Jose Castro should have been at work on July 30th.
Instead, he and his family have spent every day since that Wednesday trapped in their home, following several full days of stalking and harassment from alleged Border Patrol agents, in what could be a violation of the temporary restraining order filed against the Department of Homeland Security.
Castro was on his way to work when several vehicles blocked his path on the road near his home. Another car struck his car from behind, and he found himself swarmed. He panicked, managed to make a U-turn despite being trapped, and sped back home as the vehicles chased him into the parking lot of his apartment complex. Video footage from security cameras outside his home shows him escaping into his house with barely a second to spare.
Video footage shared by the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice shows two unmasked men dressed in law enforcement attire attempting to kick down his door.
“If they had a warrant to go into his house, they could have just gone in there, but it’s clear to us that there is no warrant, which signals that they could be violating the judge’s order of not doing these warrantless arrests,” says Javier Hernandez, executive director for the ICIJ, an immigrant rights coalition of over 35 organizations in the Inland Empire.
The order he’s referring to is the temporary restraining order against the unconstitutional tactics used by federal agents employed by the DHS, ordered by Judge Maame E. Frimpong last month and upheld this past Friday by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
According to Hernandez, the family had been under surveillance by federal agents since that Wednesday of the botched arrest.
Agents appeared at his home repeatedly from that Wednesday through Saturday; a total of four days of stalking and harassment that kept them trapped in their home and their neighbors living in fear of what may happen next.
“It wasn’t just [to] stop by and knock on the door,” says Hernandez of the agents who returned to the complex. “It was [to] stop by, hang out by the parking lot, and, basically, just make sure that the family knew that they were there and that they were watching them.”
Agents haven’t appeared at the Castro home since Sunday, but the ICIJ and its partner organizations have their own members patrolling the area in case they return. The organizations have also worked together to provide the family with food and other necessities while the family stays home, fearful that masked agents will return to snatch their patriarch.
Reporting by Telemundo notes that the Castro family arrived in the U.S. from Nicaragua in 2023 through the CBP One app. The app’s functionality was expanded that year to process claims by migrants seeking to enter the U.S. under asylum.
ICIJ shared the following statement published by DHS concerning the attempted arrest of Castro:
"On July 30, 2025, ICE and CBP agents attempted to apprehend Roberto Jose Reyes Castro, a dangerous criminal illegal alien from Nicaragua with a criminal history including assault with a deadly weapon, exhibiting a deadly weapon, and disturbing the peace. During the operation, Castro fled his vehicle and ran into an apartment complex, leaving the car to hit another vehicle as it rolled forward. Fontana Police towed Castro's car as it was blocking a handicap spot and he did not return to the scene. Castro remains at large.
Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, DHS is enforcing the law."
Additional reporting by Telemundo revealed that Mr. Castro was served with a deportation order in October of last year, but none of the agents who attempted to detain him, nor any agents who stalked his home after the fact, served him with either a judicial warrant or an administrative warrant about his deportation order, nor about the crimes he’s alleged to have committed.
Hernandez explains that the criminal history referred to in ICE’s statement concerns a case where Castro was falsely accused last year by a neighbor of threatening him with a knife. He was held in jail for six days, and his case was dropped after he proved his innocence.
“The court in San Bernardino dropped the charges, dismissed the case, and he was able to go back home with his family,” says Hernandez. “But ICE is focusing on that he was charged with this, not the fact that those [charges] were dismissed and there was no proof that he committed any crime.”
Hernandez also says that video footage provided by Castro's neighbors calls into question the events surrounding his car rolling into another vehicle. The footage shows that Castro parked his car three feet away from a neighbor’s car before he fled into his home, leaving the engine running and his wallet and other documents inside his vehicle.
“Then you see an agent walking towards the driver’s side of this vehicle, and then the next shot you see is the vehicle now hitting the front of it,” says Hernandez. “We’re not saying that it was intentional. What we are saying is that the timeline ... doesn’t make sense, and that is something that we want ICE to clarify.”
Hernandez and the ICIJ spoke with the neighbor who owns the vehicle that was allegedly hit by Castro’s vehicle. That neighbor claims to have been approached by agents who requested that he contact the Fontana police department and file a hit-and-run report against Castro to obtain a warrant for his arrest.
“The owner of the other vehicle refused to do that because the neighbors and others had already basically seen what had happened,” explains Hernandez, “Which was that Mr. Castro left the vehicle parked, not hitting the other vehicle.”
The apartment manager of the complex, according to Hernandez, offered to move Castro’s vehicle for him, but the agents refused. The agents also refused to show the manager a warrant for Castro’s arrest.
Video shared by ICIJ from the security camera outside the Castro home shows a masked agent in a black cap with CBP (the acronym for Customs and Border Patrol) on the front, dangling Castro’s house and car keys in front of the camera. The agent asks if the keys belong to Castro, as if taunting him to step outside and retrieve them or, worse, threatening to enter his home with his keys.
“It just seems very odd to us that the federal government is wasting so many resources on this,” says Hernandez. “They went four days without going into the building."
"Most importantly, when they had the opportunity to arrest him, they didn’t do that. When they had an opportunity to present a warrant to the apartment manager, they didn’t do that.”
The ICIJ is currently focused on assisting Castro and his family with the necessary legal services they’ll need to fight their case in court. Neither Castro nor his wife wishes to return to Nicaragua because they fear being sent to prison as political dissidents. Mr. Castro participated in protests against the government of Nicaragua led by president Daniel Ortega.
“We just want to make sure that this family is protected,” says Hernandez. “And that if ICE is breaking the law, if ICE is not following orders from a federal judge that said that they should not be doing these arrests, we want to make sure that this is documented because we know that ICE right now feels that they can act with impunity."
“They feel like they can act without any accountability and if we allow them to get away with this, we’re setting a really dangerous precedent for other communities,” he concludes.
A fundraiser for the family can be found here.
