Even when ICE isn’t in town, the fear that they might be unsettles people.

It’s a big deal when a multi-agency group of law enforcement officers serves a warrant on a cannabis farm, complete with a helicopter and drones, in the middle of working farmland. There’s no way people won’t notice a major police operation is going down.

That’s what happened on Wednesday morning, July 16, when the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department served a search warrant on a cannabis farm in Pajaro. Public Information Officer Mara Rodriguez declines to release much information, as the investigation is pending, but says it is connected to a case in San Bernardino County, and that several thousand pounds of processed cannabis were seized and destroyed by the agency. Rodriguez says the search warrant, signed by a San Bernardino County Superior Court judge, was based on suspected illicit marijuana cultivation, including the use of pesticides that are illegal in the U.S., among them fumigants from China.

The California Department of Cannabis Control joined the operation and has seized and embargoed thousands more pounds of cannabis, pending the investigation. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife was involved as well.

More information is likely to be released in the coming days from the agencies involved. But in the early morning hours that the local investigation was underway, as my colleagues Erik Chalhoub and Celia Jiménez have reported (see more, p. 12), the fear of who might be there caused more than a stir. Volunteer groups of legal observers who monitor activity by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrived at the scene.

They found a major law enforcement operation investigating alleged violations of the California penal code, but no ICE raid. But the tangible fear that any sign of law enforcement activity – a van, a helicopter, an officer wearing a bulky bullet-proof vest – might be la migra is permeating the community.

Some of it unfolds on social media, where posts about suspected ICE activity followed by debunking (or, occasionally, confirmation) abound. Some of it unfolds in the fields, where some crewmembers left jobs early that day. Some of it unfolds privately in people’s minds and hearts, as they wrestle with what is and is not safe.

This would seem to be part of the strategy that the Trump administration is deploying. Even if ICE cannot be everywhere at once, the fear that they might appear at any moment is changing people’s lives.

This is true not just of immigrants whose status in this country is illegal, but of immigrants who do have legal status, even citizens. I hear repeatedly from friends and acquaintances about it. One, from Mexico, is considering moving back. Another, from Canada, felt flutters of fear while returning from a trip and passing through U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the airport.

This is happening in what is supposed to be the freest nation on Earth.

Of course, creating a climate of fear is part of the autocratic playbook. And of course it might motivate more people to “self-deport,” the Trump administration’s term of art for “flee from your own community and family and job because we don’t want you here.” The ICE website even offers this glossy guidance: “If you’re illegally present in the U.S., you don’t have to – and shouldn’t – wait for ICE officials to arrest you. Instead, you can leave on your own terms.”

As if these are people’s own terms.

On Thursday, July 17, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had sent requests to sheriffs in “multiple major California counties” seeking to compel them to produce “lists of all inmates in their jails who are not citizens of the United States, their crimes of arrest or conviction, and their scheduled release dates.” Note that not citizens phrase, which includes many legally present immigrants – a wide net that can be interpreted to again refer to sowing fear. (Note as well that inmates in county jails include people who have not been convicted of any crime, but may be awaiting trial.)

Officials at the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office say it does not appear Sheriff Tina Nieto received such a request from the DOJ. Even if she did not, the specter of ICE has already asserted itself.

SARA RUBIN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@montereycountynow.com.