Neighbors React to ICE Raid at San Diego Italian Restaurant: 'It Could Happen Anywhere'

"I think it just puts a lot of fear in people—especially the hard-working people who are doing nothing wrong."

Danielle Nozzi wasn't there when heavily armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents swarmed her favorite Italian restaurant, arrested four employees, and fired off flash-bang grenades at protesters who tried to stop them.

But in the days since the raid at Buona Forchetta, in the cute and trendy South Park neighborhood of San Diego, she's been thinking about how she would explain the incident to her kids. She has yet to come up with a satisfactory answer for herself.

"I have no idea what I would say to them. 'Oh, they're taking away bad people.' They're not," Nozzi, a 41-year-old mother of two, tells me as she waits to pick up a pizza on Wednesday night.

Like other workplace raids carried out in recent weeks by ICE, this one seems to signal a shift in the Trump administration's tactics and an escalation of its deportation efforts. The White House has reportedly ordered ICE to expand its targets beyond gang members and violent criminals and to go after day laborers and other workers peacefully trying to earn a living despite their lack of legal status. That means more confrontations like the one that happened here—and more difficult questions about why immigration enforcers are busting into a restaurant in riot gear and face masks.

"They made a public show of it, and I think they're doing it for a reason—to try to incite people and try to get a reaction," says Nozzi.

Buona Forchetta is buzzing and crowded on Wednesday night, with a steady stream of patrons waiting for tables on the awning-covered patio or picking up orders from the to-go window around the corner. Everyone I spoke with had heard about the raid and seen footage of it on the news or social media, and many said they'd come to Buona Forchetta as a show of support for the restaurant—a low-key form of resistance, it would seem.

That includes Diana Ashhab, 43, who was waiting for a table with Brian Atkins. She plans to attend one of the larger protests planned for Saturday and says raids like the one that happened here should underline the importance of speaking up.

"Just because they are illegal doesn't mean they are criminals," Ashhab says. "It's such a waste of taxpayers' money when there are real problems to solve." Atkins chimes in that politicians who break the law aren't hauled out of their workplaces and arrested on the street.

The four people arrested in the raid at Buona Forchetta were servers and dishwashers, according to local news reports. The warrant authorizing the raid accused the restaurant of "knowingly employing both illegal immigrants and individuals not authorized to work in the United States," and cited a tip to federal authorities from November 2020. A follow-up investigation launched in January 2025, just after President Donald Trump took office, ultimately led to the raid after officials from the Department of Homeland Security determined that some workers at the restaurant were using counterfeit green cards, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

Photos and videos posted to social media show the raid and its aftermath, including ICE agents detonating flash-bang grenades to clear the crowd that gathered to oppose the arrests. The incident went viral shortly afterward when Sean Elo-Rivera, a Democratic San Diego city councilman, posted a photo of the ICE agents with the word "terrorists" scrawled across it, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller responded by hurling an accusation of "leftwing domestic terrorism" at Elo-Rivera.

In a statement, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, a Democrat, said "Federal actions like these are billed as a public safety measure, but it had the complete opposite effect."

On Wednesday night, there are lingering remnants of the raid and the subsequent protest. An electrical box on the sidewalk outside the restaurant now sports a prominent "Fuck ICE" sticker. A poster attached to a post across the street offers legal assistance to anyone affected by the raid.

But those things seem somewhat out of place amid the craftsman homes and manicured landscaping of the South Park neighborhood. On the three street corners opposite Buona Forchetta sit a yoga studio, a boutique gym, and a cocktail bar. Families with children and numerous dogs are out and about on this Wednesday night. Nothing about the neighborhood suggests that it is besieged by criminal gangs or the sort of violence that might require the heavy hand of federal law enforcement.

Given those surroundings, it's probably not a surprise that nearly everyone I spoke with was dismayed or upset by the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.

"I think it just puts a lot of fear in people—especially the hard-working people who are doing nothing wrong," says Alyssa Ashmore, a 28-year-old software engineer who is waiting for a to-go order.

"It kinda feels distant when you see it on the news sometimes, but then when you see it in a place where you live," she says. "It reality checks."

But that opinion was not unanimous.

"If you're illegal or you overstayed your visa, it's time to go," said Dillen Roman, a 32-year-old member of the Navy who has lived in the area for eight months. "That's just the way it is."

Nozzi said she was surprised to see the raid happening here, in a neighborhood she described as a "quintessential melting pot" full of families and small businesses.

"If it could happen in South Park, it could happen anywhere," she says, "and probably it is happening anywhere."