When masked immigration agents arrested Luz’s son in SoMa in San Francisco on Monday, they slammed him against a window. One plainclothes agent ran across the street with his gun drawn, according to an eyewitness and widely viewed surveillance footage. The agents pushed him to the concrete, breaking his glasses, Luz said.
Luz’s son has lived in the United States since he was six years old, working on farms in Monterey County. He has a son of his own.
His arrest, five immigration attorneys say, is the latest of several across the Bay Area that reflect increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement.
Bay Area “rapid response” hotlines monitoring immigration arrests have seen an uptick in reports since this weekend, said Lisa Knox, co-executive director at California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice. Knox is in contact with eight regional hotlines that field calls of reported arrests.
The increased activity has extended to the San Francisco jail, where public defenders on Tuesday spotted two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the lobby, said Deputy Public Defender Francisco Ugarte. But their presence raises questions about potential violations of city and state Sanctuary City policies.
Ugarte called the recent enforcement a “surge,” and compared it to ICE operations in 2007 and 2008 when agents from around the country came to the Bay Area, identified targets, and then “snatched people up.”
Not everyone agrees there is a surge, but over the past couple of weeks, Bay Area immigration attorneys say they’ve not only seen more arrests but also ICE agents using more violence during arrests, and arrests without valid warrants.
“We are definitely seeing an increase in violence used in ICE arrests, and also an increase in ICE,” said Nikolas De Bremaeker, an attorney with Centro Legal de La Raza in Oakland.
Mission Local verified six immigration arrests across the Bay Area in the past week. Four involved violent tactics like physically forcing individuals out of their cars, slamming them on the ground, and handcuffing them so tightly they experienced pain.
Two arrests led to immigrants being hospitalized, according to De Bremaeker and court filings.
Regional uptick in arrests
Immigration arrests across major Bay Area cities rose 81 percent between July 2025 and July 2026, according to a Mission Local analysis of federal data released by U.C. Berkeley. Attorneys expect those arrests have continued to climb since, though the latest available federal data ends in July, making it difficult to determine exactly how the recent arrests compare with previous weeks.
Most arrests in San Francisco and the region have occurred at immigration courthouses and ICE appointments — controlled locations where immigrants showing up for check-ins come to the officers.
But attorney Jonathan Abel, who directs the Habeas Institute at U.C. Law San Francisco, said that in the past week, “It appears that ICE is going out more into the communities, and arresting people at their homes, car stops, or place of work.”
There, he said, ICE is more likely to “bring more agents,” and there is “more potential for violent tactics than ICE check-ins or asylum office interviews.”
Those aggressive tactics, attorneys say, are driven at least in part by pressure on agents – introduced earlier this month – to meet a reported nationwide target of 3,000 arrests a day.
Violent tactics
Some recent ICE arrests in the Bay Area have resulted in hospitalizations.
On Saturday, ICE agents pursued an Oakland resident from Mexico who works as a truck driver, eventually boxing him in his car, about a block from his home, according to court filings on behalf of the man.
According to those court records, six agents emerged from vehicles and surrounded him. When the man asked to see a warrant, the agents showed him a photograph of what appeared to be a warrant that was “seemingly blank and had only Petitioner’s name typed into it,” the court records stated.
The records go on to describe agents who broke his car window with a hammer, “used a baton to try to pry his leg out of the car,” and “slammed” him “onto the pavement.”
By the time he arrived at ICE’s processing facility in San Francisco, he could not walk, according to the records, and was subsequently taken to San Francisco General Hospital.
He remained hospitalized at SF General and in immigration custody on Monday, according to his attorney and court filings. A federal judge ordered his release on Tuesday morning.
In Sonoma County, a U.S. citizen was driving to work when she was surrounded by immigration vehicles, according to court records filed on behalf of her boyfriend. The agents drew their guns and aimed at her, the filings said.
“I thought they were going to shoot me; I was terrified and shaking,” the documents detail. The agents were seeking her boyfriend, the filings said, who sometimes drives the same car.
Later that morning, the boyfriend sat in his car in a Santa Rosa parking lot when about a half-dozen masked officers drew their guns, pulled the man from his car, and handcuffed him, the documents state. Although he was not physically injured, he had a panic attack.
De Bremaeker, of Centro Legal de la Raza, said he is representing another Oakland resident who was hospitalized at Highland Hospital after he was “violently tackled by ICE” and then had six of his ribs fractured by a 280-pound agent who sat on his chest.
The violence, De Bremaeker said, “shows an escalation in tactics and violence.”
Mili Atkinson, head of the San Francisco Immigrant Legal Defense Collaborative, said her advice to the public is to call their county’s Rapid Response Hotline if they have news of an alleged ICE spotting.
But the arrests have left many in the Bay Area shaken.
Juan Carlos, who witnessed the arrest of Luz’s son outside his Sixth Street apartment in SoMa, said he worries about the children who pass through the neighborhood each morning on their way to Bessie Carmichael Elementary School.
“If I saw someone running with a gun, it would be very upsetting,” he said. “I’ve lived in L.A., Phoenix, Orange County – but I’ve never seen anything like this. Out of all the places it could happen, I never expected this to happen here.”
Additional reporting by Bailey Zitko.
