Federal agents were staking out a Linda Vista apartment complex one morning last summer when they spotted the man they were looking for, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, walking to his car. The agents quickly moved in, using their vehicles to box his Ford Mustang into its parking spot. The target of that operation allegedly struck one of the law enforcement vehicles while trying to drive away, prompting the agents to arrest him on suspicion of assaulting a federal officer. Before long, activists opposed to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown showed up to observe and protest; a confrontation ensued, and soon three of them were arrested and charged with the same crime of assaulting federal officers. In many respects, the events of that July 2 morning in Linda Vista were similar to scenes that have played out across the country since President Donald Trump took office last year. Amid his administration’s unprecedented campaign of deportations, activists and community members have protested and organized patrol groups to monitor immigration enforcement. Agents and community members have sometimes clashed, including last month in Minneapolis, when agents shot and killed Reneé Good and Alex Pretti. So far, however, San Diego has mostly escaped such dramatic confrontations in large part because immigration enforcement has been subtler here — with the exception of a raid last May at the restaurant Buona Forchetta in South Park — than in areas such as Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis. The three individuals arrested that morning in Linda Vista are the only protesters or activists to be charged under the Trump administration for allegedly assaulting federal officers, according to an analysis by the Union-Tribune. Federal officers conduct an immigration raid at Buona Forchetta in the South Park neighborhood on May 30. (Pedro Rios / American Friends Service Committee) Administration officials have continued to pronounce that assaults on federal officers have skyrocketed nationally. During a Feb. 12 visit to San Diego, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem mentioned a local case in which an undocumented border crosser allegedly struck a Border Patrol agent in the head with a rock. Noem said assaults against immigration agents are up 1,300% and vehicular attacks up 3,200%. The analysis by the Union-Tribune showed that prosecutions for assaults on federal officers in the San Diego region are up slightly when compared to more recent years, but down significantly from President Donald Trump’s first term and the beginning of Joe Biden’s presidency. In those years, higher numbers of unlawful border crossings led to more frequent interactions — and sometimes assaults — between undocumented immigrants and Border Patrol agents. Most strikingly, the Union-Tribune’s analysis showed that federal prosecutors, who typically have conviction rates of better than 90%, have dismissed nearly half of the assault-on-federal-officer cases they’ve brought against defendants since Trump has been back in office. “As a border district, our office has traditionally prosecuted a large number of defendants who have violently assaulted federal officers,” U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon said in statement. “Then and now, federal officers are enforcing established laws. If someone chooses to physically assault a federal officer, they need to know that an arrest on federal charges will soon follow.” Federal prosecutions Since Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California has charged 22 defendants with assaulting federal immigration or border officers, according to the Union-Tribune’s analysis. That includes officers from the Department of Homeland Security and its component agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol. Two other cases filed during the same period involved alleged assaults on military police officers. The Union-Tribune’s analysis covered the first 13 months of Trump’s presidency. But even with an extra month of cases, it showed that the 24 total prosecutions were well within a normal range when compared to fiscal year prosecution data from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. That data showed that each fiscal year between 2017 and 2022 — with the exception of the pandemic year of 2020 — federal prosecutors in San Diego filed an average of about 41 cases for assault on a federal officer. Those numbers dipped to 16 such prosecutions in fiscal 2020, 19 in 2023 and 11 in 2024. For the assault cases filed since Trump took office, the Union-Tribune reviewed criminal complaints, plea agreements, dismissal motions and other court records. Of the 22 cases involving DHS personnel, nine are still in various stages of pretrial litigation, while three defendants have either been sentenced or have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. Meanwhile, prosecutors have dismissed assault charges against 10 other defendants, or nearly half of the 22 charged with assaulting immigration or border officers. In two of those cases, the defendants pleaded guilty to immigration offenses, and prosecutors agreed to drop the assault charges. Prosecutors outright dismissed the other eight assault cases — an unusually high number given the typical success rate for federal prosecutions. In six of the eight dismissal motions, assistant U.S. attorneys informed judges that additional information or investigation had led them to “re-evaluate the prosecution” and that dismissing the case was in the best interest of justice. In the two other cases, prosecutors wrote that the government could not move forward “consistent with its legal obligations.” Those dismissals stand in stark contrast to what has played out in Los Angeles in recent months, where federal prosecutors have taken at least six such assault cases to jury trials. The Los Angeles Times reported that as of earlier this month, Los Angeles federal prosecutors were 0-for-6 in those trials, losing each of them to the federal public defender’s office. The Department of Justice has suffered other high-profile defeats in assault cases against protesters and activists. In November, a jury in the District of Columbia acquitted a man who threw a sandwich at a CBP officer. And federal prosecutors in Chicago dismissed an assault charge against a woman who was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent last year, after footage of the incident showed she had not boxed in agents with her vehicle, as had been alleged, but rather that an agent crashed his vehicle into hers. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego declined to provide specific details about why it sought dismissals at such a high rate, though it likely has to do with legal precedent that’s unique to the federal districts that are part of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Elsewhere across the nation, prosecutors can bring the assault charge against any defendant who allegedly “assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes” with a federal officer. But in 2008, 9th Circuit judges effectively narrowed the scope of that statute when they ruled that “convictions under this statute require some form of assault.” That effectively prevents prosecutors in San Diego and the rest of the 9th Circuit from being able to successfully prosecute defendants suspected only of resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating or interfering with federal officers. DHS assault data While federal prosecutions don’t provide a full picture of all assaults faced by DHS personnel and other federal officers, they represent the best way for outside observers to analyze those assaults. That’s in part because DHS does not provide detailed lists or accounts of all assaults, and the data the agency does publish remains somewhat murky. For example, DHS publishes annual statistics pertaining to assaults on CBP officers and Border Patrol agents that allow for a comparison of year-over-year rates and different regions. For CBP and Border Patrol in San Diego and Imperial counties, for instance, the agency reported 70 assaults in fiscal 2025, compared to 59 in fiscal 2024 and 61 in fiscal 2023. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during a press conference on Feb. 12 at the Otay Mesa border in San Diego. (Kristian Carreon / The San Diego Union-Tribune) DHS also breaks down those assaults by the kind of weapon used, such as rocks, firearms or knives, though the most common type is what the agency describes as a physical assault — attacks using fists, feet and other body parts. DHS does not provide such detailed breakdowns for assaults against ICE officers, instead providing those statistics in news releases that double as attacks against Democratic lawmakers and the news media. The most recent, from early January, reported 275 assaults nationwide against ICE personnel between the day Trump took office in January until the end of last year. The agency said there were just 19 assaults against ICE officers during that same period in 2024, resulting in the reported 1,347% increase. “This unprecedented increase in violence against law enforcement is a direct result of sanctuary politicians and the media creating an environment that demonizes our law enforcement and encourages rampant assaults against them,” Assistant Homeland Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. What exactly qualifies as an assault, and how DHS and its component agencies count them, can also be controversial. For example, DHS asserted that Good, the woman fatally shot in Minnesota, was assaulting officers with her vehicle when one of them opened fire, though others have argued that video footage of the incident showed she was trying to drive away from officers. In one of the most extreme controversies surrounding DHS assault data, The Intercept reported in 2018 that when six people attacked seven Border Patrol agents with rocks, bottles and tree branches, the agents’ South Texas sector counted it as 126 assaults — seven agents, multiplied by six attackers, multiplied by three types of projectiles. ‘Never assaulted anyone’ The Union-Tribune’s analysis of the 22 assault cases involving DHS personnel showed that eight involved agents and officers conducting immigration enforcement away from the border. While some of those cases involved ICE officers, others involved CBP officers, Border Patrol agents and special agents from Homeland Security Investigations working on immigration enforcement task forces. Seven other cases involved Border Patrol field agents at or near the border. Six other cases involved CBP officers at designated ports of entry. One case remains partially sealed, so it’s unknown what agency was involved, though an unsealed arrest warrant showed that ICE officers made the arrest. Jeane Wong, who goes by the name Blue, leaves the Metropolitan Correction Center July 3 in San Diego. (Denis Poroy / For The San Diego Union-Tribune) Of the eight assault cases involving ICE or immigration enforcement task forces, half stemmed from that single morning last July in Linda Vista. That case did not involve ICE officers, but rather three HSI special agents and a CBP officer working on an immigration task force. Court records showed that prosecutors eventually dismissed the assault case against the Guatemalan man the task force was initially targeting; it’s believed he was later deported. Prosecutors also dropped the assault case against one of the three protesters who confronted the agents at the scene. One of the others has pleaded not guilty, and her case remains headed toward trial. The third protester, Jeane Wong, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge last month, admitting in a plea agreement that she struck an HSI special agent in the face with her hand. She faces up to a year in prison when she is sentenced in March. At her plea hearing, Wong was reluctant to confirm her guilty plea, saying that there was more to the story. She eventually relented, on the advice of her attorney, who said she would have a chance to speak her mind at her sentencing hearing. Wong, who is part of a community patrol group that attempts to track the work of immigration enforcement officers, explained outside of court why it was so difficult for her to plead guilty, claiming that the HSI agent assaulted her and another activist first, and she was trying to protect her friend and de-escalate the situation. “(The HSI special agent) grabbed my arm and pushed me back, and that’s when I came back forward and took his mask off,” Wong said. “I’ve never assaulted anyone in my entire life … I am 0% a violent person.” Deportations quietly spike The likeliest reason that assault cases have remained relatively steady in San Diego under the Trump administration is because the White House has not surged immigration agents into the region for high-profile operations such as those conducted in Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis and elsewhere. Still, deportations have spiked. From January to mid-October of last year, ICE’s San Diego field office made 4,934 arrests in San Diego and Imperial counties, dwarfing the 764 arrests made in all of 2024, according to data from the agency obtained via public information request by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the Union-Tribune. But those arrests are occurring with immigration officers keeping a lower profile. The most glaring exception was a Friday evening last May, when immigration officers raided the popular South Park restaurant Buona Forchetta, temporarily detaining most workers before ultimately arresting four of them. The raid prompted outraged neighbors and community members to confront the masked federal agents, who responded by using flash-bang grenades to disperse the crowd. No protesters were arrested. ...read more read less