Ochoa Bogh, a Redlands Republican, wrote to Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, asking them to issue “expedited work permits to the millions of undocumented immigrants who are considered essential workers, such as farmworkers who provide critical services.” 

The effort marks a shift for Ochoa Bogh, who had long viewed immigration as a federal matter.

“For years I did not want to address immigration, and now I feel compelled to,” she told CalMatters. 

Republican Assemblymembers Leticia Castillo of Corona and Greg Wallis of Rancho Mirage, along with Republican and Democratic lawmakers from Southern California and the Central Valley, signed her letter urging a solution for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. including 2.5 million in California.

Some California Republicans have been trying to open lines of communication between the state and the White House. Last month Senator Suzette Martinez Valladares, a Santa Clarita Republican, asked Trump to focus immigration action on violent criminals and modernize the immigration process, in a letter with other Republican lawmakers including Ochoa Bogh.

“We need to advocate on the need for immigration reform and really talk about the issues that impact California,” Ochoa Bogh said. “I’m not sure that Democrats are actually communicating with the federal government.”

Trying to bridge that gap has been complicated by immigration raids that sparked conflict between California leaders and the Trump administration.

Protestors clashed with ICE agents and National Guard troops in Los Angeles last month. Perris Mayor Michael Vargas urged residents to stay inside following reports of ICE operations in the Riverside County city. And immigration enforcement on church property in San Bernardino County prompted Bishop Alberto Rojas to absolve parishioners from obligation to attend mass if they fear immigration action.

Restaurants throughout the state are closing temporarily as their workers and customers avoid immigration raids, CalMatters reported. ICE raids have ‘left crops rotting” on farms from Texas to California. 

“The system is broken,” Paul Granillo, President and CEO of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership, told CalMatters. “So we need to look at how people get their vegetables, how people get served in restaurants, and look at construction, and appreciate that unless we have immigration reform, the average Californian is going to pay more for all these goods and services, because we don’t have enough workers.”

The fallout to farms, restaurants, hotels and home-building has prompted Trump to waver between plans for mass deportations and possible concessions to employers. 

Some federal lawmakers see an opening. Congressmembers Mike Levin, a San Juan Capistrano Democrat, and Youn Kim, an Anaheim Hills Republican, proposed a federal reform package called the Dignity Act of 2025, which would provide a path to legal status for immigrant workers. Ochoa Bogh said she’s trying to build support for the bill in Sacramento.

The U.S. has offered various work visas and permits over the last century. The Bracero program, started during WW II, recruited Mexican workers to help on farms and other war industries. The H-2 Visa program of 1952 allowed foreign farmworkers to hold temporary jobs in agriculture.

Ochoa Bogh’s parents and grandparents worked under the Bracero program, so she relates to immigrants who are seeking jobs: “I have compassion and empathy for that heart.” 

Guestworker visas expanded with the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which also provided amnesty for established residents. In 1990, Congress added H-1B visas for skilled temporary workers, in a program that’s still widely used in the tech industry.

An effective work permit program should match foreign workers to labor market needs, Granillo said: “If you limit the number to smaller than the needs of the workforce, people are still going to come here, but will come illegally or overstay their visa.”

Stalled efforts to update those programs have left the country with an “outdated, slow-moving immigration system,” Ochoa Bogh wrote.

Fixing that would benefit employers, while protecting workers from unsafe work conditions and unfair pay, she said: “So that we’re able to have those folks stay here, and not work in the shadows. So that they are not subject to exploitation.”

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The Democratic governor, a fierce critic of President-elect Donald Trump, is positioning California to once again be the center of a resistance effort against the conservative agenda. He is asking his Democratic allies in the Legislature, who hold supermajorities in both chambers, to approve additional funding to the attorney general’s office to prepare for a robust legal fight against anticipated federal challenges.

Democratic Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel on Monday introduced legislation to set aside $25 million for legal fees to respond to potential attacks by the Trump administration on state policies regarding civil rights, climate change, immigration and abortion access.

“While we always hope to collaborate with our federal partners, California will be ready to vigorously defend our interests and values from any unlawful action by the incoming Trump Administration,” Gabriel said in a statement.

California sued the first Trump administration more than 120 times to various levels of success.

“We’re not going to be caught flat-footed,” Newsom said at a recent news conference.

Trump often depicts California as representing all he sees wrong in America. Democrats, which hold every statewide office in California and have commanding margins in the Legislature and congressional delegation, outnumber registered Republicans by nearly 2-to-1 statewide.

Trump called the Democratic governor “Newscum” during a campaign stop in Southern California and has relentlessly lambasted the Democratic stronghold over its large number of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, homeless population and thicket of regulations.

Trump also waded into a water rights battle over the endangered delta smelt, a tiny fish that has pitted environmentalists against farmers and threatened to withhold federal aid to a state increasingly under threat from wildfires. He also vowed to follow through with his campaign promise of carrying out the mass deportation of immigrants without legal status and prosecuting his political enemies.

Before the special session began, state lawmakers swore in more than two dozen new members and elect leaders for the 2025 legislative session. Lawmakers voted to convene the special session largely along party lines.

“This special session is about sticking up for Californians and for California values,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat representing San Francisco. “It is about ensuring that the president of the United States and his administration actually follow the law.”

Hundreds of people also demonstrated around the Capitol on Monday to urge the Legislature to try to stop Trump’s mass deportation plans. They carried banners that said “Not one cent for mass deportation” and “MAGA out of California.”

“With the results of the presidential election, we need our state elected officials to use every tool and every resource they have available to them to protect our immigrant Californians,” protester Deborah Lee said.

State Attorney General Rob Bonta said his office will protect the state’s immigration population, while Newsom last week unveiled a proposal to revive a rebate program for electric vehicle purchases if the incoming Trump administration eliminates a federal tax credit for people who buy electric cars. Newsom is also considering creating a backup disaster relief fund for the wildfire-prone state after Trump’s threats.

Bonta announced legislation Monday aimed at bolstering reproductive rights in the state, including by allowing the attorney general to seek monetary penalties against local governments that infringe on those rights. The proposals are part of the state’s efforts to safeguard against threats to abortion access after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Republican lawmakers blasted Newsom and his Democratic allies over the special session. State Sen. Kelly Seyarto, a Republican representing Murrieta in Southern California, said the special session proposal would make California have a more adversarial relationship with the federal government.

“What we’re doing today is sending that exact message — that we are going to fight tooth and nail for everything. And you know what? That means they’re going to fight us tooth and nail for everything,” Seyarto said of the incoming Trump administration if the legislation gets approved.

Legislators also are expected to spend the year discussing ways to protect dozens of laws expected to be targeted by the Trump administration, including one that has made the state a sanctuary for people seeking abortions who live in states where such practices have been severely limited.

California, the nation’s most populous state, was the first to mandate that by 2035 all new cars, pickup trucks and SUVs sold in California be electric, hydrogen-powered or plug-in hybrids. The state also extends state-funded health care to all low-income residents regardless of their immigration status.

Newsom hasn’t provided details about what actions the lawmakers will consider but said he wanted funding in place before Trump’s inauguration day, Jan. 20. The state spent roughly $42 million in litigation costs during the first Trump administration, officials said.

California is projected to face a $2 billion budget deficit next year, with bigger shortfalls ahead. Gabriel, who sued the first Trump administration in 2017 when it tried to end a program to shield young immigrants from being deported, said lining up the funding now is “a wise investment.”

California successfully clawed back $57 million between 2017 and 2018 after prevailing in a lawsuit to block the Trump administration from putting immigration enforcement conditions on certain federal law enforcement grants. Another legal victory over the citizenship question in the 2020 census forced the federal government to return $850,000 to the state, according to the attorney general’s office.

During Trump’s first presidency, Democratic attorneys general banded together to file lawsuits over immigration, Trump’s travel ban for residents of Muslim countries, the environment, immigration and other topics. But Trump has one possible advantage this time around: He was aggressive in nominating conservative jurists to federal courts at all levels, including the Supreme Court.

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But then I realized I already have.

I live in California.

If you do, too, you might be hungover, right about now. Or you’re wondering if this is all a nightmare.

It’s not. Well, it kind of is.

Vice President Kamala Harris, a California native, lost to former President Trump, and it wasn’t even close. A convicted male felon ran against a female former prosecutor and won decisively, running the table even in so-called battleground states, and Republicans also reclaimed the Senate and could well take the House.

A guy whose own running mate referred to him as “America’s Hitler,” called him a reprehensible idiot and “a total fraud,” will soon be moving back into the White House after months of juvenile name-calling and vulgarity.

Putin is partying. Ukraine is weeping. And you’re Googling real estate listings in Portugal, or Canada, or maybe you’re looking into those homes in Italy that sell for $1.

No need.

You live in California, which stands apart (along with 18 other states).

Not entirely, of course. Roughly 40% of the state’s votes will be logged for Trump when the counting is complete, with red streaks running down the center of the state.

And California had its own mini-version of a rightward tilt, with Proposition 36 (tougher penalties for criminal and drug offenses) leading in a rout as of Wednesday morning, and criminal justice reform-minded L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón’s reelection bid going down in flames.

To be fair, California’s dominant, super-majority liberal leadership has been feeble in the face of homelessness, income inequality, child poverty and the housing affordability crisis.

Not that Trump policies as president had much of an impact on those problems in California or any other state, and not that he’s come up with any new or ambitious plans since then.

“The state of California is a mess,” Trump said in September, using us as a foil, but also as a springboard, casting a global economic powerhouse as a failure, a sanctuary cesspool and a symbol of wretchedly woke excess.

Insult, or badge of honor?

California said no to the candidate who has waged an assault on women’s reproductive rights and called his female opponent dumb as a rock.

No to the candidate who called climate change a hoax.

No to the candidate who calls immigrants savages and animals.

No to the candidate who has embraced RFK Jr., who wants to pull vaccines off shelves, get fluoride out of drinking water, and who knows — maybe send the nation’s science teachers off to a gulag somewhere.

No to the candidate whose allies put together a second-term playbook called Project 2025, which would seek to wage war nationally on the very idea of California’s progressive policies on abortion, inclusion, gun control, immigration, LGBTQ+ rights and the environment.

No to the candidate who appeals to the worst in us.

Jimmy Carter once said, “We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.”

Trump once said, “They are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. … They are eating the pets of the people that live there.”

In California, we did not vote for that candidate.

We understand that immigration reform is badly needed but know that Trump’s promised deportation of millions of people would cost a fortune, destroy major industries, raise the prices of goods and services, rip families apart and cripple the economy.

In California, defeat does not signal the end of the fight (the state could well end up in court, forced to defend and preserve its progressive policies against Trump attacks). And don’t forget that while we stand apart, we do not stand alone.

The other states that went for Harris are Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, Minnesota, Illinois, Virginia, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland.

So I suppose you could consider moving to one of those places in these ever-more-divided United States.

But I was born in California and plan to stay put for now, here in the home of the resistance.

The post Column: Trump return could be a growing California nightmare. But leave the U.S? No need appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Harris’ push to further restrict asylum claims moves beyond President Joe Biden’s policy on an issue where her rival, former President Donald Trump, has an edge with voters. She balanced tough talk on policing the border with calls for a better way to welcome immigrants legally.

“I reject the false choice that suggests we must choose either between securing our border and creating a system that is orderly, safe and humane,” Harris said. “We can and we must do both.”

In her first trip to the international boundary since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, Harris chatted with local Border Patrol leaders as they strode along a rust-colored stretch of wall built during Barack Obama’s presidency. Temperatures in Douglas, Arizona, neared 100 degrees during a conversation that lasted about half an hour.

Later, Harris received a closed-door briefing at the Douglas port of entry on efforts to combat drug trafficking and improve the legal flow of goods and people across the border. Border Patrol agents have “a tough job” and deserve support to do it, she said.

Harris’ visit was designed as a rejoinder to Trump and his fellow Republicans, who have pounded her relentlessly over the Biden administration’s record on migration and fault the vice president for spending little time visiting the border during her time in the White House.

Immigration and border security are top issues in Arizona, the only battleground state that borders Mexico and one that contended with a record influx of asylum seekers last year. Voters favor Trump on migration, and Harris has gone on offense to improve her standing on the issue and defuse a key line of political attack for her opponent.

She used her remarks to challenge Trump’s own record on migration during his presidency, saying he did nothing to fix the legal immigration system or address an outdated asylum system. And she said he failed to solve a shortage of immigration judges and border agents.

Harris recounted how a sweeping bipartisan package aiming to overhaul the federal immigration system collapsed in Congress earlier this year after Trump urged top Republicans to oppose it.

“Donald Trump tanked it,” she said, so he could campaign on disorder at the border.

“He prefers to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem,” Harris added. “And the American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games and their personal political future.”

After the immigration legislation stalled, the Biden administration announced rules that bar migrants from being granted asylum when U.S. officials deem that the southern border is overwhelmed. Since then, arrests for illegal border crossings have fallen.

Harris’ plan to exceed Biden’s efforts at the border would include more serious criminal charges for people who repeatedly cross illegally and require asylum claims to be made at ports of entry.

She used her trip to remind voters about her work as attorney general of California in confronting crime along the border. She talked about helping to prosecute drug- and people-smuggling gangs that operated transnationally and at the border.

The vice president’s trip to Douglas thrusts the issue of immigration into the brightest spotlight yet less than six weeks before Election Day.

Trump didn’t wait for her to arrive there before pushing back. He pointed Friday to purported data about criminals entering the U.S. illegally in a bid to link Harris to violent crimes committed by migrants. In a scathing diatribe, he said “blood is on her hands.”

“These are hard, tough, vicious criminals that are free to roam in our country,” Trump said at a manufacturing plant in Michigan.

Earlier in the week, he told voters that “when Kamala speaks about the border, her credibility is less than zero.”

The Trump campaign has also countered with TV ads deriding the vice president as a failed “border czar.”

“Under Harris, over 10 million illegally here,” said one spot. However, estimates on how many people have entered the country illegally since the start of the Biden administration in 2021 vary widely.

Harris also never held the position of border czar. Instead, her assignment was to tackle the “root causes” of migration from three Central American nations — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — that were responsible for a significant share of border crossers.

As vice president, Harris has taken a long-term approach to an immediate problem, helping persuade multinational corporations and Latin American businesses to invest in the region. That, she argued, would create jobs and give locals more reasons to stay home rather than take the arduous trek north.

Still, Trump has continued to decry an “invasion” of border crossers.

Douglas, where Harris appeared, is an overwhelmingly Democratic border town in GOP-dominated Cochise County, where the Republicans on the board of supervisors are facing criminal charges for refusing to certify the 2022 election results. Trump was in the area last month, using a remote stretch of border wall and a pile of steel beams to draw a contrast between himself and Harris on border security.

The town of 16,000 people has strong ties to its much larger neighbor, Agua Prieta, Mexico, and a busy port of entry that’s slated for a long-sought upgrade. Many locals are as concerned with making legal border crossings more efficient as they are with combatting illegal ones.

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