New details emerge about ICE arrest near Linda Vista Elementary

A federal official on Saturday said a man arrested by ICE two days ago had allegedly been using an unauthorized social security number.

The public learned of the arrest outside Linda Vista Elementary School when San Diego schools superintendent Fabiola Bagula held a news conference Friday to reassure the community about the off-campus arrest.

In a emailed statement from the San Diego field office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin of the Department of Homeland Security described the man as an undocumented immigrant who “was fraudulently using an American’s social security number.”

Officers approached him “after he pulled over in a parking lot” on Thursday. ICE arrested him and placed him in removal proceedings, she said.

Other elements of McLaughlin’s statement run counter to those made by Bagula at her news conference.

ICE’s statement opens with the line “allegations that ICE targeted Linda Vista Elementary School are FALSE. ICE was NEVER on school grounds.’

Bagula didn’t say ICE officers were on campus. She specifically explained that the arrest “didn’t happen on school grounds, but it happened close enough to our community to feel its impact.”

That means, the superintendent said, that it “happened to an entire school community.” She also called out ICE officers for their use of masks.

McLaughlin’s statement concluded with this: “Any smears that ICE targeted an elementary school are contributing to the 1000% increase in assaults against our brave ICE law enforcement.”

Those numbers remain in dispute – yet the estimates are rapidly increasing. In June, federal officials said that there has been a 500% increase in alleged assaults of ICE officers since the beginning of the year, according to Rolling Stone. In that report, however, Homeland Security did not release actual assault numbers.

By July, federal agencies on up to the White House – the Trump administration blamed Democrats – were citing a 700% percent rise in alleged assaults on ICE.

Immigration arrests have skyrocketed since President Donald Trump took office in January. The administration often repeats that it is going after the “worst of the worst” criminal offenders, but in a new report, the Marshall Project, which covers criminal justice, found that of those immigrants deported between January and May, just around 12% had been convicted of a crime that was” “either violent or potentially violent.”

To date, ICE has targeted workplaces and public spaces where undocumented workers are thought to gather. The area around schools could be a new front for immigration officers.

The Linda Vista ICE arrest was the second at a San Diego-area elementary school in eight days. On Aug. 6, a woman was taken into custody outside Enrique S. Camarena Elementary School in Chula Vista.

ICE said in a statement that she was arrested after being ordered to be deported in absentia by an immigration judge in 2022.

That statement also noted simply, without accusations of smears or assault allegations, that the situation outside Camarena Elementary was “resolved promptly, safely and not on the school grounds.”