Masked ICE agents detain man in San Francisco, prompting city funding push
Archived — this story has rotated out of today’s deck. It is kept here in full.
The gist
Masked ICE officers detained a 51-year-old man in San Francisco's South of Market on a Monday morning.
Supervisors responded with a $1.7 million immigrant-services ordinance and emergency legal aid calls.
Background
ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is the federal agency that arrests and removes people in the country without legal status; its Enforcement and Removal Operations arm carries out those arrests. The detention in San Francisco's South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood was captured on video that spread online, and city officials say Bay Area ICE arrests were up 60% since February as of August, according to a KQED analysis. San Francisco is a sanctuary city, meaning it limits local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, and supervisors framed the new funding as backing that status.
How it unfolded
- Feb 12, 2026ICE acting director Todd Lyons, CBP commissioner Rodney Scott and USCIS director Joseph Edlow testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where Sen. Rand Paul questioned them on enforcement tactics and the shooting of Alex Pretti.
- Oct 14, 2026A $100 million plan to boost intelligence-gathering for ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations was reported, per federal records.
- Oct 19, 2026Masked ICE officers detained 51-year-old Milton Ramos-Rodriguez in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood on a Monday morning, and video of the arrest spread. The same day, Fresno City Councilmember Miguel Arias announced a proposal for a $1 million immigration legal defense fund.
- Oct 20, 2026San Francisco supervisors and immigration legal defense groups held a City Hall press conference calling for emergency funding for legal services and the city's Rapid-Response Network. Supervisor Jackie Fielder announced an ordinance for an additional $1.7 million in funding for immigration services.
- Oct 21, 2026Oregon officials reported that Bynum sent a letter asking ICE to pause non-emergency enforcement in Deschutes County after a school shooting in Bend.
- Oct 22, 2026The Fresno City Council is scheduled to consider the Immigration Legal Defense Fund resolution (Agenda Item 2-BB).
Who’s saying what
- Official
- ICE's acting San Francisco field office director, Julio S. Hernandez, said Enforcement and Removal Operations remains committed to protecting public safety by locating and arresting criminal aliens who pose threats to communities.
- Support
- Supervisor Jackie Fielder said ICE is not welcome to terrorize San Francisco's citizens and that the city will defend its sanctuary status in action, not just words.
- Caution
- San Francisco deputy public defender Francisco Ugarte said ICE calls everyone criminals and felons, and that this language of criminalization is powerful and tends to win popular support.
- Public
- The detained man's mother said he has lived in the United States since he was 6 and that she fears he will be killed if he is sent there.
Still unverified
ICE says Milton Ramos-Rodriguez is not a U.S. citizen, was previously deported to El Salvador and has a voluntary manslaughter conviction; a deputy public defender said his office was still reviewing the facts of that reported conviction. The circumstances of the Monday San Francisco detention remain unclear, the man has not been publicly identified, and the footage does not establish what led to the encounter; ICE did not immediately respond to CBS News Bay Area's request for comment. ICE said Emiliano Andrade-Covarrubias, who died in custody in Laredo, obtained his legal status fraudulently by failing to disclose a 2004 theft arrest, while his daughter disputes that. Federal officials said agents in the Renee Good shooting acted in self defense after Good allegedly tried to ram them with her car, which local city officials and her family disputed. The Vermont hiring plan is not final.