Column: Wasn't the president supposed to be deporting criminals?

[ad_1] This can 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 couple of international invasion,” Flores instructed me Thursday. “He retains attempting to color us as the opposite. I say, ‘No, you might be 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 tasks 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 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, accommodations 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 into a U.S. citizen and owns a private harm legislation agency.

These Californians are far much less more likely to break the legislation 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 known 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 whenever you raid Dwelling Depot and workplaces, whenever you tear dad and mom and youngsters aside, and whenever you run armored caravans by way of our streets, you’re not attempting to maintain anybody protected. You’re attempting to trigger worry and panic.”

And please, let’s not overlook that when Congress got here collectively and hammered out a bipartisan immigration reform invoice underneath President Biden, Trump demanded Republicans kill it as a result of he didn't need a rational coverage, he wished to have the ability to hold hammering Democrats on the difficulty.

Nevertheless it appears there's 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 the best way to damage the economic 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 the town from the socialist and the burdensome management that this governor and this mayor positioned on this nation,” Noem instructed 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 legislation professor Laurence Tribe put it on Bluesky, the usage of 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 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 in opposition to 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 government orders on variety, fairness and inclusion applications, on immigration, on environmental rules, and so on.

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 economic system is perhaps unhealthy politics for him. On Thursday, he urged in his personal jumbled means that maybe deporting hundreds of the state’s farm and hospitality employees would possibly trigger ache to his mates, their employers. (Central Valley growers and agribusiness PACs, for instance, overwhelmingly supported Trump in 2024.)

“Our farmers are being damage badly by, you recognize, they've excellent employees. They’ve labored for them for 20 years,” Trump stated. “They’re not residents, however they’ve turned out to be, you recognize, nice. And we’re going to need to do one thing about that.”

Like lots 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 Dwelling 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 road that had turn into the native canines’ pee pad.

I known 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 stated hadn’t been in a position to work in two weeks however was hopeful he’d be capable of return to Dwelling Depot quickly.

“How are your youngsters doing?” I requested.

“They fear,” he stated. “They ask, ‘What is going to we do in the event 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 present. God bless you.”

No, God bless him. For working exhausting. For being a very good dad. And for nonetheless believing, in opposition to the chances, within the American dream.