The Disney Magic finished a five-day cruise on April 23 and pulled into the B Street Cruise Terminal in San Diego. Passengers gathered their bags, said goodbye to the crew, and started heading home. Then federal immigration agents moved in.
Ten crew members from Disney Cruise Line were arrested that day by ICE officers as the ship was being unloaded. Passengers watched it happen in real time.
What One Disney Cruise Passenger Saw
Dharmi Mehta was one of them. She had spent five days on the ship with her family, stopping at Catalina Island and Ensenada before returning to San Diego. As she cleared customs, she noticed officers escorting crewmembers off the vessel in restraints. Later, as she pulled out of the parking lot, she watched more workers being loaded into a white van, surrounded by federal agents.
One of those workers was the head waiter who had served her family every night of the trip. He was still in his Disney uniform. He had no bags with him. He had two daughters he was expecting to see soon.
“So that was just my big concern, like how is he gonna reach out to his family? Does the family even know that he’s not getting back on the ship today?”
ICE agents storm Disney cruise docking in California and arrest multiple staff in front of stunned passengers https://t.co/W4bRmMWmBY pic.twitter.com/x8Vz51MsfL
— New York Post (@nypost) May 6, 2026
It Did Not End There
Two days later, on April 25, ICE returned to the same terminal and arrested four more crewmembers, this time from Holland America’s MV Zandaam.
Immigration rights groups held a news conference at the pier shortly after. Benjamin Prado from Union del Barrio called the detentions “abductions” and said the workers were being denied due process and access to consular services. “This is not an isolated incident,” he said. “In fact, it has become a growing pattern, not only here in San Diego but throughout this country.”
Where the Port Stands
The Port of San Diego made its position clear. Harbor Police had no involvement in either incident, did not receive calls for service, and, under California’s SB 54, does not participate in immigration enforcement. The port noted that the B Street terminal is a federal port of entry, putting customs and immigration authority squarely under U.S. Customs and Border Protection. CBP did not respond to requests for comment. Disney Cruise Line did not comment either.
A maritime attorney told local news that agents “obviously had a reason to go there” but declined to speculate on specifics.
Disney Cruise ships (like the Magic) are Bahamian-flagged, not US-flagged. US employment laws don’t apply to them. This is standard across the entire cruise industry — every major line hires international crew this way. It’s completely legal under maritime law.
— Scott Sanders (@TheDCLBlog) May 6, 2026
The ICE/CBP… https://t.co/Oi9nDYQNLw
The Timing Is Hard to Ignore
What makes the timing hard to ignore is that Disney had just announced it was doubling the number of cruise ships making stops in San Diego. It was good news for the port, local tourism, and Disney’s West Coast expansion. Nobody from the San Diego Tourism Authority responded when asked whether the arrests might affect that momentum.
What Disney Cruise Passengers Are Left With
For Mehta and the other passengers who were there that day, the vacation ended in a way nobody planned for. The cruise was fine. The memories were good. But the last thing many of them saw before driving home was a white van pulling away from the pier with workers still wearing their name tags.
Disney has not said anything publicly. Federal agents have not explained their reasoning. The crewmembers who were arrested have not been heard from publicly.
The ship has since sailed again.
Sources: ABC10 and NBCSanDiego
