SAN DIEGO — Arturo Gonzalez was in a car scouting for immigration agents in a Home Depot parking lot on a recent morning when he received a tip on his phone: An immigrant worker in a black pickup truck was just pulled over near the public library. Gonzalez, riding in the passenger seat of a 2013 BMW, popped the address into a second cell phone he keeps attached to the dashboard.

Google Maps said they were eight minutes away.

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“We might not make it,” he told his driver for the day, Cindy Plaza, as she steered out of the parking lot.

Plaza drove as fast as she could within reason, deploying what Gonzalez likes to call “legal ways to avoid a red light” — frequent turns and U-turns you wouldn’t normally make. When they reached the library, they found the pickup truck, with a roll of carpet strapped to the bed rack. Inside were a lunch cooler, a stack of work orders and the keys to the truck. A woman in the parking lot said the man was gone.

“They took him,” she told Gonzalez.

Gonzalez immediately went live on Instagram to his 130,000 followers, where videos of his encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement often rack up hundreds of thousands of views.

“You guys, I am live here from National City, where ICE just kidnapped this man just minutes ago,” he narrated.

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After shooting his video, Gonzalez found an address in the truck’s glovebox. He and Plaza headed there to tell the man’s family what had happened.

Across the country, President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has inspired the practice of “ICE watching,” where concerned citizens observe and record agents’ actions, with an eye toward protecting detainees’ legal rights and documenting any abuses. But what Gonzalez does might be better described as ICE chasing. He has spent the past year fielding tips and rushing to scenes across his hometown of San Diego, filming his encounters and trying to prevent what he calls “kidnappings.”

“Let’s face it,” the 23-year-old said. “No one can catch ICE like me.”

At a time of intense polarization online, Gonzalez is an anti-ICE influencer. His run-ins with federal agents — “Nazi-*** *******,” he calls them to their faces — have brought him a huge audience, with a half-million followers on TikTok alone, and a steady stream of real-time leads from San Diego residents on immigration enforcement. He has been crowdfunding a living through supporters who love what he does, and he’s achieved some notoriety inside ICE, which has labeled him an “agitator.”

Even some allies fighting Trump’s deportation campaign can get squeamish about Gonzalez’ tactics, worrying someone might get hurt.

“I don’t necessarily agree with how he does everything,” explained another ICE watcher, who did not want to be named so they could be honest about Gonzalez’s work. “But he is a very good community resource.”

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His encounters can make for engaging content but can also get unpredictable, even dangerous, in real life: One of his live videos last November led to a physical clash between residents and agents at a transit stop.

“They deserve pushback,” Gonzalez said of ICE personnel. “We want to make sure that they know that they are not welcome in our neighborhoods, that they are pieces of ****, and that what they’re doing is modern-day Nazi behavior.”

His provocative approach was on full display after the arrest at the library, when Gonzalez received another tip on his phone: A plainclothes federal agent appeared to be sitting in a truck outside a market in the Logan Heights neighborhood.

Gonzalez arrived on the scene to find an unmarked Ford F-150 with tinted windows. He pressed his phone to the passenger-side glass and asked the man inside to identify himself. The man said he was with the U.S. Marshals Service, an agency that’s assisted ICE in immigration enforcement under Trump, though it isn’t their primary mission. He grabbed a hoodie from the passenger seat and tried, unsuccessfully, to cover his face as Gonzalez filmed for Instagram.

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“Got your face,” Gonzalez taunted. “Haha!”

“U.S. marshals are here! They work with ICE!” he shouted into a bullhorn. “¡La migra está aquí!”

An old man across the street began to blow a whistle. One of Gonzalez’s Instagram followers drove onto the scene with a whistle of her own; she had been watching his livestream. People stepped out of storefronts to see what was going on.

The marshal drove off and disappeared down the street.

Gonzalez usually starts his patrol ahead of morning rush hour. He first checks his texts and social media apps for any tips that came in while he was sleeping. If he has no leads, he will head to the working-class Latino neighborhoods known for immigration-related arrests, searching for vehicles that look “sus,” like a Dodge Durango or other domestic SUV with all tinted windows.

He’s constantly dropping license plate numbers into Carfax to see if they come back as “invalid,” which he says might indicate law enforcement, and running the plates against a spreadsheet he and his comrades keep of vehicles they’ve encountered before. He likes to follow these SUVs and pull right alongside them at red lights, signaling for the driver to roll down their window. “What agency are you with?” he’ll ask. He keeps an eye out for patriotic tattoos, flannel shirts and what he calls “tactical skinny jeans.”

Inspired by the resistance in Los Angeles, Gonzalez started confronting ICE officers last June as the Trump administration was ramping up its deportation campaign. The raids in L.A. and later Minneapolis received the most national attention, but San Diego — where Gonzalez grew up as the son of a Mexican immigrant — has seen its own increase in detentions. Many detainees have wound up in nearby Otay Mesa Detention Center, right by the Mexican border, where they’ve thrown lotion bottles over the fence to activists, with notes taped to them detailing the conditions inside.

San Diego has a long history of neighborhood patrols aimed at keeping law enforcement in check. Unión del Barrio, an independent political group that advocates for immigrants, has been doing them for decades. But Gonzalez works on his own, without formal training or guidelines, helped in a Signal chat by a dozen or so like-minded activists who appreciate his made-for-social-media approach. He keeps in touch with some of them on cellular walkie-talkies as he roams the county.

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Plaza said she tried ICE watching with a volunteer group but found their guidelines too stifling; they wanted patrollers to keep their distance and keep their work off social media. “What’s the point?” she said. She saw shaming as part of the mission, and prevention, rather than mere documentation, as the goal.

“His style definitely suits me,” she said of Gonzalez.

That style has prompted “intense local debate” over the line between oversight and provocation, wrote Roberto Camacho, a San Diego journalist who has covered the local response to ICE. Some skeptics dismiss Gonzalez as a clout-chaser capitalizing on Trump’s deportation surge, a charge he attributes to “jealousy backlash.”

Gonzalez has raised nearly $50,000 via GoFundMe, though he said much of it goes to gas and car expenses, and he donates part of it to immigrant street vendors. He said his social media accounts (mostly Facebook and TikTok) bring in around $1,000 to $2,000 a month total through content monetization, with the various revenue streams adding up to a full-time job. He prefers it to his work in fast food and hospitality after high school.

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“Social media is a job now. It never used to be, but it is now a way that someone can make a living,” said Gonzalez, who lived in Section 8 housing as a kid. “It can be very useful. … People have told me that before they leave their house, they check my [Instagram] story. They check my story to make sure that there’s no ICE activity.”

It is illegal to “impede” or “interfere” with federal agents in the course of their duties, but Gonzalez has never been charged with doing so. The law is based on slippery terms, and Trump’s Justice Department has struggled to win convictions against people who confronted federal officers over the past year, including one who hurled a Subway sandwich at a Border Patrol agent in Washington, D.C.

Gonzalez acknowledged his tips can lead him to encounters with law enforcement that have nothing to do with immigration. “It’s hard sometimes to determine things, but we do our best,” he said.

The work can be dangerous on a few levels. A HuffPost reporter’s two days of ride-alongs with him and Plaza in June involved countless U-turns, a good deal of car sickness and one minor fender bender that led to the exchange of insurance information. (“He could buff that out,” Gonzalez said after surveying the scuffs on the other car.) Then there are the encounters with federal agents, which have turned deadly for people like Renée Good and Alex Pretti.

In a November incident, Gonzalez approached and then followed a black van driven by a federal agent. His livestream drew a crowd of residents to a trolley stop, where agents tackled one person and pepper-sprayed another. Agents accused Gonzalez of interfering in their work, but he fled on foot, Times of San Diego reported. The local news site Daylight San Diego, citing court documents, later reported that DHS had investigated Gonzalez over the incident on the grounds he was creating a “safety risk.”

The following month, Gonzalez, driving his own car, followed what he believed to be an ICE agent. A state highway patrol officer pulled Gonzalez over at an agent’s request, then detained and cited him for driving with a suspended license, according to court records. They impounded his car, an older Mercedes with a check engine light on, and he has never retrieved it. He assumes the fines have exceeded its value.

He said his supporter with the BMW offered to lend her car, and he estimates he’s put almost 14,000 miles on it in a few months of searching for agents.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Gonzalez. But in March, the San Diego ICE office issued a statement calling him an agitator with “a long criminal history” after an incident in which Gonzalez fled agents and ran into a nearby school.

According to court records, Gonzalez was charged in December with misdemeanor theft, but the case was dismissed a month later. An earlier misdemeanor theft charge was steered to a diversion program rather than prosecuted. ICE also accused him of “assault with a deadly weapon,” but HuffPost could find no record of it in San Diego courts, and Gonzalez denied the charge. He said he pleaded guilty to reckless driving following a DUI arrest years ago, describing the episode as a mistake.

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Gonzalez described the ICE statement as a smear that demonstrates the value of what he’s doing.

“They know I’m effective,” he said. “And they know it won’t be easy when I’m around.”

But when he watches videos of himself insulting agents or stepping in front of their cars, he wonders if it could cost him his life someday.

“I make myself nervous sometimes,” he conceded.

On April 15, a tip brought Gonzalez to the neighborhood of Linda Vista. Phone in hand, he was walking through a crosswalk shouting “la migra” when an unmarked SUV parked down the street started moving slowly toward him. In Gonzalez’s own video, the agent continues driving until the front of the vehicle appears to make contact with Gonzalez. Paramedics treated him on the scene for abdominal pain, and Gonzalez said he later visited urgent care.

A San Diego police officer interviewed the ICE agent, who said he knew of Gonzalez and feared he would harass and dox him, according to a police report. He denied he struck Gonzalez intentionally, but another San Diego officer wrote in a separate report that he believed the agent had committed vehicular assault. The San Diego County District Attorney’s Office referred questions on the case to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which said it could not “confirm or deny the existence of an investigation.”

A few of Gonzalez’s most passionate followers probably wish the agent’s SUV had never stopped. His videos provoke anger and mockery from backers of Trump’s deportation campaign, some of it racist or homophobic (Gonzalez is gay). He sometimes receives threats on his phone. He believes the Facebook algorithm has been steering his content to right-wing accounts, since he encounters more hatred there than on Instagram. The video he posted of the immigrant’s truck outside the library drew a lot of cheers among the 26,000 comments:

No kidnapping just getting a ride home that’s all

Ice Ice baby roll on

Arturo where are you right now so I can send Ice to get you!!

But on Instagram there were messages of love and support for what Gonzalez was doing.

SO PROUD OF YOU KEEP GOING

Thank you for all you do!!

Sir… you are a HERO

Gonzalez is convinced his videos have tipped off residents to ICE’s presence and foiled some deportations. Whatever his impact may be on ICE operations, there’s no denying his escapades have given a morale boost to San Diego immigrants who feel under siege. He is frequently recognized by strangers as he moves around town, at times even while idling at red lights, thanks in part to the shaggy hair and mustache that viewers notice in his selfie-shot videos.

As Gonzalez walked downtown on a recent morning, a landscaping worker in a reflective vest darted out from an apartment complex to shake his hand and snap a photo with him. His name was Fabian, and he, too, was the son of Mexican immigrants. Asked if he liked what Gonzalez was doing, Fabian reacted as though it was a stupid question.

“I love it,” he said. “He stands up for Mexicans.”

This particular day was a slow one for ICE sightings, so Gonzalez ventured to the San Diego federal building, where he likes to record and heckle agents outside the local ICE office. He was circling a park with Plaza when a man who’d presumably just left immigration court spotted him and hollered, “Arturo!” He lifted his pant leg and pointed down toward his calf.

“I just got my ankle monitor off!” the man shouted.

Another immigrant noticed Gonzalez and ran over to thank him. His name was Daniel Oliveira. He had reluctantly accepted the Trump administration’s offer to self-deport for $2,600. He said he’d overstayed a visa, got picked up by ICE at a gas station and spent three months at Otay Mesa, which he described as “terrible.” Now he had a one-way ticket home to Brazil.

“It’s not worth it to stay,” the 41-year-old said.

Oliveira held his phone up and shot a quick video praising Gonzalez, then apologized as he dashed across the street.

“I need to catch my flight,” he said.

Gonzalez doesn’t know how long he’ll keep doing this. He said he’s put on 10 pounds and developed back pain from so much time in a car. He’s found the past year emotionally exhausting as well, having lost his mother in February. ICE chasing is driven in large part by adrenaline, he said, and “there’s no ******* way that’s healthy.”

It’s also gotten more difficult to find agents after the Trump administration shifted tactics, dialing back the controversial street sweeps that were so prominent in Minneapolis and elsewhere earlier this year and opting for more targeted, less visible operations. His tips fell off accordingly. Yet ICE has begun another surge, including a pair of shooting deaths in Texas and Maine this month, and Trump has urged the agency not to let up.

“I’m not just going to stop because it’s dangerous, or because people are scared for my safety,” Gonzalez said. “At this point I’m already all in, so there’s no point in backing out now.”

As the lunch hour approached, Gonzalez and Plaza were about to call it quits. Things usually slow down mid-day, Gonzalez said, and sometimes pick back up during the afternoon rush hour. But just as they neared his home, he got another tip on his phone. Someone believed a federal agent was idling in a pickup truck outside a fast-food restaurant. It was only a mile away. Gonzalez turned to Plaza.

“Are you up for one more?”