Oxford, CaliforniaOn the morning of September 18, when the first rays of sun began to strike at the horizon, Mary was heading to the strawberry fields of Oxnard, California. He was traveling in a friend’s car and had barely traveled a square from his home when the vehicle was suddenly surrounded by immigration and customs (ICE) agents.“There were three or four vehicles with masked men on board. They made signs with the lights so that we could see,” recalled 35-year-old Maria, who asked that her name be used only for fear of government retaliation.“They told us they were looking for a man,” he continued. “My friend told them he wasn’t the person they were looking for, but they asked him to show an identification. And when they realized he had no documents, they immediately arrested him.”Oxnard, located in Ventura County, is an agricultural community located an hour north of Los Angeles. The city, where almost 80% of residents identify as Latin, houses a considerable population of migrant agricultural workers; many of them, including Maria, belong to the Mexican indigenous community. Most of them lack immigration documents.Maria, a single mother of four children aged 17, 12, 10 and 2 years, all born in the United States, arrived in Oxnard in 2007 after leaving her home in Oaxaca, in the southern extreme of Mexico.I spent months without work. Her friend, the man arrested by the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE), had offered to take her that morning to a nearby camp where, according to him, she could find a paid job. Later, while observing nervously how the agents married her friend, Maria decided to raise her voice in her defense.“Why are they taking him if he’s not the one they were looking for?” she said. “At that moment they turned to me and said they would also arrest me for asking questions and complaining about me,” Maria said.In a matter of seconds, Maria saw herself married and rushed to a different vehicle than her companion. The unit quickly headed to an ICE facility in the nearby city of Camarillo, located about 10 miles east of Oxnard.That’s the moment, says Mary, in which her world came down.Maria’s encounter with the ICE is symbolic of a change of tactics by the agency. Instead of carrying out massive raids of great impact, such as last year’s in Camarillo that resulted in the death of a local agricultural worker, agents are increasingly focusing on detaining immigrants individually at regional airports, during migration status controls and in local prisons, among other places.However, despite the pause in the deployment of large ICE operatives in cities and villages across the country, arrests are at record levels, reaching an unprecedented figure of 51,000 in August, according to the Department of National Security (DHS). California recorded the third highest number of arrests in the country, behind Texas and Louisiana.“I didn’t want to answer, but they insisted, so I pointed out my backpack and told them that there was my (Mexican) consular registration card,” said Maria.Once inside the ICE facilities, she continued to ask why she had been arrested.“You talked too much!” was the response, according to Maria.The ICE agents added: “You should have thought about it before raising your voice to defend your friend.”What terrified her most was that agents told her that she would be detained for the next three months before being deported to Mexico.“I broke to cry. I was terrified thinking I would never see my children again,” said Maria. She begged the officers to take her home. “You stay here,” they repeated me over and over again, and I couldn’t stop crying.”From Camarillo, Maria was later transferred to an ICE processing centre in Thousand Oaks, located about 16 miles further east. Then, seven hours later, Mary says something like a miracle happened.The officers took the wives from the dolls and the grillets from the ankles. Instead, they placed an electronic monitor on his ankle. “They also installed an app on my phone with the days and hours when they would come to my home to monitor me,” she said, “and the days when I would have to go to their offices.”Mary was released, but with a severe warning: “If you miss an appointment or do not fulfill everything we ask for you, we will go not only for you, but for your whole family.Laura Valdez. activist of VC Defense, the Ventura County Rapid Response Network. met Maria just when the Oaxaca immigrant was released from the ICE center in Thousand Oaks.“He lives in an apartment complex densely populated by people from the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, a place that is at the forefront of Migration,” he explained. “It’s encircled, so officers can’t get in. Instead, they spend time walking around the area, waiting for the immigrants to come out to hunt them. Three months ago, four men and a woman were taken away. She was released later because she was breastfeeding.”Valdez added: “We have vigilants in every neighborhood and sometimes we manage to stop the ICE’s kidnappings... but even when we receive an alert, like in the case of Maria, sometimes they end up being detained.”Juan José Gutiérrez, who is part of the Los Angeles-based Coalition for the Rights of Immigrants, spoke to Maria as part of an initiative to help her obtain legal assistance shortly after her release, which he called “exceptional.”“Maybe they were pitying her for being an indigenous woman, for not speaking Spanish well, for having four children and because she didn’t stop crying from the moment she was arrested until she was released,” Gutiérrez said.“And even though she was released with an electronic grill in the ankle and the obligation to go on constant appointments with the migration authorities, it was a triumph for her and her family,” she added.However, he warned that the arrests will continue unless the community stands up more firmly in defense of immigrants.“We have not responded with the energy that the moment we live deserves,” he said categorically.This report was produced as part of “Here We Stand”, a collaborative journalism project between American Community Media and various community media outlets across the state.“My world came down.”RelatedMass arrests to selective arrestsA small miracleRelatedThe hunt for immigrantsA triumph and a call to actionImmigrant defenders denounce harassment and organize 'The Defense of the People'ICE brakes two tactics in 24 hours: changes affecting its migration operations