“The president keeps talking about a foreign invasion,” Flores informed 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’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 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 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 houses, dig our ditches, trim our timber, clear our houses, inns 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 prone to break the legislation 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.
And please, let’s not overlook 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 maintain hammering Democrats on the difficulty.
However it appears there’s extra occurring right here than rounding up undocumented immigrants and terrorizing their households. We appear to have entered the “punish California” part 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 informed me. He has some extent.
So now we’re speaking about regime change? (As former Harvard legislation professor Laurence Tribe put it on Bluesky, using navy drive 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 “would be a crime scene like we haven’t seen in years,” and that “paid insurrectionists” have fueled the anti-ICE protests.
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 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 all of a sudden realized that crippling the California economic system is perhaps dangerous politics for him. On Thursday, he advised in his personal jumbled means that maybe deporting hundreds of the state’s farm and hospitality staff may trigger ache to his associates, their employers. (Central Valley growers and agribusiness PACs, for instance, 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 mentioned. “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 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 House Depot, and have employed him just a few occasions to haul away family detritus. As soon as, after I couldn’t get town to assist, he hauled off a small dune’s value of sand on the finish of my avenue that had turn into the native canine’ pee pad.
I referred to as him this week — I’ve extra stuff that I must do away with, and I used to be fairly positive he might use the work. Early Friday morning, he arrived on time with two staff. He mentioned 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 kids doing?” I requested.
“They worry,” he mentioned. “They ask, ‘What will we do if you’re deported?’”
He tells them to not fret, that issues will quickly be again to regular. After he drove off, he texted: “Thank you so much for helping me today. God bless you.”
No, God bless him. For working onerous. For being dad. And for nonetheless believing, in opposition to the percentages, within the American dream.
