No warning, no goodbye: ICE quietly deports Santa Cruz resident after 22 years

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Adolfo Gonzalez had recently started looking both ways as he walked to his work truck each morning. 

Gonzalez, 62, a handyman well-known and liked among his local clients, called the greater San Jose-Santa Cruz region home for more than 22 years. But familiarity had begun giving way to paranoia since Jan. 20, when, amid a flurry of Inauguration Day executive orders, President Donald Trump galvanized U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to fulfill his promise and conduct the “largest deportation operation in American history.” 

Over the years, Gonzalez had picked up three DUI arrests, mistakes he deeply regretted and now, he thought, placed him in ICE’s crosshairs. Each trip outside his front door suddenly coursed with risk and vulnerability. He couldn’t sleep, and seriously considered relocating from the Market Street address in Santa Cruz he had called home for almost a decade. 

Then, on Jan. 28 at about 7:30 a.m., just as Gonzalez stepped out of his home and started toward his truck, two uniformed ICE agents intercepted his path. As Gonzalez tells it, the agents presented him with a “deportation order” that cited his three DUIs. Within seconds, Gonzalez was handcuffed, placed into a van holding two other detainees and driven away. He does not expect to see Santa Cruz ever again. 

“I lived with a lot of fear,” Gonzalez said in Spanish during a phone call from outside of Mexico City, describing the days leading up to his arrest. “It was a terrible experience to live through.” 

Gonzalez’s story, which ICE could not confirm or deny, marks the first known deportation in Santa Cruz County since the Trump administration returned to the White House last month. 

The removal of undocumented residents is occurring as warned, nationwide and in California, and the Gonzalez incident makes clear ICE’s intent to operate under the radar, outside of the broader public consciousness. 

Agents detained Gonzalez early on a Tuesday morning, before most people leave for work. ICE apparently offered no heads-up to local law enforcement nor lawmakers, from mayor all the way up to congressman, according to Lookout’s conversations with local officials. Nor did it offer any clarity, to Gonzalez or to Lookout, as to how it identified the man for deportation.

Gonzalez’s friends told Lookout they had no idea where he was — he had just plain disappeared. Lookout found out the details of Gonzalez’s deportation eight days later, only after he was able to borrow a cellphone in Tijuana to reach his Santa Cruz-based employer, the first to learn about the situation. 

“This we hadn’t expected; you wouldn’t think it would happen in Santa Cruz,” said Gonzalez’s employer, to whom Lookout has granted anonymity because he is a green card holder who is also worried about being deported. “Adolfo is like a member of our family. This is extremely disturbing. He was left in Mexico without a dime in his pocket.” 

Gonzalez hardly fits the image of the hardened criminals Trump claims have flooded the country. And his case and others reported by CalMatters indicate that many of the first Californians targeted are people who live and work quietly in their communities. 

And in a city and county that prides itself as being a sanctuary, officials say they are in the dark as to ICE’s activities.

A long way from home

Recounting his story in Spanish over the phone from a small town outside of Mexico City, Gonzalez spoke with a sense of resignation. He admitted he was scared when the ICE agents converged on him, but acknowledged the target that three drunk driving charges had placed on his back. 

Once they placed Gonzalez in the van — white, with a green stripe and “Border Patrol” decal — the two ICE agents boarded the front seats and drove off in search of more immigrants. 

“They would go to some location and, if they couldn’t find the person, they would leave and go to another place until the van was full,” Gonzalez said. “They were only going after people that had already committed a crime or had some sort of record. They did not pick up anybody off the streets.” 

By the time the van arrived at what Gonzalez described as a detention center, he said the ICE agents had detained about 10 people. Gonzalez said he was unsure where the holding facility was located, only that he was confident he was still in the U.S. According to the ICE website, the agency has five such locations in California: Adelanto, McFarland, Calexico, Bakersfield and San Diego. 

Before Gonzalez and the other detainees exited the van, he said ICE agents made them sign a document. 

“There was something written on the document, but they didn’t give us time to even read what was written on the document,” Gonzalez said. “I don’t know what it was.” 

Gonzalez was held at the detention center for one week before getting loaded onto one of three buses that dropped the detainees off in Tijuana. Upon his arrest in Santa Cruz, ICE agents confiscated Gonzalez’s cellphone and wallet, he said. As they dropped him off in Tijuana and prepared to drive back to the States, they returned a single possession: Gonzalez’s Costco membership card. 

Operating in the shadows

The Trump administration’s mission to deport undocumented immigrants has been anything but secret. Just hours after taking his oath of office, Trump signed executive order Protecting the American People Against Invasion, which called for the forcible removal of those who violate U.S. immigration laws. The order also threatened civil and criminal penalties against local officials who interfered with the administration’s effort. 

That executive order might have metastasized the fears held by many residents, but organizations and lawmakers had been preparing for it since November, when Trump secured his second term. Local groups like the Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County and the Resource Center for Nonviolence have held “Know Your Rights” workshops, and elected leaders at the county level, in Watsonville and in the city of Santa Cruz have voted to reaffirm their commitments to sanctuary policies that deprioritize collaboration with ICE agents. 

Despite the loud and organized response to the threat of local deportations, Gonzalez’s case shows that ICE has been able to carry out its directive under local officials’ radar. 

ICE spokesperson Richard Beam, based in Los Angeles, told Lookout that “as policy,” the agency will reach out to local law enforcement before conducting an operation. In Salinas earlier this month, police said they received a “courtesy notification,” as reported by KSBW-TV, that ICE was in town, searching for “as many as four people.” 

Yet, Santa Cruz spokesperson Erika Smart maintains that neither the city nor its police department have received any communication from ICE about any local activity, whether on Jan. 28 or beyond, contradicting Beam’s claim about the agency’s policy.   

“We have no knowledge of any ICE activity,” Smart wrote in an email. “Since Chief [Bernie] Escalante has been in his position (began in October 2021), he has not received any communication from ICE.” 

Santa Cruz Police Department spokesperson Katie Lee wrote that “any federal agency (not just ICE) that comes into our jurisdiction is not required to notify SCPD of their presence and why they are here.” 

Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley, who also lives on Market Street, near where Gonzalez was seized, said he was unaware of any local ICE activity. A spokesperson for Rep. Jimmy Panetta’s office also had not heard about Gonzalez’s deportation; however, the spokesperson emphasized that it was expected. 

“Generally, federal immigration authorities do not alert legislators before carrying out individual operations,” Panetta spokesperson Christian Unkenholz said. 

“Intelligence-driven leads”

As the rhetoric around mass deportations began heating up, Gonzalez grew increasingly paranoid, consumed by his three prior DUI charges. 

However, it’s not clear whether Gonzalez’s DUIs ever rose beyond a misdemeanor charge, nor how federal immigration officials knew Gonzalez was living in the U.S. illegally. 

Santa Cruz County Public Defender Heather Rogers told Lookout that although data is shared across law enforcement agencies, a simple DUI in California — one that didn’t cause personal injury or property damage — “would not be the type of thing where a law enforcement officer would include a notation that the offender is an undocumented immigrant.” 

Rogers, who said about 12% of her clients are undocumented, did say that immigrants who have come into contact with federal or state law enforcement — whether through criminal violations or residency applications — are often given what’s known as an alien registration number, or A-number. Those ID numbers show up on federal and state rap sheets, Rogers said, which makes for an easy target. 

Gonzalez said he had never applied for residency, and that his deportation marked his first interaction with federal or state law enforcement. 

“ICE has a rolling list of people who come on their radar and they are just going after them,” Rogers said. “But people get reported to ICE through all sorts of ways, by neighbors, employers” or people who have an issue with a particular person. 

Beam, the ICE spokesperson, told Lookout that criminal records do not necessarily show whether someone is in the country illegally, and that “a lot of research” goes into investigating someone’s residency status. Beam has described the agency’s method as using “intelligence-driven leads.” 

“We know who we are looking for before we even exit a vehicle to try to arrest somebody,” he told Lookout. 

A forced restart

After the ICE buses left Tijuana, Gonzalez, alone in an unfamiliar city with only a Costco card in hand, struggled to find a stranger who would lend him a few minutes with their cellphone. After finally finding favor, he dialed the only number he remembered: his employer back in Santa Cruz. Eventually he got in touch with his daughter, Fabiola, who sent him money and her address in Cuautitlán, a 31-hour drive away. 

After a multiday journey by bus, Gonzalez arrived last week in Cuautitlán and is starting over. He said he has no intention of returning to Santa Cruz. 

“Because I have three DUIs, [the ICE agents]  told me if I returned and were to get detained again, I was going to get thrown in jail,” Gonzalez said, though he is unsure whether the threat was only a scare tactic.  

The job market in Mexico is bleak, Gonzalez said, but he’s trying to find his footing. He has learned the public transportation system and travels to a hardware store seeking day jobs until something sticks. 

“Just like how I started [in Santa Cruz County] at the Home Depot on 41st [Avenue],” Gonzalez said. 

His arrival in Cuautitlán marked many firsts for Gonzalez: the first time he stepped foot in Mexico in 22 years, the first time he saw his 39-year-old daughter since her 15th birthday, and the first time he met his 2-year-old granddaughter.

Back in Santa Cruz, Gonzalez’s friends and employer will put his belongings — tools, clothes and just anything that was left behind — up for sale, he said. He hopes the money will help him get by as he searches for work. “Hopefully, they can sell something, because, if I’m being honest, I’m experiencing a very sensitive situation,” he said. 

As a handyman, Gonzalez said he felt satisfied with his life in Santa Cruz. 

“I cried when I finally did the math on how much I was making,” he said. “I worked my 40 hours, $35 an hour, Monday through Friday. I didn’t know how to take advantage of the opportunity that God had given me.” 

He said he’s thankful that his daughter has helped him adjust to a new life and that he has a roof over his head. 

Gonzalez said he can’t argue against his deportation. He believes those three DUIs triggered his removal order and gave immigration officials a reason to deport him. 

“I committed three serious mistakes,” he said. “That was my error.” 

His last DUI had led him to attend court hearings and he suspects that’s when the removal order was issued for him, Gonzalez said. 

Under Trump, the margin of error for undocumented immigrants has narrowed significantly. Gonzalez urged those with a similar living situation to not make themselves an easy target for ICE. 

“I know that all of Santa Cruz, all of California is a sanctuary for us undocumented people,” Gonzalez said. “But, if we behave badly, we have to face the consequences. If I hadn’t made the mistake of drunk driving, I would’ve been able to continue living my life, working and being with my friends in Santa Cruz.”

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