This past week, Fox News updated viewers on the search for domestic terrorists who ambushed immigration agents after they raided a marijuana farm by blocking agents' vehicles and aggressively attacking them with large rocks, shown in a disturbing video that went viral during the summer.
As Fox covered a press conference by U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli in the aftermath of several key arrests, MSNBC not surprisingly ignored it since the network downplayed the violence and did not show the graphic video in the aftermath of the July 10 raid.
Shortly after 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, Fox host John Roberts related:
We're about to hear from the feds in California any moment now following a dramatic pre-dawn raid caught exclusively by Fox News. It ended with the arrest of an anti-ICE activist -- one who was accused of smashing the windows of immigration agents' vehicles -- look at that -- earlier this year during an ICE raid on a Southern California pot farm.
Reporter Matt Finn reminded viewers of the July attack on immigration agents and the arrest of allegedly a key participant:
They say Isai Carillo is seen in that viral video throwing rocks at federal cars. Carillo was allegedly part of an anti-ICE activist group that intentionally blocked the federal agent cars on the pot farm and then ambushed the agents on the way out.
In the live press conference, Essayli informed viewers that 97 have been arrested so far for attacks on federal agents in California, and filled in the public on the group VD Defensa, accusing them of following immigration agents to attack them.
In the aftermath of the July 10 attacks, MSNBC hosts mostly portrayed the raid as unnecessary even though authorities believe the business was exploiting child labor.
Chris Jansing fretted that "officials were seen using flash bangs, smoke and chemical irritants to keep the crowd back and, critics say, instill fear."
Michael Steele blamed President Donald Trump for the death of an illegal alien who died after a fall as he tried to escape: "The Trump administration's crackdown on immigration has now turned deadly."
Several MSNBC hosts emphasized that the marijuana farm was a legal business as if that excused the use of illegal workers. Three days after the raid, Ari Melber was still wondering if the raid had a justification:
This scene shows the tear gassing of protesters and others during the controversy around an attempted immigration raid at a farm that turned out, was just doing legal work, meaning it's not clear whether this was the right use or who they were going after if it was a legal farm.
Five days after the raid, Chris Hayes will still discussing the incident as if agents used teargas against demonstrators for no reason:
Masked, militarized agents descended on the area with what they call less than lethal weapons which include rubber bullets and tear gas and the like, seemingly used indiscriminately against the crowd of workers and protesters who had shown up.
Transcripts follow:
Fox's America Reports
October 29, 2025
2:05 p.m. Eastern
JOHN ROBERTS: We're about to hear from the feds in California any moment now following a dramatic pre-dawn raid caught exclusively by Fox News. It ended with the arrest of an anti-ICE activist -- one who was accused of smashing the windows of immigration agents' vehicles -- look at that -- earlier this year during an ICE raid on a Southern California pot farm. Our correspondent, Matt Finn, has got exclusive live details on this. He's in Camarillo, California, for us. Matt?
MATT FINN: Hey, John, you may recall there was a pretty notable immigration raid on a pot farm here in Camarillo earlier this summer. Some pretty disturbing viral video out of that. Suspects throwing rocks and objects at federal agents' cars as they exited their immigration raid that included hundreds of arrests. That was back in July. Well, this morning, we were exclusively on hand in a pre-dawn sting as HSI arrested a guy in a dark alleyway.
They say Isai Carillo is seen in that viral video throwing rocks at federal cars. Carillo was allegedly part of an anti-ICE activist group that intentionally blocked the federal agent cars on the pot farm and then ambushed the agents on the way out. HSI says at least four vehicles were damaged in that attack, and a federal contractor was injured after a rock and shards of glass struck their hand.
Carillo is expected to be federally charged with conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer. Now, this is all part of a broader sweep this morning happening across Southern California targeting people who engaged in alleged violence against law enforcement during this summer's immigration raid in the L.A. area. We expect a press conference at any moment to give us full details.
(...)
BILL ESSAYLI, U.S. ATTORNEY IN CALIFORNIA (live press conference): ... in response to recent immigration enforcement actions in Los Angeles, to date, we have charged 97 individuals either with assault or impeding federal agents engaged in immigration enforcement operations. And we will continue to charge more as we obtain the evidence.
Earlier this summer, federal agents engaged in law enforcement operations targeted at removing illegal immigrants who entered the United States unlawfully. In response, large protests began to form throughout the Los Angeles area. I want to be very clear. Every American has a right to peacefully protest. What is not constitutionally protected is a right to engage in violence or to impede federal agents by assaulting, doxxing or obstructing their operations.
On July 10th, law enforcement officers were executing a court-ordered search warrant at locations in Ventura County. Protesters, including members of an organization named VC Defensa came to the site of the search warrants. VC Defensa is an organization that operates and manages what they call a "rapid response network" designed to impede federal agents and their enforcement operations. And that warrant is what you see on the camera there at the marijuana farm where the agents were attempting to leave.
In one of the criminal complaints today, we are charging two members of VC Defensa of conspiring to impede and injure federal law enforcement officers. These two VC Defensa members went to the protest on July 10 in Ventura County, and acted with others to assault enforcement vehicles and officers.
One of the members charged in the complaint used her vehicle to block U.S. government vehicles from leaving the location while another member and others ambushed the vehicles by throwing rocks at them. And those images went viral. Several government vehicles were damaged, and a federal contract employee was injured as a rock went through her vehicle window, shattering the glass and striking her.
(...)
MSNBC's The 11th Hour
July 10, 2025
11:52 p.m. Eastern
STEPHANIE RUHLE: But a lot of the people who ICE is rounding up are not the bad guys -- right, the bad guys that Trump told us about. The fact that this ICE operation happened on a farm where people are going to work. Is this the type of immigration reform and enforcement that Americans want?
(...)
MSNBC's
Morning Joe
July 11, 2025
7:21 a.m.
WILLIE GEIST: Protesters clashed with immigration officers in California yesterday as federal agents carried out sweeps at cannabis farms. Several people were arrested after hundreds of demonstrators attempted to block roads around those facilities. The U.S. attorney's officers confirmed it had executed a search warrant, and the farm's parent company says it fully complied.
(...)
MSNBC's Chris Jansing Reports
July 11, 2025
12:46 p.m.
CHRIS JANSING: Today, escalating tension and dramatic clashes between protesters and federal agents raiding two locations of a cannabis farm in California. In Ventura County. NBC Los Angeles reports officials were seen using flash bangs, smoke and chemical irritants to keep the crowd back and, critics say, instill fear.
(...)
RYAN NOBLES: And, of course, this raid led to a massive protest in and around the facility. Clashes between protesters and the ICE agents and other law enforcement that were there on the scene. The law enforcement responding with tear gas. And then there was even one protester that's accused of firing a shot in the direction of law enforcement. The FBI right now issuing a reward for the -- for anyone that could find and help them locate the person responsible for firing that shot. But Chris, at the very least, this shows just how high tensions are right now...
(...)
Fox's America Reports
July 11, 2025
2:05 p.m.
JOHN ROBERTS: But we also saw people throwing rocks trying to smash out the windows of vehicles of which federal agents were riding. Do you have any leads yet on who this fellow with the gun was?
BILL ESSAYLI, U.S. ATTORNEY FOR CALIFORNIA: We put out information about him. We're asking for the public's help. We currently do not know who he is, but we will find him.
(...)
ROBERTS: After (Governor Gavin) Newsom tweeted this. He said, "Kids running from tear gas, crying on the phone because their mother was just taken from the fields. Trump calls me 'Newscum,' but he's the real scum."
(CBP Commissioner) Rodney Scott's response to that was: "Here's some breaking news. 10 juveniles were found at this marijuana facility -- all illegal aliens, 8 of them unaccompanied." We now found that number is nine. "It's now under investigation for child labor violations. This is Newsom's California."
Of course, big story during the Biden administration was that they lost track of some 320,000 unaccompanied minors in the millions that came across the border. It was feared that a lot of those unaccompanied minors might be vulnerable to child exploitation. Do we believe that that's what happened here?
ESSAYLI: That -- we highly suspect that that was what (was) happening there. ...
(...)
Fox's The Story with Martha MacCallum
July 11, 2025
3:04 p.m.
WILLIAM La JEUNESSE: Glass House Farms is the state's largest licensed marijuana farm. According to ICE, in a warrant signed by a federal judge, it also hires and harbors an illegal workforce. Some seen here are lined up waiting for deportation buses. Protesters threw rocks, bottles and broke windows to stop those ICE vans from leaving. National Guard soldiers use flash bangs, pepper balls, smoke and gas to disperse the crowd.
(...)
MARTHA MaCCALLUM: There were more of these workplace operations in prior administrations, and yet they were not met with, you know, people following the vans as they went along and throwing rocks at them, and the violence that your agents are encountering. So what is going on?
TODD LYONS, ICE ACTING DIRECTOR (via phone): No, Martha, and thank you for having me today. I really appreciate you highlighting that because I was a young agent and a young supervisor back under those administrations, and we didn't have these issues. Now, you have people blatantly shooting firearms at federal law enforcement officers. It's incredible. You know, we've always heard from the left and other organizations, "If ICE only had a criminal warrant" -- well, we had a criminal warrant. We were going after a marijuana growth facility which happened to donate to Governor Newsom.
And we did it the right way that everybody wanted serving a criminal warrant against an American business that's harboring and trafficking illegal immigration. And now that we're finding out, you know, forced labor of children. And here we are being protested again -- assaulted, deadly weapons, rocks, unacceptable. And, Martha, I hate to say it. It's all because of the rhetoric of the left. A lot of elected officials putting a bullseye on ICE just for doing their law enforcement mission.
MaCCALLUM: I mean, this is absolute chaos, Director. We're just watching this video again, and things being hauled at these windows, I mean, it's a miracle that none of your agents were killed.
(...)
MSNBC's The Weeknight
July 11, 2025
7:45 p.m.
MICHAEL STEELE: The Trump administration's crackdown on immigration has now turned deadly. Just hours ago, a farm worker injured in the California raids died of his injuries according to the United Farm Workers labor union. Yesterday, federal agents arrested about 200 people on two legal cannabis farms in Ventura and and Santa Barbara Counties. Agents deployed teargas and so-called less lethal ammunition during a heated standoff with protesters. The labor union also says some workers, including U.S. citizens, remain totally unaccounted for.
(...)
ALICIA MENENDEZ: Andrea. Stephen Miller knows he can't hit the numbers that he's laying out and only focus on criminals, which is what he originally promised Americans. So what is he willing to do to get those deportation numbers where he wants them? And what is the consequence, then, for American communities?
ANDREA FLORES, FDW.US: Well, the most extreme consequence is actually what we saw, you know, with the death of this farm worker who was working on a California farm. My heart and condolences go out to their family, right? So that is the extreme result and consequence of pursuing mass deportation policy. I think the public is really seeing that if you want to hit a daily number or you want to really remove most of the immigrants in this country, it will be violent, it will be disruptive, and it will absolutely destroy the American economy. So you saw with that raid in California 200 workers just swept up. And those were Customs and Border Protection officers -- not just ICE officers -- so you have border patrol in communities using racial profiling ...
(...)
MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes
July 11, 2025
8:19 p.m.
CHRIS HAYES: Americans are rejecting wholesale the police state tactics of Stephen Miller and Donald Trump's mass deportation. I mean, you see it multiple times a day in so many of the videos of ICE raids, just ordinary Americans intervening. Yesterday in California, hundreds of people spent hours in a standoff with ICE agents who were raiding and detaining workers at a licensed cannabis farm.
(...)
HAYES: There was this raid at this legal cannabis farm in California yesterday. A man named Jaime Alanis who had been there for 10 years died after sustaining injuries during a raid where authorities say they arrested 200 people.
(...)
I got to imagine agricultural interests in this country are not happy with this.
(...)
MSNBC's Alex Witt Reports
July 12, 2025
1:24 p.m.
ALEX WITT: As you saw this week, the clashes between protesters and officials, they turned pretty violent at two state licensed cannabis farms where agents deployed teargas against demonstrators
(...)
CONGRESSMAN ROBERT GARCIA (D-CA): And here in California, he has created more terror. Los Angeles, that whole incident, he essentially created it by bringing in ICE and the military and the National Guard. We know that most of these protests have been peaceful. And now he's raiding farms -- raiding school campuses?
(...)
MSNBC's The Beat with Ari Melber
July 14, 2025
6:27 p.m.
ARI MELBER: If that doesn't look like the way to peacefully deal with American citizens, you can see why scenes like this have many questioning whether this is the beginning -- the start of efforts to use federal agents like a police state. This scene shows the tear gassing of protesters and others during the controversy around an attempted immigration raid at a farm that turned out, was just doing legal work, meaning it's not clear whether this was the right use or who they were going after if it was a legal farm.
(...)
MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes
July 16, 2025
8:51 p.m.
CHRIS HAYES: Federal immigration agents raided that farm. Masked, militarized agents descended on the area with what they call less than lethal weapons which include rubber bullets and tear gas and the like, seemingly used indiscriminately against the crowd of workers and protesters who had shown up.
