A photo of ICE agents arresting two people outside a Chipotle near San Francisco's AMC Metreon spread fast through immigrant group chats. It was fake, generated by AI, according to The San Francisco Standard.

Why it matters: Bay Area rapid response groups say they are now fighting two things at once, real immigration arrests and convincing fakes, as rumors of a federal enforcement surge in California build ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

What happened

A restaurant manager named Juan, an undocumented immigrant who asked that his last name be withheld, told The Standard he got the Metreon photo from his girlfriend on a Saturday and warned his coworkers in Oakland.

"I thought, 'Wow, it looks real,'" he said. "I believed it." Hours later, San Francisco's Rapid Response Network posted that the image was AI-generated.

ICEout.org, a site that crowdsources ICE sightings, received nearly 20 submissions of the same Chipotle photo that morning and rejected them, its Bay Area lead moderator, Celeste, told The Standard.

More fakes: Mountain View and Berkeley

  • The Santa Clara County Rapid Response Network debunked another AI image that appeared to show ICE agents outside Pacific Catch in Mountain View.
  • In September, the Alameda County network got calls about a photo appearing to show dozens of ICE officers outside Alta Bates hospital in Berkeley, The Standard reported.

Celeste said giveaways include vests that simply read "ICE" and vehicles spelling out the agency's full name. "I do think that the originator of these images is somebody that is trying to cause panic," she said.

"These images circulate so quickly," said Angel Ibarra Nuñez, co-director of the Alameda County Immigration Legal Education Partnership. "They circulate a lot faster than the good news that they are false."

The 'Operation Safe California' backdrop

The fakes are spreading amid reports of "Operation Safe California," a 45-day enforcement push first reported by the Washington Examiner, citing two unnamed sources, with San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego named as targets, KQED reported.

Advocates have confirmed more than 100 arrests of farmworkers and others in the Central Valley this month, but Bay Area monitoring groups have not seen a similar surge locally, according to KQED.

The Department of Homeland Security told KQED that "for operational security and the safety of our officers, ICE will not disclose or discuss law enforcement operations," and that it enforces the law "every day" across the country, including in California.

East Bay Rep. Lateefah Simon told KQED that Republicans are trying to "intimidate Latino citizens so they stay at home and don't exercise their right to vote."

Rapid response groups ask people to verify sightings through their county hotline before sharing. Related: Cabrillo Unified's letter on "Operation Safe California" reports.