Opinion: California will always defend our immigrant communities

As a California State Assemblymember representing one of the most diverse communities in the most vibrant state in the nation, I cannot stay silent while the Trump Administration continues its shameful crusade against immigrant communities. What we are witnessing is a full-blown assault on human dignity, constitutional values and the very soul of this nation.

The Trump Administration's immigration policies were never about national security or law and order. From day one, they’ve been about fear, division and white nationalist politics dressed up in the language of enforcement. Children ripped from their parents at the border, families detained in squalid for-profit facilities and communities across California terrorized by ICE raids — these are the enduring legacies of Trump’s immigration agenda.

In California, we do things differently. We understand that immigrants are a vital part of our social fabric, not scapegoats to be demonized for political gain. That’s why we’ve passed some of the strongest immigrant rights legislation in the country — from the California Values Act (SB 54), which limits state cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, to expanded legal aid for undocumented residents and protections for immigrant workers.

The Trump Administration’s blatant overreach — using federal power to target sanctuary jurisdictions, threaten funding and detain people without due process — flies in the face of our Constitution and our values. Their approach undermines public safety by eroding trust between immigrant communities and local law enforcement. It turns neighbors into suspects, families into fugitives and local governments into battlegrounds.

Let’s be clear: California will not be bullied. We will not allow our resources, our institutions or our conscience to be hijacked by a xenophobic federal agenda. Our state has prospered not in spite of immigrants, but because of them. Our economy, our culture and our democracy are stronger when everyone, regardless of immigration status, is treated with respect and humanity.

At a time when the Trump Administration is disappearing spouses of American citizens and legal residents like Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Andry Hernandez Romero to El Salvadoran mega-prisons, California will never bend and will continue to use all our available resources to defend our communities.

The arc of the moral universe may bend toward justice, but it doesn't bend on its own. We in California will keep fighting — in the courts, in our communities and in the Legislature — to ensure that the rights of immigrants are protected and the wrongs of this administration are never repeated.

History will remember the cruelty, the lies and the suffering inflicted in the name of "immigration enforcement." But we in California will always stand on the side of justice and mitigate the damage of this administration hellbent on being as needlessly cruel as possible.