The Abridged version:
- ICE arrests of Indian nationals spiked in the Sacramento region through the first year of the second Trump administration, according to data from the Deportation Data Project.
- Immigration enforcement offices in Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton and San Bernardino also saw significant increases in arrests of people with Indian citizenship.
- The arrests happened amid a surge of immigration-related enforcement at the federal level. All such arrests in the Sacramento area more than doubled, according to an Abridged by PBS KVIE analysis.
Immigration officials have greatly increased their arrest numbers throughout the Sacramento area and inland California, particularly among people from India.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Sacramento suboffice was responsible for the arrests of almost 150 Indian nationals from January 2025 through March 10, 2026, up from just five arrests of Indian nationals in the preceding 15 months, according to data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests by the Deportation Data Project at UC Berkeley and UCLA.
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ICE’s Sacramento office covers the entire Sacramento metro area, along with Solano County and several counties north of Sacramento.
Four other inland California immigration enforcement offices — Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton and San Bernardino — were responsible for an additional 850 arrests of people with Indian citizenship from January 2025 to March 2026, up from a relative handful of arrests in the previous 15 months, according to Abridged by PBS KVIE’s data analysis.
Advocates said the arrests largely targeted the Sikh community. California is home to hundreds of thousands of Sikhs, with a heavy concentration in the Central Valley. Many are recent asylum-seekers, fleeing alleged persecution.
Sikhs and other Indian nationals have found work as commercial truck drivers, an industry targeted by federal officials. The Trump administration has pushed an executive order and a proposed law that toughen requirements for commercial truck drivers to demonstrate English language proficiency, citing a California wreck in 2024 caused by a truck driver with Indian nationality that seriously hurt a 5-year-old girl.
“ICE has now doubled down on that effort and expanded its enforcement effort to specifically target this population,” said Munmeeth Kaur Soni, legal director for the Sikh Coalition, a national organization that advocates for Sikh civil liberties.
Soni cited a nationwide immigration enforcement effort called Operation ICE Wall that targeted truck drivers without documentation at interstate weigh stations.
At one stop, Soni said, a Sikh truck driver and asylum seeker was flagged by an inspection officer in Iowa. The driver, who was hauling poultry, presented his valid commercial driver’s license. The inspector noted a minor registration issue with the driver’s employer that was quickly resolved. But the inspector also called ICE.
“He’s an asylum seeker, and they immediately arrest and detain him, and he ended up being detained for over 10 weeks,” Soni said.
‘Wave of anxiety and panic’
About 30% of the Indian nationals arrested by officials in ICE’s Sacramento suboffice in recent months had previous or pending criminal charges, a significantly lower proportion than the office’s other arrests, according to Deportation Data Project figures.
“We know that many truck drivers have forsaken their professions in fear,” Soni said. “They’re arresting oftentimes the sole breadwinner in families, and the hardship is then falling on the mothers who are now like primary caretakers, having to find sources of income.”
Other than truck drivers, ICE is also arresting Sikh and other Indian nationals when they show up for mandatory immigration check-ins, Soni said.
The increase in the arrest of Indian nationals is part of a broader upsurge instigated by the Trump administration.
ICE’s Sacramento suboffice was responsible for about 830 arrests from January 2025 to March 10, 2026, up from about 330 arrests in the previous 15 months, according to the Deportation Data Project.
People from Mexico were the most common group arrested, followed by citizens of India, Guatemala, El Salvador, Russia, Afghanistan and Nicaragua.
“There is a much more indiscriminate kind of approach to enforcement patterns,” said Giselle Garcia, who works with NorCal Resist, an organization that fights for immigrant rights.
The arrests, Garcia said, have led to “a wave of anxiety and panic” in the region’s immigrant communities.
To respond to the increased targeting of Indian nationals, NorCal Resist has translated many of its educational materials into Punjabi.
Garcia said volunteers from her organization have witnessed Indian nationals and other people from south Asia arrested when they arrive for immigration appointments at a downtown Sacramento federal building.
“In the beginning, a lot of folks would go in and they didn’t want to check in with us. They were like, ‘No, I’m fine. You know, they’re not going after us. They’re just going after Latinos, right?’” she said. “Now, this new reality is reaching the community more.”
