SAN DIEGO — Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown sparked protests across Los Angeles and sent many people into hiding. Some California Republicans are starting to fear they’ll pay a price for the chaos.
Amid reports of masked agents sweeping into neighborhoods in tactical gear, public sentiment is shifting nationally against the president’s immigration policies. And some long-suffering Republicans here are scrambling to stake out a middle ground between supporting Trump, but not the raids that are rippling through their communities and threatening key industries.
“I don’t dismiss for one second that the fear in our communities is real. It is,” said state Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares, a Republican who was the lead author of a recent letter urging the administration to focus on criminal immigrants. “I’ve had constituents on both sides articulate that it’s heartbreaking, heart-wrenching, what’s going on.”
Republican officials publicly expressing their concern, so far, have been limited. Just six of the 29 GOP members of the state Legislature signed the Valladares letter. Two of the nine Republicans in California’s House delegation — Rep. David Valladao and Rep. Young Kim — have signed on to legislation that would combine border security with a path to citizenship for some undocumented migrants.
But on Monday, the state Legislature’s Problem Solvers Caucus, composed of 13 Republicans and 13 Democrats, issued a statement to the members of the state’s congressional delegation urging them to work on “bipartisan, common-sense immigration reform” that would include both border security and a path to legal status for undocumented workers who pose no threat to public safety.
“Immigrants have long been the backbone of California’s economy and an essential part of our communities — raising families, building businesses, and powering key industries,” it said.
These concerns emerge as employers become increasingly vocal about losing workers and polls start to show slipping support for Trump’s immigration policies. Republicans in California may be uniquely attuned to the potential ramifications of an immigration blowback — a warning sign for the party across the country. In this state with more immigrants, both with legal status and without, than any other, the Republican effort to crack down on illegal immigration in the 1990s is widely credited with sending the GOP to the political wilderness. Today, for elected officials such as Kim, Valadao and Valladares, all of whom are in competitive districts, the politics of the issue once again threaten to become problematic with ICE agents making arrests across the interior of a vast and diverse state.
“The waters are getting more muddied, because instead of talking about immigration enforcement at the border, we have now shifted to a conversation about what do you do about the 10 million-plus illegal immigrants that are in the country now. And that’s a thornier issue,” said Jon Fleischman, an Orange County-based GOP strategist and former executive director of the California Republican Party.
At the same time, Republicans who distance themselves from Trump risk inflaming their base voters, who are still ardently supportive of strict enforcement.
“Whether you’re Valadao or Young Kim or anyone else, understand that the politics of trying to embrace the center necessarily means that you may alienate the right,” Fleischman said.
Valadao, who represents an important agricultural region, weighed in on the issue in a social media post last month. “I remain concerned about ongoing ICE operations throughout CA and will continue my conversations with the administration—urging them to prioritize the removal of known criminals over the hardworking people who have lived peacefully in the Valley for years,” he said on X.
But he has kept a low profile on the issue ever since. His office said he was not available for an interview. Kim’s spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
“Republicans have real concerns about potential economic impacts, especially upon agriculture, with the way that enforcement is being conducted,” said Rob Stutzman, a Sacramento-based GOP strategist who advises political and corporate clients.
Republican dissent is largely limited to criticism of the ICE raids — which have resulted in the arrests of hundreds of people who have no convictions or pending charges despite the administration’s portrayal of the operation as targeted at serious criminals — and not of the president. GOP officials are also quick to accuse Democrats and former President Joe Biden of not doing enough to stop illegal immigration. They blame the media and activists for spreading fear about the sweeps.
Still, even the muted public criticism, combined with the recent polls showing that public concern about immigration is receding, suggest the winds may be shifting on a signature element of Trump’s policy agenda.
“There’s going to be Republicans hedging on this for sure,” Mike Madrid, a Republican political strategist and author of “The Latino Century,” said after the release of a Gallup Poll that showed a majority of Americans now disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration. “It’s coming, and it has to. The numbers are just unbelievable.”
In California, Trump started to make good on his oft-promised mass deportations in June. U.S. authorities had carried out immigration operations in the past, of course, but not at this scale, described as a “siege” in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of activists, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the United Farm Workers, and joined by the city of Los Angeles.
The plaintiffs documented what the suit calls a “shocking (though hardly surprising) number” of arrests of U.S. citizens and people legally in the country as well as detentions that appear to be based on race or occupation. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, its parent agency, have touted the capture of people who have been convicted of serious offenses, including rape and murder. But a Los Angeles Times analysis of data from organizations associated with UCLA and UC Berkeley found that 70 percent of the people arrested in the region in June had no criminal convictions and 58 percent had never been charged with a crime. Their only offense was often just the underlying immigration offense, a civil violation.
And it isn’t just advocacy groups or the media who are seeing the raids that way. Increasingly, it is Republicans, too.
“Grabbing people with criminal histories, I think there’s a lot of support for it,” Stutzman said. “But catching people who have been here for 30 years, have family, work, contribute to the economy — and the only reason they’re undocumented is because America has failed to provide a program for them to be here legally — I don’t think there’s going to be a whole lot of stomach for that.”
As the arrests surged, at times drawing angry protests, Valladares and her colleagues sent their letter to the administration.
“We respectfully ask you to focus deportations on criminals, and to support legal immigration and visa policies that will build a strong economy, secure our borders, and protect our communities,” they wrote.
Valladares said in a recent interview that the lawmakers had not received a response, but she said some of Trump’s comments about the need to support farmers is an “encouraging” sign.
“I’m blaming both sides, by the way,” she said. “You know this issue has been a political football for 20 years, and we have to fix those policies, or rather, the president and Congress have to fix those policies.”