ICE Agents in LA Are Being Followed Home and LAPD Says They Cannot Legally Help

A federal law enforcement officer in Los Angeles has to drive home each night not knowing whether anti-ICE activists noted his address.

Now the director of ICE operations in LA is talking, and what he describes is a federal workforce under siege in its own city.

His officers are being stalked home through LA streets, and sanctuary law has legally bound the only police force that could intervene.

Thomas Giles Breaks Down What Sanctuary Policies Are Doing to Federal Officers

Thomas Giles, the Los Angeles ICE Field Office Director, told Fox News this week exactly what his agents are living through.

"My officers have been followed home and been harassed, harassed on social media, harassed just personally," Giles said.

It is not random.

Anti-ICE activists are identifying federal agents, tracking their movements, following them to their homes, and making sure they know they are being watched.

And when ICE agents look to the Los Angeles Police Department for backup?

LAPD Special Order 40 and the city's sanctuary ordinance prohibit officers from initiating any action to determine immigration status or from assisting in civil immigration enforcement.

In plain language: LAPD is legally forbidden from helping federal law enforcement officers who are being stalked in their own city.

Giles put it directly: "The sanctuary policies definitely impact our operations…it sends our officers out into the community, putting our officers at risk."

This is not a hypothetical risk.

During a recent ICE enforcement operation on a Thursday morning, a crowd of anti-ICE agitators formed around agents working in the field.

The team had to relocate the entire operation under threat.

The Criminal LAPD Released Who ICE Had to Catch in the Street

The reason ICE is operating in the community instead of secure jail facilities is not a choice.

Sanctuary policies force it.

Before Los Angeles implemented its sanctuary ordinance, Giles explained, ICE was "picking up hundreds of people a day at local jails" – controlled environments where everyone was safe and processing was efficient.

Now those transfers are banned.

So when a violent criminal gets arrested by LAPD, ICE cannot request a hold and take custody at the jail.

LAPD releases the suspect.

ICE has to catch them again – on the street, in neighborhoods, surrounded by potentially hostile crowds.

That is exactly what happened with Julio Alberto Aroca-Rodriguez.

Aroca-Rodriguez is a 20-year-old Honduran national who was arrested by local police for assault with a deadly weapon – a baseball bat.

He had an active removal order since 2019.

LAPD received ICE's detainer request and released him anyway.

ICE agents then had to locate and arrest him in a street operation, surrounded by a hostile crowd.

Giles described the sanctuary policy's direct impact on public safety as "a big, huge public safety threat."

He is right.

What a 1,300 Percent Spike in Assaults Tells You About Sanctuary Policy

Los Angeles is not where this ends.

It is the predictable result of sanctuary rhetoric turned into enforceable law.

DHS reported a 1,300 percent increase in assaults against ICE officers nationwide following the surge in sanctuary city policies and the anti-ICE political campaign that sanctuary politicians have run since 2025.

Vehicular attacks on ICE agents – people deliberately ramming federal officers with cars – increased 3,200 percent.

Death threats against ICE officers and their families increased 8,000 percent.

These are not statistics from an advocacy group.

They are from the Department of Homeland Security.

What sanctuary politicians in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Denver have done is create a political atmosphere where attacking a federal law enforcement officer is treated as an act of resistance rather than a federal crime.

They told their constituents that ICE agents are the bad guys.

They passed laws preventing police from helping those agents.

And then they acted surprised when the violence followed.

Thomas Giles and his officers are the ones absorbing the consequences.

They cannot refuse the assignment because a crowd surrounded them.

They cannot call LAPD for backup because LAPD is legally prohibited from providing it.

They go back out the next day because the law says so, and because the people they are arresting – like a Honduran national with a removal order caught swinging a baseball bat at someone – are exactly who immigration enforcement exists to remove.

Los Angeles chose this.

The people following ICE agents home know the city chose it too.

Sources:

• Staff, "EXCLUSIVE: LA ICE Director Reveals Officers Followed Home, Harassed as Police Fail to Help in Sanctuary City," Fox News, August 2026.
• DHS, "Radical Rhetoric by Sanctuary Politicians Leads to an Unprecedented 1,300% Increase in Assaults Against ICE Officers," January 8, 2026.
• DHS, "ICE Officers Face an 8,000% Increase in Death Threats Against Them and Their Families," January 26, 2026.
• DHS, "DHS Demands Sanctuary Politicians Stop Violent Rhetoric Fueling Vehicle Attacks Against Federal Law Enforcement," July 15, 2026.