Many Americans are witnessing immigration arrests for the first time and
reacting
[June 21, 2025]
By JULIE WATSON, JAKE OFFENHARTZ and CLAIRE RUSH
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Adam Greenfield was home nursing a cold when his
girlfriend raced in to tell him Immigration and Customs Enforcement
vehicles were pulling up in their trendy San Diego neighborhood.
The author and podcast producer grabbed his iPhone and bolted out the
door barefoot, joining a handful of neighbors recording masked agents
raiding a popular Italian restaurant nearby, as they yelled at the
officers to leave. An hour later, the crowd had grown to nearly 75
people, with many in front of the agents’ vehicles.
“I couldn't stay silent,” Greenfield said. “It was literally outside of
my front door.”
More Americans are witnessing people being hauled off as they shop,
exercise at the gym, dine out and otherwise go about their daily lives
as President Donald Trump's administration aggressively works to
increase immigration arrests. As the raids touch the lives of people who
aren’t immigrants themselves, many Americans who rarely, if ever,
participated in civil disobedience are rushing out to record the actions
on their phones and launch impromptu protests.
Arrests are being made outside gyms, busy restaurants
Greenfield said on the evening of the May 30 raid, the crowd included
grandparents, retired military members, hippies, and restaurant patrons
arriving for date night. Authorities threw flash bangs to force the
crowd back and then drove off with four detained workers, he said.
“To do this, at 5 o’clock, right at the dinner rush, right on a busy
intersection with multiple restaurants, they were trying to make a
statement,” Greenfield said. "But I don’t know if their intended point
is getting across the way they want it to. I think it is sparking more
backlash.”
Previously, many arrests happened late at night or in the pre-dawn hours
by agents waiting outside people's homes as they left for work or
outside their work sites when they finished their day. When ICE raided
another popular restaurant in San Diego in 2008, agents did it in the
early morning without incident.
White House border czar Tom Homan has said agents are being forced to
make more arrests in communities because of sanctuary policies that
limit cooperation with ICE in certain cities and states. ICE enforces
immigration laws nationwide but seeks state and local help in alerting
federal authorities of immigrants wanted for deportation and holding
that person until federal officers take custody.
Vice President JD Vance, during a visit to Los Angeles on Friday, said
those policies have given agents “a bit of a morale problem because
they've had the local government in this community tell them that
they're not allowed to do their job."
“When that Border Patrol agent goes out to do their job, they said
within 15 minutes they have protesters, sometimes violent protesters who
are in their face obstructing them,” he said.
'It was like a scene out of a movie'
Melyssa Rivas had just arrived at her office in the Los Angeles suburb
of Downey, California one morning last week when she heard the
frightened screams of young women. She went outside to find the women
confronting nearly a dozen masked federal agents who had surrounded a
man kneeling on the pavement.
“It was like a scene out of a movie,” Rivas said. “They all had their
faces covered and were standing over this man who was clearly
traumatized. And there are these young girls screaming at the top of
their lungs.”
As Rivas began recording the interaction, a growing group of neighbors
shouted at the agents to leave the man alone. They eventually drove off
in vehicles, without detaining him, video shows.
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Melyssa Rivas poses for a photo at a location where she witnessed
masked federal agents detaining a person earlier this month outside
Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in Downey, Calif., on
Friday, June 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Rivas spoke to the man afterward, who told her the agents had
arrived at the car wash where he worked that morning, then pursued
him as he fled on his bicycle. It was one of several recent
workplace raids in the majority-Latino city.
The same day, federal agents were seen at a Home Depot, a
construction site and an LA Fitness gym. It wasn’t immediately clear
how many people had been detained.
“Everyone is just rattled,” said Alex Frayde, an employee at LA
Fitness who said he saw the agents outside the gym and stood at the
entrance, ready to turn them away as another employee warned
customers about the sighting. In the end, the agents never came in.
Communities protest around ICE buildings
Arrests at immigration courts and other ICE buildings have also
prompted emotional scenes as masked agents have turned up to detain
people going to routine appointments and hearings.
In the city of Spokane in eastern Washington state, hundreds of
people rushed to protest outside an ICE building June 11 after
former city councilor Ben Stuckart posted on Facebook. Stuckart
wrote that he was a legal guardian of a Venezuelan asylum seeker who
went to check in at the ICE building, only to be detained. His
Venezuelan roommate was also detained.
Both men had permission to live and work in the U.S. temporarily
under humanitarian parole, Stuckart told The Associated Press.
“I am going to sit in front of the bus,” Stuckart wrote, referring
to the van that was set to transport the two men to an ICE detention
center in Tacoma. “The Latino community needs the rest of our
community now. Not tonight, not Saturday, but right now!!!!”
The city of roughly 230,000 is the seat of Spokane County, where
just over half of voters cast ballots for Trump in the 2024
presidential election.
Stuckart was touched to see his mother’s caregiver among the
demonstrators.
“She was just like, ‘I’m here because I love your mom, and I love
you, and if you or your friends need help, then I want to help,’” he
said through tears.
By evening, the Spokane Police Department sent over 180 officers,
with some using pepper balls, to disperse protesters. Over 30 people
were arrested, including Stuckart who blocked the transport van with
others. He was later released.
Aysha Mercer, a stay-at-home mother of three, said she is “not
political in any way, shape or form." But many children in her
Spokane neighborhood — who play in her yard and jump on her
trampoline — come from immigrant families, and the thought of them
being affected by deportations was “unacceptable," she said.
She said she wasn't able to go to Stuckart's protest. But she
marched for the first time in her life on June 14, joining millions
in “No Kings” protests across the country.
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt as strongly as I do right this here
second,” she said.
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Offenhartz reported from Los Angeles and Rush from Portland, Oregon.
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