A year after grenade-wielding immigration agents raided the popular Buona Forchetta restaurant in South Park, Rep. Scott Peters warned that harassment and mass deportations are quietly continuing in San Diego.
Fifty people were ordered deported Friday in the first “mega” master immigration hearings in San Diego. The move is just one in a series of chaotic crackdowns on immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers by the Trump administration, which has been open about its mass deportation aims.
The hearing was the latest in a new national effort by the Department of Justice to significantly increase deportations by fast-tracking hearings, according to the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
Rep. Scott Peters, who represents an area of San Diego that includes Buona Forchetta, the site of a violent immigration sweep (and an immediate, outraged community response) in May 2025, said that San Diego is losing significant portions of its population to hard-line immigration enforcement.
“The Trump administration has funded ICE and Border Patrol to an extent that’s unheard of,” he said. “They’re better funded than the entire Israeli military already … it is ridiculous from people who are claiming to be fiscally responsible.”
The Democratic lawmaker said he is strongly against the $70 billion that was authorized for Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week.
“It’s very bad for us in San Diego,” he said.
Some 850,000 immigrants live in San Diego — more than 21% of the population, according to the county — and their daily lives have been tremendously disrupted, Peters said. “Many of them have legal status through TPS or with green cards and are just being harassed and it’s particularly terrible for San Diego — we’re actually losing population,” he said. “If you’re a native-born citizen you may not see it.”
With mass deportations and “rocket dockets” the current norm, “this is really an indiscriminate cleansing of immigrants from the United States,” he explained. “It’s unnecessary and it’s political, and it’s also just the wrong way for the country to be going.”
It may seem to be quieter around San Diego and other major cities with an ICE presence, but as this week’s mass removal order shows, just because shows of intimidation have diminished doesn’t mean vulnerable people are not being targeted.
“I think the administration has turned away from the sort of militaristic demonstrations that we saw in Minneapolis and Los Angeles, but don’t be deceived,” Peters said. “They’re just being conducted more quietly.”
For example, instead of getting arrested in the streets, many people are now getting picked up on their way to court-mandated hearings or even appointments to receive a green card.
But Peters said that those defending their neighbors against the threat of violence, removals from the country, and worse give him reason to hope.
“There’s a pretty good network of folks who are in communication with each other,” he said, adding that the work of local volunteers is crucial for keeping immigrants and asylum-seekers safe, particularly if a Minneapolis-style confrontation came to San Diego.
“To be out there in the streets with eyes on and cameras on probably prevented a lot more violence and death than what we actually saw,” he said.
The congressman added that Americans need to keep speaking out about violent removals and demand better treatment of those being targeted. He is also supporting immigrants by introducing legislation to limit the use of force by immigration agents, such as the Stop Excessive Force in Immigration Act.
“We should just hold Border Patrol and ICE to the same standards that we do local law enforcement — body cameras always on, no masks, very standard now — people are very comfortable with that,” Peters said.
He said that spreading the word about both immigration violence and efforts to stop it is a way to help the most vulnerable, because immigrants are not the only people hurt by immigration sweeps and mass deportations — society overall becomes less vibrant and resilient without their presence, hurting everyone in the end.
“Just being aware of how harmful this is for all of us is very important,” he said.
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