An ICE arrest in La Jolla, San Diego
Truck of house-cleaner detained by ICE agents on Belvedere Street in La Jolla, San Diego
It was a cloudy morning on Belvedere Street in La Jolla, San Diego. I was just about to check my email when my mom's caregiver came to tell me of the ICE arrest that she witnessed when pulling up to our house. I had yet to encounter Immigration and Enforcement (ICE) agents anywhere in San Diego, let alone La Jolla. San Diego’s most iconic beach, Windansea Beach, is just down the street—Belvedere Street—on which cars whiz by at more than 50 miles an hour due to the lack of speed bumps and stop signs. Occasionally you see influencers on the street posing for their audiences in front of the ocean view. It’s the same beach Tom Wolfe immortalized in his book The Pump House Gang. At Windansea or one of the beaches close-by, a twentysomething Eddie Vedder wrote three hit songs for Pearl Jam’s first album 10—while surfing. But it’s not surfing nor songwriting that keep the gears turning here: it’s the immigrant day laborers and professionals who care for the elderly, tend gardens, and work construction. Surely, they are aware that they could be arrested at any moment by ICE at any moment, I’ve told myself while passing garden and construction workers while walking down to the beach, not quite believing it. But maybe, like them, I’ve been lulled to sleep by the beaches and palm trees and landscaped gardens.
I walked outside and saw 23-year-old "ICE Chaser" Arturo Gonzalez walking towards me. He explained that a housecleaner had been detained in front of a house two doors up the street. She and the ICE agents who arrested her were already gone; he knew shew was a housecleaner because of the supplies he had seen in the vehicle. The black Tacoma truck was parked in front of the house she had been presumably contracted to clean.
Gonzalez showed me the Instagram video he had just posted to his 152,000 followers, showing the arrest. Then he showed me the social media message he received by one of his followers, letting him know that ICE was active in La Jolla.
We got to talking a bit and I asked him about my suspicion that the approach Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was taking towards detaining migrants in San Diego County was deliberately low-key, more so than elsewhere in the US.
“I think the approach is very more discreet, more secretive because they don't want the community to be aware of what's happening," he said. "They don't want people to document their tactics, and they're clearly going after families, not criminals. And so, when you see what's happening on the news, when you see what the Republicans are trying to paint the picture that they're doing it to help us. In reality, they're not helping the economy because they're taking people that are on their way to work."
He thought that there was a lack of awareness by immigrant workers and their supporters in communities like La Jolla.
"People that aren't vigilant for that kind of activity because it's mostly predominantly happening in Barrio Logan, Logan Heights, and vulnerable communities," he said. "So you would never expect La Jolla to be a community that ICE would just come and pick up a housekeeper. But in this case, it has started, and we have to be more vigilant in and around La Jolla and anywhere around our communities, all over San Diego County."
Regardless of where these arrests are taking place—Gonzalez is on the case, chasing down the ICE agents and often shouting expletives directly at them and posting his encounters on his various social media channels. In between the insults, he’s warning anyone around that ICE is in the area. Often, he walks right up to the line in provoking agents. But so far, at least, he’s managed to avoid doing time in an ICE detention facility. (He once had his car impounded for 30 days, however.)
"I think that the tactics here in San Diego, what makes them different from anywhere else, is that they know that the community here wants to take action," he told me, before heading off to his next encounter.
