This may strike the literal-minded as illogical, however I believe 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 People, whether or not they have a doc or they don’t.”
“The president retains speaking a couple of overseas invasion,” Flores advised me Thursday. “He retains making an attempt to color us as the opposite. I say, ‘No, you might be 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 colleges right here, have all of the tasks of residents minus lots 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 court docket losses attest.)
However our area’s undocumented Mexican and Central American immigrants are inextricably embedded in our lives. They look after our kids, construct our properties, dig our ditches, trim our bushes, clear our properties, lodges 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 turn out to be a U.S. citizen and owns a private damage regulation agency.
These Californians are far much less prone to break the regulation 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 referred to as within the Marines.
“So we began off by listening to the administration needed to go after violent felons gang members, drug sellers,” mentioned Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who organized the mayors’ information convention final week, “however once you raid House Depot and workplaces, once you tear mother and father and youngsters aside, and once you run armored caravans by our streets, you’re not making an attempt to maintain anybody protected. You’re making an attempt to trigger concern and panic.”
And please, let’s not neglect that when Congress got here collectively and hammered out a bipartisan immigration reform invoice beneath 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 hold hammering Democrats on the difficulty.
Nevertheless it appears there may be 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 tips on how to damage the financial system and trigger chaos, and he’s actually doubling down on that marketing campaign,” Flores advised me. He has a degree.
“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 advised 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’re not going away.”
So now we’re speaking about regime change? (As former Harvard regulation professor Laurence Tribe put it on Bluesky, the usage of navy drive 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 foolish 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 concern, 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 variety, fairness and inclusion packages, on immigration, on environmental rules, and so forth.
And but, as a result of he’s maybe the world’s most ignorant head of state, he appears to have all of the sudden realized that crippling the California financial system may be dangerous politics for him. On Thursday, he steered 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 already know, they’ve superb employees. They’ve labored for them for 20 years,” Trump mentioned. “They’re not residents, however they’ve turned out to be, you already know, nice. And we’re going to must do one thing about that.”
Like a number of 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 House Depot, and have employed him a couple of occasions 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 road that had turn out to be the native canines’ pee pad.
I referred to as him this week — I’ve extra stuff that I have to eliminate, and I used to be fairly certain he might use the work. Early Friday morning, he arrived on time with two employees. He mentioned hadn’t been capable of work in two weeks however was hopeful he’d have the ability to return to House Depot quickly.
“How are your children doing?” I requested.
“They fear,” he mentioned. “They ask, ‘What is 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 at this time. God bless you.”
No, God bless him. For working onerous. For being a very good dad. And for nonetheless believing, towards the chances, within the American dream.
