It will strike the literal-minded as illogical, however I feel Huntington Park Mayor Arturo Flores, a Marine veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, had a righteous level when he declared at a news conference with Southern California mayors that immigrants being rounded up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in communities like his “are People, whether or not they have a doc or they don’t.”
“The president retains speaking a few overseas invasion,” Flores instructed me Thursday. “He retains making an attempt to color us as the opposite. I say, ‘No, you’re coping with People.’”
California’s estimated 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who’ve lived amongst us for years, for many years, who work and pay taxes right here, who’ve despatched their American-born youngsters to varsities right here, have all of the obligations of residents minus lots of the rights. Sure, technically, they’ve damaged the legislation. (For that matter, so has President Trump, a felon, and he continues to violate the Structure day after day, as his mounting court losses attest.)
However our area’s undocumented Mexican and Central American immigrants are inextricably embedded in our lives. They take care of our kids, construct our properties, dig our ditches, trim our bushes, clear our properties, lodges and companies, wash our dishes, pick our crops, sew our clothes. Tons personal small companies, are paying mortgages, attend universities, rise of their professions. In 2013, I wrote about Sergio Garcia, the primary undocumented immigrant admitted to the California Bar. Since then, he has turn into a U.S. citizen and owns a private harm legislation agency.
These Californians are far less likely to break the law than native-born People, and they don’t deserve the reign of terror being inflicted on them by the Trump administration, Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem and Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has pointlessly however theatrically known as within the Marines.
“So we began off by listening to the administration needed to go after violent felons gang members, drug sellers,” said Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who organized the mayors’ information convention final week, “however whenever you raid Residence Depot and workplaces, whenever you tear dad and mom and youngsters aside, and whenever you run armored caravans by our streets, you’re not making an attempt to maintain anybody protected. You’re making an attempt to trigger worry and panic.”
And please, let’s not overlook that when Congress got here collectively and hammered out a bipartisan immigration reform bill under President Biden, Trump demanded Republicans kill it as a result of he didn’t need a rational coverage, he needed to have the ability to maintain hammering Democrats on the problem.
However it appears there may be extra happening right here than rounding up undocumented immigrants and terrorizing their households. We appear to have entered the “punish California” section of Trump 2.0.
“Trump has a hyperfocus on California, on how one can damage the financial system and trigger chaos, and he’s actually doubling down on that marketing campaign,” Flores instructed me. He has some extent.
“We’re staying right here to liberate town from the socialist and the burdensome management that this governor and this mayor positioned on this nation,” Noem told reporters Thursday at a information convention within the Westwood federal constructing, throughout which California Sen. Alex Padilla was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed face down for daring to ask her a query. “We’re not going away.”
So now we’re speaking about regime change? (As former Harvard legislation professor Laurence Tribe put it on Bluesky, using navy pressure aimed toward displacing democratically elected leaders “is the very definition of a coup.”)
Noem’s noxious mixture of willful ignorance and inflammatory rhetoric is sort of too ludicrous to mock. It goes hand in hand with Trump’s silly declaration that our metropolis has been set aflame by rioters, that with out the navy patrolling our streets, Los Angeles “can be a criminal offense scene like we haven’t seen in years,” and that “paid insurrectionists” have fueled the anti-ICE protests.
What we’re seeing play out within the information and in our neighborhoods is the willful infliction of worry, trauma and intimidation designed to spark a violent response, and the warping of actuality to melt the bottom for additional Trump administration incursions into blue states, America’s bulwark in opposition to his autocratic aspirations.
For weeks, Trump has been scheming to deprive California — most likely illegally — of federal funding for public faculties and universities, citing resistance to his government orders on variety, fairness and inclusion packages, on immigration, on environmental laws, and so forth.
And but, as a result of he’s maybe the world’s most ignorant head of state, he appears to have instantly realized that crippling the California financial system is likely to be unhealthy politics for him. On Thursday, he advised in his personal jumbled means that maybe deporting hundreds of the state’s farm and hospitality employees would possibly trigger ache to his associates, their employers. (Central Valley growers and agribusiness PACs, for instance, overwhelmingly supported Trump in 2024.)
“Our farmers are being damage badly by, you understand, they’ve excellent employees. They’ve labored for them for 20 years,” Trump said. “They’re not residents, however they’ve turned out to be, you understand, nice. And we’re going to should do one thing about that.”
Like numerous Californians, I really feel helpless within the face of this assault on immigrants.
I thought of a Guatemalan, a father of three younger American-born youngsters, who has a thriving enterprise hauling junk. I met him a few years in the past at my native Residence Depot, and have employed him a couple of occasions to haul away family detritus. As soon as, after I couldn’t get town to assist, he hauled off a small dune’s price of sand on the finish of my road that had turn into the native canine’ pee pad.
I known as him this week — I’ve extra stuff that I must do away with, and I used to be fairly positive he may use the work. Early Friday morning, he arrived on time with two employees. He stated hadn’t been capable of work in two weeks however was hopeful he’d have the ability to return to Residence Depot quickly.
“How are your youngsters doing?” I requested.
“They fear,” he stated. “They ask, ‘What’s going to we do in case you’re deported?’”
He tells them to not fret, that issues will quickly be again to regular. After he drove off, he texted: “Thanks a lot for serving to me at this time. God bless you.”
No, God bless him. For working onerous. For being a very good dad. And for nonetheless believing, in opposition to the percentages, within the American dream.
