What Trump's mass deportation looks like in San Diego

It started when workers without status were arrested at an industrial paint shop near El Cajon. It escalated with asylum seekers detained at their immigration court hearings. It came to a boil after a raid at a popular South Park restaurant.

The impacts of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation strategy are now abundantly clear in the San Diego region.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, under pressure to meet arrest quotas, are targeting anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally. Not just those with violent criminal convictions.

KPBS has documented cases of a grandmother, a soccer coach and a disabled asylum seeker caught in the frenzied enforcement.

“When Trump took office, he put into place a number of executive orders and memoranda that vastly expanded the scope of enforcement activities, and we are now starting to see their fruits,” said Ginger Jacobs, Managing Partner at Jacobs & Schlesinger LLP.

Some of the tactics are more familiar, like workplace raids — which happened sporadically during the first Trump term but rarely during the Biden administration.

Others are new, like arresting people at immigration court or during their regular check-ins with ICE, and revoking student visas.

Stacy Tolchin is an immigration lawyer who is representing more than 20 students throughout Southern California.

“People are scared,” Tolchin said. “These people who are finishing up graduate programs, doctoral programs, this is a lot of time invested. To lose this is pretty monumental to people who have devoted their lives to it.”

A coalition of nonprofits, humanitarian workers, volunteers and lawyers have spent most of 2025 responding to this new wave of ICE enforcement.

Advocates patrol immigrant neighborhoods to warn people of potential enforcement. Lawyers rush to the downtown federal courthouse to provide pro-bono legal representation to those being arrested. Mutual aid networks fundraise to help families of the detained, including their U.S.-citizens partners and children.

“We’ve got incredible organizations here in San Diego that do rapid response incredibly well,” Jacobs said.

And following last month’s immigration raid at South Park’s Buona Forchetta, San Diego’s political and labor leaders are becoming more vocal.

“Over the past week, immigration enforcement tactics we’ve seen in San Diego have crossed a new line,” said Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (D-San Diego) at a June 2 news conference.

That same week, Christian Ramirez of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) said it was hypocritical for our society to profit from the work of unauthorized immigrants while simultaneously punishing them for that work.

Though Democratic politicians, labor leaders and activists agree that this level of enforcement is problematic, they disagree on how to combat it.

Democrats are quick to criticize White House officials and specific enforcement operations. But they still generally support ICE and its role in immigration enforcement.

At the June 2 news conference, Congressman Juan Vargas (D-Chula Vista) said local ICE agents are mostly good people following bad orders.

“I’ve met a lot of ICE agents, I can assure you that almost every ICE agent there didn’t want to be doing that,” Vargas said. “They did not want to be there running into a restaurant with machine guns to arrest the cook. They’re getting those orders from Washington.”

In contrast, immigrant rights advocates believe the entire agency needs to be fundamentally restructured. They point to a history of civil rights abuses to argue that the problem is systemic, not just a few bad apples or a particularly harsh administration.

“We can’t continue in this way because the infrastructure is a juggernaut,” said Pedro Rios of the American Friends Service Committee at a news conference. “Unless we are calling for a true end to ICE raids, then we have to be truthful about our vision for a just society.”

And tension is rising between local Democrats and their longtime supporters and funders in labor.

“We are not afraid, we are angry,” said Ramirez from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 221. “We feel betrayed by some elected leaders who took a while to respond to this. But elected leaders who are in Congress have to do more than just have press conference about it.”

Vargas and other Democrats say their power is limited because they are the minority party.

They did, however, send Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a letter demanding an investigation into the South Park raid.

Just a few days later, the Trump administration sent National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles in response to mass protests over increased immigration enforcement. The president of SEIU California, David Huerta, was arrested during those protests. He still faces federal charges.

Noem traveled to Los Angeles and did not mince words about the administration's plans during a news conference.

“We are not going away, we are staying to liberate this city,” Noem said.

At that same event, Noem’s security detail forced California Senator Alex Padilla to the ground and briefly handcuffed him after he tried to ask a question.

The situation remains volatile. On Sunday, Trump ordered ICE to increase enforcement in what he called Democrat-run cities like San Diego.