What’s next for California's resistance to immigration crackdowns?

Amid ramped-up deportation efforts under President Trump’s second term, California has become ground zero for immigration raid standoffs.

Los Angeles, America’s second-largest city, has particularly become a flashpoint as protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids led to a June 7 memorandum authorizing the deployment of National Guard and active-duty armed forces, including the Marines, anywhere ICE raids are happening or likely to occur.

Continuing protests nationwide culminated one week later, on June 14, in the “No Kings” protest — the largest single-day protest in U.S. history, drawing over 5 million participants to over 2,000 locations across the country.

“In 60 years, the last time the National Guard was federalized, they were federalized for the purpose of protecting people’s civil rights, not infringing on those rights,” said Antonio Villaraigosa, former LA Mayor and California gubernatorial hopeful, at a Friday, June 27 American Community Media briefing.

“I’ve never in my lifetime seen people in military fatigues or civilian wear covered from head to shoulder with assault weapons, flash-bang grenades, going after nannies and gardeners at schools, graduations,” he continued. “This is a move on the part of the federal government to go after not just criminals.”

From October 2024 through June 14, 2025, ICE detained 204,297 people. 

Of those book-ins, 65% had no criminal convictions, while over 93% had no violent offenses. 53% of convictions involved immigration, traffic or nonviolent vice crimes.

“We should use the courts where we can,” said Villaraigosa. “I was in Bakersfield with a very, very conservative crowd, and I said if you want to put people at the border, put people at the border. If you want to go after violent criminals, go after violent criminals, but going after these hardworking people is absolutely unacceptable. And everybody started to clap.

“There is an opportunity for us to win the day on this issue if we fight back in a way that is looking to win, not to score points, not to be the most progressive, but to really challenge what these people are doing as un-American beyond the pale,” he added. “Like today, we just heard that a district court cannot enjoin the federal government on the issue of birthright citizenship. That hasn’t happened in over 100 years.”

The 6-3 Supreme Court ruling granted the Trump administration’s request to limit nationwide injunctions by lower judges — in this case a district court injunction that had blocked a Trump executive order denying birthright citizenship to certain babies — so the injunctions only apply to the states, groups and people that sued.

Specifically, the January 20 birthright order denies U.S. citizenship to babies born to a mother who is either illegally present in the U.S. or has legal temporary status, and a father who is neither a citizen nor a legal permanent resident

“I wish that I and my fellow Democratic attorneys general never had to go to court because the president of the United States was breaking the law or violating the Constitution,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta. 

“But unfortunately, we’ve had to. We’ve done it 26 times in 23 weeks. That’s more than once a week. It’s double the speed and amount of lawsuits in Trump 1.0, and it is all based on what he does. If he follows the law, we don’t go to court,” he continued.

The 26 cases involve, among other issues, pushbacks against Trump-led efforts to end birthright citizenship; restrict voting access; impose sweeping tariffs without Congressional authority; dismantle AmeriCorps; dismantle the Department of Education; pause $3 trillion in federal aid; end $11 billion in public health grants; and cut federal funds to states that refuse to comply with immigration enforcement.

Nationwide injunctions like the lower district birthright citizenship order are “sometimes appropriate, and we believe that they’re appropriate here when it’s a constitutional right that applies to everybody,” Bonta explained. “The difficulty and the administrative chaos and the financial cost to states of having a baby born in Texas have a different immigration status than a baby born in California … That creates harms to California that are deserving of a nationwide injunction.” 

Describing how “this administration is working unconstitutionally” on the ground, Jeannette Zanipatin, policy and advocacy director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), said “People now have to decide: do I go to my appointment and risk getting my case thrown out? … Do I get a deportation order entered against me because I don’t go to court, or do I risk getting picked up and arrested by ICE enforcement?”

“The Trump administration is asking judges to dismiss cases for folks that have active cases in immigration court. In many instances, judges are complying … and once folks leave their court hearings, they’re being arrested right outside of the courthouse,” she continued.

“We went to Adelanto” — an ICE processing center 85 miles northeast of central LA — “three days after the raids started,” Zanipatin explained. “I went with Judy Chu and other members of Congress trying to gain entry. Congressional members have oversight of detention centers, yet were denied entry. I, as an attorney, was also denied entry.”

She added that, through running the Los Angeles County Rapid Response Network, CHIRLA has received numerous reports of ICE agents in vehicles with license plates from other states including Louisiana and Texas; “masked men and women approaching folks in very aggressive, very violent ways when asked to identify themselves, they’re just not identifying themselves”; and “in many instances, they’re not providing any warrants. They’re just abetting, arresting and detaining folks merely based on the way they look.”

In response, two bills aimed at increasing law enforcement transparency are currently under consideration in California. 

SB 627, the “No Secret Police Act,” prohibits all law enforcement — local, state and federal, including ICE — from covering their faces during non-emergency operations; SB 805, the “No Vigilantes Act,” requires law enforcement to clearly display their name or badge number, prohibits bounty hunters from performing immigration enforcement and lets officers verify the identification of anyone claiming to be law enforcement, under reasonable suspicion.