Immigration officials have greatly increased their arrest numbers throughout the Sacramento area and inland California, particularly among people from India.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Sacramento suboffice was responsible for the arrests of almost 150 Indian nationals from January 2025 through March 10, 2026, up from just five arrests of Indian nationals in the preceding 15 months, according to data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests by the Deportation Data Project at UC Berkeley and UCLA.

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Four other inland California immigration enforcement offices — Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton and San Bernardino — were responsible for an additional 850 arrests of people with Indian citizenship from January 2025 to March 2026, up from a relative handful of arrests in the previous 15 months, according to Abridged by PBS KVIE’s data analysis.

Advocates said the arrests largely targeted the Sikh community. California is home to hundreds of thousands of Sikhs, with a heavy concentration in the Central Valley. Many are recent asylum-seekers, fleeing alleged persecution.

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“ICE has now doubled down on that effort and expanded its enforcement effort to specifically target this population,” said Munmeeth Kaur Soni, legal director for the Sikh Coalition, a national organization that advocates for Sikh civil liberties.

Soni cited a nationwide immigration enforcement effort called Operation ICE Wall that targeted truck drivers without documentation at interstate weigh stations.

At one stop, Soni said, a Sikh truck driver and asylum seeker was flagged by an inspection officer in Iowa. The driver, who was hauling poultry, presented his valid commercial driver’s license. The inspector noted a minor registration issue with the driver’s employer that was quickly resolved. But the inspector also called ICE.

“He’s an asylum seeker, and they immediately arrest and detain him, and he ended up being detained for over 10 weeks,” Soni said.