Karla Toledo was having what she thought was a regular Monday morning at home when she was arrested by immigration agents. Yesenia was driving home from selling empanadas and arepas at a QuickTrip on the south side of Tucson when agents arrested her. An older Latino man had just left a neighborhood grocery store when immigration authorities broke his car window and took him into custody..
These are just some of the stories of Southern Arizona residents whose lives have become trapped and twisted in a widespread immigration crackdown that has swept the country under the Trump administration.
Arizona is home to several immigration detention centers, and plays a key role in deportation flights. Immigration arrests more than tripled in Arizona in 2025, with street-level ICE arrests in particular going from near zero to hundreds per month under Trump. That has meant people who would normally not have had contact with immigration enforcement — people who had temporary protective status because they came to the country as children, or who had no criminal record — are now moving through the deportation system.
Through short updates on street level enforcement, the impact of deportations on local communities and the efforts to get legal representation for immigrant children, Arizona Luminaria is tracking the effect of these policies on local communities, as well as the ways that rapid response groups and immigrant rights organizations have organized to provide free legal clinics and a community-built map to track ICE activity.
In this project, you’ll find on-the-ground voices and moments of organizing that help us understand the long-term impact of immigration enforcement under the second Trump administration.
To report an arrest, detention or another immigration enforcement action in Southern Arizona, please reach out to Rafael Carranza (rcarranza@azluminaria.org), Yana Kunichoff (ykunichoff@azluminaria.org) or our informational email (info@azluminaria.org).
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