Federal agents detained at least three people outside San Bernardino County Superior Court on Thursday in what lawyers are calling a worrying increase in immigration enforcement actions outside courts in the area.
Federal immigration agents were spotted at the courthouse parking lot in Rancho Cucamonga around 9 a.m. and began arresting individuals as they left the building by noon, advocates said. Eyewitnesses told ABC7 Just before 9:30 a.m. a man was surrounded by agents in the parking lot with his son. Video shows masked agents surrounding a man, handcuffing him and putting him in the back of an SUV.
Lizabeth Abellan, executive director of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, said similar detention incidents have occurred outside courts in San Bernardino and Riverside in recent months.
Federal agents arrest a man outside a courthouse in Rancho Cucamonga on Thursday.
(KTLA)
“We view this as a violation of their due process,” Abellan said. “It’s not that ICE is arresting them based on immigration violations. They’re trying to target people who have had some kind of encounter with law enforcement. But, in America, we have due process which means you’re innocent until proven guilty. But in these cases people don’t have the opportunity to get their case dropped or get closure.”
The Department of Homeland Security said Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol were in court Thursday for targeted immigration operations and arrested three people, two of whom were from Colombia and one from Mexico.
According to Homeland Security, Godofredo Chiqueté López overstayed in the United States after entering on a tourist visa in 2007. He has been charged with two felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon that was not a firearm, a misdemeanor count of hit and run and a possible sentencing enhancement for great bodily injury on a person connected to an incident in 2023. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges, according to San Bernardino County court records.
Another man in ICE custody, Alexander Pacheco Sabogal of Colombia, was arrested on suspicion of battery, a Homeland Security spokesman said. No criminal charges have been filed against Sabogal in San Bernardino County, according to court records.
“An immigration judge ordered him removed in 2023 after he failed to appear for his hearing,” a Homeland Security spokesperson wrote in an email.
Cesar Andrés Méndez Garzón, who was also detained on Thursday, is from Colombia and entered the United States in Arizona in 2023. According to federal officials, he did not appear for a hearing in 2025 and an immigration judge ordered his removal.
It was unclear why Garzon was in court Thursday. According to online court records, he has not been charged with any crimes in San Bernardino County.
“We need the involvement and input of state and local law enforcement so we don’t need such a presence on the streets,” a Homeland Security spokesperson wrote in an email to The Times. “Elected officials who refuse to cooperate with DHS law enforcement are wasting law enforcement’s time, energy, and resources, while putting their own constituents at risk.”
The Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, which advocates for immigrants in the region, said at least 33 people have been detained in or near the Rancho Cucamonga courthouse since October.
“These are the ones we know about,” he said.
California law prohibits civil arrests inside courthouses, but arrests have occurred periodically outside buildings and in parking lots since the Trump administration began increasing immigration enforcement last summer.
In January 2025, ICE issued interim guidance stating that officers may take civil enforcement actions in or near courts “when they have credible information that leads them to believe that the targeted alien is or will be present at a specific location, and where such action is not prevented by laws imposed by the jurisdiction in which the civil immigration enforcement action will take place.”
A bill proposed by Senator Alois Gomez Reyes (D-San Bernardino) would force federal officers to get a warrant signed by a judge before arresting someone for a civil offense outside of a state court.
Abellan said the coalition is concerned that the presence of immigration officers in the courthouse parking lot will discourage others — even citizens — from going to the building for hearings or handling normal business like traffic tickets.
“It puts entire families at risk,” she said. “They may be targeting an individual, but their family is a non-citizen and whether it’s on site or after the fact, they are targeted. It’s a security concern.”
California Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero said in a statement in July that the arrests could have a “chilling effect” on the court.
“Making the courts the center of immigration enforcement hinders rather than helps the administration of justice by deterring witnesses and victims from coming forward and discouraging individuals from asserting their rights,” he said.
