A community gathering scheduled last weekend to provide diapers, food and other resources to families in San Diego was canceled, as organizers kept getting reports of local Haitian immigrants being detained by federal agents.
Guerline Jozef, executive director and co-founder of the nonprofit, grassroots organization Haitian Bridge Alliance, said the decision was made to protect the community. On Thursday, she received word of at least one Haitian immigrant arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego. She has been fielding such reports for the past few weeks.
“This has been extremely disturbing,” she said. “Because this is what we have feared for a very long time.”
Other local groups have also recently reported heightened immigration enforcement operations throughout the county. According to new data, July saw the highest number of immigration arrests in the San Diego region in a single month under the second term of the Trump administration.
“It’s not happening with great fanfare, but it’s happening,” said the Rev. Scott Santarosa from Our Lady of Guadalupe parish during a recent prayer vigil in Linda Vista in solidarity with immigrant communities. “Even though a lot of people think it’s not happening, it is.”
Following the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis earlier this year, Trump officials signaled their intent to take a more low-key approach to immigration enforcement operations.
In July, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said that the agency was “turning up the heat on the streets,” but wanted to stay out of the headlines “every single day.”
ICE agents try to detain a person in the College Grove shopping center in Oak Park on Aug. 19, 2026. (Sideo TV)
Still, community patrols, advocates and local residents have documented ICE activity and shared it on social media, offering a glimpse into what is taking place in San Diego neighborhoods.
Following the Trump administration’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for Haitians last month, which was upheld by the Supreme Court, Jozef said that the San Diego-based organization has sensed an uptick in ICE activity, both locally and in other cities.
“As soon as they made that decision from the Supreme Court, they started taking community members, people going to the laundromat, to school, to the supermarket, or doing food delivery,” Jozef said.
A spokesperson with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Thursday that the agency “is conducting law enforcement activities across the country to keep Americans safe” and added that DHS “does not discuss ongoing or future operations.”
“Temporary Protected Status is exactly that — temporary,” the spokesperson added. “For too long, TPS has been allowed to function as a de facto amnesty program despite Congress never intending it to be permanent.”
The busiest month
ICE data obtained by the Deportation Data Project via public records request and analyzed by the Union-Tribune show that ICE’s San Diego division made about 9,200 arrests from Jan. 1 to Aug. 6 of this year. Nearly 2,000 of those arrests were made in July alone.
Arrests by ICE in the San Diego area of responsibility, which covers San Diego and Imperial counties, are already outpacing those made last year. ICE made about 8,500 arrests in the region in 2025, the data shows.
Data show that just over half of those arrested so far this year, 51%, had no current or pending criminal charges. Last year, it was a slightly larger portion, about 57%.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson disputed the data, saying it is being “cherry-picked by the Deportation Data Project to peddle a false narrative.” The Deportation Data Project said it does not add or drop any rows from the data.
The federal agency said that nationwide, agents are targeting “public safety threats” and that the percentage of those arrested with criminal convictions or pending charges is higher.
“The Deportation Data Project relies on information releases that have not been reviewed, audited or given context,” the spokesperson added. “DHS nor ICE have verified the accuracy, methodology or the analysis of the project and its results.”
The spokesperson said the Deportation Data Project’s work is “inaccurate,” even though the project publishes data from ICE that the federal agency doesn’t regularly share publicly.
Nationwide, ICE made nearly 50,000 arrests in July — the highest single month for arrests so far under Trump.
Tactics on the ground
Community patrol volunteers said the newly obtained data matches what they have seen or received reports of in recent months.
“Now that we’re looking at the data, it’s clear why there have been so many calls to the Unión del Barrio patrol line,” said volunteer Adriana Jasso. “People are asking what they can do next.”
Parked at a park in Linda Vista, Adriana Jasso places the magnetic door signage identifying their group. The small group of volunteers with the Unión del Barrio community patrol will drive through alleyways and large parking lots, as well as past nearby schools, searching for signs indicating that federal immigration agents are actively operating in the area. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
The organization believes the uptick could be related to additional federal funding under H.R. 1, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, allowing for the deployment of more resources and enforcement teams throughout the county, Jasso said. The bill allocated nearly $30 billion for ICE, including for purposes of hiring and training additional personnel through September 2029.
Jasso said that they have noticed more ICE vehicles at arrest scenes lately, as well as quicker arrests, compared to previous months.
“It seems there’s an effort to make the arrest where there are as few witnesses as possible,” she said.
Neither DHS nor ICE responded to questions about the increase in arrests or whether additional resources had been allocated.
For years, Unión del Barrio has been documenting incidents involving ICE agents in local neighborhoods. During a Wednesday morning shift, agents were not seen, but the group gathered later to speak about concerns raised by community members.
Data indicate that most of the arrests made by the San Diego division this year occurred in the city of San Diego, including hundreds in San Ysidro, home to the nation’s busiest land port of entry. El Centro and Calexico, both in Imperial County, also had a high number of arrests.
From the more than 17,600 arrests made by ICE in the region since the start of the current administration, the overwhelming majority — about 74% — are Mexican nationals, followed by 5% from Guatemala, 3% from China, and 2% from Venezuela and Colombia, according to the data.
What court records say
Once individuals are detained, one way they can try to seek freedom — at least temporarily — is through a habeas corpus petition, which challenges the legality of a person’s detention. Most petitions allege some sort of due process violation, arguing that the detainee has been held too long without being granted a hearing, or that immigration agents detained a person who had been previously granted immigration parole without a valid reason for revoking that parole.
The use of such petitions has skyrocketed under the Trump administration, and federal judges in San Diego have largely sided with the petitioners, finding repeatedly that the administration is violating those petitioners’ due-process rights.
The Union-Tribune reviewed dozens of habeas corpus petitions filed since July in the Southern District of California, which covers San Diego and Imperial counties. That review offered anecdotal examples of how some immigration arrests occurred during the agency’s busiest month.
On July 5, a Peruvian man who’d been lawfully living in the U.S. for three years on immigration parole made a wrong turn and ended up at the gates of Camp Pendleton, where he was subsequently detained by ICE officers. Earlier this year, the Union-Tribune found that dozens of noncitizens lawfully living in the U.S. were being detained by ICE at the gates to Camp Pendleton. Most of those individuals arrived at the base inadvertently, or did so while working as rideshare or delivery drivers.
A San Diego federal judge found that the government detained the Peruvian man without due process and ordered it to release him under the same parole requirements he’d been living under since 2023.
On July 30, an undocumented man from Honduras who has lived in the U.S. since 2017 was arrested by ICE officers in San Diego County, according to his petition, which lacked details of the arrest. The man, who asserted that he operates a construction company and that his father is a U.S. citizen, alleged in part that his due process rights were violated because he has no criminal record and had never been ordered removed from the country.
As of Thursday, the man remained in ICE custody, and a federal judge assigned to his case had not yet ruled on his habeas petition, which was filed Monday.
Other habeas petitions filed in San Diego federal court and reviewed by the Union-Tribune were filed by individuals being held at local detention facilities, but who were arrested in other parts of the country. Other petitions did not make clear whether the person had been arrested in San Diego or elsewhere.
One such petition was filed by a Haitian woman who alleged that she was granted immigration parole in 2023. Her attorney wrote that she is the mother of a 4-year-old child and a breastfeeding 2-month-old baby. Her petition alleged that on Aug. 27, she went to a DMV to take a driving test when ICE officers detained both her and her husband’s cousin who had accompanied her to the DMV.
The petition alleged that ICE violated its own policy regarding pregnant and breastfeeding mothers by detaining her and separating her from her nursing infant.
As of Thursday, a judge had not yet ruled on her petition, which she filed Monday.
María Méndez said that her brother-in-law, Antonio Muñiz, who worked as a dishwasher at a restaurant, was detained by ICE agents last month in the parking lot of a shopping center in La Mesa. His roommate, who also worked at a restaurant, was arrested with him. The incident was shared on social media.
The 64-year-old brother-in-law came to the U.S. from Mexico undocumented as a teenager, she said. The family said that he does not have a criminal record. He is currently held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center. ICE did not respond to questions about the arrest.
The family had previously told him to be careful in light of the immigration enforcement operations in town. Still, they were surprised when her brother-in-law called to tell them he was detained.
“It’s very sad,” she said. “You never expect to hear news like that.”