immigrants

WASHINGTON — An undocumented man from Guatemala who has leukemia postponed chemotherapy because he was afraid to go to the hospital.

A Mexican grandmother packed most of her belongings into boxes, in case she is deported.

A Pentecostal church in East Los Angeles has lost nearly half of its in-person membership.

Across California and the U.S., immigrants are responding to the Trump administration’s unrelenting enforcement raids by going into lockdown. Activities that were once a regular or even mundane part of life — taking kids to school, buying groceries, driving — have become daunting as immigrants who lack legal authorization grapple with how to avoid arrest and deportation.

To stay safe, some immigrants have swapped in-person activities with digital approximations. Others are simply shutting themselves away from society.

“It’s a harmful form of racial profiling combined with the suspension of constitutional rights and due process. That’s why many families are staying at home,” said Victor Narro, a professor and project director for the UCLA Labor Center.

Pastor Carlos Rincon said that about 400 people used to attend his church every week. Now, half as many attend and viewership of live-streamed services on Facebook and YouTube has increased.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Pastor Carlos Rincon, who leads a Pentecostal church in East Los Angeles, said that about 400 people used to attend his church every week, people with roots in Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras. Now, half as many attend and viewership of live-streamed services on Facebook and YouTube has increased. Some prayer groups meet on Zoom.

In January, the Trump administration said immigration agents were free to make arrests in sensitive locations once considered off limits, such as hospitals, schools and churches.

At Rincon’s church — which he asked not be named for concern about retaliation — fear has colored life in ways large and small.

A congregant in his late 20s who has leukemia postponed his chemotherapy, afraid he could be caught and deported to Guatemala. After he decided to reschedule the upcoming treatment, church leaders agreed they will take turns staying with him at the hospital.

Pastor Carlos Rincon says he has had to cancel a music class for children due to the raids. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The Trump administration has said immigration agents are free to make arrests in locations once considered off limits such as hospitals, schools and churches. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

A half-day program to provide resources for landscapers and a music class for children were canceled this month after many said they were too afraid to attend. Rincon restarted the music class last week for those who could attend.

On Wednesday, after neighbors told him that immigration agents had been lurking around the area, he warned families against attending a regularly scheduled in-person church service.

Five miles away at Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Father Ricardo Gonzalez said church attendance is down at least 30%. The church doesn’t live-stream Mass, though he’s considering it.

Gonzalez said parishioners expect him to have answers, but as an immigrant green card holder himself, he too doesn’t know how to react if immigration agents show up at the church.

“If I get arrested, am I going to be thrown from the country?” he said. “Who is going to help me out?”

Pastor Carlos Rincon and his wife, Amparo, sing and pray during a livestream service at their church.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

For weeks, agents have been arresting those who show up at courthouses for their immigration proceedings.

Volunteers at USC, UCLA, UC Irvine and UC Law San Francisco responded by establishing a free hotline to help people file motions to move their appointments online. The service was the idea of Olu Orange, a lawyer and USC political science and international relations professor who runs the Agents of Change Civil Rights Advocacy Initiative.

Since the hotline (888-462-5211) went live June 15, volunteers have responded to nearly 4,000 calls and helped more than 300 people fill out the form to move their hearings online.

On Friday, Orange answered a call from a girl who sounded about 12 years old, whose parent had been picked up by immigration agents.

“She saw this number on social media and she called and she said, ‘What can I do?’” Orange said. He gave her the number for CHIRLA, a local immigrant rights nonprofit.

Luz Gallegos, executive director of TODEC Legal Center in the Inland Empire, said the pandemic prepared some rural and elderly residents for the current reality because it taught people to use technology — “to go virtual.” Now they have WiFi access and know how to use Zoom.

Some, though, also fear staying digitally connected.

Gallegos said many people who call TODEC’s hotline say they are changing phone companies because they are afraid of being tracked by immigration agents. Others say they’re swapping cellphones for pagers.

A woman identified only as Doña Chela at her home Tuesday. She has packed up her possessions planning to return to her hometown in Michoacan, Mexico, for the first time in more than 25 years. But her brother said it wasn’t safe.

(Julie Leopo / For The Times)

Many of the immigrants served by TODEC now leave their homes only for work, Gallegos said. They have groceries delivered or run to the store when they think border agents are least likely to be on patrol. Before schools let out for the summer, some parents switched their children to online classes.

Some Inland Empire farmworkers now won’t grab their own mail from community mailboxes, Gallegos said, so TODEC has mobilized volunteers to drop off mail, give people rides and help with interpretation needs.

One person helped by the nonprofit is Doña Chela, an undocumented 66-year-old woman who asked to be identified by her nickname.

Many months ago, Doña Chela packed up her possessions after making plans to return to her hometown in Michoacan, Mexico, for the first time since she arrived in the U.S. in 1999. But in April, her brother called to say it wasn’t safe there, that cartel groups had taken over the neighborhood and were extorting residents.

Her husband, a U.S. citizen, has dementia. She thought of moving instead to a border town such as Mexicali, where she and her husband could still be near their three adult U.S.-born daughters.

Doña Chela stands by the packed luggage in her home. (Julie Leopo / For The Times)

Doña Chela waters her home garden. “If it wasn’t for this garden I would not know what to do with myself,” she said in Spanish. (Julie Leopo / For The Times)

But then her husband’s condition began to decline, and now starting over feels too difficult. Even so, she has chosen to keep her clothes, pots and pans, and jewelry packed away — just in case.

Doña Chela doesn’t leave her home except for emergencies. Her daughters bring her groceries because she has stopped driving. She no longer goes to church or makes big batches of tamales for community reunions. She barely sleeps, thinking that agents could burst through her door any time.

“I don’t know what to do anymore,” she said, crying. “I will wait here until they kick me out.”

Her only distraction from constant anxiety is the lush garden she tends to daily, with mangoes, nopales, limes and a variety of herbs.

Gallegos, of TODEC, said the situation faced by Doña Chela and so many others bring to mind a song by Los Tigres del Norte — “La Jaula de Oro.” The golden cage.

“Our community is in a golden cage,” she said. “I hope it’s not too late when this country realizes they need our immigrant workforce to sustain our economy.”

St. John’s Community Health, one of the largest nonprofit community healthcare providers in Los Angeles County that caters to low-income and working-class residents, launched a home visitation program after it surveyed patients and found many canceling appointments “solely due to fear of being apprehended by ICE.”

The clinic, which serves L.A., the Inland Empire and the Coachella Valley, said that since the immigration raids began, more than a third of all patients didn’t show up or canceled their appointments.

Some of those who canceled signed up for telehealth or home visits performed by a small team of medical staff, according to Jim Mangia, the clinic’s chief executive. The clinic is adding another home visitation team to double the amount of visits they perform.

Community coalitions are stepping in to help immigrants who can’t afford to hide. OC Rapid Response Network, for instance, raised enough funds through payment app Venmo to send 14 street vendors home.

Robb Smith stands by the food he delivered after he unloaded his truck at a food drop site on Monday in Paramount.

(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)

Robb Smith, who runs Alley Cat Deliveries, said he has seen requests for grocery deliveries grow by about 25%.

He doesn’t ask his customers if they’re immigrants in hiding, but there are signs that people are afraid to leave their house. One woman, who said she was making an inquiry for a friend, asked him if he saw any ICE officers when he was picking up items at Costco.

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1. Tito Rodriguez helps unload Robb Smith’s truck of drieg goods and groceries at a drop site on Monday in Paramount. 2. Robb Smith, left, unloads his truck with the help of Tito Rodriguez at the drop site on Monday in Paramount. 3. Robb Smith carries a box of groceries down a driveway Monday in Long Beach. He founded and runs Alley Cat Deliveries. (Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)

Glen Curado, the founder and chief executive of World Harvest Food Bank in Los Angeles, said there has been a significant drop in people coming in to pick up groceries in person. Up to 100 families visit the food bank on a weekday, down from the usual high of 150, he said.

The food bank has a program, called Cart With A Heart, in which people can donate $50 toward fresh produce, protein and other staples to feed two families for a week. The donors can then take those groceries to people sheltering in place.

“It’s almost like a war scene,” Curado said. “You hide here. I’ll go out and I’ll get it for you, and I’ll bring it back — that mentality.”

Castillo reported from Washington and Wong from San Francisco. Times staff writer Melissa Gomez in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Between June 6 and June 22, immigration enforcement teams arrested 1,618 immigrants for deportation in Los Angeles and surrounding regions of Southern California, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

DHS did not respond to requests for information on how many of those arrested had criminal histories and a breakdown of those convictions.

As immigration arrests have occurred across Southern California, demonstrators have protested the federal government’s actions and bystanders have sometimes confronted immigration officers or videotaped their actions. Between June 6 and June 22, 787 people have been arrested for assault, obstruction and unlawful assembly, a DHS spokesperson said.

Figures about the Los Angeles operation released by the White House on June 11 indicated that about one third of those arrested up until that point had prior criminal convictions.

The “area of responsibility” for the Los Angeles field office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area and the Central Coast, as well as Orange County to the south, Riverside County to the east and up the coast to San Luis Obispo County.

Data from the first days of the Los Angeles enforcement operation show that a majority of those arrested had never been charged with or convicted of a crime.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Monday that 75% of nationwide arrests under the Trump administration have been of immigrants with criminal convictions or pending charges. But data published by Immigration and Customs Enforcement show that figure is lower in recent weeks.

Nationally, the number of people arrested without criminal convictions has jumped significantly and many of those are nonviolent offenders, according to nonpublic data obtained by the Cato Institute that covers the period from last Oct. 1, the start of the federal fiscal year, to June 15. The most frequent crimes are immigration and traffic offenses.

Serious violent offenders account for just 7% of those in custody, according to Cato.

Immigration enforcement officers have recently intensified efforts to deliver on President Trump’s promise of mass deportations. In California, that has meant arrests of people in courthouses, on farms and in Home Depot parking lots.

But, with a daily goal of 3,000 arrests nationwide, administration officials still complain that agents are failing to arrest enough immigrants.

Democrats and immigrant community leaders argue that agents are targeting people indiscriminately. Despite the chaotic nature of the raids and protests in Los Angeles, 1,618 arrests by DHS in southern California over more than two weeks is about 101 arrests per day — a relatively small contribution to the daily nationwide goal.

Perhaps the bigger achievement than the arrests themselves, advocates say, is the fear that those actions have stoked.

Times staff writer Rachel Uranga contributed to this report.

On Friday morning, more than 50 community and religious leaders from around Los Angeles signed a petition that called on the Dodgers “to take a public stand against the indiscriminate ICE raids which are causing immense terror in our communities, hurting businesses, and separating families.”

By Friday afternoon, the team finally started to put some public plans into action.

In their first public response to the immigration raids that have swept through Los Angeles over the last two weeks, the Dodgers announced they have committed $1 million toward assistance for families of immigrants affected by the recent events in the city, as well as plans for further initiatives that are to be unveiled in the coming days.

“What’s happening in Los Angeles has reverberated among thousands upon thousands of people, and we have heard the calls for us to take a leading role on behalf of those affected,” team president Stan Kasten said in a statement. “We believe that by committing resources and taking action, we will continue to support and uplift the communities of Greater Los Angeles.”

After days of increasing calls for the team to address the unrest that has swept through the city over the last two weeks, the pressure on the Dodgers had been ratcheted up again with Friday’s petition.

“This is the moment for the Dodgers to stand with the families whom masked agents are tearing apart,” read the letter, which was signed by religious officials, labor leaders and immigrant-rights activists, and addressed to Dodgers owner Mark Walter.

“If these truly are OUR beloved Los Angeles Dodgers, we need you, more than ever, to stand with us, immigrants and non-immigrants alike. Stand with all of us.”

The petition, which was organized by faith-based community organizing network PICO California, came a day after the Dodgers initially postponed their planned financial assistance announcement.

The club decided to delay its announcement after immigration agents showed up at Dodger Stadium on Thursday morning, attempting to access the ballpark’s parking lots in an apparent effort to use them as a processing site for people who had been arrested in a nearby immigration raid.

The Dodgers denied the agents entry to the grounds, according to the team, but pushed their announcement to Friday afternoon — when they detailed that their $1 million in financial resources will be made in partnership with the City of Los Angeles.

“The Dodgers and the City of Los Angeles have a proven ability to get financial resources to those in critical need, most recently seen in their efforts to aid victims of the January wildfires,” the Dodgers said. “Through our support of the city’s efforts, the Dodgers will encourage those organizations in a similar position to use their resources to directly support the families and workers who have suffered economic hardship.”

The team said more initiatives with local community and labor organizations will be announced in the coming days.

“I want to thank the Dodgers for leading with this action to support the immigrant community of Los Angeles,” Mayor Karen Bass said in a team statement.

That news checked off one of the requests laid out in Friday’s earlier petition, which implored the club to:

• Issue a public statement affirming that families are sacred, and that the ICE raids must stop
• Stand with and support community organizations that are welcoming, protecting, and integrating immigrants into the fabric of our great region
• As when you asked ICE to leave the property yesterday, continue to ensure that no Dodgers’ property or assets will be used to aid or abet immigration enforcement operations

A news release announcing the letter also promoted a public petition campaign for fans to sign.

Many of the signatories of Friday’s petition were local church leaders, including the bishops of the Methodist California-Pacific Conference and Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.

The petition was also signed by representatives from more than 20 community advocacy groups, including the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and National Day Laborer Organizing Network; as well as labor leaders from local teacher unions and the Service Employees International Union, among others.

“We love the Dodgers not only because they are champions, but even more because they are the team of Jackie Robinson, of Fernando Valenzuela, of Kiké Hernandez — baseball players who have helped bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice,” Joseph Tomás McKellar, executive director of the PICO California organization that organized the petition, said in a statement Friday morning. “This is a moment when the Dodgers, a beloved family and cultural institution for 67 years, can take a moral stand and make an impact on the lives of vulnerable families in our region. Families are sacred.”

After the Dodgers’ announcement, Reverend Zach Hoover from LA Voice, a member federation of PICO California, released another statement.

“The Dodgers have taken a meaningful step toward addressing the fear in our communities. By committing real resources to immigrant families, they’re showing that moral courage and civic leadership still matter in Los Angeles, and that we can heal the wounds of hate with the power of love. We pray this is just the beginning — because dignity demands more than silence, and faith calls us to act.”

Amid the Dodgers’ silence about federal immigration raids in Southern California, a familiar voice that has comforted immigrants for years emerged.

Jaime Jarrín, the former Spanish-language voice of the Dodgers who captivated thousands of fans for decades and served as Fernando Valenzuela’s translator during Fernandomania, posted a message on his Instagram account about the raids and protests in a city he adopted as his own in 1958.

“As an immigrant who came to this country 70 years ago, I know firsthand the hope, courage and determination it takes to build a new life in a new land,” Jarrín posted Tuesday. “I have always believed that immigration is not just part of the American story; it is the American story.”

“Los Angeles is my home,” Jarrín added in his Instagram post. “This city is my family. And it breaks my heart to see the growing division in our community and across the country. We all deserve to be treated with dignity, respect and humanity.”

Former Dodgers Spanish language broadcaster Jaime Jarrín posted a message in support of immigrants and protestors following to weeks of ICE raids.

(Fernando Llano / Associated Press)

The message from the Baseball Hall of Fame inductee and Dodgers ambassador was celebrated while critics grew more vocal opposing the team’s silence following ICE raids and protests in the Los Angeles area the past two weeks. A Dodgers spokesman said the team would announce plans to aid immigrants on Thursday, but it delayed the announcement after turning away federal agents who tried to use the team parking lot after conducting raids at the Hollywood Home Depot and surrounding areas.

Jarrín is originally from Quito, Ecuador, and his first job in this country was in a factory in East Los Angeles. Over time, Jarrín became the sports director for KWKW and a Dodgers broadcaster for more than six decades. Jarrín worked alongside Valenzuela when he was a rookie in Major League Baseball in 1981, serving as his translator during Fernandomania in the 1980s. They later shared microphones in the radio booth broadcasting Dodger games in Spanish.

“In the face of the injustices and suffering we have witnessed, I am deeply proud of the thousands who have peacefully taken to the streets; raising their voices, refusing to be silenced. Their courage matters. Your presence matters. Do not be afraid. Stand strong. Stay present. Let your voice be heard,” added Jarrín.

President Donald Trump’s massive deportation orders have affected the professional sports atmosphere in Los Angeles. The games typically draw Latinos and immigrants from a wide range of countries. Tournaments such as the Gold Cup and the Club World Cup lost fans as some stayed away from stadiums because they feared potential raids or preferred to show solidarity with the demonstrations.

Of Los Angeles’ 12 professional sports teams, as of Friday morning, only two have issued public statements about the raids. Angel City FC and LAFC have shown their support for the community since the protests began, while the Dodgers and Galaxy, with a heavily Latino and immigrant fan bases, have remained silent.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has responded to some questions from reporters, but he has limited his remarks to saying he understood that the community is “heartbroken” and said the situation was somewhat “unsettling for everyone.”

Fan favorite Kiké Hernández took to his social networks to say he was “sad and enraged” at how immigrants were treated, noting the city of Los Angeles had opened its arms to him.

The Puerto Rican player, who helped the Dodgers win the World Series last season, wrote: “Maybe I wasn’t born and raised here, but this city adopted me as if I was one of them. I am too sad and infuriated with everything that is going on in the country and in our city. Los Angeles and Dodger fans have opened their arms to me, supported me and shown me a lot of kindness and most of all a lot of LOVE! This is my second home,” posted Hernandez, who was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and is in his second stint with the Dodgers after playing in L.A. from 2015-20 and returning from 2023 to the present.

“I cannot tolerate watching our community continue to be violated, attacked, abused and separated. ALL people deserve to be treated with respect, dignity and their human rights. I stand with you!!! #CiudadDeImigrantes,” the Dodger wrote on Sunday, using a hashtag referring to L.A. as a city of immigrants in Spanish.

Meanwhile, Maria Valenzuela, the daughter of legendary pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, spoke out against the ICE raids.

“I am a proud daughter of immigrant parents. They came to this country with dreams bigger than borders. My mother followed her heart, and my father not only pitched for the Dodgers, but for all immigrants who believed they belonged in this country,” Maria Valenzuela posted on Instagram. “He helped shape a city and inspired generations of Mexicans to dream big. Behind the fame was the same immigrant story: sacrifice, struggle and endless work for a better future.”

This article first appeared in Spanish via L.A. Times en Español.

After nearly a week of protests in Los Angeles against recent federal immigration enforcement sweeps in the city, President Trump doubled down on his administration’s efforts to detain and deport immigrants without documentation, claiming they are a key voting bloc in Democratic cities.

In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump said Los Angeles and “other such cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use illegal aliens to expand their voter base, cheat in elections, and grow the welfare state, robbing good paying jobs and benefits from hardworking American citizens.”

But according to Los Angeles County election officials, that’s simply not true.

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“That claim is false and unsupported, and only serves to create unsubstantiated concern and confusion about the electoral process,” the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s office said in a statement.

In reality, the county has safeguards in place to ensure only eligible voters cast ballots and that all votes are accurately counted, said Mike Sanchez, spokesperson for the county’s Registrar-Recorder’s office.

How do people become registered voters in California?

In the state of California there are five requirements a person must meet to register to vote, according to the California Secretary of State. To register an individual must be:

1. A U.S. citizen.
2. A resident of California.
3. At least 18 years or older on or before Election Day.
4. Not currently serving a state or federal prison term for the conviction of a felony.
5. Not currently found mentally incompetent to vote by a court.

When a person meets the eligibility criteria, they can register to vote which includes attesting under penalty of perjury that they meet all eligibility requirements, including being a U.S. citizen and a resident of California, said Sanchez.

“This sworn statement is a legal declaration and serves as the foundation of the voter registration process,” Sanchez said.

Voting as a noncitizen is a felony that can lead to a year in jail or deportation, said Hasen.

Though there are some cities in the United States where noncitizens can participate in local elections, for example in communities in Vermont and Maryland, participation is limited to voting in school board or city council elections.

In California, San Francisco is the only city where noncitizens can vote and it is limited to the school board.

How does Los Angeles County verify who is voting in federal elections?

Once a voter registers, their personal information is verified through the State Voter Registration database, which is done by cross-checking state Department of Motor Vehicle records or the last four digits of the person’s Social Security number, Sanchez said.

When the verification process is complete, a voter does not have to show their identification when voting in person. If verification has not occurred, the voter must show identification the first time they vote. Acceptable forms of identification include a driver’s license, state-issued I.D or passport; the California Secretary of State has a complete online list of what identifying documents to take to the polling place.

Once polling places open for voters within the county, the voter must sign a roster in the presence of election workers, who attest to their identity and eligibility.

“Elections officials also conduct regular voter roll maintenance, checking against several data points including death records from the California Department of Public Health, Social Security Administration, Department of Motor Vehicles, and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation,” the California Secretary of State told The Times in a statement.

For vote-by-mail ballots, the signature on the return envelope is compared to the one on file in the voter registration record, Sanchez said. If the signature does not match or is missing, the voter is contacted and given a chance to correct it.

“Only verified ballots are accepted and counted,” he said.

Where do the claims about undocumented immigrants voting originate?

The claim that immigrants lacking documentation vote in large numbers — and for Democrats — has been repeated for years.

It has seeds in the once-fringe racist conspiracy theory called the “great replacement.” According to a poll by the Associated Press and and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 1 in 3 Americans now believe “an effort is underway to replace U.S.-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains.”

The theory has gained momentum under Trump.

In 2016, Trump won the Electoral College and the presidency, but not the popular vote. That went to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who received about 2.9 million more votes.

Trump then claimed, without evidence, that he would have won the popular vote if 3 to 5 million immigrants living in the country illegally hadn’t voted.

“About 3 million votes was the margin by which he lost the popular vote which is why I think he chose that 3 million number to try to explain away his popular vote loss,” Hasen said.

After losing his reelection bid in 2020 to Joe Biden, when voting by mail was a focus, Trump refocused on immigrants lacking authorization in the 2024 campaign and was ultimately voted back into the White House.

“In 2024, when I think Trump and the Republicans concluded that the attacks on absentee ballots were actually hurting them because people don’t want to show up in person to vote, the shift went back to immigration,” Hasen said.

Voter fraud claims echo whomever is trying to dictate the political narrative, according to Hasen.

Researchers have found, repeatedly through decades of investigation, that fraud conducted by voters at the polls is virtually nonexistent and does not happen “on a scale even close to that necessary to “rig” an election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Many instances of reported fraud were due to clerical errors or human errors.

“I think one of the things we’ve seen is people on the losing end of elections tend to be more likely to believe that there’s cheating,” Hasen said. “But Donald Trump has really supercharged things to the point where we’re way beyond what we normally see in terms of partisan divisions.”

But Trump is not alone in fueling that theory recently. Last year as he campaigned for Trump, billionaire Elon Musk repeated those claims on his social media platform, X.

“If the Democratic party gains enough voters to win an election by importing them and giving them free stuff, then they will do so,” he posted in September.

So is the number of undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles growing?

Yes, but likely not at the rate it once was, said Manuel Paster, professor of sociology and American studies at USC.

California’s immigrant population — including those without authorization — increased by 5% (about 500,000) from 2010 to 2023, compared to 14% (1.27 million) from 2000 to 2010, and by 37% (2.4 million) rise in the 1990s, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

Between 2019 and 2022, the population of undocumented immigrants in most states across the nation steadily climbed. California’s however, decreased, according to the Pew Research Center.

These days, most new immigrants are going to Florida, Texas and the South rather than high-cost California, Pastor said.

“Los Angeles, more than 70% of our undocumented immigrants have been in the country for longer than a decade,” he said. “They’re more likely to be long established employees, parents, parts of faith institutions.”

Amid ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids happening in Los Angeles and across the country, Shakira is opening up about the realities of being an immigrant in the United States.

The 48-year-old singer spoke with the BBC last week about moving as a teenager from her native Colombia to Miami in the ’90s.

“I was only 19 when I moved to the US, like many other Colombian immigrants who come to this country looking for a better future,” she said. “And I remember I was surrounded by Spanish-English dictionaries and synonym dictionaries because back in the day I didn’t really have Google or ChatGPT to [help].”

Further commenting on her “very precarious” situation, Shakira noted that she used the works of poet Walt Whitman and singer-songwriters Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan to refine her English skills.

But beyond the language learning pains, the “Estoy Aquí” artist spoke on the emotional toll of the immigrant experience.

“It means living in constant fear. And it’s painful to see,” Shakira said. “Now, more than ever, we have to remain united. Now, more than ever, we have to raise our voices and make it very clear that a country can change its immigration policies, but the treatment of all people must always be humane.”

This isn’t the first time Shakira has touched on the subject of immigration in recent months.

While accepting the Latin pop album Grammy for “Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran” in February, the “Whenever, Wherever” singer dedicated her award to her “immigrant brothers and sisters in this country”

“You are loved, you are worth it and I will always fight with you,” she said.

Shakira’s recent words of solidarity with the immigrant community came as other major Latin American music acts used their platforms to condemn the ICE raids and align their sympathies with immigrants. Becky G, Ivan Cornejo, Fuerza Regida, Junior H, Grupo Frontera and Maná were among the acts to publicly voice concern for the immigrant community.

Things were looking tense in Los Angeles on Thursday even before federal agents took down U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla.

We had the Marines, slightly trained in domestic crowd control, heading out to do crowd control. We had ICE raids, sweeping up a man from a church. Or maybe it was ICE — the armed and masked agents refused to say where they were from.

But then the situation went further south, which to be honest, I thought would take at least until Monday.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was in town to cosplay at being an ICE agent herself. You know she loves to dress up. Padilla, who was in the same building to meet with a general, went to a news conference she was hosting and tried to ask her a question.

Bad idea.

Federal agents manhandled him out of the room, shoved him down onto his knees and handcuffed him. The FBI has confirmed to my colleagues that he was not arrested, but that’s little comfort.

While officers may not have known Padilla was a U.S. senator when they started going after him, they certainly did by the time the cuffs were snapping.

Padilla was heard saying, “Hands off, hands off. I’m Sen. Alex Padilla,” as the officers pushed him back.

The hands remained on.

Shortly after the video of this frightening episode hit social media, Gov. Gavin Newsom posted on X, “If they can handcuff a U.S. Senator for asking a question, imagine what they will do to you.”

Indeed.

After the news conference, Noem offered a sorry-not-sorry.

“I wish that he would have reached out and identified himself and let us know who he was and that he wanted to talk,” she told reporters. “His approach, you know, was something that I don’t think was appropriate at all, but the conversation was great, and we’re going to continue to communicate.”

It was great! Send in the Marines!

When asked why she had ordered the removal of Padilla, Noem deferred to law enforcement.

“I’ll let the law enforcement speak to how this situation was handled, but I will say that it’s people need to identify themselves before they start lunging at these moments during press conference,” she said.

“Lunging.”

It is starting to feel like being brown in America is a crime. Brown man allegedly lunging is the new Black man driving — scary enough that any response is justified.

Sen. Adam Schiff, our other California senator, came to his colleague’s defense, demanding an investigation.

“Anyone who looks at it — anyone — anyone who looks at this, it will turn your stomach,” he said. “To look at this video and see what happened reeks — reeks — of totalitarianism. This is not what democracies do.”

Political pundit Mike Madrid pointed out how personal this issue of immigration is to Padilla.

Padilla is the son of Mexican immigrants, Santos and Lupe Padilla. He went into politics in 1995 because of the anti-immigrant Proposition 187, the California measure that knocked all undocumented people off of many public services, including schools. He’s been a champion of immigrant communities ever since.

“Hard to describe how angered and passionate Senator Alex Padilla is — I’ve known him for 25 years and never seen anything like this,” Madrid wrote online. “He’s a living example of how Latinos feel right now.”

And not just Latinos — all Americans who care about democracy.

We are about to have approximately 3,000 hours of debate on whether Padilla deserved what he got because he was not invited to the press conference.

The right wing is going to parse the video looking for that lunge and saying Padilla was aggressive. The left will say he has a right to ask questions, even a duty because he is an elected representative whose constituents are being detained and disappeared, even ones that are U.S. citizens.

I’ll say I genuinely do not care if you are pro-Trump or pro-Padilla.

If you care about our Constitution, about due process, about civil rights, watching a U.S. senator forced onto his knees for asking questions should be a terrifying wake up call.

It turns out that it’s true: after they come for the vulnerable, they do indeed come for the rest.

WASHINGTON — Immigration agents have arrested 330 immigrants in Los Angeles and surrounding regions of Southern California since Friday, the White House confirmed Wednesday.

The numbers came from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who also slammed Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, saying they — President Trump — “fanned the flames” of violence in Los Angeles.

The “area of responsibility” for the Los Angeles field office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area and the Central Coast, as well as Orange County to the south, Riverside County to the east and up the coast to San Luis Obispo County.

During a press briefing, Leavitt said 157 people have also been arrested on assault and obstruction-related charges. That includes a man charged Wednesday with the attempted murder of a police officer for throwing a Molotov cocktail. Overall, Leavitt said that 113, or about a third, of those detained had prior criminal convictions.

The White House and the Department of Homeland Security have touted the arrests of specific individuals in recent days, including people from Vietnam, Mexico and the Philippines who had previously been convicted of crimes, such as second-degree murder, rape and child molestation.

Leavitt condemned the protests in Los Angeles against raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“These attacks were aimed not just at law enforcement, but at American culture and society itself,” she said. “Rioters burned American flags, chanted death to ICE and spray-painted anti-American slogans on buildings.”

Echoing sentiments Trump has relayed, Leavitt criticized Newsom and Bass, branding them as radical Democrats.

Bass, she said, “embarked on one of the most outrageous campaigns of lies this country has ever seen from an elected official, blaming President Trump and brave law enforcement officers for the violence.”

“The mob violence is being stomped out,” she said. “Criminals responsible will be swiftly brought to justice, and the Trump administration’s operations to arrest illegal aliens are continuing unabated.”

But Trump’s top border policy advisor, Tom Homan, told NBC on Tuesday that the protests in Los Angeles are making immigration enforcement “difficult” and more “dangerous.”

Leavitt issued a stark warning to protesters in other cities.

“Let this be an unequivocal message to left-wing radicals in other parts of the country who are thinking about copycatting the violence in an effort to stop this administration’s mass deportation efforts: You will not succeed,” she said.

Prince, also known by his recording name Dellyswagz, heard about the choir through a friend who was a member when he first moved to Venice in 2017. He was a singer in Nigeria, and his friend told him it was a good community, that they could help him get settled. When he first arrived, they gave him clothes, helped him find work and provided him with legal assistance to begin the process of getting a visa.

He is now 38, soft-spoken, but when he sings, he sways with feeling, and belting the lyrics, his voice strains and nearly breaks. He dresses in blue-tinted sunglasses, a black leather newsboy cap and a full denim outfit. “Like a king,” he says, smiling.

Shortly after he was born, his parents split up, and his primary caregiver was his mother’s father, who he was very close to. When his grandfather died in 2011, Prince no longer had ties to the Lagos suburb where he grew up and in 2015 decided to cross the Sahara and the Mediterranean in search of a better life.

“Growing up a boy, your mom have to really pray a lot for you,” he explains. “Either you become a thug or a mafia.”

He lives in a shared apartment in Padua, 40km (25 miles) outside Venice, where he moved after losing his job in a factory and being evicted because he didn’t have his papers yet. His bedroom doubles as his recording studio, where on a cluttered desk with a large monitor, he is recording and producing Afrobeats songs for his first album.

In Nigeria, he was a professional dance teacher, by most accounts successful, yet he felt there was no future there. Friends and family had already left, including his father, who lived in the United Kingdom, yet he didn’t consider leaving until his uncle, who was living in Austria, called and suggested he make the trip with his uncle’s wife and three cousins. Prince gave away his speakers, clothes and sneakers to his students. Along with his family, he saved up thousands of dollars. He brought nothing with him and told his parents he’d already made up his mind.

“The journey was deadly,” he says with a serious expression. “My story comes with a lot of pain and loss.”

The first three weeks were spent on a large open-backed truck packed with dozens of people. They drove across the Sahara and slept on the sand each night. Some had to drink their own urine, he recounts, because they hadn’t brought enough water, and along the way, he saw bodies left in the sand. “I can’t count how many we buried,” he says without emotion, referring to the people who died on the journey. “We used sand to cover them up. There’s no details of a name or family to call.”

From Libya, he and his family members tried to cross the Mediterranean by boat eight times. The entire journey to Italy took him two years. Once, they were kidnapped by pirates when they were on a boat and released two months later after paying a ransom. Another time, he was held in a Libyan prison for four months. At one point, they ran out of money, and he worked as a security guard for seven months in a compound holding refugees and migrants.

Then, in October 2016, he and his family members tried to cross the Mediterranean again. They crowded onto a wooden boat with more than 200 passengers on board. In the middle of the night, water began to enter the boat, and it started to sink. As it capsized, people fell into the water. Prince jumped in to save his cousins. The sea was freezing, and everyone was shouting and screaming around him, and he remembers the dark water lit by stars. By the time he located his 14-year-old cousin Sandra, it was too late. She had drowned because she didn’t know how to swim.

He held her lifeless body floating on his chest with a life vest propped behind his neck for what he estimates was 25 hours before he and other survivors, including the rest of his family, were rescued by fishermen and brought back to Libya.

“I didn’t even know I was rescued because I was so tired,” he says. “My eyes were just seeing white. I wasn’t seeing any more because of the sea, the salt. I was so tired.” Prince and his family were never able to bury Sandra because he says her body was stolen by people smugglers.

In Libya, a fisherman from The Gambia taught him how to use a compass, and on his final voyage, he was the navigator, telling the boat captain in which direction to steer. Their boat was intercepted by a rescue boat off the coast of Lampedusa. “The journey is not something I would wish upon my worst enemy,” he says, shaking his head. The rest of his family, who had gone ahead separately, went to different parts of Italy and Austria.

Prince tried to live with his sister-in-law in Austria, but when the authorities threatened to deport him, he was brought back to Italy, where his asylum case was pending. His flight landed him in Venice. He doesn’t know why.

Life in Italy has been hard, he says. His father had warned him about living as an immigrant, telling him before he left, “It’s better to be a free man in your own country than a slave abroad.” Prince is starting to agree with him. When he was evicted from his apartment, he was homeless for seven months, sleeping on friends’ couches and in a garage.

For him, there’s nothing special to Venice. “All I do is go to work and come home, go to work, come home,” he says. If he could do it all again, he says, he would have stayed in Nigeria.

These days, he has a new job, but it is an exhausting night shift with a long commute that cuts into the time he has to make music. To save money, he has learned to subsist on one meal a day and has stopped painting, another favourite hobby. The choir is the only time he enjoys himself. “When I’m singing with them, I’m always smiling,” he says, “because that’s the only time I can be myself.”

News and social media feeds inundate us with dramatic scenes of immigration policing. Viral videos of immigrant mothers picked up on sidewalks near their homes, news accounts of ICE agents showing up in Los Angeles schools and social media posts of U.S. citizens detained by government agents, all create a frightening spectacle. President Trump fuels the fear by trolling immigrant communities with sinister Valentine cards, dangling self-deportation incentives and implementing a chaotic enforcement strategy that ignores attempts at judicial oversight. Amid all this, many look to state and local leaders for calm, reassurance and support.

In California, there remains a simple and consistent response. No matter who, when, where or how you ask, a commanding majority of registered voters in the Golden State support a path to citizenship for those in the state without proper documents. In other words, across the partisan aisle, and across all kinds of different groups and places, most voters see a path to citizenship as a much-needed policy fix, even now.

In August of 2024, a few months before the presidential election, the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies Poll asked more than 4,000 voters across the state whether they would support or oppose a “path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who come forward, are up to date on their taxes, and pass a background check.”

At that time, the Harris and Trump campaigns were in full swing. Harris’ team had already held a few news conferences at the border, insinuating that increased border security would be top of mind in her administration. Meanwhile, Trump continued his usual discourse about immigrants, once infamously contending that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” It was difficult to see who, if anyone, felt sympathy toward community members who’d entered the country without authorization or overstayed a visa, despite the fact that many of them had raised new generations of American citizens and contributed to public coffers and local job markets.

But even back in August, 80% of California registered voters who answered the poll supported a path to citizenship. This included close to 60% of polled Republicans, 75% of independents and even 56% of those who intended to vote for Trump. It also included 75% of those who earned a high school degree or less, 80% of those who earned a college degree or more, 80% of women, 78% of men, 75% of homeowners and 84% of those under 40. Among the strongest supporters were Democrats, with 91% support, as well as middle- and high-income earners, and those who lived in the Bay Area. Across most categories, a commanding majority of California voters expressed support for a pathway to citizenship.

But that was then, before the onslaught. Before the viral videos, the renditions to El Salvador, the offer of cash to self-deport. One could argue that in those before-times, perhaps voters were somehow more sympathetic to immigrants because they were distracted by other issues, like the price of eggs and groceries or broader inflation issues. And perhaps some might not have believed that Trump would actually follow through on his attacks on immigrant communities.

So in early May the Berkeley IGS Poll asked survey respondents again about their support for a path to citizenship. This time we polled more than 6,000 registered California voters and we inserted a small survey experiment. We were curious about whether respondents’ support in August had been so strong because the question they were asked included language about a “background check,” an idea that might have primed them to think about “good” and “bad” immigrants and may have inadvertently linked unauthorized status to crime. So for half of all respondents in May, we asked the same question again, but for the second half of respondents, we omitted this language, simply asking if they would support or oppose a “path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who are working or going to school and are up to date on their taxes.”

Our survey found no statistically significant differences between the two groups. The vast majority of California voters think a path to citizenship is simply the right thing to do, background check or not.

Moreover, we found virtually no differences from August to May. Eighty percent of registered voters this month, including close to 60% of Republicans, continued to support a path to citizenship. Somewhere between 70% and 85% of every demographic, including respondents under 40, those over 65, those of different racial groups, those in unions, those that rent their homes, those that own their homes, men, women, those in the Central Valley, Los Angeles County, the Inland Empire and even those on the far North Coast all expressed support for a path to citizenship. The consistency is resounding.

If you’re trying to make sense of the bombast and the whirlwind of executive and law enforcement actions directed at immigrants, remember the one thing that unites a commanding majority of California voters, almost without regard to who we are and where we live, an understanding that good policy is practical policy: Undocumented community members deserve relief.

State and local leaders do not design federal immigration policy, but they should remember this poll data as they make decisions about how to support us all. If it were put to a vote, an overwhelming majority of Californians would support immigration reform, not mass deportation.

G. Cristina Mora and Nicholas Vargas are professors at UC Berkeley affiliated with the Institute of Governmental Studies, where Mora serves as co-director.

They arrive at the U.S. border from around the world: Eritrea, Guatemala, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ghana, Uzbekistan and so many other countries.

They come for asylum, insisting they face persecution for their religion, or sexuality or for supporting the wrong politicians.

For generations, they had been given the chance to make their case to U.S. authorities.

Not anymore.

“They didn’t give us an ICE officer to talk to. They didn’t give us an interview. No one asked me what happened,” said a Russian election worker who sought asylum in the U.S. after he said he was caught with video recordings he made of vote rigging. On Feb. 26, he was deported to Costa Rica with his wife and young son.

On Jan. 20, just after being sworn in for a second term, President Trump suspended the asylum system as part of his wide-ranging crackdown on illegal immigration, issuing a series of executive orders designed to stop what he called the “invasion” of the United States.

What asylum seekers now find, according to lawyers, activists and immigrants, is a murky, ever-changing situation with few obvious rules, where people can be deported to countries they know nothing about after fleeting conversations with immigration officials while others languish in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.

Attorneys who work frequently with asylum seekers at the border say their phones have gone quiet since Trump took office. They suspect many who cross are immediately expelled without a chance at asylum or are detained to wait for screening under the U.N.’s convention against torture, which is harder to qualify for than asylum.

“I don’t think it’s completely clear to anyone what happens when people show up and ask for asylum,” said Bella Mosselmans, director of the Global Strategic Litigation Council.

Restrictions face challenges in court

A thicket of lawsuits, appeals and countersuits have filled the courts as the Trump administration faces off against activists who argue the sweeping restrictions illegally put people fleeing persecution in harm’s way.

In a key legal battle, a federal judge is expected to rule on whether courts can review the administration’s use of invasion claims to justify suspending asylum. There is no date set for that ruling.

The government says its declaration of an invasion is not subject to judicial oversight, at one point calling it “an unreviewable political question.”

But rights groups fighting the asylum proclamation, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, called it “as unlawful as it is unprecedented” in the complaint filed in a Washington, D.C., federal court.

Illegal border crossings, which soared in the first years of President Biden’s administration, reaching nearly 10,000 arrests per day in late 2024, dropped significantly during his last year in office and plunged further after Trump returned to the White House.

Yet more than 200 people are still arrested daily for illegally crossing the southern U.S. border.

Some of those people are seeking asylum, though it’s unclear if anyone knows how many.

Paulina Reyes-Perrariz, managing attorney for the San Diego office of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said her office sometimes received 10 to 15 calls a day about asylum after Biden implemented asylum restrictions in 2024.

That number has dropped to almost nothing, with only a handful of total calls since Jan. 20.

Plus, she added, lawyers are unsure how to handle asylum cases.

“It’s really difficult to consult and advise with individuals when we don’t know what the process is,” she said.

Doing ‘everything right’

None of this was expected by the Russian man, who asked not to be identified for fear of persecution if he returns to Russia.

“We felt betrayed,” the 36-year-old told the Associated Press. “We did everything right.”

The family had scrupulously followed the rules. They traveled to Mexico in May 2024, found a cheap place to rent near the border with California and waited nearly nine months for the chance to schedule an asylum interview.

On Jan. 14, they got word that their interview would be on Feb 2. On Jan. 20, the interview was canceled.

Moments after Trump took office, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced it had scrubbed the system used to schedule asylum interviews and canceled tens of thousands of existing appointments.

There was no way to appeal.

The Russian family went to a San Diego border crossing to ask for asylum, where they were taken into custody, he said.

A few weeks later, they were among the immigrants who were handcuffed, shackled and flown to Costa Rica. Only the children were left unchained.

Turning to other countries to hold deportees

The Trump administration has tried to accelerate deportations by turning countries like Costa Rica and Panama into “bridges,” temporarily detaining deportees while they await return to their countries of origin or third countries.

Earlier this year, some 200 migrants were deported from the U.S. to Costa Rica and roughly 300 were sent to Panama.

To supporters of tighter immigration controls, the asylum system has always been rife with exaggerated claims by people not facing real dangers. In recent years, roughly one-third to half of asylum applications were approved by judges.

Even some politicians who see themselves as pro-immigration say the system faces too much abuse.

“People around the world have learned they can claim asylum and remain in the U.S. indefinitely to pursue their claims,” retired U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, a longtime Democratic stalwart in Congress, wrote last year in the Wall Street Journal, defending Biden’s tightening of asylum policies amid a flood of illegal immigration.

An uncertain future

Many of the immigrants they arrived with have left the Costa Rican facility where they were first detained, but the Russian family has stayed. The man cannot imagine going back to Russia and has nowhere else to go.

He and his wife spend their days teaching Russian and a little English to their son. He organizes volleyball games to keep people busy.

He is not angry at the U.S. He understands the administration wanting to crack down on illegal immigration. But, he adds, he is in real danger. He followed the rules and can’t understand why he didn’t get a chance to plead his case.

He fights despair almost constantly, knowing that what he did in Russia brought his family to this place.

“I failed them,” he said. “I think that every day: I failed them.”

Sullivan writes for the Associated Press.

SACRAMENTO — One of the many traits that set California apart from other states is the way undocumented immigrants are woven into our communities.

Their economic impact is obvious, and the Golden State would be hard-pressed to keep our status as a world-competing financial power without their labor.

But most Californians know, and are OK with the reality, that at least some of our neighbors, our kids’ classmates, our co-workers, are without legal documents, or in blended-status families.

Gov. Gavin Newsom took a stand Wednesday for those undocumented Californians that seems to have gone largely unnoticed, but which probably will be a big fight in Congress and courts. In his bad news-filled budget presentation, Newsom committed to keeping state-funded health insurance for undocumented residents (with cuts, deep ones, which I’ll get to). Although some are disappointed by his rollbacks, many of which will hit citizens and noncitizens alike, standing by California’s expansion to cover all low income people is a statement of values.

“We’ve provided more support than any state in American history, and we’ll continue to provide more support than any state in American history,” he said.

Sticking with that promise is going to be tough, and likely costly.

This decision comes as Congress considers a Trump-led budget bill that would severely penalize states (there are 14 of them) that continue to provide health insurance to undocumented immigrants. California, of course, has the largest number of such folks on its Medi-Cal plan and would be the hardest hit if that penalty does indeed become the new law — to the tune of $27 billion over six years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

To put that in perspective, the governor is now estimating a nearly $12-billion budget shortfall this year. That federal cut would add at least $3 billion a year to our costs once it hits.

That federal cut, Newsom said, was “not anticipated in this budget,” which means we are ignoring it for the time being.

Federal programs aren’t open to noncitizens, and no federal dollars are used to support California’s expansion of healthcare to undocumented people.

But Congress is threatening an approximately 10% cut in reimbursements to states that insure undocumented people via the Medicaid expansion that was part of the Affordable Care Act. That expansion allows millions of Americans to have access to healthcare.

Those expansion funds are working in ways that many don’t know about. For example, as Newsom pointed out, behavioral health teams doing outreach to homeless people are funded by Medicaid dollars.

In all, about one-third of Californians rely on Medi-Cal, including millions of children, so this threat to cut federal funds is not an empty one, especially in a lean year.

Katherine Hempstead, a senior policy advisor for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which advocates for universal healthcare, said that the bill being debated by Congress is so full of cuts to healthcare that arguing against the provision penalizing coverage for undocumented people may not be a priority for most Democrats — making it more likely that the cut will get through.

“I don’t know if this is going to be a do-or-die issue,” she said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom presents his revised 2025-26 state budget during a news conference Wednesday in Sacramento.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

And indeed, the pressure by Republicans to kill off coverage entirely for undocumented folks was quick.

“Gov. Newsom has only partially repealed his disastrous policy,” Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) said in a statement. “ It needs to be reversed entirely, or Californians will continue to spend billions on coverage for illegal immigrants and our state will lose an even larger amount in federal Medicaid funding.”

Newsom has given economic reasons for sticking with the state’s coverage for all low-income residents, regardless of status. When people don’t have access to routine care, they end up in emergency rooms and that is extremely expensive. And also, Medicaid has to cover that emergency care, so taxpayers often end up spending more in the long run by skimping on upfront care.

“It’s definitely important to the people that get the coverage because they don’t really have an alternative,” Hempstead said.

But that care has been vastly more expensive than California expected, also to the tune of billions of dollars in unexpected costs, in part because so many people have signed up.

To the dismay of many, Newsom’s budget reflects both recent economic woes — a $16-billion revenue hit caused by what he’s dubbing the “Trump slump” — as well as the state vastly understimating the cost of covering those undocumented folks.

That shortfall may force cuts in the coverage that undocumented people qualify for if the Legislature goes along with Newsom’s plan, or even parts of it.

Most notably, it would cap enrollment for undocumented adults age 19 and over in 2026, effectively closing the program to new participants. That’s a huge hurt. His plan also calls for adding a $100 per month premium, and other cuts such as ending coverage for the extremely popular and expensive GLP-1 weight loss drugs for all participants.

“I don’t want to be in this position, but we are in this position,” Newsom said.

Amanda McAllister-Wallner, executive director of Health Access California, called those cuts “reckless and unconscionable” in a statement.

“This is a betrayal of the governor’s commitment to California immigrants, and an abandonment of his legacy, which brought California so close to universal healthcare,” she said.

I strongly believe in universal single-payer healthcare (basically opening up Medicare to everyone), so I don’t disagree with McAllister-Wallner’s point. In better days, I would hope to see enrollment reopen and benefits restored.

But also, we’re broke. This is going to be a year of painful choices for all involved.

Which makes Newsom’s, and California’s, commitment to keep insurance for undocumented people notable. The state could back down under this real federal pressure, could try to find a way to claw back the benefits we have already given.

But there’s a moral component to providing healthcare to our undocumented residents, who are such a valuable and vital part of our state.

Although the fiscal realities are ugly, it’s worth remembering that in providing the coverage, California is sticking with some of its most vulnerable residents, at a time when it would be easier to cut and run.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2025-26 revised budget proposal reneges on his signature policy to provide free healthcare coverage to all low-income undocumented immigrants as costs exceed expectations and the state anticipates challenging economic times ahead.

Newsom’s office said the governor’s spending plan, which will be released late Wednesday morning, calls for requiring all undocumented adults to pay $100 monthly premiums to receive Medi-Cal coverage and for blocking all new adult applications to the program as of Jan. 1.

The cost share will reduce the financial burden on the state and could lower the total number of people enrolled in the healthcare program if some immigrants cannot afford the new premiums. Freezing enrollment may prevent the price tag of the program from continuing to balloon after more people signed up for coverage than the state anticipated.

The governor’s office said the changes will save a combined $5.4 billion through 2028-29, but did not detail the cost savings in the upcoming fiscal year that begins July 1.

Newsom is expected Wednesday to project a deficit for California in the fiscal year ahead, which includes higher than expected Medi-Cal costs, and more significant shortfall estimates in the following years. In the current budget year, the governor and lawmakers approved a $2.8-billion appropriation and took out a separate $3.4-billion loan just to pay for extra expenses for Medi-Cal through June.

The rising costs have drawn criticism from Republicans and added pressure on Democrats to consider scaling back coverage for immigrants. A recent poll found strong support among California voters for offering free healthcare to undocumented children. Just over half of voters supported providing the healthcare to eligible immigrants 50 years old or above, and a plurality — 49% — favored providing the coverage to adults between the ages of 18 and 49.

Medi-Cal, the California offshoot of the federal Medicaid program, provides healthcare coverage to eligible low-income residents. After the Republican Congress this year passed a budget blueprint that includes billions of dollars in spending reductions, fears also persist that cuts to federal Medicaid funding may be looming.

California became the first state in the nation to offer healthcare to all income-eligible immigrants one year ago after the expansion was approved by Newsom and the Democratic-led Legislature.

Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, signed a bill in 2015 that offered Medi-Cal coverage to all children younger than 19.

Newsom grew the Medi-Cal coverage pool to include all income-eligible immigrants in California under a multiyear expansion by age categories that began in 2020 and concluded in 2024.

California’s new budget shortfall comes in addition to $27.3 billion in financial remedies, including $16.1 billion in cuts and a $7.1-billion withdrawal from the state’s rainy day fund, that lawmakers and the governor already agreed to make in 2025-26.

The deficit marks the third year in a row that Newsom and lawmakers have been forced to reduce spending after dedicating more money to programs than the state has available to spend. Poor projections, the high price tag of Democratic policy promises and a reluctance to make long-term sweeping cuts have added to the deficit at a time when the governor regularly touts California’s place as the fourth-largest economy in the world.

On Tuesday afternoon, Newsom’s office said President Trump’s tariff policies have also hurt California’s financial standing and projected that the state will lose out on $16 billion in revenue from January 2025 through June 2026 because of the levies on imported goods and the effect of economic uncertainty on the stock market.

May 13 (UPI) — The Trump administration has launched an investigation into a California state-level program that provides aged, blind and disabled non-citizens with monthly cash benefits on accusations it was illegally distributing federal funding to those ineligible for Social Security.

The Department of Homeland Security announced the probe Monday in a statement saying it was requesting all records from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, which administers California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants, to determine whether federal funds were given to ineligible undocumented immigrants.

The probe will examine the program’s records going back to January 2021, the month the previous president, Joe Biden, took office.

“Radical left politicians in California prioritize illegal aliens over our own citizens, including by giving illegal aliens access to cash benefits,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in the statement.

“The Trump administration is working together to identify abuse and exploitation of public benefits and make sure those in this country illegally are not receiving federal benefits or other financial incentives to stay illegally.”

The DHS said it is specifically looking to see if undocumented immigrants were receiving Supplemental Security Income from the Social Security Administration.

California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants dates back to the 1990s and was established to provide monthly cash benefits to specific immigrants ineligible for SSI due to their immigration status.

According to its website, the program is entirely state funded. To be eligible, applicants must be California residents ineligible for SSI and either be 65 years old or older, blind or disabled.

The investigation was met with swift condemnation from SEIU California union that accused the Trump administration of using “bullying” tactics to attack the state’s safety net.

“Donald Trump‘s campaign to instill fear in immigrant communities will meet resolute opposition here in California,” the union’s president, David Huerta, said in a statement.

Huerta said the federal government has no basis for its “legal bullying” and no right to tell California how to use its state funds to fight poverty.

“The sole purpose of this sham ‘investigation’ is clear: intimidation of people seeking safety and of all those who provide them with needed support,” Huerta said.

“We will not be intimidated, and we will not back down.”

SEIU California is a non-partisan union representing some 750,000 nurses, healthcare workers, janitors, social workers and security officers as well as city, county and state employees.

President Donald Trump ran on a platform to crack down on migration and to undertake the largest deportation in American history, while using controversial and derogatory rhetoric to spread misinformation and false claims about migrants and crime.

Since his January inauguration, he has used his executive powers to focus the federal government on targeting immigration.

A month ago, he signed an executive order directing Noem and other cabinet officials to ensure undocumented immigration do not receive funds from Social Security programs and to take civil and criminal action against governments that fail to prevent non-citizens from receiving the benefits.

May 12 (UPI) — A federal judge ruled Monday that the Internal Revenue Service can share taxpayer data with immigration authorities to locate undocumented immigrants for deportation.

District Judge Dabney Friedrich, an appointee from President Donald Trump‘s first term, denied a preliminary injunction filed by immigrant rights groups, who argued sharing information violated taxpayer confidentiality laws.

“Plaintiffs Centro de Trabajadores Unidos, Immigrant Solidarity DuPage, Somos Un Pueblo Unido and Inclusive Action for the City bring this action seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to prevent the Internal Revenue Service from sharing personal tax information with the Department of Homeland Security for immigration enforcement purposes,” Friedrich wrote, adding “the court will deny the motion.”

The ruling is a win for the Trump administration and the president’s immigration agenda.

Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem agreed to allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to submit names of immigrants for cross-verification of tax records. Under the data-sharing deal, DHS can ask the IRS to confirm the addresses of suspected undocumented immigrants in the United States.

Friedrich said sharing information between federal agencies to enforce immigration laws does not violate confidentiality laws.

“At its core, this case presents a narrow legal issue: Does the Memorandum of Understanding between the IRS and DHS violate the Internal Revenue Code? It does not,” according to Friedrich’s order.

Last month, acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Kraus resigned over the data-sharing deal. Former acting IRS Commissioner Doug O’Donnell also refused to sign the agreement in February, before he retired.

While the IRS can share data to help in criminal investigations, the tax agency can not share data on civil issues or to help with deportations.

According to the Justice Department, the data-sharing agreement complies with the law because requests for IRS information will target only those under criminal investigation.

“Requesting and receiving information for civil enforcement purposes would constitute a cognizable injury, but none of the organizations have established that such an injury is imminent,” Friedrich wrote.

“The Memorandum only allows sharing information for criminal investigations … On this limited record, the court cannot assume that DHS intends to use the shared information to facilitate civil rather than criminal proceedings.”

The Trump administration announced Monday that it has launched an investigation into California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants, a state program that provides monthly cash benefits to aged, blind, and disabled non-citizens who are ineligible for Social Security benefits due to their immigration status.

The investigation began in Los Angeles, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations Los Angeles field office issuing a Title 8 subpoena to California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants, the Department of Homeland Security said in a news release.

According to the department, the subpoena requests all records from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, the agency that administers the state program, to determine if ineligible immigrants received supplemental security income from the Social Security Administration over the last four years.

“Radical left politicians in California prioritize illegal aliens over our own citizens, including by giving illegal aliens access to cash benefits,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement.

“The Trump Administration is working together to identify abuse and exploitation of public benefits and make sure those in this country illegally are not receiving federal benefits or other financial incentives to stay illegally,” Noem added. “If you are an illegal immigrant, you should leave now. The gravy train is over. While this subpoena focuses only on Los Angeles County — it is just the beginning.”

According to Homeland Security, its Los Angeles investigations field office is subpoenaing records including applicants’ name and date of birth, copies of applications, immigration status, proof of ineligibility for benefits from the Social Security Administration and affidavits that supported the application.

The investigation comes after President Trump signed a presidential memorandum on April 15 to stop immigrants lacking documentation from obtaining Social Security Act benefits in what he called a bid to stop incentivizing illegal immigration and protect taxpayer dollars.

The memorandum directed the secretary of Homeland Security to ensure unauthorized immigrants do not receive funds from Social Security programs and prioritized civil or criminal enforcement against states or localities for potential violations of Title IV of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.

It also expanded the Social Security Administration’s fraud prosecutor program to at least 50 U.S. attorney ofices and established a Medicare and Medicaid fraud-prosecution program in 15 U.S. attorney offices.

This is a developing story and will be updated.