ICE Reportedly Begins 45-day “Operation Safe California” Sweep Weeks Before the Midterms

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has quietly begun a statewide enforcement surge in California that is expected to run at least 45 days, the Washington Examiner reported Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the plan. The Department of Homeland Security has neither confirmed nor denied the operation, which the report says started near San Diego and will move north through Los Angeles to San Francisco by November.

What the report says

ICE leadership has told officers to arrest every person they encounter who is in the country illegally, whether or not that person has a criminal record, according to the Washington Examiner. One source told the outlet that officers had been instructed to “go after anybody.” Another said managers were pressing for higher arrest totals.

The operation, known inside the agency as Operation Safe California, has not been publicly announced. The Examiner reported that it began several days ago in and around San Diego and that officers from ICE’s Los Angeles and San Francisco offices are assisting.

The plan calls for enforcement to move up the state, reaching Los Angeles and then San Francisco by November, according to Newsmax’s account of the report. ICE officials reportedly expect the most resistance in San Francisco, which they view as the least friendly of the three regions.

The Examiner said the effort will use far fewer federal officers than the two-month operation in Minnesota last winter. California officers, many of whom have worked six-day weeks for months, were told before the operation that mandatory six-day weeks would resume until further notice.

What is confirmed

No federal official has confirmed the operation on the record. DHS declined to confirm or deny it when the Examiner asked on Wednesday afternoon, saying ICE does not discuss enforcement operations because of officer safety.

A DHS spokesperson said the department enforces immigration law every day. The spokesperson pointed to recent California arrests of three men with homicide convictions, from Jamaica, Mexico and South Korea.

The account rests on two unnamed sources. Other outlets covering the story, including Newsmax and The New Republic, are relaying the Examiner’s reporting, not confirming it independently. No arrest totals tied to the operation have been released.

Open question: research for this article through midday Thursday found no public response to the report from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office or the mayors of San Diego, Los Angeles or San Francisco.

On the ground this week

Local reports describe a visible jump in enforcement on Monday, Oct. 5, though none ties it to the named operation. Masked ICE officers arrested at least 17 people in Santa Maria and Guadalupe that day, the Santa Barbara Independent reported, citing the 805 UndocuFund rapid response network.

One of those arrested was the parent of an Allan Hancock College student, taken from a campus parking lot. Community groups counted more than 45 arrests across Southern California that day, including more than 20 in greater Los Angeles and four in Ventura County. ICE did not respond to the paper’s requests for comment.

“We need ICE out of the 805,” Santa Maria City Councilmember Gloria Soto said. Rep. Salud Carbajal and state Senate President pro Tempore Monique Limón also condemned the campus arrest.

The Independent described the day as a return to the street-level tactics of 2025, after a period when ICE concentrated on jails and immigration check-ins.

In San Diego, where the operation reportedly began, arrests were already climbing. ICE arrested 169 people in San Diego and Imperial counties in January 2025 and 1,964 in July 2026, according to Deportation Data Project figures reported by the Times of San Diego. The data lists 73% of the nearly 18,000 people arrested there between Jan. 21, 2025, and Aug. 6, 2026, as having no criminal record.

Legal limits

A federal court order issued three weeks ago restricts how agents can make arrests in much of the operation’s reported path. On Sept. 16, U.S. District Judge Maame Frimpong barred immigration agents in the Central District of California from making warrantless arrests without first assessing whether the person is likely to escape.

The injunction, in Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem, requires agents to document that assessment. It also bars reliance on a January ICE memo that treated unlawful status alone as evidence of escape risk. Federal law allows a warrantless civil immigration arrest only with probable cause on both points: unlawful presence and likely escape before a warrant can be obtained.

The Central District covers seven counties, including Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. San Diego sits in a separate federal district. The Examiner’s reporting does not say how an instruction to arrest everyone officers encounter would be carried out where the order applies.

DHS has defended its agents’ conduct in that case, saying they are focused on protecting the public.

California’s sanctuary law bars state and local police from helping with federal immigration enforcement. It does not stop ICE from operating in the state. Federal officials argue the law forces agents to make arrests in neighborhoods instead of jails; Newsom says state prisons still transfer people to ICE custody.

Election timing

The reported start came the same week Californians began voting in the Nov. 3 midterms. A 45-day operation that began in early October would run through Election Day and into mid-November.

The Examiner called the effort the administration’s latest ICE surge into a Democratic-led state, after Minnesota, Illinois, New York and Oregon. Supporters describe such operations as routine enforcement of federal law in places that decline to cooperate. Critics, including The New Republic, cast the timing as punishment of a state that has fought the administration.

Voting rights groups are already citing California enforcement in court. An amended complaint filed Wednesday says the Santa Maria campus arrest took place in a parking lot adjoining an active ballot drop-off site, on the first day drop boxes opened, according to Democracy Docket.

That lawsuit was brought by the League of United Latin American Citizens, Common Cause, UnidosUS and the City and County of Denver, and joined Wednesday by Hennepin County, Minnesota. It asks a federal court to keep armed federal agents away from polling places and now includes a voter-intimidation claim under the Voting Rights Act.

Democracy Docket’s account describes the arrest’s proximity to the drop box, not a claim that agents were targeting voters. Nothing in the reporting links the arrest to Operation Safe California.

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