Fresno father of four removed to Mexico 16 days after ICE arrest
Luis Arreguín lived 49 years in the US before ICE removed him to Mexico 16 days after his Fresno arrest, as deportees now land in Mexican border cities.
Luis Arreguín, 54, who lived in the United States for 49 years and raised four children near Fresno, California, was removed to Mexico on Oct. 15, 16 days after federal immigration agents detained him on his way to work.
Arreguín was among the first of about 130 people whom advocates say were taken into custody in the opening days of an immigration enforcement surge in the San Joaquin Valley, CalMatters reported on Oct. 28. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed more than 356,000 people in the first nine and a half months of fiscal year 2026, which began Oct. 1, 2025, surpassing the roughly 320,000 removals carried out in all of fiscal year 2025, the outlet reported, citing agency data.
The detentions reshaped daily life across the region. The Los Angeles Times reported that Fresno City Councilmember Miguel Arias said, "We're seeing very few people out in the streets," and that Kerman Mayor Maria Pacheco told agents, "You're not welcome in my city." For Mexican border cities, the effect arrives weeks later: since spring, U.S. officials have largely stopped returning Mexican nationals across the land border and instead fly them deeper into Mexico, according to CalMatters.
Arreguín spent 15 days in federal custody, held in Fresno, Bakersfield and at Camp East Montana outside El Paso, before agents placed him on a flight to Tapachula in Chiapas, near Mexico's border with Guatemala, CalMatters reported. Mexican officials there gave him a debit card loaded with 2,500 pesos, about $130, and his adult daughter paid for the rest of his trip to Mexicali, where she rented him a motel room. Once a launchpad for migrants headed north, Mexicali now receives deportees who arrive with little notice. Arreguín, who left Mexico as a child, understands some Spanish but answered "Poquito" when people spoke to him, he told CalMatters. "My whole life got destroyed," he said.
His wife of 31 years has visited from Fresno, a seven-and-a-half-hour drive. The enforcement operation that swept him up, which the Department of Homeland Security has declined to discuss, has since been reported in the Coachella Valley and Ventura County, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Sources: The dizzying speed of Trump's deportation machine: Fresno man lands in Mexico 16 days after arrest · 'Very few people out in the streets': ICE surge rattles California's Central Valley
This story was written with the help of artificial intelligence from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.
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