Wasn’t the president supposed to be deporting criminals?
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This will strike the literal-minded as illogical, but I think Huntington Park Mayor Arturo Flores, a Marine veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, had a righteous point 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 Americans, whether they have a document or they don’t.”
“The president keeps talking about a foreign invasion,” Flores told me Thursday. “He keeps trying to paint us as the other. I say, ‘No, you are dealing with Americans.’”
California’s estimated 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who have lived among us for years, for decades, who work and pay taxes here, who have sent their American-born children to schools here, have all the responsibilities of citizens minus many of the rights. Yes, technically, they have broken the law. (For that matter, so has President Trump, a felon, and he continues to violate the Constitution day after day, as his mounting court losses attest.)
Downey, known as the ‘Mexican Beverly Hills,’ has been roiled this week by Trump immigration raids roiling Southern California, sparking both fear and outrage.
But our region’s undocumented Mexican and Central American immigrants are inextricably embedded in our lives. They care for our children, build our homes, dig our ditches, trim our trees, clean our homes, hotels and businesses, wash our dishes, pick our crops, sew our clothes. Lots own small businesses, are paying mortgages, attend universities, rise in their professions. In 2013, I wrote about Sergio Garcia, the first undocumented immigrant admitted to the California Bar. Since then, he has become a U.S. citizen and owns a personal injury law firm.
These Californians are far less likely to break the law than native-born Americans, and they do not deserve the reign of terror being inflicted on them by the Trump administration, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has pointlessly but theatrically called in the Marines.
“So we started off by hearing the administration wanted to go after violent felons gang members, drug dealers,” said Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who organized the mayors’ news conference last week, “but when you raid Home Depot and workplaces, when you tear parents and children apart, and when you run armored caravans through our streets, you’re not trying to keep anyone safe. You’re trying to cause fear and panic.”
These are the people flying flags from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, South Korea and other places during the Los Angeles protests.
And please, let’s not forget that when Congress came together and hammered out a bipartisan immigration reform bill under President Biden, Trump demanded Republicans kill it because he did not want a rational policy, he wanted to be able to keep hammering Democrats on the issue.
But it seems there is more going on here than rounding up undocumented immigrants and terrorizing their families. We seem to have entered the “punish California” phase of Trump 2.0.
“Trump has a hyperfocus on California, on how to hurt the economy and cause chaos, and he is really doubling down on that campaign,” Flores told me. He has a point.
Plenty of people will be willing to give Trump the confrontation he wants. And the enablers aren’t just in the streets of L.A., they’re in the White House.
“We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and this mayor placed on this country,” Noem told reporters Thursday at a news conference in the Westwood federal building, during which California Sen. Alex Padilla was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed face down for daring to ask her a question. “We are not going away.”
So now we’re talking about regime change? (As former Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe put it on Bluesky, the use of military force aimed at displacing democratically elected leaders “is the very definition of a coup.”)
Noem’s noxious mix of willful ignorance and inflammatory rhetoric is almost too ludicrous to mock. It goes hand in hand with Trump’s silly declaration that our city has been set aflame by rioters, that without the military patrolling our streets, Los Angeles “would be a crime scene like we haven’t seen in years,” and that “paid insurrectionists” have fueled the anti-ICE protests.
What we are seeing play out in the news and in our neighborhoods is the willful infliction of fear, trauma and intimidation designed to spark a violent response, and the warping of reality to soften the ground for further Trump administration incursions into blue states, America’s bulwark against his autocratic aspirations.
It is ‘highly questionable’ that there is a basis in law for Trump’s deploying the state National Guard in any capacity in Los Angeles this weekend.
For weeks, Trump has been scheming to deprive California — probably illegally — of federal funding for public schools and universities, citing resistance to his executive orders on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, on immigration, on environmental regulations, etc.
And yet, because he is perhaps the world’s most ignorant head of state, he seems to have suddenly realized that crippling the California economy might be bad politics for him. On Thursday, he suggested in his own jumbled way that perhaps deporting thousands of the state’s farm and hospitality workers might cause pain to his friends, their employers. (Central Valley growers and agribusiness PACs, for example, overwhelmingly supported Trump in 2024.)
“Our farmers are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers. They’ve worked for them for 20 years,” Trump said. “They’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be, you know, great. And we’re going to have to do something about that.”
Like a lot of Californians, I feel helpless in the face of this assault on immigrants.
Trump is sending an army to Los Angeles, but isn’t this invasion really about putting on a show, creating a crisis where there was none?
I thought about a Guatemalan, a father of three young American-born children, who has a thriving business hauling junk. I met him a couple of years ago at my local Home Depot, and have hired him a few times to haul away household detritus. Once, after I couldn’t get the city to help, he hauled off a small dune’s worth of sand at the end of my street that had become the local dogs’ pee pad.
I called him this week — I have more stuff that I need to get rid of, and I was pretty sure he could use the work. Early Friday morning, he arrived on time with two workers. He said hadn’t been able to work in two weeks but was hopeful he’d be able to return to Home Depot soon.
“How are your kids doing?” I asked.
“They worry,” he said. “They ask, ‘What will we do if you’re deported?’”
He tells them not to fret, that things will soon be back to normal. After he drove off, he texted: “Thank you so much for helping me today. God bless you.”
No, God bless him. For working hard. For being a good dad. And for still believing, against the odds, in the American dream.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
- Huntington Park Mayor Arturo Flores asserts that undocumented immigrants “are Americans, whether they have a document or they don’t,” arguing that militarized immigration enforcement tactics erode trust and terrorize communities[1][5].
- Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass criticizes the Trump administration for diverting from stated goals of targeting violent criminals, instead conducting workplace raids and separating families to instill fear[2][5].
- The article emphasizes the economic and social contributions of California’s undocumented immigrants, including tax payments, small business ownership, and roles in industries like construction and agriculture, while highlighting their lower crime rates compared to native-born citizens[3][5].
- Trump’s policies are framed as politically motivated attacks on California, with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accusing state leadership of “socialist” governance and signaling a broader campaign to disrupt the state’s economy and institutions[2][4].
Different views on the topic
- The Trump administration defends immigration raids as necessary for national security, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deploying Marines and National Guard troops to address what he calls “paid insurrectionists” and unrest in Los Angeles[1][2][4].
- Federal officials claim protests against ICE have escalated into public safety concerns, citing nearly 400 arrests by LAPD—including charges for assault, possession of explosives, and firearms—as justification for heightened military presence[2][4].
- A rebuttal from LAUSD disputes Mayor Flores’ account of panic at a school graduation, asserting the event proceeded calmly, which challenges the narrative of widespread community trauma[5].
- Supporters of the administration argue that strict enforcement aligns with existing immigration laws, dismissing accusations of undue harshness as opposition to rule-of-law principles[2][5].
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