SAN FRANCISCO — 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 President Donald 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.”
“These are fear-driven, military-style operations that have no place in a democratic society,” said Mark Gonzalez, a Democratic state Assemblymember whose downtown LA district was the epicenter of Friday’s raids.
The next day, when Trump announced the Guard’s deployment, Democrats rushed to take a stand in a fight shifting from deportations to the deployment of the Guard. Gov. Gavin Newsom blasted the measure as “purposefully inflammatory.” And when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatened to deploy the U.S. military, too, Newsom posted on social media, “This is deranged behavior.”
In a note to his super PAC list, he said, “These are not people who have some deep conviction about protecting law enforcement. This is a President who failed to call up the National Guard when it was actually needed — on January 6th — and then pardoned the participants as one of his first acts as president. They want a spectacle. They want the violence.”
For the party at large, it’s a notable swing from the immediate aftermath of Trump’s victory in November, when many Democratic leaders in California and elsewhere sought to moderate on the issue — or at least strike a more muted tone than they did during Trump’s first term. Polling suggests that voter frustration over Democrats’ handling of border security and crime played a strong role in Trump’s sweeping return to power, and many elected officials adjusted in response.
Newsom was among them. He has avoided using the word “sanctuary” to defend the state’s immigration laws that limit police cooperation with ICE. He also vowed to veto a Democratic-led bill that would have applied such restrictions to state prisons and is now proposing steep cuts to a health care program for undocumented immigrants. Earlier this year, he suggested the legal fight over Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland resident mistakenly deported by the Trump administration and imprisoned in El Salvador — he is now back in U.S. custody and facing federal human trafficking charges — was a “distraction” intended to take Democrats’ focus away from other parts of Trump’s agenda (Newsom’s office later said his remarks were misconstrued).
But in recent days, the governor has criticized federal deportation efforts, including reports that federal authorities threatened the family of a Bakersfield girl with a rare, life-threatening medical condition with deportation, despite the family earlier being granted humanitarian protection.
“The @GOP are sending a 4 year old off to her death without a care in the world. It’s sick,” Newsom posted on X.
The Trump administration has accused Democrats and the media of distorting the facts of the case, noting the girl wasn’t actively being deported. Department of Homeland Security Officials said the family has since been approved to stay in the U.S. while she receives medical care.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in an email that the left’s “unhinged smears” of immigration-enforcement tactics have led to a surge of assaults on ICE agents.
“President Trump is keeping his promise to the American people to deport illegal aliens,” she said. “It’s disturbing that Democrats would side with illegal aliens over Americans and stoke hatred against American law enforcement.”
In a social media post, Trump said, “If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!”
ICE officials have also defended the agency’s actions in the San Diego raids, saying agents wear masks due to escalating death threats and online harassment. The agency said it deployed flash-bang grenades when the crowd outside the restaurant “became unruly” and posed a potential danger. Regarding the arrest of SEIU’s leader, federal authorities said Huerta had blocked an ICE vehicle while agents were serving a warrant.
Still, the headline-grabbing incidents and images of residents clashing with ICE agents have provided an opening for Democrats to put the Trump administration on the defensive — over raids, accounts of children being separated from their parents during ICE detentions and migrants being arrested in federal courthouses while attending legal proceedings. Recent polling suggests that after making gains with Latino voters in 2024, Trump’s support among Latinos is falling off.
“It’s one thing when you’re talking about illegal aliens in the abstract,” said Mike Madrid, a veteran political consultant and anti-Trump Republican. “It moved from the abstract to the real. It’s cruelty for cruelty’s sake, and that’s where you’re going to lose support.”
Chris Newman, legal director with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said while Democrats were hurt in the 2024 election by the Biden administration’s handling of immigration, the politics are shifting as Trump tries to carry out his promise of mass deportations.
“When you see these types of Gestapo-style tactics playing out in real life, the whole country is recoiling to that,” said Newman, who represents the family of Abrego Garcia. He has criticized Democrats, including Newsom, over their response to the Abrego Garcia case, which captured national headlines due to Trump’s defiance of multiple federal court orders. In that case, Democrats focused their messaging not on the humanitarian toll of deportations, but due process and the rule of law.
Newman said the latest raids show Democrats hesitant to attack Republicans over their immigration policies have misread the moment: “The wrong lesson (from the 2024 election) is that immigration is inherently a losing issue for Democrats at the top level. The right lesson is that what … the American public wants is a clear, legible immigration policy.”
Among the most outspoken California Democrats in recent days has been San Diego Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, who was pilloried by conservative media outlets over his Instagram post that included a photo labeling ICE agents as “terrorists” in the restaurant raid.
The post drew national attention, with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller accusing politicians on the left of “openly encouraging violence against law enforcement to aid and abet the invasion of America.”
Elo-Rivera, who’s also a member of the progressive Working Families Party, said while the restaurant incident made headlines, it was indicative of more aggressive ICE actions that have rattled his district near the U.S.-Mexico border — tactics he argues are designed to stoke fear.
He said while Democrats did a lot of “hemming and hawing” post-election over the party’s stance on immigration, they now have a chance to make a sharp contrast with the GOP by consistently advocating for the dignity and rights of migrants.
“Immigration is not a distraction for Democrats. We just need to have the conversation on our terms,” Elo-Rivera said. “Unfortunately, there’s folks that think they need to see a poll first before they take a position.”