San Diego ICE official threatens to pull gun on car following him
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official told a 9-1-1 dispatcher that he would hold a driver who had been following him at gun point, according to police records.
Written by Kate Morrissey, Edited by Lauren J. Mapp
The phone call came in the middle of a Know Your Rights presentation in July — an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer told one of the attendees that he was coming back for her, according to volunteers present at the meeting.
ICE had already detained her husband.
A few of the volunteers organized themselves. Two decided to wait outside the family's National City home to document what ICE might do. The volunteers asked not to be identified due to retaliation concerns.
They ended up in the parking lot of a San Diego police station being questioned by officers about why they were following ICE. But police records obtained by Daylight San Diego revealed that the volunteers were in more danger than they knew, that an ICE officer told police he would pull his gun on the volunteers.
The driver said her heart sank when she learned of the threat after the fact.
“I would certainly hope this isn't approved conduct, at least officially,” the driver said after learning about the ICE officer's statement. “I think it's intentional to terrorize the immigrants that they're going after. Not everyone will follow ICE. Not everyone is willing to be put in that situation and those who are they will threaten you with a weapon and egregious conduct.”
Community patrols have formed across the San Diego region since President Donald Trump came into office and ICE ramped up detentions. They take preemptive routes to watch for ICE in neighborhoods where many immigrants live and respond rapidly to reports of ICE activity.
As patrol volunteers, generally U.S. citizens, confront ICE officials, documenting and criticizing arrests, the agency has turned at times to the San Diego Police Department for backup, sparking criticism from community members and accusations that the department is aiding in immigration enforcement in violation of California law.
In response, the city recently tentatively passed an ordinance that would restrict police's involvement with ICE beyond the requirements in California law.
The police department has maintained that it follows state law.
“Senate Bill 54 allows SDPD officers to respond when federal authorities call for emergency help, even if federal immigration agents are present,” said Ashley Nicholes, a spokesperson for the department. “Our involvement is limited to addressing violations of California state law or threats to public safety. Our focus is on ensuring a safe environment, not enforcing immigration law.”
Meanwhile, in press releases, ICE has repeatedly claimed that assaults against officers have increased by as much as 8000%, with no information to back up that statistic. (Several cases against people who supposedly assaulted officers in San Diego have been dismissed.)
ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
On that morning in late July, the volunteers spotted two vehicles that appeared to belong to ICE outside the family's home when they pulled up in a rented red Jeep, one volunteer recalled.
One was a tinted SUV, the volunteer said, and the other was a truck. The SUV pulled away, and the volunteer decided to follow.
The driver of the ICE vehicle appeared to realize he was being followed and tried to get away from them, including by going through a drive through and running red lights, according to the volunteers.
After about four miles, according to police records, the ICE officer called 9-1-1 and accused the people in the Jeep of pointing an unknown object at him.
The dispatcher asked the ICE officer to pull over, according to the records. He declined to pull over, telling the dispatcher that he was armed and if he pulled over he would have those following him at gunpoint, the records say.
The dispatcher instructed him to go to the parking lot of a nearby police station, where San Diego police officers met the two cars to investigate.
According to the records, it appears that the ICE officer told police that the Jeep began following him at a car wash — not outside the home of someone the agency had threatened to detain.
According to one of the volunteers, a police officer scolded them for following ICE.
“I'm just looking at him like, ‘What are you talking about? They shouldn't be doing this to our community,’” she said. “I couldn't say anything — I was actually completely silent and afraid.”
The officer issued a ticket to the driver for not bringing her physical driver's license with her and let the volunteers go. The ICE officer was still with the police in the parking lot when they drove away, they said.
Nicholes said that the police department knew from the 9-1-1 call that a federal agent was being followed, and, following protocol, notified the mayor's office and the city councilmember for the district.
A human rights observer reached out to the San Diego mayor's office on the volunteers’ behalf. In an email response reviewed by Daylight San Diego, the mayor's office said that the ICE officer was off-duty.
The mayor's office email said that the ICE official refused to pull over, but it did not mention that he had threatened to pull out his weapon. The mayor's office indicated that police believed they were responding to a road rage incident.
“If they're off duty, why are the two vehicles in front of a mom's house with small children at 7:30 a.m., a mom who they called prior to that and threatened to go and be there?” one of the volunteers said. “If they weren't on duty, it begs the question of what were they doing there.”
“If they had said, ‘We're on duty, and we'll pull a gun on you,’ there's nothing we can do,” she added. “But to say they're off duty… you're a regular driver who wants to pull a gun on somebody. You're just a regular U.S. citizen. You tell the police you want to pull a gun on them. If anybody else, and dare I say anybody of color, were to say that to the police, they would not have been treated the way they were treated when we were stopped.”
The mayor's office directed Daylight San Diego to send questions to ICE and SDPD instead.
