An immigration attorney in San Diego said she is seeing a trend in immigrants showing up at military bases for contract work, then being detained.

“It has been kind of a contentious situation, because they used to work there all the time, and now they’ve kind of changed their attitude,” Valerie Sigamani told NBC 7. 

In the past two weeks, Sigamani said, she has had four cases come to her law office of men who were detained when they showed up for prescheduled work at Camp Pendleton and ended up being questioned about their legal status and taken into federal custody. 

“They didn’t have any concerns because they had done it before,” Sigamani said. “They had been contracted by somebody on the base, and then they were called into work. So they weren’t seeking work or anything like that. They were working for someone already.” 

All of the men, Sigamani said, have approved I-130 documents. According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website, it is a way for “a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident or U.S. national” to “establish your qualifying relationship with an eligible relative (the beneficiary) who wishes to come to or stay in the United States permanently and apply for the Permanent Resident Card (also called a Green Card).”

Sigamani added that one of the four men who had come to her office had gone through his first interview with USCIS to get his green card and is now concerned how this could impact his progress. 

Sigamani said the men were taken from the base in North County to the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building in downtown San Diego, where they were held for anywhere from one to three days. Afterward, they were taken to the Otay Mesa Detention Center, she said, where three of the men remain. One has been released. 

“We’re doing petitions for them to get out, habeas petition for them to get out, bond hearings for them to get out,” Sigamani explained. 

On May 17, 2025, a news release was shared on the website for Camp Pendleton that announced an “interagency security initiative in coordination with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS).” According to the release, the purpose of the initiative is to “deter unauthorized installation access by foreign nationals and reinforce layered base defense strategies in alignment with national security objectives.”

NBC 7 reached out to Pendleton’s public affairs contacts to see if the arrests mentioned by Sigamani were part of that initiative. A spokesperson responded and said all questions regarding ICE activity need to go through ICE. We also reached out to a spokesperson for ICE earlier in the day, then followed up through email and got confirmation the inquiry was received and a response would be forthcoming. However, a full statement has not been shared with NBC 7 at the time of this publication. 

Above all, Sigamani said, this adds confusion to an already-complicated process for the four men taken into custody. 

“They don’t understand,” Sigamani said. “They were working. It’s not like they were doing something bad on the base or anything like that. They were called to go there.”