From the counter of the O’Reilly’s Auto Parts store, Jose Antonio Gutierrez watched as several black SUVs closed in around a small blue pickup as they blocked the shop’s entrance. Their lights flashed red and blue.
As he stepped outside, he saw the man, dirty from a day’s work, speaking with two agents before they pulled him from the car. Earlier, the man had just bought an oil filter from the store, a co-worker told Gutierrez.
“Mis llaves, mis llaves” Gutierrez said the man cried —”My keys!” — as Gutierrez tried to salvage the man’s truck keys before he was taken away.
“The guy didn’t have a chance to breathe,” said Gutierrez, a manager at the O’Reilly’s. “Poor guy. He was scared. He was very scared.”
The vehicles were unmarked, and in video of the incident, the agents in tactical vests and face coverings wore no obvious identifying marks. But to people in the store, the arrest had all the hallmarks of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — ICE — the agency many in Stockton have eyed warily since the beginning of a nationwide immigration crackdown almost two years ago.
Across Stockton and San Joaquin County, videos of similar arrests have circulated on social media over the past month.
- A video circulated by Telemundo shows a man in south Stockton being wrestled to the ground by agents, as a woman who said she was his partner can be heard yelling just off camera.
- Local advocates say they received a report of an arrest near San Joaquin General Hospital, in which they said agents in unmarked SUVs were monitoring an overpass leading to the hospital.
- One prominent Stockton advocate said he knew of at least four migrants immigrants detained on the streets in October.
- Another advocacy group, which takes hotline calls from people reporting immigration enforcement or seeking help after an arrest, said it received nearly 2,700 calls in the past month, a six-fold increase from the month before.
Of arrest reports circulating online and in local news reports, the Department of Homeland Security appears to have confirmed only one, in which a Guatemalan man was detained at an undisclosed area in Stockton.
In response to Stocktonia’s inquiries to determine if the other local arrests were immigration-related, the agency said it declined to “disclose or discuss” its operations and did not respond to requests to identify the people arrested.
If public arrests have surged, the trend would match an overall uptick in immigration enforcement.
Agents have made major public displays of force since President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January 2025, including crackdowns in Los Angeles and Chicago. Public backlash grew as agents arrested Americans, clashed with protesters and committed several deadly shootings, including killing two U.S. citizens in Minnesota early this year.
April 2026 brought another show of force in the Central Valley, as agents shot a Salvadoran man, Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernández, six times after a traffic stop in Patterson. Prosecutors accused Mendoza Hernández of assault on a federal officer and authorities took him out of a hospital intensive-care unit to place him in prison; his trial remains pending.
The nationwide trend of increasing ICE arrests is also reflected in local data. The Deportation Data Project, a research effort led by Berkeley academics, compiles public records of arrests released by DHS. Data available through July shows ICE arrests reported inside Stockton surged this year, from 20 in January and just 6 in March to 100 in July. Data shows similar upswings in other parts of the state, and nationwide.
Nora Zaragoza-Yáñez, program manager of the rapid response program Valley Watch Network, said nearly 2,700 calls have come in the last month from people reporting immigration activity or seeking help after a loved one was detained. Across the eight counties it covers in the Central Valley, that includes San Joaquin, just under 450 calls were received the month before.
Among those calls was a report of an arrest near the San Joaquin General Hospital, Zaragoza-Yáñez said. Like in other reports they’ve received, unmarked SUVs were involved, with agents, in this case, “staking out” the area, under the overpass leading to the hospital.
“Anyone that looks foreign born is a prime target,” Zaragoza-Yáñez said. “And I can’t use another term other than hunting.”
ICE’s enforcement that has changed the everyday lives of those who have shared their experiences with the network, where they avoid activities they once did, including leaving home, grocery shopping or taking their children to school.
The reported month’s increase in immigration enforcement has sowed “fear and terror,” said immigration advocate Luis Magaña, who has spent recent weeks going around the city to meet with families affected by the arrests to help them navigate their situations.
“Once again the terror has returned and doubled,” Magaña told ABC 10 earlier this month, referring to the arrests of dozens following their immigration appointments around this time last year. In an interview with the TV station, Magaña said he knew of at least four immigrants detained earlier in the month – two at a local gas station and two farmworkers stopped in their van as they headed to work in the fields on an early Friday morning.
From across the intersection of Clay and American streets in south Stockton, Genaro Fernandez said he witnessed another man detained over the weekend. At least two Dodge Durangos had stopped a pickup carrying two men, he said. A lawnmower and a cut tree branch could be seen sticking out from the pickup’s open bed, he added.
Fernandez, who lives just a few houses away, said one of the men had run, but those who had stopped the pickup did not run after him. Instead, they grabbed the man who had stayed behind.
Like Guiterrez, Fernandez said he did not see any badges or markings identifying the officials or their vehicles belonged to ICE or DHS.
But he assumes they were. Fernandez said the encounter lasted less than 20 minutes, and the men, dressed in plain clothes with green bulletproof vests, appeared interested in only arresting one. They had also left the pickup without searching it – something Fernandez said he has seen other law enforcement officials do.
“They didn’t care about the truck,” said Fernandez, 44. “They didn’t even run looking for that other guy. They were coming strictly for this one.”
For years, Gutierrez said his father worked as a bracero – one of the millions of Mexican men contracted to ease labor shortages in the U.S. in the mid 1900s. It’s an experience he said his father, from Durango, described to him as being treated “like a dog.”
It’s why Gutierrez said he fought so hard to help the man detained outside the O’Reilly shop, trying to get his keys and family member’s phone number after those detaining him initially told him he couldn’t.
“We can’t let them treat us like that,” Gutierrez said. “We’re not animals.”
Gutierrez said he’s heard about ICE activity in Stockton through social media and his day to day conversations. The reported increase in immigration enforcement has gotten to the point where he no longer sees a tamale vendor he used to frequent at a corner along Wilson Way. She later told him she stopped selling because she was scared.
“That’s sad. It is sad that people have to be living in fear all this time when we’re free – free in the land of America,” he said.
Angel Serrano said she’s also seen the same fear spreading through Stockton’s immigrant community. At a Thursday night vigil, as a handful of protestors around her yelled “Chinga la Migra” and “ICE out of Stockton” over the sound of honking cars, Serrano repeated the chants into a megaphone, holding a sign shaped like a melting ice cube.
It was Serrano’s first time coming to the vigil – one that local community organizers put together every other week to protest and remember those who have died in ICE custody. She said she felt the need to attend because of the growing number of stories she’s been hearing of ICE arrests in Stockton.
“I don’t have the fear of being deported,” said Serrano, 34, a third generation Mexican-American, “I have the fear of being profiled. But I know I have a voice, and I want to be able to use it for those who can’t.”
Serrano said no one should feel unsafe in the community. But she believes Stockton has seen an increase in enforcement because of how diverse the city is.
“We are a community of color,” she said. “That’s why they’re targeting us.”