The Dizzying Speed of Trump’s Deportation Machine: Fresno Man Lands in Mexico 16 Days After Arrest

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Arreguin, 54, had called a small community near Fresno home since he was 5.

But on Oct. 1, federal immigration agents pulled him over on his way to work. He was among the first of about 130 people who advocates say were taken into custody during the opening days of the Trump administration’s latest immigration enforcement surge in the San Joaquin Valley.

“My whole life got destroyed,” said Arreguin, who is married and has four children.

The skilled laborer’s rapid removal to Mexico shows how fast Trump’s deportation machinery is moving, almost dizzying in its efficiency. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed more than 356,000 people in the first nine and a half months of the 2026 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, 2025, according to agency data. That surpasses the roughly 320,000 removals it carried out in all of fiscal year 2025.

The expanded enforcement that caught Arreguin later spread to the rest of California, and became known as “Operation Safe California.”

Arreguin spent just 15 days in federal custody before agents put him on a jam-packed deportation flight to Tapachula in southern Chiapas, near Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala. From there, he took buses back up to the country’s northern border where his daughter rented him a motel room in Mexicali.

“I had a five-bedroom house (in Fresno.) I don’t have nothing now,” he said.

Once a launchpad for people headed north, Mexicali is now an island for outcasts, as close as the deported may ever be again to their families and car payments and mortgages in the United States.

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Arreguin still doesn’t know why he was targeted. The ICE agent who stopped him on his way to work near Fresno told him, “I’ve been watching you.”

But Arreguin is not sure he believes he was under surveillance. That same morning, agents swept the small farmworker town where the family lived, emptying the streets.

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After his arrest, he was held at an ICE office in Fresno and then transferred to Bakersfield. He said he was taken back and forth while his blood pressure climbed until he eventually ended up spending about seven hours in an emergency room in Bakersfield.

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The facility has been a focal point for lawsuits from civil rights organizations and detainees, who have complained about harsh conditions, including not getting enough to eat and insufficient medical care. In September 2025, ICE’s own internal watchdogs found dozens of violations, the Washington Post reported.

Arreguin spent five days there before he says his phone communication was cut off and he was put on the plane to southern Mexico.

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Arreguin said his flight carried roughly 300 fellow deportados, all shackled and chained at the wrists and ankles. He counted 22 women and one minor.

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Since this spring, the administration has largely stopped sending Mexican nationals back across the land border. Instead, it’s flying them deeper into Mexico, where officials believe deportees dropped near the Guatemala border are less likely to try to cross back into the United States.

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