About a week before Yolo County’s Community Forum on how law enforcement will not deliberately work with federal agents seeking to deport illegal immigrants, former 4th District supervisorial candidate Antonio De Loera-Brust offered a stark contrast.

De Loera-Brust, who is the director of communication for the United Farm Workers, told Sergio Olmos of CalMatters, a statewide news site, that federal agents detained laborers in Kern County.

The Border Patrol conducted unannounced raids throughout Bakersfield.

Olmos stated, “This appears to be the first large-scale Border Patrol raid in California since the election of Donald Trump, coming just a day after Congress certified the election on January 6, in the final days of Joe Biden’s presidency.”

“People are freaked out, people are worried, people are planning on staying home the next couple of days,” said De Loera-Brust, adding that the Border Patrol detained at least one UFW member in Kern County as they “traveled between home and work.”

“They were stopping cars at random, asking people for papers. They were going to gas stations and Home Depot where day laborers gather,” said De Loera-Brust. “It’s provoking intense anxiety and a lot of fear in the community.”

While I applaud our law enforcement officials — particularly Sheriff Tom Lopez — saying that they want to focus on helping victims, not criminalizing average residents, it’s no guarantee Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents won’t simply show up and round up field workers.

In many ways, the forum was very similar to one held in April 2017, although much more well-attended. In 2017, only 30 people were present. This past week, around 130 attended in person, while another 170 were watching online via Zoom.

And both events had one primary thing in common: The people who needed to hear the message weren’t present. I didn’t see many, if any, farm laborers at the most recent forum, just as I didn’t see any in 2017.

In 2017, panelist Ramon Urban said it bluntly. “Let’s face it, the people who really need this information are not in this room. We need to go to Esparto and Knights Landing to get this message out.”

Let me note, however, that there were many local elected officials, including school trustees, as well as teachers and community activists present this past week. I hope they will work to spread the word among those who spend their days working in Yolo County fields.

The other message that came across loud and clear in 2017 was that everyone has Constitutional rights. The right to remain silent is important. And immigrants don’t have to let agents from ICE into their homes without a properly signed warrant and shouldn’t sign any paperwork without an attorney present.

But it was also recommended that families should have “family preparedness plans” in place in case someone is taken into custody by ICE in order to keep their children out of foster services.

That’s important because it dovetails with something else said during this past week’s forum. Children attending school most likely won’t be turned over to ICE agents by school staff, who are highly protective of their young charges.

But that raises a troubling question of what happens when adult field workers are picked up during the day by ICE, and a child returns to an empty home at night.

Jim Smith is the former editor of The Daily Democrat, retiring in 2021 after a 27-year career at the paper.