Newsom vetoed Assembly Bill 713 on Sunday, rejecting a measure that relied on a largely untested legal argument: that a 1986 federal law prohibiting employers from hiring workers without authorization to work in the country doesn’t actually apply to state governments. Supporters of the bill pointed out that the four-decade-old statute never explicitly names state governments among the employers barred from such hiring.

Despite that argument, Newsom concluded that California’s public colleges and universities would be putting themselves in the crosshairs of federal retaliation if the state moved forward on its own.

“The current federal government has shown it is quick to wreak destruction for political spectacle — attacking California’s public higher education institutions and terrorizing immigrant communities, including students, with reckless disregard for consequences and a desire for chaos,” Newsom wrote in his veto message.

He added that the stakes were too high to act without more legal certainty. “Given the gravity of this bill’s consequences — including potential criminal and civil liability for state employees — the federal courts must resolve the legality of the novel legal theory behind this legislation before we proceed,” Newsom wrote, suggesting that seeking a declaratory ruling in federal court would be a better path forward.

This marks the second time Newsom has vetoed nearly identical legislation, having rejected a similar bill in 2024.

The latest proposal came from Assemblymember José Luis Solache, a Democrat representing Lakewood, who hoped to open the door for an estimated 60,000 students without legal status enrolled in California’s community colleges and public universities to work legally on campus. Rather than seeking under-the-table cash jobs, these students could instead hold positions suited to their coursework or research interests — including lab jobs tied to their academic programs, according to bill supporters.

Campus employment matters greatly for these students because they don’t qualify for federal Pell grants, which can provide up to $7,400 a year, or for federal student loans that typically offer better borrower protections than private lending options. California does allow eligible in-state students to attend public colleges tuition-free through waivers regardless of immigration status, but living expenses and other costs remain a major hurdle without steady income.

“While California has a longstanding commitment to expanding access, affordability, and student success in higher education, our undocumented students continue to face significant financial and structural barriers,” Solache told lawmakers during a bill hearing in June.

The University of California system had once considered adopting this same legal theory on its own but abandoned the effort in 2024, citing concerns that the federal government could retaliate by cutting off funding or pursuing legal action against UC employees.

That decision effectively dismantled a coalition of student activists who had spent years pressing the UC to act unilaterally and hire students regardless of immigration status.

Following Newsom’s 2024 veto, a student and a former UC lecturer filed suit against the university system. A state appellate court later ruled that the UC’s justification — fear of a potential federal lawsuit — amounted to an abuse of discretion under California’s anti-discrimination laws covering employment and housing. The court found that the UC’s blanket refusal to hire students without legal status couldn’t be legally justified unless the university could demonstrate that federal law actually compels that policy. The UC appealed the ruling, but the California Supreme Court declined to intervene, letting the appellate court’s decision stand. Notably, the ruling did not address whether the underlying legal theory — that states can lawfully employ workers without legal immigration status — actually holds up.

In his latest veto message, Newsom made clear he believes that question needs to be settled by federal courts before California moves forward with any law along the lines of what Solache proposed.

Original source: CalMatters

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Over the past year, the population held in these for-profit facilities has more than doubled. Since September, six people have died at two Southern California sites alone: the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County and the Imperial Regional Detention Facility near the Mexican border. Detainees have resorted to hunger strikes, sit-ins, and even scrawling notes on paper and tossing them over barbed-wire fences just to get word out about the conditions inside.

Given how many lives are affected, the public has every right to know what is going on behind those walls. Yet these detention centers remain remarkably opaque, and there is little indication that federal oversight will improve any time soon.

California, however, has the power to force more sunlight onto these facilities through a modest but meaningful change to its public records law — one that would require local law enforcement agencies to release 911 call logs and related records tied to immigration detention centers.

This isn’t a hypothetical fix. Earlier this year, CalMatters reported that the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department received multiple reports of alleged sexual assaults at the Otay Mesa detention facility in 2025. Rather than investigating those claims itself, the department operates under an agreement that leaves the decision on whether to investigate up to the facility’s own warden.

When journalists sought public records about those cases, the sheriff’s office denied the request, citing an exemption in the California Public Records Act that shields active investigative files — even though no investigation was actually taking place.

I encountered this same wall of silence years ago. In 2017, while reporting for the Los Angeles Times, I began examining a series of deaths and suicide attempts inside the Adelanto facility. The people I interviewed described dangerously overcrowded, mentally taxing conditions that sound eerily similar to what detainees are describing today.

One man recalled discovering a fellow detainee who had tried to hang himself with a bedsheet from a second-floor railing. What struck me most wasn’t his shock — it was his lack of surprise.

“I think doing something like that is something that has crossed the mind of all of us who are locked up here,” he told me.

A colleague and I spent months trying to obtain official documentation about complaints from detention centers throughout California. When federal officials stalled or refused our records requests, we turned to local police departments and asked for 911 call logs tied to the facilities. Those logs documented hundreds of calls reporting violence or abuse.

But the call logs alone told us little. Most contained scant detail about what had actually happened or how — or whether — authorities had responded, because local agencies withheld the more substantive records. It took nearly two years of persistent requests before we were able to piece together a clearer picture of what detainees were experiencing.

The public shouldn’t have to fight this hard to understand what is happening in a system that affects thousands of people living, working and awaiting hearings in our state.

Reporting from other states shows exactly why this kind of transparency matters. In Arizona, journalists obtained a 911 recording revealing that officers had pepper-sprayed 47 detainees inside an overcrowded holding room at an ICE facility. In Florida, reporters used 911 calls from staff and detainees’ families to document chaos and fear at the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention site. And at a family detention center in South Texas, 911 records exposed medical emergencies involving young children and pregnant women.

A California law mandating disclosure of 911 calls and related records from privately operated detention centers could bring the same kind of accountability here.

Fortunately, state Sen. Lena Gonzalez, a Long Beach Democrat, has introduced Senate Bill 423 to do exactly that. The measure includes protections to preserve legitimate investigative confidentiality and safeguard victims’ privacy, while making clear that the public’s right to know cannot be left to the discretion of individual agencies.

The First Amendment Coalition, where I train journalists on navigating public records law, is co-sponsoring the bill alongside Immigrant Defense Advocates, a policy and advocacy organization focused on immigrant rights.

For state lawmakers, this should be a straightforward decision. No one should have to scrawl a plea on a scrap of paper and throw it over a fence just so the outside world understands what is happening to them inside a California detention facility.

Original source: CalMatters

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The county Department of Public Social Services (DPSS) said the changes stem from federal policy updates outlined in H.R. 1 and will make some non-citizens ineligible for food assistance benefits.

Those affected include certain asylees, refugees, parolees, individuals with deportation or removal withheld, conditional entrants and victims of trafficking, according to the department.

“They may be eligible for CalFresh (if) the immigration status changes to Legal Permanent Resident (LPR) and all other eligibility requirements are met,” DPSS said on its website.

The department said residents who are no longer eligible for CalFresh can seek assistance through local food banks, the 211 resource line or the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program.

Additional changes tied to the federal law are expected to take effect June 1, including expanded work requirements for certain adults without dependents and reduced exemptions for some groups.

More information is available through the county at rivcodpss.org/.

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Mexican citizen Maria de Jesús Estrada Juárez was among the hundreds of thousands of people shielded from deportation under an Obama-era program allowing people brought to the U.S. as children to stay in the country if they generally stay out of trouble.

But that changed Feb. 18 when she showed up for an immigration hearing and was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and deported the next day.

“I didn’t get to say goodbye,” the 42-year-old mother said at a news conference Tuesday in Sacramento. “It all happened so fast. This has been one of the most painful experiences of my life.”

Estrada Juárez held hands with her daughter and began to choke up as she recounted those experiences.

“It’s hard to describe what it feels like to lose your mother so suddenly, especially when you believed she was safe,” said Damaris Bello, Estrada Juárez’s 22-year-old daughter. “It was like grieving someone who was still alive.”

The federal government has deported dozens of recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA, during President Donald Trump’s second term, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The events come amid the Trump administration’s reshaping of immigration policy more broadly.

Immigration advocates say Estrada Juárez’s removal highlights the need to offer more permanent protections for DACA recipients, often referred to as “Dreamers.”

The case is a rare example of a judge ordering a person’s return to the United States after being deported, said Talia Inlender, deputy director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law.

“But, perhaps unsurprisingly, it feels like this is happening with more frequency under the current administration which is prioritizing speed and quotas, rather than fairness and process, in facilitating removals,” Inlender said in a statement.

The federal administration said Estrada Juárez was deported because of a 1998 removal order when Estrada Juárez was a teenager, shortly after she arrived in the U.S. She was sent to Mexico at the time but returned to the U.S. weeks later and has had DACA status since 2013. Federal officials reinstated the 1998 order in February after arresting her.

Estrada Juárez spent the next few weeks after being deported with relatives, stressed about being separated from her daughter.

“You can’t enjoy life when the most important part of your life is not there,” she said.

U.S. District Judge Dena Coggins, who was appointed by then-President Joe Biden, issued a temporary restraining order on March 23, giving the federal government seven days to facilitate Estrada Juárez’s return to the U.S. Her deportation was a “flagrant violation” of her DACA protections and infringed upon her due process rights, Coggins wrote.

The Department of Homeland Security has defended the deportation.

“ICE follows all court orders,” a department spokesperson said in a statement. “This is yet another ruling from a Biden-appointed activist judge.”

But Estrada Juárez wasn’t aware of the 1998 order, which her lawyer argues wasn’t final.

“DACA gives you a vested right to not be deported once it’s granted,” said Stacy Tolchin, an immigration attorney based in Pasadena, California. “I really don’t understand what they’re doing.”

Bello, who was reunited with her mother Monday night, said she is recovering from the events and hopes other families don’t have to endure the same thing.

“Having her back home means everything to me,” she said. “It means we can begin to heal, to rebuild and to move forward together as a family.”

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But what if that person committed a burglary in their late teens, served years in state prison, turned their life around, and now mentors at-risk youth?

Do the details matter? Researchers found that they do.   

A new poll by Goodwin Simon Strategic Research examines California voters’ attitudes toward due process for immigrants with criminal convictions during the Trump administration’s nationwide crackdown on unauthorized immigration. The survey also examined support for how tax dollars are spent and Californians’ views on the state’s sanctuary policies.

It found bipartisan support for ensuring that immigrants facing deportation receive due process, including ones with criminal records.

“This survey shows that there’s clear concern about the current administration’s approach to immigration enforcement,” said Sara Knight, a research director at Goodwin Simon Strategic Research. “I’m not surprised by the results, but I am heartened to see how strong the support for due process is and the growing frustration with treating people inhumanely in our immigration system.” 

President Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of mass deportations that targeted criminals, among other things, and he has made good on that. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have arrested more than 160,608 noncitizens nationwide with criminal convictions or pending charges, since his inauguration. 

The Trump administration has sought to expand the use of “expedited removal,” which allows immigration officers to remove certain non-citizens, like those convicted of crimes, from the United States without a hearing before an immigration judge.

Researchers say this latest poll by Goodwin Simon Strategic Research, released to CalMatters this week, also reflects waning support, even among a small majority of Republicans for the harshest immigration enforcement practices. It showed  84% of Democrats, 61% of independents, and 54% of Republicans agreed that “even if someone does have a record, they deserve due process and the chance to have their case heard by a judge before being deported.” 

The poll was commissioned by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, both pro-immigrant organizations. Goodwin Simon Strategic Research describes itself on its website as an “independent opinion research firm.” Researchers wrote the survey questions and polled more than 1,200 self-identified voters. Knight said the partisan divide among those polled mirrored the party-affiliation split in the electorate. The margin of error was 3 points. 

Some other recent polls echo similar conclusions released in recent weeks, including one released last week by UC Berkeley’s Possibility Lab that found 61% of registered California voters oppose deporting everyone without legal status. Another public opinion poll by the nonpartisan research firm Public Policy Institute of California found 71% of Californians surveyed said they disapproved of the job ICE is doing. And, a CNN exit poll after the Proposition 50 redistricting election on Nov. 4 found that about three-quarters of California voters said they’re dissatisfied with or angry about the way things are going in the U.S., and 6 in 10 said the Trump administration’s actions on immigration enforcement have gone too far. 

Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, pointed to other recent national polls to argue the public supports Trump’s immigration policies.

“President Trump and (Homeland Security) Secretary (Kristi) Noem are delivering on the American people’s mandate to deport illegal aliens, and the latest polls show that support for the America First agenda has not wavered – including a New York Times poll that nearly 8 in 10 Americans support deporting illegal aliens with criminal records,” McLaughlin said in a written statement.

“The American people, the law, and common sense are on our side, and we will not stop until law and order is restored after Biden’s open border chaos flooded our country with the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens,” she continued.

From prison to ICE

In the more recent Goodwin Simon Strategic Research poll, 61% of voters surveyed said they want California’s prison system to stop directly handing immigrants over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation. 

The state’s sanctuary law does not apply to immigrants who have been convicted of serious crimes. State prisons have transferred to ICE more than 9,500 people with criminal records since Gov. Gavin Newsom took office in 2019, according to data released to CalMatters. So far in 2025, ICE has picked up 1,217 inmates directly from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the data shows. 

The corrections department also provides ICE with information that helps the agency locate, arrest, and deport people who are not directly transferred. CalMatters obtained and reviewed more than 27,000 pages of emails between state prison employees and ICE. The emails show prison employees regularly communicate with ICE about individuals in state custody, including U.S. citizens. They often share personal details about their families, visitors, and phone calls. Often, these family members have no criminal records and are U.S. citizens

Newsom, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, and Speaker Robert Rivas have all denounced ICE’s broader deportation efforts. But all three have also indicated some level of support for having federal immigration officials remove noncitizens with prior convictions for violent crimes from the community. 

The governor has stated he would veto legislation that seeks to restrict the state prison system’s ability to coordinate with federal immigration authorities for the deportation of felons.

‘We may be deporting the wrong people’

Goodwin Simon researchers found that voters’ opinions change when they find out more details about the personal circumstances of a noncitizen with a past criminal conviction, even for violent crime. Pollsters gave two narratives to voters.

One was about a man who was brought to the United States from Mexico as a child. He got into a fight in his early 20s that left someone injured. The man was sentenced to seven years in state prison, where he turned his life around by taking college classes and helping other inmates get their high school diplomas. When he got out of prison, he was deported to Mexico before an immigration judge could decide on his case. 

The other narrative was about a person closely connected to a man whose family fled genocide in Cambodia when he was a baby. In the U.S., the man was the lookout for a robbery when he was a teenager and served 30 years in state prison. Upon his release, prison officials turned him over to ICE. 

“We may be deporting the wrong people. Although this last person did commit a crime, he has served his time and is now a valuable member of society, so it would be hard to say for sure if a person ever committed a crime deserves to be sent back. That is why the due process is important,” one Republican voter from Sacramento responded to the poll. She shifted her opinion from the view that people with past criminal convictions should be automatically deported to favoring a judge reviewing each individual case after hearing the narratives. 

After voters reviewed both pro- and anti-messaging and the two stories, support for having an immigration judge review individual cases before deportation increased from 84% to 90% among Democrats; from 61% to 74% among independents, but it dropped from 54% to 51% among Republicans. Central Coast voters and Republican women voters increased support for due process by 9 points after hearing the stories. 

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In Colorado, ICE smashes the window of a car with a 1-month-old inside, his mother crying out, “There’s a baby in here!”

A family of four in Chicago is surrounded at Millennium Park by heavily armed and masked immigration agents, while the 8-year-old daughter clutches her doll and sobs. The mother holds her 3-year-old son while all of them are detained.

A 6-year-old, her 19-year-old brother and mother are stopped at a immigration check-in in New York and detained.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested a 13-year-old recently in Massachusetts and whisked him away to Virginia.

These incidents are not exceptions, but a common story. In the New York City area, for example, ICE has detained at least 50 children.

Though immigrant youth have been targeted, U.S.-born Black children have not been spared. About 300 federal agents executed an immigration raid, resulting in shocking and heartbreaking scenes in a South Side apartment building in Chicago. Crying children being led out of their apartment as it was tossed. When community members in Chicago denounced the zip-tying of children, who were also separated from their family members, an ICE officer was overheard saying “f— those kids.”

In addition to the initial violence of the stops, children have been incarcerated in spaces not made to hold them. Alexandria Staging Facility in Louisiana is designated for adult males but has had at least 18 children detained between January and July. Meanwhile, even facilities designed to imprison families have major problems, including delayed medical care for children, extreme temperatures and undrinkable tap water — and the government is charging children and families money for bottled water.

The administration is also arguing in court to reduce the protections on detained children, including limits on how long they can be held and requirements of providing sanitary conditions for children.

In parallel to the abuses within the immigration enforcement system, the government is trying to fill youth incarceration facilities by encouraging “tough on crime” approaches, even when crime is the lowest it has been in decades. President Trump recently claimed in Washington that “caravans of mass youth rampage through city streets at all times of the day” — which is not true.

Instead of policies that reduce crime, we get this rhetoric of locking up “bad children.” After a significant drop in the last two decades, youth incarceration rates are increasing. Racial disparities in youth imprisonment are the widest they have been in decades, even though crime is at historic lows. Youth behavior has not become more violent, but adult reactions to youth behavior have become more punitive. More laws and policies actively punish young people for minimal infractions.

The administration is also seeking to remove youth from their homes and put them into government custody. These “welfare checks” are at times being done by FBI or Homeland Security agents instead of those trained in social welfare. And yet once youth are in government custody, they are not protected.

Targeting communities of color and immigrant communities, the Trump administration is using every tactic it can dream up to break apart families. One initiative dubbed “Freaky Friday” offers children in custody up to $2,500 to leave the U.S. Originally slated for young people as young as 14 years old, this payment would theoretically be made after “an immigration judge grants the request and the individual arrives in their country of origin.” But it would be extremely difficult for young people to receive any such payment from the government after reaching their country of origin. Worst, this program’s financial pressure on vulnerable children disregards the dangers they faced when they fled their homes in the first place.

Moreover, the administration attempted to deport a large number of Guatemalan children over Labor Day weekend, with at least 76 children being boarded onto planes, and possibly more en route, before a judge issued a restraining order.

Such actions have left immigrant children languishing in government custody, whether in detention facilities, hotels or group homes, for longer periods, instead of being reunited with family.

Violent arrests, dangerous detentions and prolonged incarceration show that the purposeful criminalizing of immigrants and Black folks is not only harmful to adults but also traumatizes children. Just witnessing a parent’s arrest can have negative mental health impacts on young children. When a youth is arrested, their life outcomes are negatively affected, including an increase in chances of leaving school, higher rates of depression and suicidal thoughts. Youth who have experienced incarceration are less likely to find stable housing and employment as adults and six times more likely to experience early death compared with non-incarcerated youth. All of these negative outcomes are also accompanied by extreme cost. The average cost of incarcerating a youth in a secure facility is about $214,620 per year.

The punitive approach does not make sense as social policy, but it serves a purpose for the Trump administration by turning vulnerable populations into scapegoats. U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro recently said: “I see too much violent crime being committed by young punks who think they can get together in gangs and crews and beat the hell out of you.” Trump recently said of Baltimore youth: “They’re not going to be good in 10 years, in five years, in 20 years, in two years they’re going to be criminals. They were born to be criminals.”

Such words remind us that some officials see many Black and immigrant youth as criminals meant to be punished, not as children meant to be protected. The rhetoric and policies of the administration, including cuts to evidence-based programs that actually reduce violence, confirm that this administration does not care about the cost to the young people violently arrested and incarcerated, nor about the cost to society. Instead of approaching all children with care, the administration has waged war on immigrant and Black youth. And it is a war that benefits no one.

Subini Annamma is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. David Stovall is a professor of Black studies and criminology, law and justice. Both research the criminalization of students in schools and society.

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Border Patrol section chief Gregory Bovino made it abundantly clear that the point of the operation at a Home Depot parking lot in South Sacramento was embodied in the same word, the same concept, as the round-ups in Los Angeles. They are about “sanctuary.”

It is a word that has clearly gotten under Bovino’s skin, just as it has gotten under the skin of immigration opponents in the White House and the Capitol. 

“There is no sanctuary city,” Bovino told Fox News. “Sacramento is not a sanctuary city. The state of California is not a sanctuary state. There is no sanctuary anywhere.”

If by that he meant that no jurisdiction can protect residents from federal immigration law, he is of course correct. The Constitution’s Supremacy Clause leaves no doubt about that. States, counties and cities that describe themselves as sanctuaries are engaging in recklessly misleading political marketing. Their laws at most prevent local police from questioning suspects about their immigration status, for example, or block jailers from holding inmates past their release dates so the feds can get them.

But the federal government’s contempt for sanctuary appears to go well beyond the modest if over-sold local policies. Their actions and statements demonstrate that they respect no sanctuary, no refuge, no protection in the very things they purport to be guarding: the law, the Constitution, the American people, and their safety, values and sovereignty.

District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong’s blistering July 11 order, which the administration has appealed, lays out the frightening details of a government that has turned hard-won American freedoms inside out.

In this country, unlike most others in the world, the people are free to go about their business without having to show their papers to government agents on demand, absent probable cause to believe they have committed a crime, or at least sufficient suspicion to ask them questions. Those same agents, by contrast, must identify themselves, and not merely by brandishing their guns. They must be clearly distinguishable in action and appearance from crooks of the sort who kidnap residents of third-world countries. Here there is no army of secret police. There are no roving bands of quasi-military thugs.

Until now. Border Patrol and ICE agents in San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties, and now in Sacramento, hide their faces, tint their car windows, remove their license plates, cover their badges, ignore requests for identification, and target people based on where they work and how they look. 

If this conduct is allowed to stand for federal officers, based on the specious argument that they need protection, it is inevitable that all police, perhaps all jailers, prosecutors and judges, will soon hide their faces and do their government work in secret.

Agents recognize no sanctuary in the Fourth Amendment’s protection against warrantless search and seizure. They demand at gunpoint that you show your papers and lock you up if they find them unsatisfactory. Frimpong’s order describes a U.S. citizen showing a driver’s license — and then being grabbed anyway after an agent demanded to see a passport. 

Since when do American citizens have to carry passports? 

There is no sanctuary in the 14th Amendment’s promise of equal protection or in generations of civil rights struggles, court rulings and policy updates that supposedly swept away racially disparate treatment. Frimpong’s order describes a stop in which agents let a white person walk away but not a nonwhite person. Border “czar” Tom Homan said recently that ICE agents were free to stop people based on their appearance.

There is no sanctuary in the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel. The order describes shocking conditions in the basement of the immigration building at 300 N. Los Angeles Street, where captured suspects were so cramped they could not sit or lie down and had no access to lawyers for days.

There is no sanctuary in courthouses, churches, nursing homes or other places where agents grab people without judicial warrants. There is no sanctuary in essential work, such as farm fields, despite President Trump’s statement that perhaps farmworkers and hotel workers might get a break, because after all, farmers would not hire any murderers. He did not explain why the exemption should cover farmworkers but not, say, kitchen workers.

There is no sanctuary, no protection from deportation, even in American citizenship. The Department of Justice is stepping up a program to denaturalize people who were born elsewhere but lawfully go through the citizenship process and take the oath, but who later commit crimes. Such a move creates a second, lesser tier of citizenship, with different standards of conduct and different consequences for the same crimes. 

Second-tier citizenship was virtually abolished in American society after a century-long post-slavery struggle for equality. Must we countenance its return?

But there is no sanctuary even in being born here. The administration is moving to end birthright citizenship, which long has been an unassailable cornerstone of American identity and civil rights. Our leaders are threatening to, for the first time in 60 years, award or deny fundamental rights based not on who you are or what you do, but who your parents were and what they did.

So where can sanctuary be found? If not in lines written on the base of the Statue of Liberty, or in the Constitution, or in citizenship or in simple human decency, then where?

Is there sanctuary only in skin color? If you’re white, or perhaps if you’re Black, you may be OK. If you are brown, you’d better carry your passport for the rest of your days, and teach your children to carry theirs too. Stay away from Home Depot. Endure stops and questions. Keep your head down. It is the dream of the white supremacist. It is the achievement of the 2017 Charlottesville rally to “Unite the Right.” It is a state of affairs repugnant to the American creed. 

And the only thing, so far, that keeps it from becoming the new American normal is Judge Frimpong’s emergency order. 

The government has appealed.

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Newsom also accused the president of trying to preserve Republican power in Washington by pressuring Texas to redraw congressional districts to elect GOP representatives. The governor repeated a threat to launch a similar effort in California to favor Democrats.

“Everything has changed, and it’s changing in real time,” Newsom told reporters Wednesday. “I’m not going to be the guy that said I could have, would have, should have. I’m not going to be passive at this moment. I’m not going to look at my kids in the eyes and say I was a little timid.”

The comments came at a news conference outside Downey Memorial Christian Church, where Newsom met with the Rev. Tanya Lopez, the senior pastor, to discuss an incident in June where she watched as plainclothes federal agents swarmed and detained a constituent in the parking lot of her church.

Newsom criticized the administration’s immigration crackdown, saying its only goal was to terrorize families and communities — not to pursue violent criminals, which Newsom said he would support. Newsom said the crackdown was also harming family-owned businesses as immigrants who work and shop at stores stay home out of fear.

The governor called the president’s decision to deploy about 4,000 National Guardsmen part of Trump’s “rule of cruelty” and said the decision to remove half the troops came after the Pentagon realized the absurdity of its deployment.

The government wasted of hundreds of millions of dollars on the deployment, Newsom said. He added that the “utilization rate” of the National Guard troops was only about 5%, meaning only that percentage was actively engaged with duties while the rest were held in reserve.

“They’re a solution right now in search of a problem,” he said of the National Guard.

The move to send home some of the troops comes after a legal battle over whether the administration could deploy the troops. A federal appeals court ruled that the president had broad — though not “unreviewable” — authority to deploy the military in American cities.

State and local leaders said the National Guard was not needed to deal with protests over immigration raids that have led to around 3,000 arrests.

On a separate issue, Newsom repeated the threat that California could redraw its electoral maps to help Democrats pick up more congressional seats in response to Trump’s call for Texas and other states to redistrict to benefit Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections. Republicans currently hold power in both the Senate and House of Representatives, which have been instrumental in enacting the president’s policy agenda, including cuts to healthcare and food assistance for Americans in need.

“They can’t win by the traditional games, so they want to change the game,” Newsom said. “We can act holier-than-thou. We can sit on the sidelines, talk about the way the world should be, or we can recognize the existential nature that is this moment.”

California voters in 2010 gave an independent Citizens Redistricting Commission the power to determine the boundaries of state voting districts for the U.S. House of Representatives instead of leaving that authority with the state Legislature.

Newsom said the California Legislature could pass a bill in the regular session or in a special session that places a proposed constitutional amendment before voters to change state redistricting laws through a special election held in a tight window before the 2026 primaries.

The governor said he’s also exploring a potential legal loophole that could allow the California Legislature to redraw the congressional maps themselves now with a two-thirds vote and avoid going to the ballot.

“That is an option that is also being considered and both of those are being advanced in real time, not only with members of the Legislature, but others that are interested, because they feel the same pressures I do about the existential threat of what Donald Trump and some of these Republican states are trying to do,” Newsom said.

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The episode illustrates the obstacles some Democratic lawmakers have experienced trying to observe conditions in ICE detention centers, and what they say are restrictive rules that interfere with Congressional oversight.

Rep. Raul Ruiz, a Palm Desert Democrat, planned to learn if detainees had legal representation and had seen an immigration judge, and whether they had access to healthcare, hygiene and nutrition.

“I had a questionnaire that was prepared with staff and the ACLU and other organizations that asked if they, for example, were allowed a lawyer, phone calls, if they were able to communicate with their loved ones, if they were read their rights,” Ruiz said.

On Monday, July 7, he submitted a request to ICE to tour the facility last Friday with Rep. Norma Torres, an Ontario Democrat. An Instagram post by the two lawmakers showed an earlier message from Torres’ office on July 3, also asking to schedule a visit.

Both requests complied with ICE requirements for 72 hours notice, Ruiz said. But those were courtesy gestures, he said, since federal law doesn’t require advance notice for Congressional oversight visits. When Ruiz and Torres arrived, ICE turned them away.

“They turn around and tell me it’s now seven days notice,” he said. “They keep moving the goal post. We showed up in the hopes that Congressmember Norma Torres and I could enter the facility and speak with an ICE agent and do our jobs. As soon as they saw us they shut the gate and locked it with a chain and a deadbolt.”

The two lawmakers posted a video outside the locked gate, demanding to enter and calling for the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

The same day, Ruiz said, Rep. Jay Obernolte, a Hesperia Republican, also scheduled a visit and was allowed inside.

A statement from ICE said Obernolte had provided seven days notice for touring the detention facility, but Ruiz and Torres had not.

“Congressman Raul Ruiz and Congresswoman Norma Torres showed up to Rep. Obernolte’s approved visit; ignoring the established DHS directive regarding visiting ICE facilities,” the agency stated. “They were advised that ICE would be more than happy to accommodate their visit—provided it was scheduled in accordance with DHS policy.”

In a message on X after the visit Friday, Obernolte said he was satisfied with the conditions he observed. He toured the dormitories, cafeteria and recreation facilities, observed the meals and confirmed that detainees had access to legal counsel.

“It’s clear to me that this facility is doing its job: ensuring that detainees are treated humanely – with access to medical care, legal representation, and timely hearings – while helping ICE carry out its mission to enforce our immigration laws,” Obernolte wrote.

An earlier group of Southern California lawmakers who visited the facility in June reported problems with the facility. They found detainees were held “without enough food, clean clothing, the ability to call their families or access to a lawyer,” according to Rep. Judy Chu, a Pasadena Democrat.

Ruiz said the 72 hour notice requirement – and even more so the seven day notice period – makes it hard to tell if the facility is consistently maintaining humane conditions, or has spruced them up in advance of a Congressional visit.

He’ll try to schedule a visit again with at least seven days notice. If he still can’t get access, he’ll consider legal action to challenge the restrictions. The effort to access immigration detention facilities is about due process and also the workings of democracy, Ruiz said.

“When you have an executive branch who’s purposely denying a member of the legislative branch to provide oversight of the executive branch, then you’re starting to go down a very dangerous slippery slope that is contrary to the Constitution and ideas of the founding fathers and three co-equal branches of government,” Ruiz said. “They precisely did not want a single figure to act like a king.”

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About 8 in 10 Americans, 79%, say immigration is “a good thing” for the country today, an increase from 64% a year ago and a high point in the nearly 25-year trend. Only about 2 in 10 U.S. adults say immigration is a bad thing right now, down from 32% last year.

During Democratic President Joe Biden’s term in office, negative views of immigration had increased markedly, reaching a high point in the months before Trump, a Republican, took office. The new Gallup data suggests U.S. adults are returning to more pro-immigrant views that could complicate Trump’s push for sweeping deportations and other anti-immigration policies. The poll shows decreasing support for the type of mass deportations Trump has championed since before he was elected.

Since taking office, Trump has called on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to do all in its power to deliver “the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.” His administration has also pushed to limit access to federal benefits for immigrants who lack legal status, sought to revoke the citizenship of immigrants who commit crimes and is working to end birthright citizenship for children born to those without legal status or who are in the country temporarily.

In general, Americans’ views of immigration policies have shifted dramatically in the last year, the Gallup polling shows — including among Republicans, who have become much more content with immigration levels since Trump took office but who have also grown more supportive of pathways to citizenship for people in the country illegally.

The broader trend also shows that public opinion is generally much more favorable to immigrants than it was decades ago.

The vast majority of U.S. adults say immigration is good

Americans’ more positive view on immigration is driven primarily by a shift among Republicans and independents.

About two-thirds of Republicans now say immigrants are “a good thing” for the country, up from 39% last year. And independents moved from about two-thirds last year to 80% this year.

Democrats have maintained their overwhelmingly positive view of immigration in the last few years.

The share of Americans who want immigration decreased has dropped significantly

In the time since Trump took office, Republicans have become more satisfied with the level of immigration in the country.

The share of Americans who want immigration “decreased” in the United States dropped from 55% to 30%. While fewer Americans now want to decrease the number of people who come to the U.S. from other countries, more want immigration levels kept the same than want higher immigration levels. About 4 in 10 say immigration should be kept at its current level, and only 26% say immigration should be increased.

The poll suggests Republicans’ sharp anti-immigrant views highlighted before November’s election — which helped return Trump to the White House — have largely faded. The share of Republicans saying immigration should be decreased dropped from a high of 88% to 48% in the last year. Close to 4 in 10 Republicans now say immigration levels should remain the same, and only about 1 in 10 would like an increase.

Much of that Republican movement probably comes from support for the Trump administration’s stringent immigration enforcement, but there are also signs in the Gallup polling that Republicans have become more supportive of pathways to citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally and more likely to see benefits from immigration that could be at odds with the Trump administration’s priorities.

More Americans back a pathway to citizenship

Most Americans favor allowing immigrants living in the U.S. illegally the chance to become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements over a period of time, the poll shows.

Almost 9 in 10 U.S. adults, 85%, favor a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, and nearly as many say they favor a path to citizenship for all immigrants in the country illegally as long as they meet certain requirements.

That increased support for pathways to citizenship largely comes from Republicans, about 6 in 10 of whom now support that, up from 46% last year. Support was already very high among independents and Democrats.

Support for deporting immigrants in the country illegally has also decreased across the board, but less significantly. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults now favor deporting immigrants who are in the country illegally, down from about half a year ago.

Sanders writes for the Associated Press.

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