Home security video captured three U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents cornering and questioning a man Monday morning in SoMa. One, a plainclothes officer in a red flannel and a baseball cap, drew his gun on the man, who appeared unarmed.
Juan Carlos, a financial analyst who asked that his last name be withheld for privacy, said he witnessed the incident from his 6th Street apartment. When he heard yelling around 8:45 a.m., he looked out his front door and saw the plainclothes officer with his gun out. He didn’t immediately see the badge around the officer’s neck and couldn’t tell he was law enforcement.
“I was like, ‘Am I about to see someone get murdered?’” Juan Carlos said. “I said, ‘Hey, you’re being recorded.’ They didn’t give a fuck.”
Footage captured by Juan Carlos’ security cameras shows a man in a navy-blue suit and brown leather shoes running across the street toward the cameras, with the plainclothes officer just behind him. Soon, two other officers in green ICE uniforms catch up, and the pursued man stops. “Get on the ground!” one of them yells.
The suited man continues to stand and asks what the officers are doing. One asks why he ran. “I don’t know who you guys are,” he responds, adding that he was on his way to work. “You’re violating my rights as a U.S. citizen,” he says.
Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who represents the area in City Hall, condemned the incident on social media.
“I am outraged by the video showing an armed federal agent confronting a man who repeatedly identified himself as a U.S. citizen,” he wrote in a statement. “ICE has no place terrorizing our communities, and the tactics we witnessed this morning are unacceptable.”
The statement also referenced last year’s narrowly averted “federal invasion,” a planned immigration enforcement surge that President Donald Trump called off at the last minute after a phone call with Mayor Daniel Lurie. Lurie’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
ICE agents arrest a man on 6th Street in SoMa on the morning of Monday, Oct. 19. | Source: Courtesy Juan Carlos
The Department of Homeland Security had no comment. The San Francisco Rapid Response Network, which runs a hotline where people can report ICE sightings, did not respond to a request for comment.
A small crowd formed around the scene, with pedestrians pulling out their phones to record.
Juan Carlos said the plainclothes officer at that point had his gun pressed against his apartment window: “I was like, great, if that shit goes off it’s hitting me or my dogs.” He described the glass shaking as the agents slammed the man against the window. Soon afterward, they pushed him to the ground. Just 10 minutes earlier, Juan Carlos had been outside pouring bleach on that exact spot, as he does twice every day, to combat the smell of urine.
The footage shows the officers leading the man, who’d been placed in handcuffs, north on 6th Street. The interaction lasted about six minutes. Juan Carlos said he does not know what happened after they left, or whether they put the man in a car. He said he was especially disturbed because there are often parents on his block walking children to Bessie Carmichael Elementary School at that time of morning.
“Having this untrained person running with a gun when kids are present — it’s just plain wrong,” Juan Carlos said, referring to criticism that ICE agents receive less training (opens in new tab) than their peers in other federal agencies.
He posted a still from his security video and a description of the incident on Reddit (opens in new tab), where it has accumulated hundreds of upvotes and comments condemning ICE.
Anthony Proctor witnessed the incident from his truck, where he lives, at the Chevron gas station on 6th and Harrison streets.
“I felt some type of way, seeing them gang up on him,” Proctor said. “I thought they were going to shoot him.”