When immigration officers recently stormed two popular Italian restaurants in South Park, they came prepared for a confrontation. Videos from the Friday evening operation showed most carried pistols on their hips and wore tactical plate-carrier vests. Several wore helmets and carried automatic rifles, and most wore some type of facial covering.
The operation, which was based on criminal search warrants alleging Buona Forchetta was employing up to 19 undocumented workers, resulted in four workers being taken into custody and no criminal charges as of Friday, a week after the May 30 raid.
It also resulted in a chaotic scene when community members from South Park, a leafy neighborhood that borders Balboa Park, began to angrily protest the immigration crackdown and go face-to-face with officers and agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security Investigations. The law enforcement personnel used flash-bang devices to disperse the crowds that blocked their vehicles.
Similar scenes played out Friday in Los Angeles, the same day Democratic lawmakers continued seeking answers from ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, about why such a show of force was necessary in South Park. Meanwhile, community members and immigration rights activists grappled with the new reality that workplace enforcement raids now appear nearly indistinguishable from SWAT standoffs.
Opinions differ greatly about the optics, tactics and effectiveness of the operation at Buona Forchetta and its nearby sister restaurant Enoteca Buona Forchetta. A former DHS agent said heavily armed tactical teams are often used to make arrests and serve warrants on non-violent targets simply to ensure the federal agents are never surprised or outgunned. He and others suspect the operation was similar to hundreds of others that have occurred across the nation in recent years under presidents from both parties, but it received heightened attention because of the current administration. Others believe the show of force was an escalation of previous immigration enforcement operations in San Diego, and part of a purposeful effort by the Trump administration to send a warning to undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens alike.
“It’s meant to send a message to the individuals being targeted … but more importantly I think it’s meant to send a message to everyone else … that anyone who might want to stand in (ICE’s) way should think twice,” said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a criminal and immigration law professor and the Gregory H. Williams Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at Ohio State University.
“The Administration’s use of these tactics … suggests the intent of the raid was not to uphold the law in a responsible manner, but rather to intimidate,” local Democratic Congress members wrote in a letter sent Friday to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. “This is unacceptable. The use of such tactics to execute warrants for non-violent crimes not only harms public trust in HSI and ICE, it also raises legitimate questions about the Department of Homeland Security’s stewardship of taxpayer dollars.”
Everyone is going to be ‘kitted out’
Brian Dennison, who spent 26 years working as a federal law enforcement agent in Miami, Tucson and San Diego, said he understood from a law enforcement perspective why ICE and HSI may have carried out the Buona Forchetta operation with such a show of force.
“Just in general terms, when you’re effecting an arrest or serving a warrant, you want more force on the ground to actually prevent violence, not cause it,” said Dennison, who began his career as an inspector with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, a precursor to ICE, before joining DHS as a criminal investigator when the agency was created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Dennison, who retired from law enforcement in 2021 and is now a private investigator who owns and operates Drumdutton Investigations, said he couldn’t speak to the specifics of the Buona Forchetta operation because he wasn’t involved. But he said any such operation is planned in detail in advance, with reasoning behind the tactical decisions that are made.
He recalled as a DHS criminal investigator serving warrants for non-violent criminal offenses, such as COVID-era unemployment fraud, in operations that looked much like the one in South Park.
“You always send enough people to be sure the situation is not dangerous for the target, the agents or bystanders,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot of people ask, ‘Why do they look like that? Why do they have that equipment? Why those big guns?’ … When you’re serving a warrant, everyone is going to be kitted out — body armor is mandatory … and it’s always going to include tactical gear and weapons.”
Heavy weaponry has not always appeared to have been the norm, even during some of ICE’s largest-ever immigration raids. During a 2008 operation in Postville, Iowa, ICE officers carried handguns while wearing T-shirts or the agency’s classic blue windbreakers as they rounded up 389 undocumented workers, but no officers appeared to wear tactical vests or carry rifles, according to photos and videos from the Des Moines Register and other news outlets. Associated Press photos from a 2019 operation that resulted in 680 arrests at several Mississippi chicken processing plants showed agents wore handguns and tactical vests, but did not wear masks, carry rifles nor arrive in armored vehicles.
Dennison said he understands that immigration is a contentious topic and why some people take issue with the optics of a militarized police force. “But my friends in (ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations) were doing this in the previous three administrations,” without the same type of critique and criticism, Dennison said.
Longtime San Diego immigrant rights advocates disagreed, viewing the operation in South Park as an escalation of the immigration enforcement operations that they’ve documented for years.
“They come in wearing tactical gear like they’re responding to a shooting,” said Benjamin Prado, a member of the immigrant rights group Unión del Barrio. “There has always been a surprise factor, but the difference now is that all the agents are hiding their faces and carrying long guns.”
Todd Lyons, ICE’s acting director, turned emotional last week when asked to explain why agents and officers wear masks, saying that some have received death threats and been harassed online, the Associated Press reported.
“I’m sorry if people are offended by them wearing masks, but I’m not going to let my officers and agents go out there and put their lives on the line, their family on the line because people don’t like what immigration enforcement is,” he said at a news conference in Boston to announce nearly 1,500 arrests in the area as part of a monthlong operation.
In a post Thursday on the social media site X, the official DHS account stated: “When our heroic law enforcement officers conduct operations, they clearly identify themselves as law enforcement while wearing masks to protect themselves from being targeted by known and suspected gang members, murders, and rapists.”
Authorities have offered no evidence or allegations that any of the alleged undocumented workers at the South Park restaurants were suspected of any crimes beyond immigration violations.
‘A pivotal moment’
The investigation that resulted in the search warrants in South Park was related to “violations of hiring and harboring illegal aliens and false statements,” according to an ICE spokesperson.
Prado, from Unión del Barrio, has witnessed similar operations in the past, including a February 2019 operation during the first Trump presidency at Zion Market in Kearny Mesa. ICE officers arrested 26 workers at the Korean supermarket. Prado said there was not a large contingent of federal agents that day wearing the same type of military-type tactical gear, and they were “not as armed.” He recalled one agent who masked his face.
Immigration officers in March raided a metal business in unincorporated El Cajon that contracts with the federal government. The operation at San Diego Powder and Protective Coatings resulted in criminal prosecutions against four people, including the general manager who is charged with conspiracy to harbor aliens. Some officers wore military-style tactical gear, and all appeared to be outfitted in bulletproof vests during the operation, which occurred at a warehouse in an industrial zone. Most officers wore masks.
Prado said the South Park operation, which occurred in an urban neighborhood just before Friday night dinner service, was “excessive.” Others agreed.
“I think it opens up a pivotal moment,” said Christian Ramírez, policy director with Service Employees International Union-United Service Workers West, a labor union. “It’s clear that militarization is no longer limited to the border; it has spread to South Park and many other residential areas across the country.”
Pedro Ríos, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S.-Mexico border program, noted the presence of “too many armed agents” and the use of flash-bang grenades to disperse the crowd as things he hadn’t seen in San Diego in a long time. “It seemed to me to be excessive, militarized, and unnecessary,” he said.
In a letter sent Friday to Jennifer Fenton, associate director of ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility, California U.S. Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, along with U.S. Reps. Juan Vargas, D-Chula Vista, and Scott Peters, D-San Diego, said that the incident “appears to be part of a broader pattern of escalated and theatrical immigration enforcement operations across the country.”
The lawmakers are pushing for a thorough investigation and answers as to whether the operation complied with internal policies and whether the decision to deploy agents in tactical gear and use flash-bang devices was justified “based on any credible threat or resistance.”
‘Enough is enough’
García Hernández, the Ohio State law professor, said ICE has “adopted a single approach to immigration law violations that assumes everyone is a criminal and everyone is dangerous.” But he said community members such as the ones who protested outside Buona Forchetta “know that’s about the furthest thing from the truth.”
He said there was something telling that it was “ordinary people who probably do not think of themselves as activists” who were willing to face off with the armed officers.
“And the reason for that is these are people who feel like they know the folks who are being targeted … are hard working, ordinary people who make their own lives better, who improve the quality of life in San Diego and in fact make this particular neighborhood the attractive place that it is to live in,” García Hernández said.
“When ICE treats everyone as if they are dangerous, then they should expect that folks who know better are going to be unhappy and will at some point hit a tipping point. I think we saw that in (South Park), where people said, ‘Enough is enough. We don’t buy what you’re selling here. And we’re going to put our own bodies on the line to resist that.’”
In a statement Saturday, DHS denounced the actions of protesters who clashed with federal law enforcement in downtown Los Angeles on Friday following immigration raids and blamed the rhetoric of certain Democratic leaders.
“Our ICE enforcement officers are facing a 413% increase in assaults against them. Disturbingly, in recent days, ICE officers’ family members have been doxed and targeted as well,” the statement read.
“ICE has arrested 2,000 aliens a day this week and these violent activists won’t deter enforcement operations.”
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