
“We depend on people working in the fields, so yes, there has been a big impact,” he said.
Poplar, with just under 2,000 residents, sits in the southeastern corner of Tulare County, one of the nation's largest producers of dairy, citrus and berries, among other crops — a multibillion-dollar industry built largely on the backs of migrant labor.
Two-thirds of Poplar's residents are Latino, though there is also a long-established Filipino community, as well as a smaller Yemeni population and indigenous migrants from parts of Mexico and Central America.
It is estimated that 310,000 people live in unincorporated communities like Poplar throughout the San Joaquin Valley.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the city was the scene of some of the earliest movements of what would become the farmworker movement, led by labor groups such as the United Farm Workers Union (UFW), among others. That history is celebrated in a new mural in the local park, representing the many faces, past and present, of those who have fought to improve conditions locally.
“This was an epicenter of the farmworker movement and one of the areas that experienced the most violence,” explains Mari Pérez Ruíz, co-founder of the nonprofit Central Valley Empowerment Alliance (CVEA), which advocates on behalf of residents of Poplar and surrounding communities.
CVEA is located in what used to be the Poplar fire station, closed years earlier as part of cuts to local services after county officials identified it as one of 13 communities with no growth prospects. All 13 were majority communities of color. The cuts included basic services like water and sewer. CVEA successfully fought to restore services to Poplar during California’s record drought that ended in 2016.
“They didn’t make it easy,” said Perez Ruiz, referring to county officials and the outsized interests of local producers.
Today, she and her team are busy supporting families who are too afraid to go to work or send their children to school. CVEA has published small pocket-sized booklets titled Know Your Rights that detail the steps to take in case someone is detained by immigration officials, as well as contact numbers for legal assistance.
On a recent afternoon, CVEA volunteers handed out food and clothing to a small community of indigenous farmworkers outside Poplar. Many spoke of lost wages over the past week. “Why are they going after us?” one man complained. “We’re doing honest work here, trying to feed our families.”
Gregorio says that half of what people here earn normally goes to paying the rising rents, and the other half to food, childcare and other expenses. “It’s impossible,” he says.
As for the mood among neighbors and customers, “it’s the same conversation with every person you meet,” he said. “How are you?” “Scared.”
Manuel Ortiz, Ed Kissam and Nicolas Diaz Magaloni contributed to the reporting of this story.
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