The immigration agenda of President Donald Trump has met with an opposition wave in Los Angeles, the second largest city in the country.
At least 56 people have been arrested so far in mass protests against administration immigration raids in the city on Friday. The demonstrations have spilled on one of the largest highways in the region, and the federal authorities face criticism after they arrested, and apparently injured, a prominent labor leader.
In response, the White House has threatened to arrest the governor of California and mobilize the Marines to support the National Guard troops to defend federal property, despite the fact that state officials say they do not want help and are now demanding the administration.
For the White House, this scene, Trump fighting a blue state for its characteristic theme, is a political victory, authorities said. It is a saga of the species observed at the national level that has long defined his career: a time for television.
“We are happy to have this fight,” said a White House official, emphasizing that politically, the administration sees it as a winning problem.
Democrats and immigration activists have widely expelled the operation of Los Angeles as illegal and inhuman and insisted that it is a policy, and not a good public policy.
“The actions of this administration are not on public security, they are fear,” said former Vice President Kamala Harris, a Los Angeles resident who ran against Trump last year.
But Trump’s allies argue that it is simply Trump carrying out the hard line immigration agenda that was the centerpiece of his campaign. NBC News spoke with four White House officials, in addition to other Trump supporters, who requested anonymity to speak frankly.
“So the United States voted, point,” said a Trump advisor. “This is the first approach in the United States that caused the president to be elected and is promoted by nothing more than what he promised American voters.”
“Look at violence, attacks against the application of the law,” added the advisor. “If the Democrats want to support that, leave them. That is why we win the elections and they don’t.”
Trump’s advisors also pointed out the fact that the president’s immigration policies continue to obtain high grades in most public surveys.
A CBS/Yougov survey carried out just before the Los Angeles immigration raids found that 54% of respondents approved the “Administration Program to Deported Immigrants illegally.”
These numbers help clarify why the broader administration and republicans of Congress feel politically comfortable supporting the support of the raids on the vocal opposition of critics, and a persistent threat of legal challenge.
“I know that there is no doubt like California that the Nose has leaned the American people and determined that they want to be a sanctuary for criminals,” Senator Kevin Cramer, Rn.D. said, adding: “I think he is exercising exactly what he said he would do and what people chose him.”
Trump’s advisors say that the president also points out the fact that he obtained more votes in California in 2024 than in his previous campaigns, although he still lost the very democratic state.
The response of the administration to the protests seems to have an eye in the reaction in the conservative media, an increasingly dominated space by pro-trump influencers.
Some of those influential people have been publishing from the protests, especially Phil McGraw, a well -known Trump defender better known as “Dr. Phil”, which was embedded with immigration agents and customs compliance during Los Angeles’s raids, as he did during similar immigration raids in Chicago this year.
Trump’s advisor asked about McGraw’s participation, said: “This is an important moment in American history. People have the right to see it in a way that is not unfairly biased by a partial media.”
The advisor would not explain how McGraw, whose presence was first informed by CNN, could have first -line access to federal immigration operations. An McGraw spokesman did not respond to a comment request.
Republicans also see the fight as a political winner and say that Democrats are having the hook functionally on a subject in which surveys has given Trump an advantage.
“I think it is a symptom of how far this party has made when you have important democrats stops on the side of illegal foreigners who are antintering of vehicles,” Florida’s governor, Ron Desantis, said Fox News on Monday.
“It is one of the reasons why the Democratic Party is fighting so much nationally,” he added.
Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and former Trump administration official, said that raids should not be a surprise because immigration is a “legitimate problem” that voters have indicated that they care.
“There is no political advantage to defend or deny the images of burning cars, uproar and looting and destruction,” he said about the Democrats. “A feeling that things have gone out of control in California and that the government cannot effectively govern … the conversation of illegal immigration to a collapse in society has changed.”
Even so, there has been some disagreement, at least in public messages, about how far to push Pursue the Democrats of California, a break between what can be politically popular between the base and what is politically realistic.
The clearest example focuses on the authorization of the Trump administration authorizing the deployment of the National Guard troops on the opposition of the governor of California Gavin Newsom.
Newsom and the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, have argued that inserting troops of the National Guard will inflame tensions and potential violence, an answer that has led Trump to indicate that he would consider arresting Newsom if he will continue what the administration considers its interference.
“I would do it if it were Tom,” Trump said, referring to his “border tsar,” Tom Homan. “I think it’s great. Gavin likes advertising. But I think it would be a big thing.”
While stopping Newsom, it would undoubtedly please Trump’s magician base, White House officials say privately that they are not currently on cards.
“It is not planning or considering actively,” said a senior White House official. “But anyone who breaks the federal law is put at risk of being arrested. That is just a basic fact.”
A second White House official said that if Newsom or Bass, a former Democratic congressman, disagree with the Federal Immigration Law, could be arrested. But the official also recognized that the optics of arresting California officials in an immigration fight that believe that most Americans support the backlash with some Republican voters because, at this time, they do not seem that they have really violated any immigration law.
The official said there is no great strategy to deploy National Guard troops in blue cities throughout the country; The administration is simply waiting to see if other protests get out of control.
Meanwhile, Newsom has inclined threats, practically challenging the administration to arrest it instead of focusing on protesters.
“It’s a hard guy. Why don’t you do that? You know where to find me,” Newsom told MSNBC on Sunday. Referring to Homan, he added: “That type of Blointing is exhausting. So, Tom, arrest me. Let’s go.”
On Monday, California sued the Trump administration, arguing that the State National Guard is “illegal.”
“Let me be clear: there is no invasion. There is no rebellion,” said the attorney general of Democratic State Rob Bonta. “The president is trying to manufacture chaos and crisis in the field for his own political purposes. Federalize the California National Guard is an abuse of the president’s authority under the law, and not one that we take light. We are asking a court to stop the illegal and unprecedented order.”
Trump’s supporters have aligned behind him, and some even offered to address Los Angeles to help, despite having no experience in the law.
“Preparing to deploy … in Los Angeles,” said Vocal Trump, Benny Johnson, in X. He continued with a position to his 3.7 million followers who show him using military style team with his name.
The increasingly controversial political struggle over Los Angeles, admit administration officials, is no longer just about deporting those with a criminal record, which was Trump’s main point for voters in the campaign.
On Monday, a MSNBC host asked Homan if all ICE have arrested as part of Trump administration’s immigration efforts had a criminal record, and had a forceful response.
“Absolutely not,” he said.
