This year, federal agents arrested thousands of immigrants in San Diego — in courtroom hallways, near school dropoff lines, through smashed car windows — and they even arrested U.S. citizens too.
Federal agents, often wearing face masks, arrested nearly 5,000 immigrants in San Diego and Imperial counties from January to October 2025. Volunteers, activists, and immigration lawyers suggest the final tally for the year, including November and December, will be a few thousand more. This is over 10 times the number of migrants authorities arrested in the region last year.
In a news conference earlier in December at the San Diego border, Tom Homan, the White House border czar, said the administration intends to continue the escalation of arrests of undocumented people in 2026. “The Trump administration has sent a clear message: we’re going to enforce immigration law without apology,” he said.
Increasing arrests
Though the Trump administration’s stated intent was to deport “the worst of the worst,” the new methods of enforcement immediately targeted asylum seekers and undocumented people without criminal records.
Immigration agents make arrests of people checking in with the agency at its San Diego offices, Oct. 21, 2025. (Photo by Adrian Childress/Times of San Diego)Arrests shot up in San Diego in September and October, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents began detaining immigrants attending routine check-in appointments at the ICE office in the federal building downtown. Volunteers who escort migrants to their appointments began writing family members’ phone numbers on migrants’ arms in permanent marker, in case they were unexpectedly detained and needed to inform their loved ones.
Federal agents also arrested people attending appointments for citizenship services or green card applications, signaling a new willingness by authorities to detain any immigrant, regardless of their paperwork. At the news conference, Homan said the administration plans to push the boundaries even further next year, and people with valid immigration statuses would not be off-limits for ICE arrests in 2026.
The arrests occurred on the street, as well as in offices and hallways. In August, masked federal agents arrested at least three parents on their way to drop off or pick up children at schools across the San Diego area. Several blocks from Park Dale Lane elementary school in Encinitas, a crowd of children, parents, and school administrators watched as a man was handcuffed and put in the back of a black SUV after dropping off his daughter at school. The agents motioned for the crowd to clear, ignoring shouts of “Let him say goodbye!”
By the end of the summer, growing numbers of arrests led to a new nationwide high of 65,000 people held in immigration detention facilities nationwide. Migrants detained at the Otay Mesa and Imperial regional detention centers, the nearest facilities to San Diego, said some were forced to sleep on mats on the floor for months on end.
At least 23 people died in ICE custody this year, making 2025 deadlier for detained migrants than the COVID-19 pandemic. By January 2026, the Migration Policy Institute expects over 100,000 people could be held in detention facilities across the country.
A Times of San Diego investigation found that the migrants arrested in the federal building in October were held in cells in the basement of the building for up to four days. They endured cold temperatures with just aluminum blankets, slept on thin mats on the floor and did not shower or change their clothes for days on end.
Legal countermeasures
The increasing ICE presence in communities led to confrontations between immigration agents and U.S. citizens, who were at the scene to observe or protest, or by accident.
In June, federal agents arrested two U.S. citizen teenagers in Oceanside after shooting their home with flash-bang grenades and detaining their parents. In July, ICE arrested multiple U.S. citizens in San Diego, activists and volunteers who were observing and taking videos of raids, including a 71-year-old grandmother, Barbara Stone, who was held for more than eight hours without access to a lawyer.
Volunteer Barbara Stone demonstrates how she was handcuffed. (Photo by Chris Stone/Times of San Diego)In recent months, activists have sorted into organized groups that aim to resist the raids in distinct ways: escorting migrants to appointments at the Federal Building, raising money for commissary at detention centers, patrolling neighborhoods at dawn for possible federal agents, following and filming agents’ vehicles and holding weekly protests outside detention facilities. Volunteers expect the coordination of these efforts to extend into 2026, perhaps increasing the likelihood of more frequent confrontations with federal agents.
Mariel Horner, an organizer who participates in a weekly protest outside the Otay Mesa detention facility, said the activists use music, bullhorns, and yelling to communicate with immigrants held there, and their presence has prompted inmates to “organize amongst themselves.” Horner says the group raised over $3,000 this holiday season to contribute to the commissary costs of 60 immigrants.
Civil rights organizations, lawyers, and local governments have also begun to use the law to combat ICE raids. The tactics involved are mass lawsuits that seek to protect a class of people from arrest, petitions to release migrants from detention, and city ordinances that aim to limit federal agents’ access to certain areas.
Lawyers and organizations say they plan to take what they’ve learned and implement stronger legal strategies in 2026. In the fall, numerous lawyers’ associations and non-profits began offering training courses for immigration lawyers, to learn how to submit filings known as habeas petitions, a tactic to release an immigrant from detention.
To accommodate shifting demands, in early 2026, the Catholic diocese will open a resource center next to the Our Lady of Guadalupe parish, where immigrants can access pro-bono legal services, and families of detained or deported migrants can receive support and temporary lodging. Parish members with expertise in construction are providing “free manpower” to transform the building, Father Hung, one of the local priests, said, “so the center can meet the needs we’re seeing.”
More arrests planned
Crowded detention centers coincided with a rise in the use of ankle monitors and other surveillance devices like smart watches and phone applications. ICE agents use these wearable devices to track the locations of migrants currently in immigration proceedings as part of the Alternatives to Detention program. Migrants in San Diego who have worn these ankle monitors say they interfere with work, and cost the migrants thousands of dollars, as they are obligated to attend mandatory weekly check-ins with little prior notice. After months wearing a device, the migrant may be arrested anyway. The Trump administration has already signed a $2.2 billion contract with the surveillance contractor B.I. Inc. to produce more devices for the next two years, meaning in 2026, thousands more people in San Diego could be forced to wear them.
The Imperial Regional Detention Facility near San Diego. Some of the migrants in the detention center have lived in the United States for decades, while others only recently arrived. (Photo by Lillian Perlmutter/Times of San Diego)The company was also awarded a $121 million contract this month, to produce technology that surveils undocumented people and verifies their addresses.
In the press conference at the border, CBP Commissioner Rodney S. Scott said the administration plans to integrate surveillance into everyday life for millions of people in 2026, through license plate readers scanning for vehicles belonging to undocumented people. Scott said in 2026 the border wall will also become a “smart wall,” with new cameras and trackers “embedded” into the infrastructure.
But these cameras will likely be capturing primarily desert wildlife. This year, Customs and Border Protection has recorded the lowest number of unauthorized border crossings in any year since 1970. With no path to seek asylum under the Trump administration, fewer people are traveling to the border.
But with continuing patterns of gang violence, economic precarity, and political instability across Latin America, groups like No More Deaths expect that numbers of border crossings could begin a slow return to pre-pandemic levels next year.
“With the Trump administration’s attempts to block any access to asylum at the southern US border, we are sure to see increases in deaths of more vulnerable populations,” No More Deaths wrote in a recent report.
The borderlands have also been witness this year to a changing of the guard, as hundreds of miles of border territory have been transferred to the military, including the area between Otay Mountain and the Arizona border, which was transferred to the Navy in December.
It is unclear whether the Navy will arrest migrants in this territory next year, and which roles will belong to the Border Patrol and sheriff’s deputies. Local activist groups and sheriffs in other sections of the border have raised concerns that the confusion over jurisdiction increases the possibility migrants will die in the desert, waiting for the right authority to address their emergency calls.
The new, nebulous nature of border enforcement is part of a larger phenomenon, as federal agents of all types have taken part in immigration raids this year, including agencies typically uninvolved in immigration enforcement, like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
Rumors spread in the fall that top ICE leaders, including the head of the San Diego field office, would be replaced with high-ranking Border Patrol officers, who are known for more violent, sweeping raids. The Trump administration’s apparent preference for those more extreme tactics could indicate larger, more indiscriminate raids for 2026.
New legislation has blasted immigration enforcement budgets into the billions of dollars this year, meaning ICE, Border Patrol, and other agencies will have ample resources to recruit tens of thousands of new officers and buy more sophisticated equipment next year, increasing the likelihood of larger and more aggressive immigration enforcement in 2026.
“As we bring 10,000 more agents on, you ain’t seen anything yet,” Homan said.
Lillian Perlmutter covers immigration for Times of San Diego and NEWSWELL.
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