In the News

"The Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive moves on immigration are pulling Democrats back into a border security debate they had tried to ignore.

For months, Democrats scarred by the politics of the issue sought to sidestep President Donald Trump’s immigration wars — focusing instead on the economy, tariffs or, in the case of deportations, due process concerns.

But in the span of a week, that calculation was jolted in California, after a series of high-profile raids and arrests, including of a labor union leader and dozens of other people in Los Angeles, and with Trump on Saturday announcing the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops to the area.

In this citadel of Democratic politics, party officials from the governor’s mansion to city halls are suddenly tearing into Trump on immigration again, inflaming a debate that worked to Trump’s benefit in 2024 — but where Democrats believe they now have a political opening.

“We were wrong on the border,” said Rep. Scott Peters, a Democrat from San Diego who chided Immigration and Customs Enforcement over a raid at a popular restaurant in the city. “But it is not hard to explain to average Americans why what’s happening here is unproductive. It’s so un-American, and it’s so cruel.”

Peters and other San Diego leaders — including Democratic Reps. Juan Vargas, Sara Jacobs and Mike Levin — were quick to condemn the recent raid on an Italian restaurant in the trendy South Park neighborhood, where around 20 masked agents stormed the restaurant and handcuffed workers as a rattled crowd looked on. Four undocumented immigrants were arrested.

The lawmakers called the agents’ tactics “needlessly reckless” and said the heavy-handed approach “terrorized” residents, noting agents used flash-bang grenades to disperse those who gathered outside to protest.

But if the enforcement action was aggressive, the response from Democrats represented an escalation in their engagement on immigration, too. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, a Democrat, had previously said little about Trump or his immigration policies in the early months of his second term — similar to other blue-city mayors in California who’ve sought to avoid drawing the president’s ire. But in recent days, Gloria sharply criticized federal officials over the raids.

And then came the immigration sweeps in Los Angeles, where union officials said the Service Employees International Union’s state president, David Huerta, was injured and arrested. Rep. Derek Tran, a Democrat from Orange County, who last fall flipped a hotly contested GOP seat, said on X that he was “appalled by this clear violation of first amendment rights,” while Rep. Jimmy Gomez called it part of a “nationwide pattern of suppression.” Protests erupted in the city, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass decried immigration enforcement tactics she said “sow terror in our communities.”


Full Article