About 100 people packed into Manny’s civic gathering space in San Francisco to hear local leaders discuss how understanding past instances of anti-immigrant sentiment in the state is essential to tackling President-elect Donald Trump’s threats to deliver mass deportations.
State Sen. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park), Assemblymember Liz Ortega (D-Hayward), UC Davis law Professor Kevin Johnson, and San Francisco Immigrant Rights Commissioner Sarah Souza joined on a panel to discuss navigating protecting the state’s undocumented immigrants with a second Trump presidency on the horizon.
The Friday discussion reflected on the impacts of previous anti-immigrant legislation in the U.S. and California’s history, especially the Chinese Exclusion Act and Mexican Repatriation.
“We’ve seen this before, we’ve tried this before,” Becker said. “We have to learn from the past and not repeat it.”
We’ve seen this before, we’ve tried this before. … We have to learn from the past and not repeat it.
State Sen. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park)
Anti-Chinese fervor in the U.S. stemmed out of California, where many Chinese immigrants settled after the Gold Rush. Anti-Chinese legislation and sentiment was building up in state decades before the 1882 federal Chinese Exclusion Act.
San Francisco was at the center of the anti-Chinese movement, where a series of laws were passed in the city designed to target Chinese residents. The slogan “The Chinese Must Go” originated out of San Francisco by the Workingmen’s Party of California leader Denis Kearney, who blamed cheap Chinese labor for job scarcity.
Economic toll of anti-Chinese legislation
After the Chinese Exclusion Act, which suspended the entry of Chinese laborers into the United States, the Chinese population in America steadily declined. It was not repealed until 1943.
Declining Chinese populations had negative impacts on economic growth in labor sectors where Chinese immigrants previously filled, according to Nancy Qian, an economics professor who conducted a study on the economic consequences of the Chinese Exclusion Act in the Western U.S.
“We’ve seen a cycle in history of going very anti-immigrant and then going in a different direction,” Johnson said. “It seems that whatever crisis comes up, immigrants are a convenient scapegoat that are often punished. And then when they’re needed in the economy, things change.
During the Great Depression, over one million Mexican Americans, many of whom were U.S. citizens, were deported from the country.
“Mexicans in California and other parts of the country were labeled as a problem group that caused the loss of jobs to U.S. citizens,” Johnson said. “In a time of deep economic turmoil, more than a million persons of Mexican ancestry were removed from the United States. More than a quarter were U.S citizens by birth or naturalized U.S citizens.”
The epicenter of the repatriation was in Los Angeles.
“There was a park in L.A. where working-class Mexican folks would congregate. What happened was local police, with federal backup, decided to round people up and drive them to the border to get them out of the country … In some ways, it was an ethnic cleansing without due process.”
However, the country reversed course during World War II when agricultural labor was scarce. They implemented the Bracero Program, an agreement between the U.S. and Mexico in which millions of Mexicans were offered employment contracts to come and work in California.
“It turns out, we needed those people here in the country to do those jobs,” Becker said. “We have these swings back and forth. We blame immigrants when it’s convenient to do so.”
Being reminded of the effects of previous deportations is more important than ever as cracking down on illegal immigration was a key focus of Trump’s campaign, the panel said.
Trump’s vision for mass deportation
Trump has promised to “launch the largest deportation in American history,” he said during an October rally last year at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
His outspoken intent to deliver mass deportations should be taken seriously, the panel said.
“We’re expecting everything that he said he’s going to do,” Ortega said. “We have a convicted felon in the White House. What I expect is lawless overreach.”
As Trump’s inauguration takes place Monday, some immigrants living in the United States with insecure or undocumented status are anxious as they face the reality of potential deportation.
“There is a lot of fear,” Souza said. Souza is an undocumented migrant from Brazil. “As a DACA recipient, it’s frightening for me to be a targeted by this administration. I always think about it every day, every minute.”
DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is federal immigration policy that defers deportation of migrants who came to the U.S. as children and gives them work authorization.
During Trump’s first term in office, he attempted to end the DACA program. However the move was overturned by the Supreme Court and DACA was upheld.
Despite Trump’s promise to crackdown on illegal immigration, there are multiple Calif. laws in place meant to protect undocumented immigrants from federal overreach.
In 2017, during Trump’s first term as president, Calif. signed into law Senate Bill 54 that essentially made it a sanctuary state.
The bill limits the sharing of information on undocumented immigrants between local law enforcement and federal authorities. It also prevents state and local resources from being used to assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or I.C.E.
One of the bill’s purposes is help undocumented immigrants feel more at ease interacting with local law enforcement without the fear of deportation.
“It’s very important that it’s clear to immigrant communities in California that local police are separate and apart from the immigration enforcement authorities,” Johnson said. “It’s a big public safety concern if immigrants don’t feel comfortable reporting crimes or flee police out of fear that they might be get deported.”
However federal immigration authorities would still have the power to conduct their own deportations in California. In addition, state prisons are able to cooperate and share information with I.C.E. and allow federal immigration agents to conduct interviews at county jails.
Becker hinted at a few bills that some state officials will try to move forward in an effort to further enhance protections for undocumented immigrants.
The bills are aimed at establishing public schools and hospitals as sanctuaries.
“The chair of the Latino Caucus has a bill with our Superintendent Tony Thurmond around schools. They’re trying to make school sites to be sanctuaries, to protect both students, parents, staff and teachers,” Becker said. “We’re also looking at a bill doing the same around hospitals. We must have these areas where people can come and without fear.”
The discussion mainly focused on immigrants who came from Latin countries, since Mexican immigrants made up 23% of the U.S.’s foreign-born population as of 2022, according to Pew Research Center.
However recent waves of immigrants who entered the U.S. have seen growing immigration from all corners of the world. During the Biden administration, unauthorized immigration from Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, South America and the Caribbean all saw increases, according to Pew Research Center.
“It’s not just Latino immigrants,” Becker said. “It’s African immigrants, Middle Eastern immigrants, and Asian immigrants who are all going to be targeted as well.”
Empowering through legal awareness
The most vital way for undocumented immigrants to be protected from deportation is knowing their rights, the panel said.
Becker pointed to a stack of red cards from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center that each contained written explanations of the rights that immigrants have under the U.S. Constitution including the Fourth Amendment. They are a resource that can be used by people if they encounter immigration authorities.
While state laws can help build protections to federal crackdowns on illegal immigration, speaking up about the personal stories of those who experience deportation could be just as, if not more powerful.
“When people hear the stories about fathers and mothers being torn away from their children, I think that’s when the tide is going to turn,” Becker said. “We need to make sure that we do our role to share those stories. When they see the real toll on people in our communities, that’s gonna change things.”
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