This may 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 information convention with Southern California mayors that immigrants being rounded up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in communities like his “are Individuals, whether or not they have a doc or they don’t.”
“The president retains speaking a few international invasion,” Flores informed me Thursday. “He retains making an attempt to color us as the opposite. I say, ‘No, you’re coping with Individuals.’”
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 kids to colleges right here, have all of the duties of residents minus most of the rights. Sure, technically, they’ve damaged the regulation. (For that matter, so has President Trump, a felon, and he continues to violate the Structure day after day, as his mounting courtroom 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 houses, dig our ditches, trim our timber, clear our houses, motels and companies, wash our dishes, decide our crops, sew our garments. Heaps 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 change into a U.S. citizen and owns a private harm regulation agency.
These Californians are far much less prone to break the regulation than native-born Individuals, 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 referred to as within the Marines.
“So we began off by listening to the administration wished to go after violent felons gang members, drug sellers,” stated Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who organized the mayors’ information convention final week, “however if you raid House Depot and workplaces, if you tear mother and father and kids aside, and if you run armored caravans by our streets, you’re not making an attempt to maintain anybody secure. You’re making an attempt to trigger worry and panic.”
And please, let’s not neglect that when Congress got here collectively and hammered out a bipartisan immigration reform invoice below President Biden, Trump demanded Republicans kill it as a result of he didn’t desire a rational coverage, he wished to have the ability to hold hammering Democrats on the difficulty.
But it surely appears there’s extra occurring 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 the right way to damage the financial system and trigger chaos, and he’s actually doubling down on that marketing campaign,” Flores informed me. He has some extent.
“We’re staying right here to liberate the town from the socialist and the burdensome management that this governor and this mayor positioned on this nation,” Noem informed reporters Thursday at a information convention within the Westwood federal constructing, throughout which California Sen. Alex Padilla was wrestled to the bottom and handcuffed face down for daring to ask her a query. “We aren’t going away.”
So now we’re speaking about regime change? (As former Harvard regulation professor Laurence Tribe put it on Bluesky, using navy pressure geared 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 foolish declaration that our metropolis has been set aflame by rioters, that with out the navy patrolling our streets, Los Angeles “can be against the law 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 towards his autocratic aspirations.
For weeks, Trump has been scheming to deprive California — in all probability illegally — of federal funding for public colleges and universities, citing resistance to his govt orders on range, fairness and inclusion applications, on immigration, on environmental laws, and so on.
And but, as a result of he’s maybe the world’s most ignorant head of state, he appears to have all of a sudden realized that crippling the California financial system may be dangerous politics for him. On Thursday, he steered in his personal jumbled manner that maybe deporting 1000’s of the state’s farm and hospitality staff may trigger ache to his buddies, their employers. (Central Valley growers and agribusiness PACs, for instance, overwhelmingly supported Trump in 2024.)
“Our farmers are being damage badly by, you realize, they’ve excellent staff. They’ve labored for them for 20 years,” Trump stated. “They’re not residents, however they’ve turned out to be, you realize, nice. And we’re going to should do one thing about that.”
Like a variety of Californians, I really feel helpless within the face of this assault on immigrants.
I considered a Guatemalan, a father of three younger American-born kids, who has a thriving enterprise hauling junk. I met him a few years in the past at my native House Depot, and have employed him a couple of instances to haul away family detritus. As soon as, after I couldn’t get the town to assist, he hauled off a small dune’s value of sand on the finish of my avenue that had change into the native canine’ pee pad.
I referred to as him this week — I’ve extra stuff that I have to eliminate, and I used to be fairly positive he may use the work. Early Friday morning, he arrived on time with two staff. He stated hadn’t been capable of work in two weeks however was hopeful he’d be capable of return to House Depot quickly.
“How are your children doing?” I requested.
“They fear,” he stated. “They ask, ‘What’s going to we do should 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 as we speak. God bless you.”
No, God bless him. For working onerous. For being a superb dad. And for nonetheless believing, towards the chances, within the American dream.
