From Sacramento to San Diego, evidence of an increase in immigration enforcement has mounted across California this month.
Unmarked vehicles idled outside an election office in Northern California. Arrests emptied fields of workers in the state’s agricultural heartland. Reports of immigrants being stopped and pulled from their cars by agents came in from all corners of the state.
Several local groups that track enforcement in different parts of California reported an uptick in arrests. Along the Central Coast, for instance, one organization tallied 200 arrests in Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo Counties since Oct. 5, compared with fewer than 100 during the same period last year.
“This is just about the worst surge of ICE activity we have seen,” said Lucas Zucker, co-executive director at CAUSE, a social justice organization in Ventura.
The reports of increased enforcement coincide with efforts by the Trump administration to unearth voter fraud in California and other states, with Homeland Security agents going door to door in search of noncitizens who were registered to vote. A federal judge ordered the administration to halt those operations last week.
Allegations of election fraud have served as a centerpiece of President Trump’s yearslong feud with California, which began after he lost the state by more than four million votes in 2016. Studies have shown noncitizen voting is exceptionally rare.
The reported uptick in arrests has rattled immigrant communities. In Fresno, the largest city in the agriculture-rich Central Valley, workers have stopped showing up to their jobs, Latino business districts have emptied or shuttered, and school attendance dipped, said Miguel Arias, a city councilman.
“I think the economic impact and the fear has never been worse than now,” Mr. Arias said.
The Department of Homeland Security has not released arrest data since August, and in response to questions said it would not disclose operations. “Every day, D.H.S. enforces the laws of the nation across the country including in California,” it said in a statement.
The reports of raids emerging from California mirror the tactics Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents have deployed across the country in recent months: Instead of hundreds of agents taking to the streets of major cities, the operations have happened more quietly, with arrests occurring as people go about their daily lives. Most of those arrested had no criminal record but were accused of violating civil immigration laws.
Traffic stops and other arrests by ICE near farms in central California, a relatively uncommon sight even during the mass deportation campaign, have unnerved immigrant workers and threatened the industry they sustain.
On the morning of Oct. 7, unmarked vehicles surrounded the almond orchard where Pablo Perez Hernandez, 58, worked in Kerman, near Fresno, according to his nephew, Lionel Perez, 21. Others managed to flee, but Mr. Perez Hernandez, who was undocumented, and another man were arrested.
Mr. Perez Hernandez was his family’s breadwinner and principal caregiver for his autistic adult son, said Mr. Perez. He was taken to a detention center outside Fresno. The Department of Homeland Security did not comment on Mr. Perez Hernandez’s case.
Joe Garcia, whose labor contracting firm places 4,000 workers on farms in the Central Valley and Central Coast, warned that continued enforcement could disrupt the food supply “because people will be too scared to go to work.”
Mr. Garcia, also president of the California Farmworker Foundation, said that the group had been trying to assure workers that enforcement was targeted and agents wouldn’t enter farms.
In Sutter County, north of Sacramento, six unmarked S.U.V.s with tinted windows idled for two hours in a parking lot outside a veterans hall and county election office on Oct. 5, the first day polls opened there.
Donna Johnston, registrar of voters, said she saw a man in a camouflage vest inscribed with “Police,” his face covered.
Ms. Johnston approached one of the vehicles and told the man that elections were taking place and passed him her card. He did not identify himself, she said. She later returned and handed him a state reference guide on rules for law enforcement activity near polling places.
NorCal Resist, a nonprofit that operates in Sutter County and elsewhere in Northern California, recorded 30 arrests in the two weeks between Oct. 7 and Oct. 21, compared with an average of 20 per month previously this year, according to Giselle Garcia, programs director of the mutual aid organization, based in Sacramento.
Along the Central Coast, a regional nonprofit, 805UndocuFund, has tallied 200 arrests in Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo Counties between Oct. 1 and Oct. 23 this year compared with 93 for the same period last year. NorCal Resist and 805UndocuFund provide services to undocumented immigrants and other immigrant families.
The city of Santa Maria, home to many immigrants who work in berry farms, has been hard hit, said Primitiva Hernandez, the executive director of 805UndocuFund.
“They are picking up random people waiting for rides, shopping and just walking in the street,” Ms. Hernandez said.
Early on Oct. 21, Erik Zepeda, a 20-year-old American, was tackled by agents as he walked to school, according to the district, which called 911 after he managed to reach campus. He was treated for injuries at a local hospital. His arms were bandaged and his face appeared bruised and swollen in images on a local TV report.
“We cannot normalize this brutality,” said Gloria Soto, a local council member.
D.H.S acknowledged that agents had mistaken Mr. Zepeda for their target but blamed him for assuming “a fighting stance.”
In another arrest in Santa Maria, federal agents detained a man on Oct. 5 after he pulled into a college’s parking lot to drop off his daughter. Federal agents have typically refrained from enforcement on college campuses.
Lauren Milbourne, public affairs and communications director at Allan Hancock College, provided a photo of the encounter and a statement condemning the enforcement. She said ICE representatives had told regional law enforcement officials in April that they would not enter the campus.
D.H.S. said in a statement that claims the man was arrested on a college campus were false. It said that he would remain detained until his immigration case was resolved because he had not agreed to be deported.
Groups that monitor enforcement said that early this month they began noticing more unmarked S.U.V.s with out-of-state license plates, suggesting additional agents had been deployed to California.
In San Diego, advocates said they encountered agents from Texas.
Arturo Gonzalez, 24, who alerts residents with a bullhorn when ICE is in the vicinity and informs hundreds of thousands of followers on social media of sightings, shared videos he filmed in early October of an agent who confirmed he was from Texas and said, “We’re here making America great.”
On Wednesday, while on the phone with a reporter, Mr. Gonzalez, an activist, filmed an agent inside his vehicle who pulled his gun out of his holster and placed it on his lap when Mr. Gonzalez taunted him.
The same day, Alberto Ramirez, a U.S. citizen who encountered ICE agents when he pulled into the parking lot of a breakfast place in San Diego, was pepper-sprayed after he began recording them with his phone, he said.
D.H.S. did not comment on the interactions with Mr. Gonzalez and Mr. Ramirez in San Diego.
Back in Fresno, school students have participated in walk outs and people have protested outside the downtown ICE facility.
On Oct. 11, some 300 people packed a local church to discuss how to help affected immigrants.
Attendees learned about how they could join mutual aid efforts that are offering people rides and delivering groceries to those too afraid to leave home. Organizers also recruited people to patrol the streets for ICE activity.
“We’ve never had 100 people in the same room care about immigration,” Mr. Arias, the councilman, said. “We had 350 people that don’t look like us.”
Madeleine Ngo contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
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