ICE has arrested nearly 10 times as many people without a criminal record in San Diego this year compared with 2024, new data shows, as immigration arrests continuing to rise more sharply in San Diego relative to the rest of the U.S.

The latest numbers were obtained by the Deportation Data Project via a Freedom of Information Act request, and analyzed by NBC 7 Investigates.

The data shows that, nationwide, ICE has made 225,757 arrests through October 2025, compared with 111,446 arrests in all of 2024, more than double even before the year’s end.

In San Diego, ICE arrested 783 people 2024, the data shows, but, through October 2025, that figure rose to 5,138 – about 6.6 times more arrests than last year, with several weeks still left in 2025.

Nationwide, about three times as many people without a criminal history or pending charges were detained in the first 10 months of this year, compared with 2024. In San Diego, though, that number is up tenfold: 305 arrests in 2024, which was about 39% of all arrests, versus 2,992 arrests in 2025.

The thousands of people without a criminal record who ICE arrested in San Diego make up 58% of all arrests through October of this year.

Trisha Sleek-Castañeda said her husband Misael Curiel-Castañeda was one of those arrests.

“My husband is a wonderful, wonderful person,” Sleek-Castañeda said. “They call him Mudo because it means silent one in Spanish, because he hardly ever talks. Very gentle, would help anyone.”

Sleek-Castañeda said her mother was friends with Curiel-Castañeda’s family and had rejected her mother’s attempts to set them up before the couple met at a party in 2011.

“I saw him standing in the doorway, and I was like, ‘Who is that?’ ” Sleek-Castañeda said. “My mom’s like, ‘That’s the one I was telling you about, that’s the one. I knew from that moment that he was going to be my husband. And he knew I was going to be his wife.”

Married now for 12 years, Sleek-Castañeda – an American citizen – said the couple filed years ago to adjust Curiel-Castañeda’s immigration status. She said it was interrupted by a cross-country move but that they restarted the process after returning to San Diego.

“We are going through the immigration process just like everyone else,” Sleek-Castañeda said. “It’s a lengthy process. It’s a very long and expensive process. It’s not easy.”

As they watched the Trump administration rise to power on a promise of mass deportations, Sleek-Castañeda said their concern grew for her husband, originally from Mexico, so they communicated their movements throughout the day and shared locations as a precaution.

“I feared it every single day,” Sleek-Castañeda said.

On Nov. 12, she said, that fear became a reality when Curiel-Castañeda, who works in construction, was home on bereavement after his grandmother died. He stepped outside their City Heights home to move his car, she said, when federal agents surrounded him and broke the car window to detain him.

“They instructed him that they wanted him to get out of the vehicle, and he said that he was waiting on his wife and his lawyer, and they insisted that he get out immediately,” Sleek-Castañeda said. “He didn’t want to get out of the car because, of course, he was in fear because he didn’t really know who it was at his door at the time.”

Sleek-Castañeda said he called her, and she left work immediately, but he was gone by the time she arrived. Her daughter, who Curiel-Castañeda raised as his own, recorded the arrest and said she asked to see a warrant but the agents never showed her.

Sleek-Castañeda checked her husband’s location and saw he was at the federal building downtown. He has since been transferred to the Otay Mesa Detention Center.

“There would have been no reason for a stop like that because he wasn’t breaking the law,” Sleek-Castañeda said.

Sleek-Castañeda said her husband has no criminal record. NBC 7 Investigates searched San Diego County court records for Curiel-Castañeda and found no record of criminal charges. ICE did not respond to a request for comment about his case and about the data showing the increase in arrests of people without a record.

“It’s been horrible because he’s our — he’s my backbone, he’s my person,” Sleek-Castañeda said through tears. “Him not being there is just hard. It’s so painful at night. And it’s just been hard to accept that a man that is not a criminal — he’s never even gotten a speeding ticket, a parking ticket — and he’s being detained like he’s a criminal.”

Broken glass still litters their street, and Sleek-Castañeda now wears her husband’s nickname, Mudo, on a necklace to keep him close. Detained for a month, she said, he’s remained quiet – even with her.

“He doesn’t want to let me know that he’s struggling, but I can look at my husban,d and I know he’s struggling in there,” Sleek-Castañeda said. “It’s mentally wearing him down.”

“I’ve never seen it like this,” said immigration attorney Narciso Cruz, who doesn’t represent Curiel-Castañeda but has been practicing for more than 14 years.

“They said they would go after the worst of the worst, those criminal aliens, those people who are bad hombres, but we’re seeing the opposite,” Cruz said.

Cruz and other immigration attorneys have said more of their clients have been detained in recent months – and it’s become far more difficult to get them out, many turning to federal courts to petition for their release.

“Why are you doing this to our families that are not criminals?” Sleek-Castañeda asked, adding, “I just don’t understand why, when we contribute to making this country great.”