The Brief

Undocumented immigrants and their California families braced for the worst — and many told CalMatters they would go underground — as newly sworn-in President Donald Trump began issuing executive orders to enable what he promises will be the most massive deportation in U.S. history.

“It’s draining my energy a lot, thinking of what’s going to happen and not knowing exactly what’s going to happen with me and my family and my daughters,” said Frank, a Los Angeles resident who asked to be identified only by his first name because of his ongoing immigration case.

Advocates reported hearing from parents who were considering keeping their children home from school this week. Some neighbors said they will dispatch their children to shop for groceries and run errands, so they can mostly stay inside the house.

“I plan to just stay very local, no unnecessary trips, and thank God my work is close to my house,” said Frank, who is a restaurant cook and came to this country without federal authorization from El Salvador about 20 years ago.

Kathleen, his wife of seven years and a U.S. citizen, called the situation “terrifying” and said she was worried about him and “what I would be left to deal with and having to take care of our kids on my own.”

In his inaugural speech, President Trump previewed a planned series of executive orders that he began rolling out later in the day. By Monday evening, he officially declared a national emergency at the southern border that “requires use of the Armed Forces” — a move for which he can expect to face legal hurdles.

“All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” Trump continued in his inaugural address. His tally of noncitizens with criminal convictions is far higher than that reported by federal immigration authorities.

The Republican president also said he planned to reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy in place during his first term, which forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their U.S. court hearings to present their immigration cases.

“I will end the practice of ‘catch and release,’ and I will send troops to the southern border to repel the disastrous invasion of our country,” he continued.

As expected, he issued an executive order designating Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. “And by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, I will direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks …” he said.

And he signed yet another order to revoke birthright citizenship — the right enshrined in the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing citizenship to anyone born in the country or its territories regardless of their parents’ immigration status. Trump wants the Supreme Court to reinterpret the provision.

Eighteen states, including California, filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Massachusetts on Tuesday, challenging the order on grounds that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment and the Immigration and Nationality Act.

“I am deeply disappointed that we’re here, and also not at all surprised,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta at a news conference. “This isn’t some theoretical legal disagreement. It would strip Americans of their most basic rights.”

Bonta and the other attorneys general are asking the court for an immediate injunction to stop the order from taking effect on Feb. 19 while they litigate the case. Bonta acknowledged that the case could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“As president of the United States, you have a lot of authority,” Bonta said, “but it is not unlimited.”

Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th president of the United States on Monday

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Morry Gash

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Associated Press

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By late afternoon Monday on the West Coast, several hundred protesters began marching from San Diego’s Balboa Park to the Hall of Justice, chanting, “When immigrant lives are under attack, what do we do? Stand up fight back!”

“I’m worried about migrant people because this will be really hard for the next four years. It was before too, when Trump had power the last time. It was really crazy for us right there on the border, and we expect the same thing right now or worse,” said Alejandro Ortigoza, 50, the leader of Armadillos Busqueda y Rescate, a group that goes into the desert to search for the remains of missing migrants.

Yet even as the new president was declaring a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, people whose lives straddle it mostly carried on with business as usual.

Lighter than normal foot traffic continued through the “pedestrian east” crossing at San Ysidro as people calmly headed for the trolley under the familiar noise of a helicopter circling above.

In the Home Depot parking lot in Imperial Beach, day laborers gathered as they usually do, seeking odd jobs helping San Diegans move or clean up their lawns. They said they cross the border every day from their homes in Tijuana and didn’t expect Trump’s executive orders would heavily affect them. Still, several planned to carry documents proving they are naturalized U.S. citizens everywhere they go.

Left: Workers wait for job opportunities in front of a Home Depot in San Diego on Monday. Right: Travelers walk toward the Mexico entrance of the San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego on Monday.

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Adriana Heldiz

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CalMatters

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Saúl Muñoz, a 53-year-old construction worker who lives in the Otay area of Tijuana, predicted an increase in human rights violations under Trump.

“If they remove all the [people who are] undocumented, then yes, we’re going to have more work, but they’re going to want to pay the same as they did before, they’re going to want to pay us less,” said Muñoz. “So, really, who is going to benefit?”

“Throughout the Trump administration, we’re going to see horrors in terms of the attacks that immigrant communities are going to suffer. President Trump will put 5.1 million U.S. citizen children at risk of family separation,” said Kerri Talbot, co-executive director of the Immigration Hub, a national pro-immigrant advocacy group based in D.C.

The most recent New York Times / Ipsos poll of Americans, conducted earlier in January, found that 55% either strongly or somewhat support mass deportations of people living in the United States without authorization.

Public support for deportation was even stronger in certain circumstances: 87% of those surveyed backed deporting those who are “here illegally and have criminal records,” and 63% backed removing those who are “here illegally and arrived over the last four years.”

But just 41% of those surveyed supported ending “birthright citizenship for children born to immigrants who are here illegally.” And only 34% wanted to stop deportation protections for “immigrants who were children when they entered the country illegally.”

Trump’s actions were telegraphed far in advance — on the campaign trail, he repeatedly promised to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. By the end of last week, Trump’s Incoming “border czar,” Tom Homan, was telling Fox News that large-scale raids are set to begin as soon as Tuesday.

“There’s gonna be big raids all across the country. Chicago is just one of many places,” said Homan, the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “On Tuesday, you’re going to expect ICE … ICE is finally going to go out and do their job. We’re going to take the handcuffs off ICE and let them go arrest ‘criminal aliens.’ That’s what’s going to happen.”

The administration’s plans are likely to encounter significant legal challenges and logistical obstacles, including the challenge of housing millions of detainees before they can be removed.

Threatening to yank California’s federal funds — again

One of Trump’s immigration orders today also threatened to pull federal money from “sanctuary jurisdictions” that limit collaboration between local law enforcement and federal immigration agencies.

A third of California’s budget relies on federal dollars.

“The Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall, to the maximum extent possible under law, evaluate and undertake any lawful actions to ensure that so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions, which seek to interfere with the lawful exercise of Federal law enforcement operations, do not receive access to Federal funds,” one order states. “Further, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall evaluate and undertake any other lawful actions, criminal or civil, that they deem warranted based on any such jurisdiction’s practices that interfere with the enforcement of Federal law.”

The returning president has long derided California for declaring itself a “sanctuary state” for undocumented immigrants – a move the Democratic-controlled Legislature made during his first term — but the reality is more nuanced. Known here as the California Values Act, the law exempts from its protections people convicted of violent crimes or serious offenses such as felony drunk driving, for example, and allows California state prisons to regularly coordinate with ICE about upcoming release dates for prisoners eligible for deportation.

California went to court during Trump’s first term to beat back his intent to withhold a few federal grants from the state for its failure to fully cooperate with federal immigration authorities. In 2018, a federal judge ruled in the California’s favor, saying the president’s move was unconstitutional.

In December, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted 3-1 to prohibit county agencies from using local resources to assist federal immigration enforcement, including cooperation with ICE. But San Diego County Sheriff Kelly Martinez said she will not comply with the county’s new policy, saying the county board does not set policy for her department.

People seeking asylum are detained after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border last year.

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Robert Gauthier

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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Days before Christmas, a conservative organization led by Trump adviser Stephen Miller sent letters to California leaders and former San Diego County Supervisor Nora Vargas warning they could go to prison over sanctuary policies that protect undocumented residents.

Homan has said he plans to target not just people with criminal records but anyone who may be nearby.

“You’re going to concentrate on the worst first, public safety threats first. But no one’s off the table. If they’re in the country illegally, they’ve got a problem,” Homan said on Fox News this weekend.

In San Diego, local organizations have been holding private “Know Your Rights” events in the months since Trump’s election.

Gina Amato Lough, the directing attorney for Public Counsel’s Immigrants’ Rights Project in Los Angeles, stressed that constitutional rights apply to everyone, whether they are in the country legally or not.

“I do think it’s really important for people to exercise their constitutional rights,” she said. “If you’re at home and ICE shows up at your door, you don’t have to open the door.”

In another case among the exhaustive list of California legal challenges to the first Trump administration, the University of California in 2020 prevailed in a suit that preserved the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. The program’s purpose: to shield from deportation immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children.

Economic impact

Trump’s executive orders are expected to have financial and economic impacts, costing billions of dollars and disrupting local communities while doing little to address real immigration challenges, advocates warned. Advocates and academics cautioned Trump’s pledged policies will ultimately weaken the country by undermining the contributions of immigrant communities.

“Economically, the entire country is going to be deeply affected negatively,” said Cecilia Menjívar, a professor of sociology at UCLA. “I think it’s super important to recognize that it’s not only undocumented immigrants we’re talking about. Lawful permanent residents, naturalized citizens, all immigrant labor, all immigrants, all foreign-born, contribute vitally to critical sectors of the entire economy of the country: health, services, hospitality, care for children, care for the elderly, high tech, you name it.”

“Importantly, for California, recovery from disasters: It’s immigrants who clean up and rebuild,” Menjívar added.

The California Welcoming Task Force, a binational coalition of immigration organizations active in the border region, estimated the removal of 7 million to 8 million undocumented workers in the U.S. would exacerbate already-worsening labor shortages.

People wait outside the San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego on Jan. 20, 2025.

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Adriana Heldiz

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CalMatters

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“The impact on numerous industries, such as construction, agriculture, healthcare and hospitality, would be catastrophic,” the group wrote in an email. “A deportation effort of this scale would also cost hundreds of billions of dollars in California alone, with millions more spent annually to fund immoral and unsafe detention camps.”

South of the border

At a protest in the Mexican city of Tijuana on Sunday, activists hung anti-Trump signs and a Trump piñata along the border wall at Playas de Tijuana. Earlier, students from Universidad Autónoma de Baja California of Ensenada painted hearts and messages of love and acceptance on the steel bollards of the border wall.

Trump ended the Biden administration’s CBP One, a mobile application that allows migrants outside the U.S. to request an asylum appointment at a port of entry. CBS News reported about 270,000 migrants were waiting in northern Mexico, hoping to get an appointment or make their appointment before Trump cancels the program.

Cutting off their legal pathway may lead to an increase in irregular crossings, border experts warned. During the last Trump administration, makeshift encampments formed along the border as migrants waiting to cross into the United States became increasingly desperate, lacking food, water, shelter and being targeted by criminal groups in northern Mexico. That led to an increase in people making more desperate attempts to cross the border in more dangerous ways.

Nigel Duara of CalMatters contributed to this article.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Since 1977, Richard Santillan has been to every Opening Day game at Dodger Stadium. 

“The tradition goes from my father, to me, to my children and grandchildren. Some of my best memories are with my father and children here at Dodger Stadium,” Santillan told The LA Local, smiling under the shade of palm trees near the entrance to the ballpark Wednesday morning. He was there to protest the team less than 24 hours before Opening Day.

Santillan, like countless other loyal Dodgers fans, is grappling with his fan identity over the team’s decision to accept an invitation to the White House and owner Mark Walter’s ties to ICE detention facilities.

More than 30 people joined Santillan on Wednesday morning for a press conference held near 1000 Vin Scully Drive to convey a message directly to the team. 

“We are demanding the Dodgers stop participating in funding of inhumane treatment of families and do not go to the White House to celebrate with the criminal in chief,” Evelyn Escatiola told the crowd. “Together, we have the power to make a change.”

Escatiola, a former dean of East Los Angeles College and longtime community organizer, urged fans to flex their economic power by “letting the Dodgers know that we do not support repression.”

Jorge “Coqui” Rodriguez, a lifelong Dodgers fan, spoke to the crowd and called on Dodgers ownership to divest from immigration detention centers owned and operated by GEO Group and CoreCivic.

Jorge Coqui H Rodriguez speaks at a press conference outside Dodger Stadium on March 25, 2026, to demand the Dodgers not to visit the White House following their 2025 World Series win.

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J.W. Hendricks

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The LA Local

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In a phone interview a day before the protest, Rodriguez told The LA Local he did not want the Dodgers using his “cheve” or beer money to fund detention centers. 

“They can’t take our parking money, our cacahuate money, our cheve money, our Dodger Dog money and invest those funds into corporations that are imprisoning people. It’s wrong,” Rodriguez said. 

Rodriguez considers the Dodgers one of the most racially diverse teams and said the players need to support fans at a time when heightened immigration enforcement has become more common across L.A.

The team’s 2025’s visit to the White House drew ire from the largely Latino fan base, citing the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on immigrants. 

In June, the team came under further scrutiny when rumors swirled online that federal immigration agents were using the stadium’s parking, which immigration authorities later denied in statements posted on social media accounts.

The team again came under fire after not releasing a statement on the impacts of ICE raids on its mostly Latino fan base at the height of immigration enforcement last summer. The team later agreed to invest $1 million to support families affected by immigration enforcement.

When he learned the Dodgers were pledging only $1 million to families in need, Rodriguez called the amount a  “slap in the face.” 

“These guys just bought the Lakers for billions of dollars and they give a million dollars to fight for legal services? That’s a joke,” Rodriguez said. “They need to have a moral backbone and not be investing in those companies.”

According to reporting from the Los Angeles Times, former Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershawsaid last week that he is looking forward to the trip.

“I went when President [Joe] Biden was in office. I’m going to go when President [Donald] Trump is in office,” Kershaw said. “To me, it’s just about getting to go to the White House. You don’t get that opportunity every day, so I’m excited to go.”

The Dodgers have yet to announce when their planned visit will take place. 

Santillan sometimes laments his decision to give up his season tickets in protest of the team. His connection to the stadium and the memories he has made there with family and friends will last a lifetime, he said. On Thursday, he will uphold his tradition and be there for the first pitch of the season, but with a heavy heart.

“It’s a family tradition, but the Dodgers have a lot of work to do,” he said.

A local favorite mom-and-pop bookshop in Eagle Rock is facing displacement due to a steep rent hike. The owners say theirs is just one of several small businesses along Eagle Rock Boulevard struggling to keep up with lease increases.

Over the past 19 years, many in the neighborhood have come to love READ Books for its eclectic collection of used titles and shop dog Florence.

Co-owner Jeremy Kaplan said it’s been a delight to grow with the community over the years.

“Like seeing kids come back in, who were in grade school and now they’re in college,” Kaplan said.

But the building where Kaplan and wife Debbie rent was recently sold, and the rent increased by more than 130% to $2,805 a month, Kaplan said. He told LAist it was an increase his small business simply could not absorb.

Kaplan said he originally was given 30 days notice of the rent increase. After some research, assistance from Councilmember Ysabel Jurado’s office and some pro-bono legal help, Kaplan said he pushed back and got the 90-day notice he’s afforded by state law.

California Senate Bill 1103 requires landlords to give businesses with five or less employees 90 days’ notice for rent increases exceeding 10%, among other protections.

Systems Real Estate, the property management company, did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment.

What can small businesses do? 

Nadia Segura, directing attorney of the Small Business Program at pro bono legal aid non-profit Bet Tzedek said California law does not currently allow for rent control for commercial tenancies.

Outside of the protections under SB 1103, Segura said small businesses like READ Books don’t have much other recourse. And even then, commercial landlords are not required to inform their tenants of their protections under the law.

“There’s still a lot of people that don’t know about SB 1103. And then it’s very sad that they tell them they have these rent increases and within a month they have to leave,” Segura said.

She said her group is seeing steep rent hikes like this for commercial tenants across the city.

“We are seeing this even more with the World Cup coming up, the Olympics coming up. And I will say it was very sad to see that also after the wildfires,” Segura said.

Part of Bet Tzedek’s ongoing work is to advocate for small businesses, working with landlords who are increasing rents to see if they are willing to give business owners longer leases that lock in rents.

What’s next 

After READ Books posted about their situation on social media, commenters chimed in to express their outrage and love for the little shop.

While he looks for a new spot, Kaplan says he’s forming a coalition of local businesses and activist groups to see what can be done to help other small businesses facing similar displacement. He wants to address the displacement issue for businesses like his, which have made Eagle Rock the distinctive neighborhood that it is today.

Owl Talk, a longtime Eagle Rock staple selling clothing and accessories in a unit in the same building as READ Books, is facing a “more than double” rent increase, according to a post on their Instagram account.

Kaplan said he’s been in touch with the office of state Assemblywoman Jessica Caloza and wants to explore the possibility of introducing legislation to set up protections for small businesses like his, including rent-control measures or a vacancy tax for landlords. Kaplan said he also reached out to the office of state Sen. Maria Durazo.

By his count, Kaplan said there are about a dozen businesses within surrounding blocks that are at risk of closing their doors or have shuttered due to rent increases or other struggles.

When READ Books was founded during the Great Recession, Kaplan said he knew it was a longshot to open a bookstore at the same time so many were struggling to stay in business.

“It was kind of interesting to be doing something that neighborhoods needed. That was important to me growing up, that was important to my children, that was important to my wife growing up,” Kaplan said.

“And then somebody comes in and says, ‘We’re gonna over double your rent.”

Topline:

Frozen budget: Most of the city’s Bureau of Street Lighting budget comes from an assessment that people who own property illuminated by lights pay on their county property tax bill. The amount people pay depends on the kind of property they own and how much they benefit from lighting. A typical single-family home currently pays $53 annually, and in total, the assessments bring in about $45 million annually for the city to repair and maintain streetlights. Changing the amount the Bureau of Street Lighting gets from the assessment requires a vote among property owners who benefit from the lights.

Ballots: L.A. City Council’s vote gives city staff the green light to prepare and send out those ballots. Miguel Sangalang, who oversees the bureau, said at a committee meeting earlier this month that he expects to send out ballots by April 17. Notices about the ballots will be sent out prior to the ballots themselves.

Near unanimous vote: L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez was the only “No” vote Tuesday, saying she wanted to see a more current strategic plan for the bureau. Sangalang said the bureau developed a plan in 2022 that lays out how money will be spent. Councilmember Imelda Padilla was absent for the vote.

Vote count: Votes will be weighted according to the assessment amount. Basically, the more you’re asked to pay yearly to maintain streetlights, the more your vote will count. Ballots received before June 2 will be tabulated by the L.A. City Clerk.

How much more money: According to a report, the amount needed in assessments from property owners to meet the repair and maintenance needs of the city’s streetlighting in the next fiscal year is nearly $112 million.

Use of the money: Sangalang said at a March 11 committee meeting that the extra funds would be used to double the number of staff to handle repairs and procure solar streetlights, which don’t face the threat of copper wire theft. That would all potentially reduce the time it takes to repair simple fixes down to a week. Currently, city residents wait for months to see broken streetlights repaired. The assessment would come with a three-year auditing mechanism.