California can't be smug: A Trump victory could ruin the lives of millions of our neighbors

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Hello and happy Thursday. There are 12 days until the election, and today I want to tell you about America.

Not the country, but the woman: América Ramirez Lomeli.

América came across our southern border illegally when she was 2, brought by her mom for the same reason millions of others have made that dangerous crossing: hope for a better life.

And she found it, in a tidy trailer on the outskirts of Sacramento, a home filled with the cacti her mother grows and the stray cats they have taken in. And love, there’s a lot of love in that tight space.

América’s mom, Ziria, did what most immigrant moms do: work really hard.

When the jobs she had were too menial to keep her family afloat, she learned new skills. She convinced a construction crew to take her on. Despite the sexism, she excelled, though work has been slow the past few months. The granite counters in her house are testament that this is a woman who can take care of herself — she remodeled the entire kitchen on her own.

And while Ziria was working, América was doing what immigrant kids do — clawing her way up. She excelled in school, she excelled at UC Davis, and now she works to help female farmworkers with Lideres Campesinas.

She is the kind of Californian who should make us all proud.

América Ramirez Lomeli, left, shown with her mother, Ziria Lomeli, works with Lideres Campesinas.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Mass deportation for what? So why am I telling you about América? Because her family, and thousands like it, are what Donald Trump hopes to destroy with his promise of mass deportation. These are the criminals and lunatics and murderers that, to use his words, are “poisoning the blood” of our country.

That is “ignorance about people like me who are really working hard,” América told me. “I am really, really trying. I am a graduate from a UC. I have a job, I pay my taxes. I am kind of angry to hear all of this rhetoric about the person they think that I am, but I am not.”

While América has managed to obtain citizenship, and her siblings were born here, her mother has not. Is this the family we want to tear apart, rip a great mom away from her kids, send her to a country she hasn’t known for decades? For what?

There is nothing behind a policy like that other than racism.

California is home to about 10 million immigrants, and about 1.85 million of them are undocumented. We have the largest population of immigrants of any state, making up about 23% of the foreign-born population in the entire country.

Like América’s family, many of those people are in situations where some of their loved ones have legal status and some don’t. So when we talk about deportation, we aren’t talking about 1.85 million Californians. The number of people who will have their lives capsized into a sea of uncertainty and hurt is much higher.

But of all the repulsive ideas Trump has vowed to implement if he wins the presidency, mass deportation is one he will have the power to achieve. Really, it will take very little stretching of existing laws to implement neighborhood sweeps and detention centers and even camps.

Speak for the vulnerable The Golden State will be devastated if mass deportations happen. Frankly, it doesn’t even have to be mass deportations, just enough deportations of honest, hardworking Californians who happen to be undocumented.

Because when the cleaning ladies and gardeners of Bel-Air and Brentwood disappear, it will be an inconvenience to employers. But in Echo Park and San Pedro, in Cudahy and East L.A., it will be moms and dads and sisters and brothers who vanish.

Californians can’t be silent about that threat. We can’t shrug and say the Golden State won’t go for Trump, so our work is done.

I’ll leave every other worry aside — that Trump’s economic plans will lead to inflation; that women’s reproductive rights will further erode; that democracy is dangling by a worn-out thread. Those are all national concerns.

But immigration is intrinsically, undeniably a California concern.

We have an obligation as residents of the most diverse state in the union to speak for our most vulnerable residents — those who cannot speak for themselves at the ballot box because they do not have a vote. California has woven immigrants — documented and undocumented — into our culture, our communities and our values. We know that papers do not make people good, any more than a lack of them makes someone bad.

Our state should be the clearest and fiercest voice pushing back on Trump’s false, cruel and dangerous narratives about immigrants so that those in other states, where views on immigrants may be shaped more by Trump’s rhetoric than reality, can hear the truth about what diversity really means.

Otherwise, we are telling our neighbors, our family, our friends — we are telling America — that the Golden State may not stand with Trump, but we also cannot be bothered to stand against him.

What else you should be reading: The must-read: They’re Bro-American and Here for the (Political) Party The extremism watch: How a conspiracy-fueled group got a foothold in this hurricane-battered town The L.A. Times special: In Kamala Harris’ Berkeley, political activism is part of growing up

Stay Golden, Anita Chabria

P.S. Here’s Trump in his own words talking about immigration.

Donald Trump:

“We will root out the...radical left thugs that live like vermin.”

“We’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”

“They’re destroying the blood of our country…I never read Mein Kampf. They said, ‘Hitler said that.’” pic.twitter.com/titECk298p

— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) October 23, 2024 Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

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