California, home to the largest immigrant population in the US, is bracing for Donald Trump’s plan to carry out the “largest deportation operation in American history,” with advocates pushing state leaders to find new and creative ways to advance his agenda to disrupt.
The Golden State led the fight against Trump’s first term, protecting many noncitizens from removal by limiting local cooperation with federal immigration authorities. But the threat is more extreme this time, immigrant rights groups say, and blue states in the US are facing pressure to mount an aggressive, multi-pronged 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 a lot of legislators, honestly, don’t do that. Their focus was on supporting Kamala Harris, and people’s hopes for the best got in the way of their preparation for the worst.”
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Trump, who built his political career on racist, xenophobic rhetoric, has said he wants to drive “as many as 20 million people” out of the US in his second term. That would mark a dramatic increase from his first administration, in which he, like other recent presidents, carried out several hundred thousand removals a year. To achieve his goal, Trump would have to uproot the lives of undocumented people who have been living in the US for years. He has pledged to build mass detention camps and replace the National Guard and local police to support the efforts.
In 2017, California became the first state to pass a sanctuary law under Trump. The bill banned local law enforcement from supporting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), and it had major consequences. While local police had transferred thousands of immigrants to Ice each year, that number dropped to hundreds, according to advocates who reviewed state data.
Nationally, Trump fell short of his overall removal goals — arresting fewer immigrants in the country and carrying out fewer deportations than Obama — in part because of the policies of California and other states.
Before the bill was signed in California, however, it was watered down to allow state prisons to coordinate with Ice and to give Ice agents access to interview people in prisons. The final version also weakened proposals to limit the sharing of police data with Ice. These loopholes leave many immigrants still vulnerable.
Activists and some lawmakers have since fought to strengthen shelter policies in recent years. But California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who now describes himself as an anti-Trump leader, has repeatedly opposed these efforts, which advocates say could have better equipped the state for Trump’s new threat of mass deportations.
“California has its own culpability in fueling the deportation machine, as advocates have pointed out for years,” said Anoop Prasad, advocacy director for the Asian Prisoner Support Committee, which supports incarcerated Californians. “Governor Newsom has not taken action on these calls in recent years, but hopefully he is now willing to understand the urgency.”
In 2019, Newsom vetoed a bill passed by lawmakers that would have banned private security officers from entering prisons to arrest immigrants. In 2023, he vetoed another measure widely supported by lawmakers that would have halted prison transfers to Ice. This year, he vetoed a bill that would have allowed undocumented students to be hired for on-campus jobs.
“The state government can limit its participation in enforcement as much as possible and provide as many benefits as possible [to immigrants] 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 do not see an increase in crime. “I hope a blue state politician would say, ‘We’re going to be fact-based and rational and not worry about immigrants eating cats,’” he said. “The rational policy is that we shouldn’t collaborate because there is no evidence that it makes us safer and drives communities apart.”
He said he hoped California would expand funding for legal representation for immigrants. During Trump’s first term, California also tried to ban private immigration detention but was blocked in court, and Arulanantham said lawmakers 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 that is woven throughout the state,” Prasad said. “It uses not only state government resources but also our airports and our roads. There are detention centers in our communities. Companies registered in the state provide transportation to Ice to carry out deportations.”
For example, a county in Washington state blocked deportation flights from its local airport in 2019, but was ultimately thwarted by the courts.
Newsom could also pardon immigrants with old criminal records and protect them from deportations. He has done this before in notable cases of fugitives who had to be removed because of old cases, but his leniency rate was lower than that of his predecessor, said Angela Chan, assistant chief counsel for the San Francisco public defender’s office.
“That is a very important strength that he can use. These are often green card holders who have been in this country since childhood, encountered trouble at a young age, served their sentences, earned their release, and then face the double penalty of deportation.”
She said she hoped lawmakers would look for ways to further limit data sharing with Ice and prevent local police from being involved in joint federal task forces that involve immigration enforcement purposes.
A spokesperson for Newsom did not respond to questions about specific proposals. California’s 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 that he had been preparing for Trump’s possible return for months and said the state should “strengthen and fortify” the existing sanctuary law, without providing details. He said he was also prepared to hold accountable pro-Trump sheriffs who are going rogue and trying to support the president-elect’s deportation agenda.
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It’s a threat that advocates are increasingly monitoring.
“There will be recalcitrant sheriffs in California who will try to circumvent and delegitimize the state sanctuary policy,” Newman said, pointing to Trump’s ties to Joe Arpaio, a notorious Arizona sheriff who brutally attacked immigrants and was convicted of criminal contempt for his deeds. “There will probably be one or more sheriffs in California who want to be the next Joe Arpaio who regularly appears on Fox News.”
Newman noted that there were new threats from Trump this time, including a crackdown on activists and the use of the National Guard. “We will have to be creative when it comes to defensive measures,” he said.
Local Democrats could play a key role. Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, the US’s second-largest city, said last week: “Wherever you were born, how you came to this country… Los Angeles will stand by you.” But she is now under intense scrutiny for her new pick for LAPD chief, Jim McDonnell, who served as LA sheriff during Trump’s first term and allowed immigration authorities to target people for deportation in the local jail system. Amid protests, McDonnell emphasized Friday that “LAPD will not assist with mass deportations.”
Titilayọ Rasaki, policy and campaign 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 build a defense that ensures people have direct representation. We will keep an eye on the court. We will tell the story and apply 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 start fighting.”
