Get Out of the Way San Francisco, ICE Has Work To Do

On October 19, 2026, ICE agents arrested 51-year-old Salvadoran national Milton Ramos-Rodriguez on a South of Market/SoMa neighborhood sidewalk in San Francisco, and city hall responded as expected – clutching pearls and grabbing the checkbook.

ICE stated that Ramos-Rodriguez had previously been deported. He also had a California conviction for manslaughter and was allegedly tied to the Sureños gang.

It’s straightforward – federal authority: the reinstatement of the prior deportation removal order, and removability based on a serious criminal conviction. San Francisco officials, however, are far more interested in the optics of the actual takedown caught on camera.

Video of this arrest shows Ramos-Rodriguez, dressed in a suit, repeatedly declaring “I’m a U.S. citizen” while questioning the ICE badges –  telling agents not to touch him. One plainclothes officer displayed a firearm.

The citizenship claim is a familiar tactic – an attempt to create hesitation. It generates sympathetic social media footage and shifts the narrative from “previously deported alien felon” to “man in a suit being accosted by masked men.”

ICE’s position was that he was a previously deported Salvadoran national, not a U.S. citizen. A verbal assertion of being a citizen does not cancel ICE’s federal authority – it simply all gets sorted out later.

San Francisco officials and the public defender’s office nonetheless treated the claim – and the drawn gun  – as the central scandal. They describe the tactics as outrageous while shunning whether the manslaughter conviction and prior deportation were real.

San Francisco’s sanctuary ordinances and California’s state sanctuary statutes limit local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Yet ICE derives its arrest power from the federal supremacy law, not from a permission slip issued at City Hall.

Local rules may reduce information-sharing or discourage jail holds, but they can’t touch street-level federal operations. Yet that legal reality didn’t slow the city’s response.

City Council members quickly organized an emergency rally on city hall steps, lashing out with condemnation of ICE for “terrorizing” communities as they promised a supplemental funding request of $1.7 million for immigrant legal services.

Their message was clear: sanctuary laws would be defended “not just in words but in action,” preferably with taking additional tax dollars from local San Franciscans.

San Francisco’s pattern is quite consistent. City officials and the public defender’s office emphasize tactics and skepticism toward every ICE account (“they call everyone criminals”) while giving minimal public scrutiny to the prior deportation and voluntary manslaughter conviction, in Ramos-Rodriguez case. City Hall rally participant’s statements were laser-focused on the manner of the arrest and the need for more legal-aid resources rather than on the grounds ICE cited for removal.

What did city hall not do? Publicly acknowledge or highlight a prior deportation, the California manslaughter conviction, or the Sureños gang ties as being relevant to whether the person should remain in the country. They also didn’t express support for ICE’s public-safety rationale – or for the removal of someone with that kind of record.

To them, federal enforcement itself is the problem.