Why this mattters
The midterm election has offered a sharp rebuke to President Trump’s agenda. But his immigration crackdown continues.
After more than a year, the organizers and attendees who gather every Sunday outside the immigration detention center in San Diego have a practiced routine that runs like clockwork.
The “peacekeepers,” mostly older women in neon yellow vests, arrive about 15 minutes ahead of time to place orange traffic cones bearing “SLOW” signs along Calzada de la Fuente.
Sunday, a man in a boonie hat set up speakers that towered over most people’s heads. Cables snaked along the gravel path that lines the perimeter of a fenced-in facility where more than 1,000 people are held each day on average.
These immigrants are from all over. Most have no criminal records. What they have in common is a lack of a legal immigration status, which puts them at the center of an aggressive and unprecedented deportation crackdown under President Donald Trump.
Every Sunday since October 2025, attendees from across San Diego County have arrived here, bringing dogs, children and camping chairs, carrying canopies for shade, folding tables for selling shirts and colorful, often creative signs denouncing Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Sunday afternoon, a brown and white Cavalier King Charles Spaniel dog wore a white shirt with a post-midterm election message written in marker that read: “Lawyer up, B——!”
That night, in an interview on 60 Minutes, Trump would acknowledge that his deportation policy— which along with gas and grocery prices and the Iran war cost Republicans their congressional majorities — was “too tough.”
He would say, “I think, ultimately, that hurt me.”
Week after week, a crowd of a few dozen people has spent the afternoon at the Otay Mesa Detention Center to show solidarity with detainees inside, to raise money for their commissary accounts and to send a message of resistance to the Trump administration.
Johannes Ottensmeier works with the Otay Mesa Detention Collective alongside Racial Justice Coalition of San Diego to put on the weekly events. He is unequivocal about their future.
“As long as ICE is there and this is open, then we wouldn’t stop,” he said.
His immigration crackdown
Over the past year, as has happened nationwide, ICE has been ramping up arrests across Southern California. In San Diego and Imperial counties, officers made the most monthly arrests of Trump’s second term on record in July, the most recent data point.
Following turmoil in cities like Minneapolis, where federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens during protests, officers have moved from dramatic, made-for-TV operations in public spaces to more stealthy, quiet arrests.
Days after midterm election results offered a sharp rebuke to Trump’s immigration agenda and other second-term priorities, advocates outside Otay Mesa on Sunday said their fight isn’t over.
“What I want every single person here to remember is that ICE is still actively in our communities ripping families apart,” Arturo Gonzalez told the crowd outside Otay Mesa.
The immigration crackdown, however, has shown few signs of slowing.
Wednesday, ICE officers detained an 8-year-old Haitian boy after his immigration hearing in downtown San Diego. An image obtained by KPBS showed the child in a white collared shirt and black slacks being escorted down a hallway by ICE.
The agency told KPBS that the boy, who was living with his uncle, was considered an unaccompanied minor since his father had been deported in March 2025.
Friday, Trump appointed Stephen Miller, the architect of many of the administration’s most controversial and cruel immigration policies, as his new chief of staff, signaling new aggression.
“Trump says his immigration crackdown went too far,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote Sunday on X. “Apparently, his solution was to put the man responsible for it in charge of the White House. That’s not a course correction. That’s a promotion.”
‘You are not alone!’
A 42-year-old man died while in custody at Otay Mesa Detention Center on Oct. 24 after staff found him unresponsive in his cell. The cause and manner of his death have not been released.
Four months earlier, in June, inewsource published a three-part investigation that revealed allegations from dozens of immigrants who described deteriorating health and inadequate care at Otay Mesa Detention Center.
A former detainee and Type 1 diabetic described care that medical experts said was “potentially life threatening.” The investigation also found a higher-than-expected number of ambulance calls for seizures.
Outside the detention center on Sunday, music blasted from speakers, in multiple genres and languages. Organizers play the music for the immigrants inside the detention center. Attendees say the immigrants can hear them from inside.
Jennifer and Lucy Hernandez, a mother and daughter from El Cajon, attended for the first time.
Jennifer said she’s had family and friends affected by the crackdown and knows other immigrants in her community, even those with legal status, are afraid to leave their homes.
Lucy said one day ICE officers followed her as she drove in her truck with a friend. She said it scared her and made her mom worry that being U.S. citizens might not protect them.
“You realize that like anyone can be a target,” Jennifer said.
Guards at the privately-run detention center sat inside white trucks and a van watching the rally, slowly driving by and sometimes speaking into handheld radios.
At one point, attendees began shouting at them.
“We are human beings just like you,” Gonzalez shouted through a megaphone. “We don’t deserve this. We are hard-working people. These are families, not criminals. Leave our families alone. Leave our families alone.”
Nine people took turns with the microphone over an hour-long speaking portion that included Wister Gaetan, co-founder of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, Darwin Fishman, co-founder of the Racial Justice Coalition of San Diego, and two women with a group they started, Sing For Change, which was inspired by their first visit to Otay Mesa.
One of the women said that on that visit, a detainee threw a toiletry bottle over the fence of the facility, and attendees there retrieved it. Taped to the bottle was a handwritten message describing troubling conditions inside, as L.A. Taco first reported.
“It was the most moving experience that I have had, that I can remember really,” the woman said.
To close out the rally, Gonzalez and Gaetan took turns leading the crowd in a chant for the detainees inside in English, Spanish, Haitian and French: “You are not alone!”
The entire event lasted about two hours. After the last of the speakers, attendees broke down their chairs and tables, removed the traffic cones from the street and returned to their cars with signs.
They drove away, leaving the detention center and all of its detainees in their rearview mirrors until next Sunday when they will be back to do it all over again.
inewsource’s persistent reporting shines a light on the immigration crackdown. Chip in to keep these stories coming, informed and local.
