Fresno Father Deported After 49 Years — Family Says ICE Swept Town, Cut Off Communication
Federal immigration agents arrested Luis Arreguin, 54, on his way to work in Fresno on October 1, held him for 15 days, and deported him to southern Mexico. Arreguin had lived in a small community near Fresno since he was 5 years old. He is married with four children.
Arreguin was among roughly 130 people advocates say were detained in the opening days of the Trump administration’s latest immigration enforcement surge in the San Joaquin Valley, which later spread statewide as “Operation Safe California.” The ICE agent who stopped him told him, “I’ve been watching you,” but Arreguin said agents swept his entire town that morning. “My whole community works in the fields. They did a sweep on my little town, and my wife called me and said, ‘It’s empty, babe. It’s empty,'” he said.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed more than 356,000 people in the first nine and a half months of the 2026 fiscal year, which began October 1, 2025 — surpassing the roughly 320,000 removals it carried out in all of fiscal year 2025, according to agency data.
After his arrest, Arreguin was held at an ICE office in Fresno, transferred to Bakersfield, then moved to Camp East Montana on the outskirts of El Paso. He spent five days there before agents, he said, cut off his phone communication and put him on a deportation flight. The facility has been the subject of lawsuits from civil rights organizations and detainees alleging harsh conditions, including insufficient food and medical care. In September 2025, ICE’s own internal watchdogs found dozens of violations at the facility, the Washington Post reported.
Arreguin described a roughly 300-person deportation flight to Tapachula in southern Chiapas, near Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, during which all passengers were shackled and chained at the wrists and ankles for 36 hours of travel. He said agents restricted people’s access to the bathroom and water during the flight, and that agents removed the shackles just before deplaning — which he interpreted as an effort to keep Mexican officials from seeing how they had been transported. Others on the flight who spoke to the news outlet on condition of anonymity corroborated these details. ICE has a long-standing operational policy mandating that passengers in custody are shackled with handcuffs, waist chains, and ankle restraints during flights.
Arreguin said agents taunted him during the flight: “Oh, look, it’s the famous Mr. Arreguin,” holding up their phones with news stories about his arrest and social media videos his daughter made to draw attention to his case.
ICE posted a statement on social media a day after the original story published, saying Arreguin has a criminal history that includes aggravated assault with a weapon, firearms offenses, and driving under the influence, and that he had been deported, most recently in 2005. “The Trump administration’s deportation machine is running FULL SPEED, sending criminals who should never have been in our country in the first place OUT,” the agency said. A public records search by the news outlet returned no recent criminal history for Arreguin.
Arreguin is now in Mexicali, Baja California, a seven-and-a-half-hour drive from Fresno. His wife visited him last week. In 31 years of marriage, he said, they had never spent a night apart until his arrest. “I had a five-bedroom house. I don’t have nothing now,” he said. His wife is packing up their house to move — the family doesn’t have the money to stay without Arreguin paying rent as the main breadwinner. His two youngest children, 6 and 10, will have to change schools.
“I’m a father. You kidnapped me in the morning and took me from my kids,” Arreguin said.
The Breakdown
- Luis Arreguin, 54, was arrested by ICE agents in Fresno on October 1, 2026, on his way to work. He was among roughly 130 people detained in the opening days of the Trump administration’s latest San Joaquin Valley enforcement surge.
- Arreguin was held for 15 days in ICE custody in Fresno, Bakersfield, and Camp East Montana in El Paso before being deported on October 15.
- He was flown to Tapachula in southern Mexico — near the Guatemala border — on a flight carrying roughly 300 people. All passengers were shackled at the wrists and ankles for 36 hours of travel, according to Arreguin and others on the flight.
- The Trump administration has largely stopped returning Mexican nationals across the land border, instead flying them to southern Mexico. In the first seven months of 2026, just 1,567 people came through the Mexicali crossing — less than 2% of the national total — while Tapachula and Villahermosa together took 48,000 people, nearly half of all returns.
- ICE stated after the story published that Arreguin has a criminal history including aggravated assault with a weapon, firearms offenses, and DUI, and that he was deported previously, most recently in 2005. A public records search returned no recent criminal history.
What This Means for You
This is the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policy in action — set by the elected President and carried out by his appointees at ICE and DHS. If you voted for Trump, this is what you voted for. If you didn’t, you’re seeing what the administration you opposed is actually doing with the authority voters gave it. The scale and speed of these operations — 356,000 removals in nine and a half months, surpassing the prior year’s total — and the treatment of people during them are decisions made by officials answerable to the President. Whether you think this is what immigration enforcement should look like, or whether you think it’s cruel and lawless, is a question you’ll answer again at the ballot box.
What to Watch
ICE did not respond to questions about Arreguin’s case until after the story published, and then only on social media. The agency says Arreguin has a criminal history and was previously deported; a public records search found no recent criminal history. What would settle this: the records ICE is relying on — the criminal conviction records, the prior deportation order, the dates and charges. ICE has those records. Produce them, or the claim remains what an agency said on Twitter after getting press attention, not what it documented before removing someone from the country.
Arreguin says agents told him “I’ve been watching you,” but he believes the arrest was actually part of a sweep of his entire town that morning. What would confirm that: ICE’s operational records for October 1 in that area — how many people were arrested, what the targeting criteria were, whether Arreguin was under individual investigation or picked up in a dragnet. ICE has those records too.
Arreguin and others on the flight describe being shackled for 36 hours, restricted access to bathrooms and water, and shackles removed just before deplaning. ICE has a policy mandating shackling during deportation flights. What’s not answered: whether the specific treatment Arreguin describes — 36-hour shackling, restricted bathroom/water access during that time, removal of restraints before Mexican officials could see them — complies with ICE’s own standards, or whether it crosses the line into the kind of treatment the agency’s own watchdogs flagged at Camp East Montana. The detention conditions lawsuit and the internal violations report both exist. Whether this flight was handled the same way is a question ICE is in a position to answer and hasn’t.
Arreguin’s family is now facing displacement — his wife is packing up their house because they can’t pay rent without his income, and his two youngest children will change schools. The six-year-old and ten-year-old are U.S. citizens. That’s a direct, statable cost of this enforcement policy: citizen children lose their home and their school because their father was removed. Whether you think that’s an acceptable cost of enforcement, or whether you think it’s the government punishing children for their parents’ immigration status, is the question this case puts to you.
