Comments
ICE STORM - For the past week portions of Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA), as well as the cities of Pasadena, Paramount, and Compton, have experienced US Customs and Enforcement (ICE) deportation actions at hardware and convenience stores, schools, and even courthouses. The communities most impacted by these raids have pushed back hard, and the mainstream media have covered these events in such a way that people in other cities think that Los Angeles is experiencing another mass civil disturbance, similar to 1965 and 1992. As a result of this extensive but superficial reporting, most viewers don’t realize there are at least three sides to this story.
Side 1 - The White House Perspective: The Trump II administration spins the mass expulsion of undocumented immigrants as protecting the public from violent criminals, with Steven Miller, a notorious xenophobe and Donald Trump’s Homeland Security Advisor directing ICE to quickly deport undocumented residents who are hard-working, law-abiding residents. But, taking undocumented immigrants into custody whose only sin is they want to work reveals that these Trump/Miller claims are only a pretext. Study-after-study reveals that immigrants have lower crime rates than native-born residents.
Side #2 - State and Local officials. Since the Trump II claims are so far-fetched, the more level-headed perspective of California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass appear to be reasonable. They have repeatedly said there is no need to federalize the California National Guard and send Marines from Ford Ord to Los Angeles. They also said that they were not consulted by the Trump Administration. If they had been, they would have never agreed to send in these troops. Their message is that the public has a legal right to demonstrate, that very few demonstrators have engaged in criminal acts, and that local authorities can gain control of the situation without the White House’s unsolicited and escalatory intervention. Given the sharp contrast between them and President Trump, most news coverage portrays them as the good guys.
But is this really the case? If we look carefully, we discover that Democrats have deported more undocumented immigrants than Republicans. According to Infographics:
“From 1990 to 2018, Democratic presidents deported over 3.9 million people, with an annual average of 246,006. In contrast, Republican presidents deported about 2.7 million, averaging 205,453 annually. These figures highlight a notable difference in the deportation rates between the two parties, with Democrats overseeing higher numbers.”
Another aspect is the role of local Democratic Party officials to support real estate speculation at the expense of low income residents. For example, according to the Los Angeles City Controller’s recent report on LA’s severe housing crisis:
“Over 41% of the 1.38 million households in the City are lower-income renters. Against the backdrop of skyrocketing housing costs and with a substantial affordable housing shortage, our City only has 47,000 affordable housing units to meet the needs of our over 568,000 lower-income residents.”
In other words, in Los Angeles local government has left over 500,000 residents – many of them immigrants -- without affordable, well-maintained residences. This has nothing to do with the previous and current Trump administrations since local government is almost entirely composed of Democrats, despite officials being officially non-partisan.
Immigrants and their Supporters: There are an estimated 11.1 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, including 800,000 in the Los Angeles region. The bulk of them are from Latin America and are fleeing poverty, political persecution, and criminal gangs. Nearly all of them prefer to enter the United States legally, but given the small number of available immigration slots, they enter illegally and then hope to legalize their immigration status. They now face an additional hurdle. When they are finished with their appointments at Federal immigration courts, plain clothes ICE police often violently take them into custody.
Given this reality, no one should be surprised that their family members, friends, and allies come to their defense when ICE, protected by local and state police, as well as the US military, abduct and then quickly deport them.
Where is this face off headed? So far, there is no indication that either side is backing down. The Trump/Miller side is ramping up their kidnapping of suspected undocumented immigrants. This inflames their families, friends, and supporters. As a result, the anti-ICE demonstrations are rapidly expanding to other cities, also drawing in support from those who see similarities to US foreign policy, especially in Gaza.
While it is difficult to predict the future, deporting hard-working and low-paid immigrants will cause major economic disruption, complementing the inflationary impact of tariffs. As for the pushback from undocumented residents and their supporters, there is no indication yet that they will fold when the police and US military try to stop them.
(Victor Rothman is a California-based policy analyst.)
