While the Trump administration’s immigration blitz hit Midwestern cities like Chicago and Minneapolis, a quieter escalation unfolded in San Diego late last year with agents making thousands of arrests in and around the city.
Government data analyzed by CalMatters show nearly a 1500% increase in arrests for May to October compared to the same time period a year earlier. The arrests occurred in San Diego and Imperial counties, a region the federal government refers to as its San Diego area of responsibility.
By September, the number of arrests recorded in the two counties surpassed immigration arrests in the Los Angeles territory, a much larger region that the Trump administration targeted for a headline-grabbing crackdown that summer.
In September and October, federal immigration officers arrested more than twice as many people in the San Diego region than they did in all of 2024, according to government data.
“I feel the temperature rising,” said Patrick Corrigan, a volunteer who monitors U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity at the federal courthouse in San Diego.
As in other blue cities across the nation, activists are worried San Diego could be next on President Donald Trump’s list for a major military-style immigration operation. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson would not comment about whether more high-profile operations were planned for the San Diego area. David Kim, a Border Patrol spokesman, said the agency cannot confirm future operations.
In December, White House “border czar” Tom Homan visited the San Diego border with U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott.
“As we bring 10,000 more agents on…you haven’t seen anything yet,” warned Homan. “Wait til’ next year.”
He added that so-called ‘sanctuary cities that have official policies that limit law enforcement cooperation with federal officers, such as San Diego and Chula Vista, would see more non-criminal arrests because agents would be forced into the community. “If you wanna be a sanctuary city, you’re gonna get exactly what you don’t want. More agents in the community and more non-criminals arrested,” he said.
Advocacy groups and immigrants have noticed the skyrocketing arrests. In San Diego, federal immigration agents have clashed with protesters while arresting immigrants in the hallways of downtown courtrooms. Agents also swept Home Depot parking lots in Encinitas, National City and San Marcos in the past year and made arrests near public schools.
In May, ICE agents stormed Buona Forchetta, a small neighborhood restaurant in the upscale South Park neighborhood of San Diego.
But San Diego hasn’t felt like a city under siege — yet.
Gregory Bovino, the chief patrol agent of the El Centro Sector in California who made headlines around the nation as the Border Patrol’s commander at large, has not shown up in San Diego. Even without his presence and the attention that follows, arrests here have been surging.
Agents arrested more than 4,500 people between May and October of 2025 compared to less than 300 in the same period of the previous year, the data shows.
Many arrests are occurring at immigration check-ins and courthouses. Some critics call that tactic illegal because they say it violates people’s due process rights to legalize their status. They say it serves as a deportation trap: if you don’t show up, you will probably be ordered deported; if you do, you may be arrested.
“They’re just putting numbers on the board,” said Andrea Guerrero, the executive director of Alliance San Diego, a community human rights organization that works to hold federal law enforcement accountable, including Border Patrol.
“And they’re doing so in a way that is not just irresponsible, but is inhumane. There is no doubt that public trust is eroding in real time in the institutions of our government and that has an impact on the resiliency of our democracy,” she added.
San Diego arrest data shows immigration agents are no longer focusing on people with criminal records. Only 25% of people arrested between May and mid-October had past criminal convictions, compared to over 60% in the same months of the final year of Joe Biden’s presidency.
The data was provided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in response to a public records request by the Deportation Data Project, a group of academic researchers and attorneys, and analyzed by CalMatters.
This data set only includes administrative arrests: when ICE agents arrest an individual for a civil violation of immigration laws, such as being in the U.S. without permission from the government. ICE can also make criminal arrests, but those figures do not appear to be included in this data set, according to researchers.
Courthouse arrests
Earlier this month, a woman from Venezuela showed up at the federal immigration courthouse with her 5-year-old son and a social worker. She was nervous because agents previously arrested her husband. The family had waited in Mexico for an appointment through Biden’s CBP One application in 2024, which was the legal way to enter the country and seek asylum at that time.
“I was very afraid to go in,” said Milagros about the Edward Schwartz federal court building. She said she asked the social worker to accompany her to her immigration check-in so that her son would not also be taken into custody if she was arrested. She planned to hand the boy off to the social worker if she had to.
“When they’re constantly changing all the policies, it’s very difficult. We don’t feel like we can walk around freely,” she said. She asked Calmatters to identify her only by her first name because she feared retaliation for speaking with the media.
As she approached the court building, Milagros spotted The Rev. Brad Mills, who helped run a church shelter during a surge of Venezuelan asylum-seekers during the Biden administration.
“When I saw the father, I was able to relax a little,” she said.
Mills said he comes to the courthouse to accompany people to their hearings and check-ins because they “are trying to go through the legal pathways to seek residency or seek some legal right to stay here and work here.”
“Many come here with a lot of fear,” Mills said. “The presence of the faith volunteers, we’ve been told, has kind of a peaceful calming effect.”
Corrigan, another FAITH volunteer, accompanies people at the courthouse four days a week and five to six hours a day.
“We’ve seen increases in detention, a lot of detentions in the courthouse,” Corrigan said. “There were two weeks in October where it was 10 to 20 (people) a day, and then lately maybe one or two a day,” he said in mid-January.
The arrests include people who likely would have been allowed to remain in the country in past administrations. They include a Cuban man who had been in the U.S. for 15 years, a Turkish man married to a U.S. citizen, and a Mexican mom granted withholding from removal, court records show.
‘How much longer is this going to go on’?
On a crisp January morning before dawn, a group of volunteers gathered in a parking lot in Linda Vista, a San Diego neighborhood that’s home to the University of San Diego and Skate World, the only indoor roller rink in the county.
Armed with megaphones and walkie-talkies, they were preparing to patrol the neighborhood block-by-block, street-by-street to warn Latino, Filipino and Vietnamese community members about Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in the area. The day before, ICE arrested a day-laborer here. A week earlier, agents took four people: three Guatemalans and one Mexican national, according to members of the group Union del Barrio.
The Union del Barrio volunteers are not nervous, even though less than a week prior to their patrol, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis for doing exactly what they say they’re trying to do: protect their streets from the Trump administration’s massive deportation machine.
“We’ve been doing this for many years, so I think it is fair to say that it shakes you, as a person … the violent way agents or the agent in particular decided to act or react to the situation,” said Adriana Jasso.
But it’s not going to stop them, she adds.
They patrol six, sometimes seven days a week, and they respond to calls from neighbors afraid to go outside when they see a passing SUV. They’re looking for fancy cars; the grade of tint on their windows; the type of haircut and color of pants a 20-something is wearing — clues that agents are operating in the area. If they confirm ICE is here, messages go out to a WhatsApp group with more than 700 members for the Linda Vista neighborhood.
That day was quiet, but others have not been. In July, community members clashed with agents from Homeland Security Investigations outside the Mesa Vista Apartments in Linda Vista, according to news reports. The federal agents requested and received backup from the San Diego Police Department, fueling further community outrage. In August, ICE arrested a parent waiting nearby to pick up his child from Linda Vista Elementary School, according to Voice of San Diego.
But it hasn’t reached the fever pitch seen in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis. “No, we haven’t seen that, that degree of presence or force,” says Jasso.
Later in the week, Union del Barrio volunteers were just wrapping up their shift patrolling Barrio Logan, one of the region’s oldest Mexican-American communities. It has a history of immigration, labor and grassroots activism. A wave of phone pinged and alerts rippled through the group. A neighbor has spotted a suspicious vehicle back in Linda Vista, about 10 miles to the north.
The volunteers sprang into action, getting to Linda Vista with the same determination as cops rolling to a crime scene. In an alley in the Village apartment complex, they found a dark blue minivan with no front license plate and visible collision damage on the passenger side. In the back, there was a handicap plate. A reflective sunshade propped against the windshield partly concealed the agents inside.
Jasso got out and tentatively approached the car. Once she confirmed two men wearing Department of Homeland Security uniforms were inside, she got on the bullhorn.
“La migra! La migra está aquí en Linda Vista! This is an ICE vehicle!” her voice echoed across the parking lot in English and Spanish.
“You need to move or you’re going to get arrested for impeding,” an agent told a Union del Barrio driver, who asked CalMatters not to identify him because he fears arrest because of his involvement.
The volunteer backed up slowly as Jasso kept screaming. Once the Union del Barrio car was out of their way, the agents peeled out of their spot and continued out of the parking lot.
“It’s just way too much for people,” Jasso said. “One of the constant questions we get is: ‘How long is this going to go on? ¿Cuantó tiempo más?’”
“It breaks your heart because what can we say?” she added. “Nobody knows.”
About the data
ICE released arrest data in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Deportation Data Project. The data includes administrative arrests – an arrest for a civil violation of U.S. immigration laws – conducted by immigration enforcement officers. The data does not explicitly track arrests by ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division, Customs and Border Protection and criminal arrests. However, the data appears to include some people who were originally arrested by Border Patrol and reprocessed by ICE. ICE did not respond to clarifying questions CalMatters asked about the data.
When we found multiple records of arrests of the same person within a 24-hour period, we considered the data to reflect likely duplicates and we counted it as a single arrest. However, repeated arrests of the same person within a 24-hour period may occur in some rare cases. We flagged records that were missing an identifier for the person arrested as potential duplicates if multiple people matching the same basic demographic information – gender, birth year and citizenship country – and apprehension criminality were arrested in the same area of responsibility on the same day.
The analysis used the area of responsibility indicated in the arrest record — the geographical area in which an ICE field office has the authority to conduct enforcement and removal operations — to describe the location where the arrest occurred. We did not include records for which the area of the arrest could not be determined with certainty. For example, when the apprehension area of responsibility conflicted with the apprehension state, we omitted it.
Government records of people held in ICE detention indicate that, for a small subset of cases, ICE recorded more than one arrest during the course of a person’s detention stay. ICE could not be reached for comment on whether these represented duplicate arrest records.
