California, home to the largest immigrant population in the US, is bracing for Donald Trump’s plan to enact the “largest deportation operation in American history”, with advocates pushing state leaders to find new and creative ways to disrupt his agenda.
The Golden state led the fight against Trump’s first term, shielding many non-citizen residents from removal by restricting local cooperation with federal immigration authorities. But the threat this time, immigrant rights groups say, is more extreme, and blue states across the US are facing pressure to mount an aggressive, multipronged response.
“Communities that will be involved in mutual aid and self-defense are prepared,” said Chris Newman, general counsel for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, a California-based group that supports immigrants. “I think many lawmakers, frankly, are not. They were primarily focused on supporting Kamala Harris, and people’s hope for the best got in the way of their preparation for the worst.”
Trump, who built his political career on racist, xenophobic rhetoric, has said he wants to expel “as many as 20 million people” from the US in his second term. That would mark a dramatic increase from his first administration, in which he carried out several hundred thousand removals a year, in line with other recent presidents. To reach his target, Trump would have to uproot the lives of undocumented people who have lived in the US for years. He has pledged to build mass detention camps and deputize national guard troops and local police to assist the effort.
In 2017, California was the first state to pass a sanctuary law under Trump. The bill prohibited local law enforcement from assisting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), and it had major effect. While local police had been transferring thousands of immigrants to Ice each year before, those numbers dwindled to the hundreds, according to advocates who reviewed state data.
Nationally, Trump did not meet his overall removal goals – arresting fewer immigrants within the country and carrying out fewer deportations than Obama – in part because of California’s and other states’ sanctuary policies.
Before California’s bill was signed, however, it was watered down to allow state prisons to coordinate with Ice, and to give Ice agents access to interview people in jails. The final version also weakened proposals to limit police data-sharing with Ice. Those loopholes have continued to leave many immigrants vulnerable.
Activists and some lawmakers have since fought to strengthen the sanctuary policy in recent years. But California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, a Democrat now styling himself as an anti-Trump leader, has repeatedly opposed those efforts, which advocates say could have made the state better equipped for Trump’s new threat of mass deportations.
“California has its own culpability in feeding the deportation machine, which advocates have been pointing out for years,” said Anoop Prasad, advocacy director of the Asian Prisoner Support Committee, which supports incarcerated Californians. “Governor Newsom hasn’t taken action on those calls in prior years, but hopefully now he’s willing to understand the urgency.”
In 2019, Newsom vetoed a bill passed by lawmakers that would have banned private security agents from entering prisons to arrest immigrants. In 2023, he vetoed another measure widely supported by legislators that would have stopped transfers from prisons to Ice. This year, he vetoed a bill that would have allowed undocumented students to be hired for campus jobs.
“The state government can limit its participation in enforcement to the maximum extent possible and can provide as many benefits [to immigrants] as possible, consistent with federal law,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, faculty co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA.
Arulanantham, an immigrant rights attorney, said research has repeatedly supported the public safety benefits of sanctuary policies, showing that jurisdictions that reduce cooperation with Ice don’t see increases in crime. “I’d hope a blue state politician would say, ‘We’re going to be evidence-based and rational and not worry about immigrants eating cats,’” he said. “The rational policy is we should not do cooperation, because there’s no evidence it makes us safer, and it tears communities apart.”
He said he hoped California would expand funding for legal representation for immigrants. During Trump’s first term, California also attempted to ban private immigration detention, but was blocked in court, and Arulanantham said legislators should look at other ways to thwart the expansion of these facilities.
“It’s a good time to zoom out and map the deportation system, which is interwoven throughout the state,” added Prasad. “It’s using not just state government resources, but also our airports, our roads. There are detention centers in our communities. Companies registered in the state are providing transportation to Ice to carry out deportations.”
A county in Washington state blocked deportation flights from its local airport in 2019, for example, but was ultimately thwarted in court.
Newsom could also pardon immigrants with old criminal records, shielding them from deportations. He has done this before in notable cases of refugees facing removal due to old cases, but his clemency rate has been lower than his predecessor, said Angela Chan, assistant chief attorney of the San Francisco public defender’s office.
“That is a very important power he could tap into. These are often green card holders who’ve been in this country since they were young, faced trouble at a young age, served sentences, earned release, then are facing the double punishment of deportation.”
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She said she hoped lawmakers looked for ways to further limit data sharing with Ice and prevent local police from being involved in joint federal task forces that involve any immigration enforcement purposes.
A spokesperson for Newsom did not respond to questions about specific proposals. The California governor has called a special legislative session for December to prepare for the Republican administration.
Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, will play a key role in defending the state against Trump’s agenda. He told the Guardian last week he had been preparing for months for Trump’s possible return and said the state should “reinforce and strengthen” the existing sanctuary law, without offering specifics. He said he was also prepared to hold accountable any pro-Trump county sheriffs who go rogue and attempt to assist the president-elect’s deportation agenda.
It’s a threat advocates are increasingly monitoring.
“There will be recalcitrant sheriffs in California who will try to circumvent and delegitimize the state sanctuary policy,” said Newman, noting Trump’s ties to Joe Arpaio, an infamous Arizona sheriff who brutally targeted immigrants and was convicted of criminal contempt for his actions. “There will probably be one or more sheriffs in California who want to be the next Joe Arpaio with regular appearances on Fox News.”
Newman noted there were new threats from Trump this time, including cracking down on activists and using the national guard. “We’re going to have to get creative in terms of defensive measures,” he said.
Local Democrats could play a key role. Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, the second-largest city in the US, said last week: “No matter where you were born, how you came to this country … Los Angeles will stand with you.” But she is now facing intense scrutiny for her new pick of LAPD chief, Jim McDonnell, who was LA sheriff in Trump’s first term and allowed immigration authorities to target people for deportation in the local jail system. Amid protests, McDonnell insisted on Friday that “LAPD will not assist with mass deportations”.
Titilayọ Rasaki, policy and campaigns strategist for La Defensa, an LA-based advocacy group, said organizers were prepared. Her group was already planning to expand its court watch program to immigration courts.
“We will mount a defense that will ensure people have direct representation. We will have eyes on the court. We’ll be telling the story and applying pressure in real time,” she said. “We are ready. We are resilient. We’re going to rest and lick our wounds, we’re going to hold each other. And then we’re going to fight.”
