(phone ringing) (phone humming) Good morning.

Good morning, Dad.

You have a fun New Year's?

Yeah.

Just the house?

Just home.

Just home.

Wanna say hi?

Hi.

Oh, hi, how are you?

Good.

Say I miss you.

[Paulino] Happy New Year.

I hope you have a good time.

We miss you a lot, I love you.

(somber music) We'll figure it out.

We'll do that.

[Protesters] Say it loud and say it clear, immigrants are welcome here.

[Voiceover] By the fall of 2025, protests in Portland against the Trump administration's immigration policies were in full swing.

(people screaming) For me, it's just standing up for my people.

[Voiceover] But away from the crowds, immigrant families across the region were being swept up in a historic dragnet.

I miss my wife.

(truck whooshing) You have to go by the system, and nobody should be exempt from that.

That's just not fair.

We just need to get a better grip on this situation, and ICE is a big part of that.

Increasing the number of arrests.

At the end of the year, I would've liked to see them doubled.

(window thumping) Hey, hold on.

[Voiceover] We're looking at the Trump administration's aggressive immigration deportation plan.

In this second part, we go inside Operation Black Rose.

(somber music continues) (birds) Today we gather, not in silence, but in strength.

We gather because families in our community, including my own, have been torn apart.

Truly, today is just not about my father, Paulino.

It's about everyone who's being affected today by ICE.

(birds) We will not be intimidated.

We will not be erased.

We are here and we're not gonna go anywhere.

Every single one of us, thank you.

(group applauding) (light music) [Voiceover] Paulino Martin San Pedro immigrated to the United States in the early 1990s from Hidalgo, Mexico.

He and his wife had three children, all born and raised in Oregon.

Eric Martin San Juan is the oldest and now lives in Madras.

This is my pops and me.

I think it was my mom's birthday.

They went out to the rose gardens.

This is my mom and my dad.

They came here to chase the American dream.

He had a bunch of sisters and a bunch of nephews and nieces who didn't have a father around.

And so he wanted to provide for them.

They came here to find that.

[Voiceover] Each year, millions of people immigrate to the US like Paulino did.

(tense music) There are legal pathways into the country, but navigating them isn't always that simple.

My dad told me at a young age, you know, that he wasn't here the right way.

If there was an easier way to get citizenship, obviously he woulda done that.

We've talked to multiple lawyers.

If we had like a fair shot and we had the funds available, I think we would've had a really good chance for my dad to get status here.

(tense music fades out) (bright music) The politics of immigration is something that people who have been trying to immigrate to the United States for decades have been constantly trying to navigate.

One thing that's been really different under President Trump's second term is just the amount of people that we've seen arrested and deported who have lived here a really long time, people who have lived here for decades.

And you know, these are folks that own homes.

They have businesses.

They also have US citizen children, right?

And what it's doing is it's ripping families apart.

[Voiceover] Presidents on both sides of the aisle have attempted reforms.

We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws.

We're a nation of laws, and we must enforce our laws.

We're also a nation of immigrants, and we must uphold that tradition, which has strengthened our country in so many ways.

What I'm describing is accountability, a common sense middle ground approach.

[Voiceover] When he first campaigned for office, Trump ran on an anti-immigration platform.

I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will have Mexico pay for that wall.

Mark my words.

(audience applauding) [Voiceover] Since taking office again, Trump has pushed an even more aggressive agenda.

That's put him at odds with sanctuary states like Oregon.

Oregon is the oldest sanctuary state in the country.

What that means is that local and state resources are not used for any sort of federal immigration enforcement.

It's against the law.

And so when the Trump administration came in saying that they were gonna be really aggressive with their immigration policies, they were gonna kinda push this big crackdown, they were going to try really hard to enforce immigration law to kind of the extreme, a lot of that has played out in sanctuary communities.

I said weeks ago that with sanctuary cities, how we're gonna address it, we're gonna flood the zone.

We got 10,000 more agents coming on.

We're gonna flood the zone.

There were these jarring incidents that we knew we had to focus on that were really showing the way that the Trump administration was approaching his agenda.

[Child] Go now.

[Troy] A father was dropping off his child at a preschool in Beaverton.

(window thumping) Hey, hold on.

And while in the process of doing that, had immigration enforcement officers come up to his window, order him to get out, and while he was trying to navigate that situation, just decided to start breaking his window open.

(window thumping) I'm getting out.

I'm getting out.

[Officer] Well, you should've done it already.

Calm down.

[Officer] I told you three times, "Unbuckle your seatbelt and step out of the car."

No, you but you so- [Officer] Step outta the car.

You're under- Okay.

Hey, sir.

[Bystander] This is not okay.

[Voiceover] Across the country, the Trump administration began launching highly visible immigration enforcement operations.

(tense music) They took a noticeably more military-style approach.

(people screaming) (door thumping) We started seeing these operations, these really intensive immigration operations.

[Journalist] Protesters are demanding an end to ICE's methods and raids that have been a constant in Chicago since the administration launched what it called Operation Midway Blitz in September.

[Journalist] Operation Trojan Horse in Westlake back in August, in which agents jumped out of a Penske moving truck and detained people.

[Journalist] Agents arrested nearly 100 people there on Saturday as part of what they're calling Operation Charlotte's Web.

And in Oregon and parts of Washington, it was Operation Black Rose.

(tense music continues) [Voiceover] The Department of Homeland Security organized immigration sweeps that spread across the country.

(tense music continues) We've been hearing rumors about a deployment.

Today those rumors became a reality.

And as Councilor Zimmerman noted, we have armored vehicles on the streets of Portland and reported agents throughout our community.

We really saw a huge spike in enforcement in October.

(tense music continues) The arrests themselves seemed to be becoming more aggressive.

This militarized police force basically in the community and taking people, and oftentimes taking people violently.

[Agent] He's saying, "Bust it, bust it."

(car horn honking) (people screaming) It wasn't just that they were arresting people.

It was who they were arresting and the conditions that they were putting folks through.

We were on one end looking at and seeing these immigration stops that were drawing a lot of attention because of their high-risk nature, because of the brazenness of the tactics.

(siren sounding) Hey, if you say your name and where you're from, we'll help you out, man.

[Bystander] Sir?

And what we were seeing as a result were people starting to protest, and that became a story in and of itself.

(protesters yelling) They started to send in a lot of federal law enforcement directly to the ICE building.

That building was bursting with personnel, Customs and Border Protection, just all of these federal officers who were coming to directly interface with protesters.

We were hearing a lot more suddenly around the same time that immigration enforcement had picked up to a level that we had not yet seen before that year.

The National Guard got blocked, and so the administration picked a fight with the State of Oregon.

We piloted this experiment in Southern California.

We learned how to do it a little bit better in Chicago.

Now let's bring it to Oregon.

[Caroline] Can you describe for me the goals that you have set out since taking over in your position?

Sure, it's what I talked about before is increasing the number of arrests.

At the end of the year, I would've liked to seen them doubled, but like focusing in on trying to get to 30 a day.

There could be and there were several instances where people, for instance, would set, would interact with one person, but they would end up with 10 arrests.

That was not the goal of that day.

It was a goal of one arrest, and these are, like, more collateral arrests that happened.

But those were not the expectation of the day.

(tense music) [Voiceover] Paulino Martin San Pedro was one of the people detained in the operation.

My dad worked construction for 30 years.

Whenever we'd go places, my dad would always, "Hey, I built that house.

Like, I built the foundation for that."

And my dad did everything to give us everything that he didn't have.

(tense music fades out) My mom and dad were at the job site fixing a window, and they head home.

They were maybe half a mile away from home, and they got pulled over by ICE.

(car beeping) Told 'em to get out, they arrested him on the spot, put him in cuffs, and put him in the van.

(tense music) And my dad's final words weren't, "I love you, tell my kids I love you."

None of that.

"Hey, tell my son and tell my cousin to finish this job."

My mom called us just sobbing, crying that my dad was taken by ICE.

I know what to do all the time.

But I didn't know what to do in this.

(somber music) [Voiceover] As the operation spread, families with mixed statuses, where some are US citizens and some aren't, were vulnerable to sudden separation.

We're just a normal family.

We do the same thing everybody else does.

And no one deserves to go through this.

[Voiceover] Valeria and Cristian's mom, Maria Trinidad Loya Medina, was detained as part of Operation Black Rose.

It was January.

She was in a parking lot after buying socks for Cristian's soccer game.

She just briefly FaceTimes me, and I could see that, like, in her lap, like she has her phone and she's just like telling me that ICE was here.

And so when we got there, we realized that we had gone there too late and all that was left was like shattered window with no sign of the ICE agents or my mom.

My wife is the best person, the best woman, the best mom.

And I wanna say.

Yeah.

(dishes clinking) (water sloshing) The only reason she came to the US was to make a new life, to buy a new house and make a family here.

She has the best intentions.

Like she's not a criminal.

(somber music) People would be arrested here in Oregon, and then within hours, they would be transported out of the state to Tacoma.

And from Tacoma, they would then end up being retransferred to Arizona, Southern California, and then retransferred and retransferred again to Louisiana, Mississippi.

[Voiceover] Many people arrested in Oregon and Washington during the surge were quickly moved into the federal detention system.

That can include ICE field offices, hospitals, and detention facilities.

Trying to find my dad was probably the most difficult thing in my whole life.

I feel like the way they set it up was to break you and to lose your patience.

Hey, everyone.

Just wanted to fill you in on updates.

We did see my dad.

He was at the Tacoma facility, and he's okay.

He was a little sad that he didn't think we'd come find him.

But he's okay for now.

They did tell us, he did tell me that they're trying to force him to sign paperwork to either have him deported to Mexico, to Arizona, and then to Mexico, and that no matter if he signs it or not, that he's gonna be taken away tomorrow.

We saw on the ICE locator that he's in transport, and then it didn't say anything.

It didn't say where.

It didn't say any facilities.

We called to the Arizona detention center.

He wasn't in their system.

Friday that afternoon, he was, he called us that he was in Mexico.

[Eric] Yes.

I cried like a child.

I've been dreading this day my whole life.

I knew this could happen.

The idea that they were targeting the worst of the worst in Operation Black Rose was simply not borne out in the data.

[Voiceover] Over half of the people detained in Operation Black Rose had no criminal record.

(somber music) By far, we have focused overwhelmingly, day after day after day, on bringing in the worst of the worst and getting them off of our streets.

From what we've seen, a lot of the times, the people that they're arresting here are just people who are working and providing for their families.

We do know that they are trying to hit these quotas and make as many arrests as possible.

(vehicles whooshing) [Voiceover] While immigration enforcement operations like Black Rose have drawn outcry from some.

Others see this as the Trump administration fulfilling their promises.

I believe that we need more ICE enforcement here.

I believe that that needs to be dealt with.

Like the whole sanctuary state thing, where a state decides they're not gonna follow federal laws, is an issue for me.

(car horn honking) (person yelling) (vehicles whooshing) People are here illegally.

That means that they broke the law.

(bell ringing) (vehicles whooshing) As somebody who voted for Trump, I 100% support deporting people who came here illegally in ways that they knew they were doing something wrong by coming here.

But when you see the violence and the terror that some ICE agents are bringing to communities, it just doesn't seem like it's the way that, as Americans, we would've been wanting the issue to be taken care of.

(vehicles whooshing) Operation Black Rose was less than six months.

Officially, according to the Trump administration, it ended March 1st.

But the impact that it's had, not just on Portland and the Portland metro broadly, but the Latino community specifically, 'cause the level of fear that still persists because of this operation.

(somber music) I needed to fly out to Mexico.

And by the time I was ready to fly out, my dad was super sick.

And to be transported multiple times, not sleeping, being traumatized, it all kinda wraps together that it weakened his immune system so much that once he got something bigger, it just, it hit him really, really hard.

My dad's name is Paulino Martin San Pedro, and he passed away on February 16 at 5:00 in the morning.

And it was the hardest day of my life.

Hardest day of my life.

I lost Superman.

(somber music continues) (bright guitar and brass music) [Speaker] Does anyone need a candle?

(somber music) And I know today, my dad is looking down on us, and he's smiling.

And he's so proud.

In the darkest days, I know he's with us.

I'd like to have just a moment of silence for my pops.

(somber music continues) (tense music) [Voiceover] While Operation Black Rose has officially ended, across the country, enforcement continues, while questions about tactics and accountability grow.

In episode three, we look at how the crackdown on protests and immigration, as well as the pushback.

ICE is no longer an immigration enforcement agency.

It is Trump and the administration's personal Gestapo.

[Voiceover] Test how powerful an American president can be.

Hey, thanks for watching.

We wanna hear from you.

Please just hit us up in the comments.

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In part three of "The Crackdown," we're gonna broaden our focus and look at the courtroom action that pushed back on the Trump administration in Oregon and sent ripples through the nation.

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(somber music)