At a Linda Vista apartment complex, masked federal agents recently swarmed an undocumented immigrant to make an arrest as an angry crowd gathered in protest, in a scene that has played out in viral videos across social media amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Standing in front of yellow police tape, between the agents and bystanders, stood San Diego police officers.
“All we are here for is scene security,” the officer told Arturo Gonzalez, an activist recording the operation. “We have not made any immigration arrests.”
Gonzalez wasn’t convinced: “You’re not making any arrests. You are just protecting them so they can do their duties.”
California law is clear. Local law enforcement agencies cannot assist federal agents with immigration enforcement. But local cops have been increasingly called to the scenes of such arrests in recent weeks as public immigration arrests continue to roil communities.
Police are in a thorny spot. The community’s distaste for the arrests by federal agents rubs off on local officers on the front line. In the eyes of the public, there may be little daylight between the two.
“One of the main things the community has said is that they no longer know who to trust,” said Adriana Jasso, coordinator for the U.S.-Mexico border program with the American Friends Service Committee.
Policing agencies say their presence is to ensure safety for everyone. In recent local encounters, officers responded to calls for help — sometimes from federal agents staring down angry onlookers.
“Our main purpose and goal is to keep the peace and safety for all,” Oceanside Police Chief Taurino Valdovinos said. “Not just the federal agents, not just the community, but for everyone.”
Local police are trying to combat the perception that they are helping or facilitating federal agents. Departments drawn into such encounters have gone on the offense — posting about the incidents on social media and issuing explanations.
“That’s where it’s the tough spot, because that is a matter of keeping the peace and not trying to protect one side,” Lt. Travis Easter, a San Diego police spokesperson, said. “It’s literally kind of being in the middle to keep both sides separate for that public safety.”
‘A concerning setback’
Since 2018, law enforcement has been operating within the parameters of the California Values Act, or Senate Bill 54. Sometimes referred to as the “sanctuary state law,” SB 54 indicates that law enforcement agencies across the state shall not use “agency or department moneys or personnel to investigate, interrogate, detain, detect, or arrest persons for immigration enforcement purposes.”
The law aimed to foster trust with immigrant communities, so they would feel comfortable reporting crimes to the authorities. Human rights advocates, however, say progress made in the last seven years is at risk with the possible perception that police are supporting federal agents.
“It’s a concerning setback,” Jasso said. “This could send people back into the shadows in terms of their rights, access to resources and the ability to report violent situations.”
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson said the agency has requested assistance from local police for safety reasons.
“Due to heightened media and public attention, there are occasions where crowd control measures are necessary to prevent operational disruptions and ensure public safety,” the spokesperson said.
“In such instances, ICE may request assistance from local law enforcement agencies for perimeter control. It is important to note that while local law enforcement agencies do not participate in immigration arrests, they do assist with crowd control efforts to ensure the safety of all involved.”
At the July 2 confrontation in Linda Vista, federal authorities ended up arresting three U.S. citizen protesters, who were charged in federal court with assaulting, resisting or impeding federal officers.
“While (Homeland Security Investigations) respects the public’s right to peacefully express disagreement with immigration enforcement, physical assaults on federal officers and interference with lawful operations will not be tolerated,” ICE said a day after the arrests.
Community activist Tasha Williamson and other community members accused San Diego police of not protecting bystanders from exercising their First Amendment rights at such scenes. “They are not preserving the peace,” Williamson said Friday. “They are just standing around, letting law enforcement do whatever they want to do and targeting community members.”
In San Diego County, bystanders have posted videos documenting other arrests in recent weeks. Perhaps most notorious is the immigration raid at Buona Forchetta restaurant in South Park on May 30. Several people protesting the ICE operation swarmed the area. Armed federal agents in tactical gear used flash-bang devices to disperse the crowd blocking their vehicles.
San Diego police officers said at the time that the Department of Homeland Security had made an “urgent request for assistance,” and that the federal agents had left before they arrived.
Asked about police response to immigration operations, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria’s office said police respond to emergency assistance calls from all law enforcement agencies “because such calls often indicate a situation is posing a danger” to the public.
“As he has stated previously, Mayor Gloria condemns the aggressive tactics ICE is deploying and believes they make our communities less safe — and the fact ICE is having to call SDPD for cover when their enforcement operations escalate into chaos proves his point,” his office said.
Juanito Xochipilli Conoro is a member of the Human Rights Council of Oceanside and also part of a team that records and documents immigration arrests. He said that members of his group have received training on how to interact in these situations and understand that they must maintain a distance and cannot interfere.
“We are not obstructing any kind of operation,” he said. “We just want to shed light on what is happening to protect the community.”
Finding a balance
In Spring Valley earlier this month, sheriff’s deputies were called in as federal agents conducting immigration enforcement detained two people on a residential street. A bystander who recorded slices of the forceful arrests cursed at and taunted the agents, who ordered him to back off.
A few other bystanders gathered, and someone — presumably one of the detainees — screamed.
A bystander called 911, fearing that someone might need medical assistance, Sheriff Kelly Martinez said. The caller, she said, mentioned that it appeared to be an ICE operation.
Martinez said that by the time deputies arrived, Homeland Security Investigations agents “had pretty much resolved the situation” and were leaving the scene. “We didn’t really have any involvement in that case,” she said.
The sheriff acknowledged that immigration enforcement is “a very emotionally charged issue right now.”
“We’re trying to find that balance where we’re not violating SB 54 and doing what we’re doing,” Martinez said.
Any kind of presence, no matter how brief, can be sticky.
Valdovinos, the Oceanside chief, said that earlier this month, federal agents were wrapping an operation on Las Vegas Drive and were trying to leave when someone blocked their path and identified themselves — falsely — as an off-duty undercover Oceanside police officer. The agents called police.
By the time Oceanside officers arrived, the person was gone, and the agents were on their way out. The chief personally reviewed footage from the scene and said his officers were there for less than a minute.
Valdovinos said the incident was the first time federal agents — in this case, an agent with the Internal Revenue Service — have reached out during an immigration operation.
“We have and always will abide by state law, specifically SB 54,” the police chief said.
“We understand that request for help kind of muddies that water,” he said. “But again, as long as we’re not assisting with the actual arrest, detention or providing any information, we’re simply there to keep the peace.”
The chief also said there had been a second call for service regarding the incident — this one from a community member who saw federal agents and reported that whatever conflict was happening appeared to be escalating.
The encounter prompted the police department to issue a statement. “We want to be clear: OPD was not a participant in this federal operation,” the statement reads, in part. “We do not engage in immigration enforcement, nor do we assist in such efforts.”
The Human Rights Council of Oceanside issued a statement criticizing police and alleged that community members are telling them of seeing “patterns that blur the line” between federal and local authorities. It noted that the presence of Oceanside police at the scene of an immigration operation “only deepened community mistrust.”
The council also called for the department not to send unmarked or covert cars into immigrant communities. “These tactics cause confusion, retraumatize neighborhoods and erode trust,” the statement reads.
Identifying law enforcement
There is also confusion about who is who in immigration enforcement operations.
Federal officials sometimes wear clothing with the word “police” emblazoned on it, and have done so for several years. Sometimes the labeling also includes acronyms such HSI, which stands for Homeland Security Investigations, or ERO for ICE Enforcement Removal Operations.
In its social media statement earlier this month, the Human Rights Council of Oceanside notes that when local police and federal agents don clothing that reads “police,” doing so makes it “intentionally difficult for residents to tell who is who.”
Sheriff Martinez acknowledged that such confusion is a concern — many people don’t understand which agency does what — and that her department has even turned to trying to let people know what clothing its deputies wear to make those distinctions clear.
The San Diego Police Department has been sending officers to community meetings to get their message out. “We still need the trust of our community,” Easter said. “We want the trust of our community, and we don’t want to lose that.”
Staff writer Caleb Lunetta contributed to this report.