The Department of Homeland Security says its officers use the minimum force necessary and face a surge in assaults; court filings and immigration lawyers describe broken car windows and hospital stays, and a federal judge has ordered one Oakland man released while the case proceeds.
Over the past week and a half, at least two immigration arrests in the Bay Area have ended with the person detained in a hospital. In each case the public account has come mostly from one side: lawyers, advocates and court filings on behalf of the people arrested. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has given its own account, and it differs sharply.
“ICE law enforcement officers are trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations to prioritize the safety of the public and our officers,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement to The Inquirer on Friday. “Officers are highly trained in de-escalation tactics and regularly receive ongoing use of force training.”
The department said its officers are working under growing physical risk. “We have seen a highly coordinated campaign of violence against our law enforcement,” the statement said. “Our brave law enforcement is facing more than a 1,600% increase in assaults, 3,300% increase in vehicular attacks, and an 8,000% increase in death threats against them. This violence must end. Anybody who lays a hand on our officers or tries to obstruct them is committing a felony and a federal crime.”
This Inquirer Investigation reviewed a federal court order, statements from DHS and Alameda County officials, and reporting by local news outlets to set out what is alleged, what the government says, and what remains unproven. The accounts of force described below are allegations made by the people arrested or their advocates. None has been tested at a hearing, and in the one case that reached federal court, the government’s response is not due until Monday.
The government’s position
DHS frames the arrests as lawful enforcement of immigration law under a mandate from voters. “There are NO quotas on arrests,” the spokesperson said. “Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin’s leadership, ICE has been supercharged to find, arrest, and deport illegal aliens from the United States using every lawful tool available.”
The statement continued: “In President Trump’s first year back in office, more than 3 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations. As of September, we have now deported nearly 1.1 million illegal aliens and arrested over 1.1 million illegal aliens.” It added: “The American people sent President Trump back into the White House with a mandate, and he will continue to deliver on that promise.”
The department also argued that resistance, not agent conduct, is what makes arrests dangerous. “Resisting officers and evading arrest is dangerous for our officers, illegal aliens, and the public,” the spokesperson said, adding that these attempts “come after sanctuary politicians held webinars and provided resources and tips for how to openly defy ICE.” Among the examples the department cited was that “California Governor Gavin Newsom released guides and sanctuary laws advising illegal aliens how to recognize ICE, block entry, and defy arrest.”
DHS listed five people arrested by ICE in California whom it described as public safety threats, including Kevin Lewis, whom it described as “a criminal illegal alien from Jamaica, convicted of drug trafficking, homicide-negligent manslaughter-vehicle, and drug possession,” and Kenny Lee, described as “a criminal illegal alien from South Korea, convicted of homicide-willful kill-gun, amphetamine – possession, and homicide.” The department did not say that any of the five were involved in the arrests examined here.
The legal framework gives ICE broad arrest powers. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, immigration officers may arrest noncitizens on administrative warrants, which are signed by immigration officials rather than judges, and in some circumstances may arrest without a warrant. When officers use force, courts judge it under the Fourth Amendment standard the Supreme Court set out in Graham v. Connor in 1989: whether the force was objectively reasonable in light of the circumstances, including whether the person was resisting or trying to flee, judged from the perspective of an officer on the scene.
The Oakland truck driver
The most fully documented case is in federal court. According to an order issued on Oct. 20 by U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the Northern District of California, which recites the allegations in a habeas corpus petition filed on Oct. 19, the man is 40, was born in Mexico and came to the United States in September 2002 at age 16. He works as a truck driver and has significant family and community ties in Northern California, the petition says.
In 2018, the San Francisco Immigration Court granted him withholding of removal, a form of protection that bars the government from deporting a person to a country where his life or freedom would more likely than not be threatened. Since then, the petition says, he has, to the best of his knowledge, complied with all ICE supervision conditions.
On Oct. 17, the order says, he was driving home to Oakland when he noticed a black SUV following him. He parked about a block from his home. Two more vehicles blocked in his car, and six agents surrounded it and ordered him out. According to the petition, none identified themselves or explained why he was being arrested.
A sworn declaration filed in the case says an agent broke the driver’s side window with a hammer. The petition says three agents then tried to pull him through the broken window and “used a baton to try to pry Petitioner’s leg out of the car,” and that once he was out, they “slammed him onto the pavement,” handcuffed him and put him in the SUV.
When he asked to see a warrant, the petition says, agents showed him a photo on a cellphone of a document they described as an administrative warrant. “The document looked blank and only had Petitioner’s name typed into it,” the order states, summarizing the petition. He was taken to ICE’s processing office at 630 Sansome Street in San Francisco and then to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital “due to the injuries he sustained during his arrest,” according to the filing.
The judge found that the man was likely to succeed on his claim that his detention violated his due process rights under the Fifth Amendment, writing that the Due Process Clause “entitles Petitioner to a bond hearing before an immigration judge prior to any arrest or detention.” The order noted that the government had not sought to detain him in the years since he was granted withholding of removal, which the court said “reflects a determination by the government that he was neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community.”
She ordered his immediate release, barred the government from re-detaining him without notice and a hearing, and barred moving him out of the district. The government’s response is due Monday, Oct. 26, and a hearing on a longer injunction is set for Nov. 2.
The ruling rests on the due process question, not on the force allegations; the court made no finding about how the arrest was carried out. DHS did not address this case specifically in its statement to The Inquirer. The Inquirer is not naming the man; a county legal aid partnership said the people injured in recent Alameda County arrests asked for their privacy to be respected.
The Emeryville arrest
In the second case, DHS has offered a direct rebuttal. The Alameda County Immigration Legal and Education Partnership, a county program, said in a statement that a person arrested in Emeryville was taken to Highland Hospital in Oakland “with injuries appearing to be caused during the arrest,” and that federal agents “appear to have used excessive force.”
A DHS spokesperson confirmed the arrest to The Oaklandside, saying ICE arrested a man from Honduras during a targeted enforcement operation, and denied that agents used excessive force. “During the arrest, he attempted to assault officers and refused their lawful commands,” the statement said. “Officers relied on their training to control the situation.”
The spokesperson said the man “was taken to the hospital for evaluation, and he disclosed a preexisting injury from falling from a ladder two days prior,” and that officers accompany detainees taken to hospitals for “their monitoring, safety of the staff, and the public. This is standard procedure.”
Alameda County Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas said at a news conference on Friday that the man was discharged into ICE custody late Thursday. “It’s outrageous that this ICE arrest resulted in six days of hospital care,” she said, according to The Oaklandside, and she asked anyone with video of the arrest to submit it to the state attorney general. The Alameda Health System, which runs Highland, said “protecting patient privacy is a fundamental responsibility” and that it was “following all immigration protocols.”
Nikolas De Bremaeker, a lawyer with Centro Legal de la Raza in Oakland, told Mission Local that he represents an Oakland resident hospitalized at Highland after he was “violently tackled by ICE” and had six ribs fractured by a 280-pound agent who sat on his chest. The report did not make clear whether that client is the man arrested in Emeryville, whose injury DHS attributes to a fall. The Inquirer could not independently verify the account.
A pattern, or a reported one
Lawyers say the cases are part of a shift. Mission Local reported that it had verified six immigration arrests across the Bay Area in one week, four of which, it said, involved tactics like “physically forcing individuals out of their cars, slamming them on the ground, and handcuffing them so tightly they experienced pain.” The outlet also described a Sonoma County case in which court filings say agents drew guns on a U.S. citizen driving a car her boyfriend sometimes uses.
Jonathan Abel, who directs the Habeas Institute at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, told Mission Local that ICE appeared to be “going out more into the communities and arresting people at their homes, car stops, or place of work,” where there is “more potential for violent tactics than ICE check-ins or asylum office interviews.”
The numbers support the observation that arrests are rising, if not the claims about force. 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 the University of California, Berkeley. Federal data available so far ends in July. The Inquirer reported on Friday that deportations are nearing one million under the administration as arrests move into communities.
Some attorneys attribute the change to a reported nationwide goal of 3,000 arrests a day. DHS rejects that characterization: “There are NO quotas on arrests,” its spokesperson said.
Arrests away from controlled settings such as courthouses and check-in appointments carry more risk for both sides, which is the point DHS makes about resistance. An arrest at a car door is precisely the kind of encounter where the Graham v. Connor standard asks what a reasonable officer would do. Whether the force in these cases met that standard is a factual question that only video, testimony and records can answer. So far, none of those have been made public, apart from the declaration in the Oakland case.
What DHS asked for
The Inquirer emailed DHS on Friday with questions about use of force in recent Bay Area arrests. The DHS Press Team replied: “Hello, Please provide names and A-Numbers. -DHS Press Team.” A-Numbers are the identification numbers the government assigns to noncitizens in immigration records.
The Inquirer did not provide names or A-Numbers. A DHS spokesperson then sent the statement quoted above, which began: “When the media refuses to give names, it makes it impossible to provide details on specific cases or even verify any of this even happened or that the people even exist. If you can’t do your job, we can’t do ours.”
The department’s frustration reflects a real limit. Without identities, DHS cannot respond case by case, and the public cannot easily weigh the government’s records against the accounts of lawyers and advocates. The Oakland case shows how that gap can close: a filing under oath, a government response due Monday and a hearing on Nov. 2.
ICE’s media relations office, the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice and Mr. Abel did not respond to requests for comment from The Inquirer.
Adaeze Monroe covers Congress, the White House and federal agencies, with a focus on what Washington’s decisions mean for California, for the Washington Bureau. More from Adaeze Monroe
