Danielle Nozzi wasn’t there when closely armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) brokers swarmed her favourite Italian restaurant, arrested 4 workers, and fired off flash-bang grenades at protesters who tried to cease them.
However within the days for the reason that raid at Buona Forchetta, within the cute and classy South Park neighborhood of San Diego, she’s been fascinated by how she would clarify the incident to her children. She has but to provide you with a passable reply for herself.
“I do not know what I might say to them. ‘Oh, they’re taking away dangerous folks.’ They are not,” Nozzi, a 41-year-old mom of two, tells me as she waits to choose up a pizza on Wednesday evening.
Like different office raids carried out in current weeks by ICE, this one appears to sign a shift within the Trump administration’s techniques and an escalation of its deportation efforts. The White Home has reportedly ordered ICE to broaden its targets past gang members and violent criminals and to go after day laborers and different employees peacefully attempting to earn a dwelling regardless of their lack of authorized standing. Meaning extra confrontations just like the one which occurred right here—and harder questions on why immigration enforcers are busting right into a restaurant in riot gear and face masks.
“They made a public present of it, and I feel they’re doing it for a cause—to attempt to incite folks and attempt to get a response,” says Nozzi.
Buona Forchetta is buzzing and crowded on Wednesday evening, with a gentle stream of patrons ready for tables on the awning-covered patio or choosing up orders from the to-go window across the nook. Everybody I spoke with had heard about the raid and seen footage of it on the information or social media, and lots of mentioned they’d come to Buona Forchetta as a present of assist for the restaurant—a low-key type of resistance, it will appear.
That features Diana Ashhab, 43, who was ready for a desk with Brian Atkins. She plans to attend one of many bigger protests deliberate for Saturday and says raids just like the one which occurred right here ought to underline the significance of talking up.
“Simply because they’re unlawful doesn’t suggest they’re criminals,” Ashhab says. “It is such a waste of taxpayers’ cash when there are actual issues to resolve.” Atkins chimes in that politicians who break the regulation aren’t hauled out of their workplaces and arrested on the road.
The 4 folks arrested within the raid at Buona Forchetta had been servers and dishwashers, in line with native information stories. The warrant authorizing the raid accused the restaurant of “knowingly using each unlawful immigrants and people not approved to work in the USA,” and cited a tip to federal authorities from November 2020. A follow-up investigation launched in January 2025, simply after President Donald Trump took workplace, in the end led to the raid after officers from the Division of Homeland Safety decided that some employees on the restaurant had been utilizing counterfeit inexperienced playing cards, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
Photographs and movies posted to social media present the raid and its aftermath, together with ICE brokers detonating flash-bang grenades to clear the group that gathered to oppose the arrests. The incident went viral shortly afterward when Sean Elo-Rivera, a Democratic San Diego metropolis councilman, posted a photograph of the ICE brokers with the phrase “terrorists” scrawled throughout it, and White Home deputy chief of workers Stephen Miller responded by hurling an accusation of “leftwing home terrorism” at Elo-Rivera.
In an announcement, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, a Democrat, mentioned “Federal actions like these are billed as a public security measure, nevertheless it had the exact opposite impact.”
On Wednesday evening, there are lingering remnants of the raid and the following protest. {An electrical} field on the sidewalk outdoors the restaurant now sports activities a outstanding “Fuck ICE” sticker. A poster hooked up to a publish throughout the road provides authorized help to anybody affected by the raid.
However these issues appear considerably misplaced amid the craftsman houses and manicured landscaping of the South Park neighborhood. On the three avenue corners reverse Buona Forchetta sit a yoga studio, a boutique health club, and a cocktail bar. Households with youngsters and quite a few canine are out and about on this Wednesday evening. Nothing in regards to the neighborhood means that it’s besieged by legal gangs or the kind of violence which may require the heavy hand of federal regulation enforcement.
Given these environment, it is most likely not a shock that almost everybody I spoke with was dismayed or upset by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
“I feel it simply places loads of concern in folks—particularly the hard-working people who find themselves doing nothing improper,” says Alyssa Ashmore, a 28-year-old software program engineer who’s ready for a to-go order.
“It kinda feels distant while you see it on the information generally, however then while you see it in a spot the place you reside,” she says. “It actuality checks.”
However that opinion was not unanimous.
“If you happen to’re unlawful otherwise you overstayed your visa, it is time to go,” mentioned Dillen Roman, a 32-year-old member of the Navy who has lived within the space for eight months. “That is simply the best way it’s.”
Nozzi mentioned she was stunned to see the raid occurring right here, in a neighborhood she described as a “quintessential melting pot” filled with households and small companies.
“If it might occur in South Park, it might occur wherever,” she says, “and doubtless it’s occurring wherever.”
