President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement crackdown brought more than 800 arrests across Ventura County in 13 months, according to data from a nonprofit group.
Official numbers remain sparse, and the available federal data offers an imprecise glimpse at arrests in the county though it suggests activity in 2025 may have more than doubled the previous year.
The most compelling data comes from 805 UndocuFund, the nonprofit that has documented ICE activity since mid-January 2025. It contends 827 people were arrested across the county by federal agents through Feb. 10, by far the most in a region that also spans Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
The tally includes people arrested during raids on farms or other businesses as well as people apprehended in early-morning street patrols. It includes too people transferred to the custody of federal agents when they have finished serving county jail sentences for certain serious or violent felonies.
Nearly 600 of the arrests came in the Oxnard and Camarillo areas including the massive July raid in which more than 330 people were apprehended at the Glass House Farms cannabis operation outside of Camarillo city limits.
There were other surges, too.
More than 40 people were arrested after federal agents descended on farms in the Oxnard Plain on June 10, according to 805 UndocuFund counts. Immigration authorities conducted raids three days later in car washes, restaurants and other locations in Thousand Oaks, Moorpark and other sites. They arrested 16 people, the nonprofit said.
Enforcement activity increased dramatically in 2025 as Trump promised it would.
Federal data obtained by the Deportation Data Project showed 10,817 arrests from January to mid-October 2025 in a seven-county Los Angeles area that includes Ventura County. That’s nearly three times more than the 3,812 arrests in the same time period in 2024. The data project is a repository led by academics and lawyers who gather immigration information through public records litigation.
The federal data does not calculate arrests by county and appears to show an incomplete look at local activity. But it does show 300 arrests from January to October 2025 made by federal fugitive operations teams as well as people apprehended by immigration agents after being held on other charges at the Ventura County Jail. A year earlier, there were 130 fugitive operations and jail arrests.
Of the 300 arrests, a final order for deportation was given in 161 cases with many of the other cases still being processed, meaning the number could grow.
‘Already in Tijuana’
The 805 UndocuFund numbers come via reports from families hit by the arrests and are verified using the federal government’s online database of people who have been detained, said Primitiva Hernandez, the organization’s executive director.
Sometimes, the confirmation comes in the form of a phone call from the person who was arrested and deported just hours later, she said.
“They just call and say, ‘I’m already in Tijuana,’” she said.
Hernandez said her organization’s numbers likely don’t cover all of the enforcement activity in the county.
“It represents just a glimpse of what is really happening out there and how our communities are getting targeted,” she said. “It explains why our communities are living in fear.”
Department of Homeland Security officials did not provide comprehensive Ventura County arrest data but said in a statement 70% of ICE arrests nationwide involve immigrants charged or convicted of a crime.
As part of the statement, DHS officials issued a list of more than 90 people in Ventura County arrested by immigration agents. They had been previously convicted or accused of far-ranging crimes – from sexual exploitation of a minor and aggravated assault to damaging property and driving under the influence. The officials characterized the offenders as “the worst of the worst.”
“Secretary (Kristi) Noem unleashed ICE to target criminal illegal aliens including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, gang members and terrorists,” they said.
The data for Ventura County available through the Deportation Data Project appears incomplete. But of 300 people arrested in the county, ICE contended 148 had been previously convicted and another 33 had been charged with crimes.
Other data organizations that have sifted through federal immigration data have reported an increasing number of people arrested on immigration offenses have no previous criminal convictions. The Transactional Records Access Clearing House, a data-gathering organization founded at Syracuse University, reported in February that 74% of the people being detained across the nation had not previously been convicted.
State law allows law enforcement agencies to respond to requests from federal immigration authorities by notifying them about the release of people convicted of specific offenses. Online data from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office shows only a small increase in requests for notification from ICE after Trump’s inauguration, with the number rising to 1,329 requests in 2025 from 1,208 the previous year.
The sheriff’s office provided notifications to federal agents on 169 occasions in 2025, slightly higher than 2024, according to the sheriff’s online dashboard.
Hernandez said many of the people arrested in Ventura County were stopped early in the morning on their way to work or after they drop off their kids at school. The vast majority have clean records.
“Do some of them have criminal convictions? Yes, they do,” she said. “But it’s not 70%.”
Data from 805 UndocuFund defines communities not by city boundaries but by mailing addresses and zip codes. Camarillo is listed as having had 451 arrests in part because the region encompasses the Glass House Farms outside of city limits and the site of the massive July raid.
The Camarillo numbers also include arrests made at the ICE field office on Cortez Circle in Camarillo, Hernandez said.
Oxnard was hit hard. There, 144 people have been arrested from Jan. 14, 2025, through Feb. 10, 2026, according to the 805 UndocuFund data.
The deportations and early morning immigration patrols in Oxnard have sparked large protests, observers that track federal agents as they drive across the city and at least one operation in which federal officers used chemical agents and flash bangs to control the crowd.
Immigration advocates contend the crackdown has kept families from seeking medical care, keeps some people out of public places and spawns stress that affects performance in schools.
‘Empty restaurant’ sign of ICE’s effect
Before January 2025, the line of people waiting to eat chilaquiles and enchiladas at the small La Placita Restaurant on Oxnard’s Sixth Street often stretched out the door. Now, the tables are often empty.
At 11 a.m. on a Wednesday, six people were eating an early lunch. Three of them were employees.
Most of the customers stopped coming more than a year ago when the crackdown began. They never really came back.
“It didn’t get better,” said owner Javier Rodriguez in Spanish. “They’re scared to come out.”
The empty tables have forced cuts in employee hours. Rodriguez said he’s not sure it will get better as long as people worry about ICE.
“If immigration is around, people don’t come out,” he said.
The story is similar at the large indoor swap meet in an Oxnard theater building with a large Vogue sign.
“There is no people,” said Carmen Bello, standing in front of a booth where she has sold yarn, crocheted dresses and other products for more than 24 years. She blamed the slow business on immigration fears, worrying she may have to close up shop.
“I don’t want to but there’s no rent money,” she said.
Trump had mandate for tougher enforcement
As with every aspect of the immigration enforcement surge, the volume of Ventura County arrests over the past 13 months sparks debate. Willie Lubka, executive director of the Buen Vecino immigration advocacy group, asserted each action has ripple effects.
“That’s 827 families that are in turmoil and going through trauma,” he said.
Others see the increase as Trump making good on campaign promises to secure the border and remove undocumented immigrants, especially those with criminal records.
“He didn’t skirt around the issue of what he wanted. People overwhelmingly elected Trump,” said Richard C. Lucas III, chairman of the Ventura County Republican Party. “I always have said that the fact that Trump won the electoral college as well as the popular vote was a mandate.”
Federal data on Ventura County arrests has long been hard to find. A spokesperson for U.S. Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Westlake Village, said her office has asked the Department of Homeland Security for numbers but has not received them.
Groups like the Deportation Data Project collect data through public record requests but mining the information for specific communities and counties is challenging. Arrest locations are often listed only by a landmark, said David Hausman, the project’s co-director and a UC Berkeley assistant professor of law.
The 805 UndocuFund data contends there were 79 arrests over 13 months in Ventura, 46 in Thousand Oaks, 33 in Simi Valley and 28 in the Santa Clara River Valley communities of Fillmore, Santa Paula and Piru.
Lisa Tate farms avocados and coffee beans in Santa Paula and Fillmore. When ICE agents descended on farms last year, she worried they might come to her fields. She cautioned farm workers to keep tractors off the roads and to keep their vehicles behind property lines and out of sight.
Federal agents didn’t come and still have not. Tate continues to worry. The fear is focused less on the daily threat of arrests and more on the absence of a long-term solution that would allow immigrants without documents to work without looking over their shoulders.
“The real story is we need a worker program,” she said.
Tom Kisken covers health care and other news for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tom.kisken@vcstar.com.
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This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: ICE crackdown brings 827 arrests to Ventura County, nonprofit says
Reporting by Tom Kisken, Ventura County Star / Ventura County Star
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