Security footage at 47th Street Trolley Station shows ICE agents tackling man filming them

Last November, San Diego police helped Homeland Security Investigations agents detain a U.S. citizen in a situation the agents escalated with violence at the 47th Street Trolley Station.

Written by Kate Morrissey, Edited by Lauren J. Mapp

Around 11 a.m. on a Tuesday in November last year, San Diego police received an emergency call from Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations agents asking for cover, according to police records obtained by Daylight San Diego.

The agents were in the parking lot of the 47th Street Trolley Station. A small group of people was filming them and critiquing their actions and presence. 

San Diego police responded with 41 officers, according to the call for service log from the incident. They arrested one man who arrived approximately one minute before they did, according to video surveillance footage from the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System obtained by Daylight through a public records request. They handed him over to the ICE agents.

Medics treated at least two people present that day because of force used on them by the ICE agents. One of them suffered a head injury, according to medical records shared with Daylight.

Since President Donald Trump returned to office, ICE officers and agents have called San Diego police for backup in several instances that resulted in the arrests of U.S. citizens. At both a Linda Vista apartment complex in July 2025 and at the 47th Street Trolley Station on Nov. 18, 2025, those filming ICE agents asserted that the agents were the aggressors but that police assisted them anyway. 

In a court filing related to the Linda Vista case, the U.S. Attorney's office revealed a document from Operation Road Flare, an investigation into several people who document ICE activity in San Diego. The document told the ICE agents’ version of events at the trolley station. They called the crowd unruly and threatening.

Now, video footage obtained by Daylight, a combination of MTS surveillance footage and videos from people who were present, shows a clearer picture of what happened.

ICE did not respond to requests for comment. 

Ashley Nicholes, communications manager for the San Diego Police Department, said that the agency responds to calls from ICE to prevent the situation from escalating further. She said that San Diego police do not assist with immigration enforcement.

“I’m unsure what portion of the incident the MTS camera captured, however, we re-reviewed footage from this incident, and it shows a physical confrontation between some individuals and the federal agents,” Nicholes said. “We also noted that the crowd was agitated. It was not as large and aggressive as some we have seen, however, they were physically confronting and engaging with the agents and officers.”

Daylight previously requested the body-worn camera footage from San Diego police for this incident and is currently suing for those records.

That morning, according to San Diego police records and the Operation Road Flare document, a group of ICE Homeland Security Investigations agents were surveilling an area near the trolley station in plainclothes. It is not clear what they were investigating.

Arturo Gonzalez, a TikTok influencer who tracks ICE presence around San Diego County, responded to the area and identified one of the agents’ cars. He announced that ICE was present there.

Around 10:50 a.m., Gonzalez was in the parking lot of the trolley station when agents approached him. After the agents began questioning Gonzalez, he ran up the stairs to the trolley platform and along the tracks, escaping the agent who pursued him onto the tracks.

Jeane Wong, known by many in San Diego's activist communities as “Blue,” was with Gonzalez in the parking lot. She told Daylight that she had brought Gonzalez lunch. Her daycare business van was parked near Gonzalez’s car in the surveillance footage. 

Wong followed the agents, filming the chase. Another onlooker, who asked not to be identified, also noticed the scene unfolding and began filming.

As he ran, Gonzalez yelled to Wong to move his car. It was not parked in a parking space. As Wong got into the car, an agent grabbed her from behind and pulled her from the car. Wong began to argue with the agent.

“I'm a preschool teacher. That's my car,” Wong told the agent, gesturing at a big, red van with her school logo on the side. 

Wong gave the agent her first name and then asked for the agent's name and badge number. The agent, a woman with her face covered using a dark blue American flag print cloth, declined to provide either.

Around this time, according to footage from the unidentified onlooker, another agent, a woman with long hair wearing a mask, arrived.

The agent who had chased Gonzalez returned to the group. That agent, a man with a black cloth covering his face, told Wong that the agents were with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations subagency.

“We're trying to effectuate a federal arrest warrant, and you guys are interfering with our investigation,” the agent said to her.

He told her to put her phone down and give him her ID. Wong immediately questioned why the agents needed her ID.

“Unless they were investigating us, there was no one else there but us,” Wong told Daylight. “There was nothing to impede, so I have no idea what they're talking about.”

The agent told her that because she said she was with Gonzalez, he needed to investigate her. When Wong declined to give her ID, the agent told her that he would place her in handcuffs.

“No,” Wong said, “I have to go pick up little children in an hour.”

The agent held firmly to her wrist as she tried to walk toward her car.

At that time, around 10:54 a.m., according to the surveillance footage, a man who lived nearby walked into the parking lot filming. He had seen the livestream of Gonzalez running away and realized that the situation was happening in his neighborhood. 

The man, Adan de Jesus Morales Rubio, walked in half circles back and forth around the agents and Wong, yelling loudly about ICE's presence in the area. One of the agents kept trying to steer him further away from the group.

“I can be here in the street,” he told the agent. “You don't own the streets here.”

Meanwhile, the agent holding Wong continued to ask her about her relationship with Gonzalez.

“I know him. I'm with him. I'm checking on him,” Wong said.

The agent asked if she was with him earlier, and she responded emphatically that she was not.

“I just need your ID,” the agent said. “That's it.”

“For what?” Wong responded.

As Wong realized that the agent was going to arrest her, she tossed several of her belongings — her van keys, wallet and phone — to Morales Rubio. 

One of the agents rushed at Morales Rubio and tackled him to the ground, fighting to take Wong's belongings from him. Another agent soon joined her, both of them pinning him to the ground. Morales Rubio tossed the phone and keys to the other bystander, who had been filming from a distance since Gonzalez first ran from the agents. The agents obtained the wallet.

While the two agents were pinning Morales Rubio to the ground, the agent holding onto Wong took her to the other side of Gonzalez’s car and pushed her to the ground. Wong told Daylight that the force injured her knee.

Wong yelled to the unidentified bystander to get the van keys to her wife to pick up the children for their daycare business after school.

Meanwhile, the agents let go of Morales Rubio, and he found his sandals and put them back on his feet. He began to yell at the agents, showing in his video the cuts and bruises on his leg and hand. Medical records from a hospital visit he made later that day also showed that he had a head injury.

One of the agents asked if he needed medical attention several times, and around 10:59 a.m., he told her to call. She walked over to the agent who was still detaining Wong and told him that she was going to call for medical help for Morales Rubio. 

In the security footage, the agent is visibly on the phone around 11 a.m. It’s not clear whether in that same call, she requested cover from police or whether that came in another moment.

Wong told Daylight that she heard the male agent calling for cover soon after the agents tackled the bystander while the male agent still had Wong on the ground. 

What is clear is that, according to the call log, an agent called for cover from San Diego police at 11:01 a.m. At that time on the surveillance footage, the only people present were Wong, Morales Rubio and the unidentified bystander, plus the three agents. It is not clear whether the call log clock and surveillance footage clock are synced. 

The initial report in the call log indicates that a “large group is forming” at the trolley station.

A few minutes later, at around 11:05 a.m. on the surveillance footage, the number of people protesting ICE's presence grew to six or seven. 

“Honestly, they could have just left at this point, but the reason that they can't is because they made a false call to 911, because there's no one there for them to take,” Wong told Daylight. “They have to make the phone call be true.”

A San Diego police dispatcher called the Metropolitan Transit System around this time, according to audio obtained by Daylight through a public records request. The dispatcher asked the MTS staff member to check cameras at the station. 

The staff member told the dispatcher that she saw four to five people. While the two were talking on the phone, the group grew to about eight.

“Are they involved in any fight?” the dispatcher asked.

“No,” the MTS staff member responded. “We just see them standing and some recording.”

During the conversation, one of the police department's helicopters began flying over the area, according to the dispatcher.

At 11:06 a.m. on the surveillance footage, a U.S. citizen whom police later arrested pulled into the parking lot, and the man got out of his truck about one minute later. He walked toward the group of people already protesting, and an agent blocked him from walking that way. The man pointed as though to indicate he was joining the group and then walked toward the other witnesses.

At 11:08 a.m., police officers pulled into the parking lot. According to Nicholes, officers from three divisions — Mid-City, Southeastern and Central — responded in addition to the officers in the helicopter.

“SDPD’s helicopter reported that the crowd had grown and there may be a vehicle blocking an exit to the area,” Nicholes said. “SDPD officers responded and worked to separate agents and community members to help prevent further conflict and protect the community.” 

As the police got out of their vehicles, agents rushed forward toward the man who had just arrived, sending him backward across the parking lot. Many of the members of the growing crowd followed, as did the police. 

According to Wong and to testimony on video footage taken by people who were there, the agents used pepper spray on several people.

According to the call log, police in the helicopter observed the crowd becoming “rowdy” at 11:09 a.m.

According to the video footage, a police officer grabbed one man and shoved him. Then the officer pulled out his Taser and pointed it at several people.

Meanwhile, Wong was trying to get closer to the man whom the agents had arrested. An agent pushed her back and pepper sprayed her face at close range. She began to cough.

According to the log, police detained the “primary aggressor.” 

“SDPD officers responding to calls for service don’t often see the crime being committed or have full details of the crime before arriving,” Nicholes said. “The detention of the man was for a battery on an agent, which was investigated as a federal matter. It was not an immigration-related detention.”

The Operation Road Flare document accuses the man of quickly placing his finger approximately one inch from an agent's face and later of slapping an agent. Daylight was unable to find a moment when such a slap occurred in the available video footage. 

Police officers took the arrested man to stand behind one of their vehicles away from the crowd. Other officers made a perimeter to keep the protesters away from him. After conferring with the ICE agents, several officers walked the man across the parking lot to put him in one of the agent's cars. The crowd dispersed slowly. Both Wong and Morales Rubio received medical attention. Morales Rubio later went to a hospital for further evaluation, according to medical records.

ICE eventually released the detained U.S. citizen without filing charges.

A text message released with police records about the trolley station incident from an unknown sender to an unknown recipient says, “Wanted to pass this incident along. It doesn't involve us responding to a fed agency that was conducting immigration enforcement directly, but it is likely to prompt questions.”

The message describes 10 Homeland Security agents doing undercover surveillance for immigration reasons near the trolley station when a man noticed them and began following them. It says an “altercation occurred” after agents confronted the man at the trolley station.

It says officers received a call for cover right after 11 a.m. and began responding but because the situation appeared calm, they backed off. Then the helicopter reported that the crowd was “getting unruly and becoming physical” so officers responded, arriving at 11:08 a.m. which matches the video surveillance footage, and “helped separate the protestors from the agents.” It says officers detained one person who was suspected of slapping an agent and handed him over to the agents.

Whoever received the message gave it a thumbs up.

Daylight had asked for records of communications between San Diego police and the mayor's office about the incident among its records requests. It's not clear if this is one of those records.

Wong and other protesters tried to meet with Mayor Todd Gloria to discuss the police response at the 47th Street Trolley Station, Wong said. After the mayor did not meet with them, several people including Wong staged a protest at his office, and police arrested them.