Joel Garcia was on a Zoom call when he heard screaming.
The yells came from the street, nine floors below the coworking space at 101 Montgomery St. where he runs his tech consulting company, AllCode. What he saw shocked him.
Garcia posted a video on X of immigration agents on Tuesday arresting a man who was coming out of San Francisco Immigration Court across the street. Protesters clashed with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, who drove a van at a group and shoved them away with batons. Two protesters were pepper-sprayed, according to a witness. Some clung to the van’s hood and eventually fell.
“I’ve been here for 30 years, on and off, and I’ve never seen anything like that,” Garcia said.
This extreme example was one of many protests and chaotic scenes at the courthouse since President Donald Trump launched his immigration crackdown.
Unlike many of the deportations in agricultural areas across California, these raids are happening in the financial center of a city that generally doesn’t cooperate with ICE. The immigration court, spread across the fourth, eighth, and ninth floors of the 25-story office tower at 100 Montgomery St., shares the building with a dentist’s office and an environmental law firm. The ground floor has a Proper Food grab-and-go cafe frequented by nearby office workers.
As the blitzkrieg plays out on their doorsteps, many downtown workers are feeling anxious that they will get sucked into the tumult. Some, fearing they will be racially profiled and harassed by immigration agents, are carrying around documents showing they are in the U.S. legally.
Amando Balbuena, a marketing director who also works at 101 Montgomery St., said he carries his U.S. passport with him since his mother expressed fears that federal agents may target him because of his Mexican ethnicity.
“How do I prove that I’m American?” he said.
Amir Adibi, a patent attorney whose firm is at 155 Montgomery St., said the immigration arrests have people around his office “on edge.”
“What if we get harassed or detained?” asked Adibi, who is Mexican and Iranian. “It’s a conversation on our floor, like, ‘Carry your birth certificates, passports.’”
Federal agents have arrested at least 30 immigrants in San Francisco since late May. The Trump administration has a goal of making 7,000 ICE arrests daily nationally and deporting vast numbers of undocumented immigrants, according to the local organization Mission Action.
Balbuena said he’s accustomed to federal agents patrolling the area — the Israeli Consulate and Colombian Embassy are nearby — but has recently noticed them positioned behind pillars or parked vehicles near the immigration court.
“It’s like they don’t want to be seen,” he said, pointing to a July 1 photo he took of three Department of Homeland Security agents standing behind a San Francisco Police Department SUV.
A barista in a Montgomery Street cafe who requested anonymity described Tuesday’s clash as “harrowing.”
“A lot of food places are run by Latinos, so it’s a lot of uncertainty,” he said. “It’s hard to process that people are kidnapping people not even based on reality, but just their skin color.”
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an email that enforcement operations “are highly targeted and are not resulting in the arrest of U.S. citizens.” She said 70% of those arrested are immigrants living in the country illegally who have been convicted or have pending criminal charges.
“What makes someone a target of ICE is if they are illegally in the U.S. — not their skin color, race, or ethnicity,” she said.
Waiting inside Proper Food, immigration attorney Phil Albert said he works primarily with undocumented people from Ukraine. News of raids and arrests scares them, he said.
Whenever possible, he’s opting for clients to appear remotely over Zoom for their immigration appointments. If they can’t, he urges their loved ones to stay home, out of fear they’ll be detained while waiting outside court.
“If they want to make people afraid, it’s working,” he said.