Governor Gavin Newsom Wednesday lashed out at the Trump administration for devastating Southern California’s economy through its aggressive immigration crackdown after visiting communities and businesses that were hollowed out following weeks of raids.
After talking to residents and business owners in the cities of Downey and Bell, Los Angeles communities heavily hit by the immigration enforcement, Newsom lamented that mom and pop shops are struggling more now than they did during the coronavirus pandemic.
“They said, ‘We miss COVID.’ They said it was much easier,” Newsom recalled the conversation with a business owner. “ They said they’ve lost 80% of their businesses. They say they’ve lost a community.”
NBC Los Angeles has been extensively covering the impact of the immigration raids as workers, whether documented or undocumented, are afraid to go to work or buy necessary goods in fear of being detained by federal agents. Crowded shopping districts, including Santee Alley in downtown Los Angeles, have seen more shops with doors shut with palpably fewer shoppers over the past few weeks.
While standing in front of a Downey church near which an apparent immigration operation was conducted last month, the governor said he could sense the tension and nervousness from the community although a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order last week to halt broad immigration stops and arrests across California, including Los Angeles. Under the order, federal agents are prohibited from relying on race, occupation or speaking Spanish or English with an accent to stop someone.
“There was no one in the ice cream store in the middle of the day in the summer,” Newsom said about his visit to the city of Bell. “They said the tourists aren’t coming, wrecking the economy, destroying families, destroying generational businesses.”
Addressing the Trump administration’s decision Tuesday to withdraw 2,000 National Guard members from Los Angeles, the Democratic governor characterized the Pentagon’s initial order to send military troops in response to anti-deportation protests as an “absurdity” and a waste of resources and time.
“The folks that were taken and brought into armories, waiting for a mission assignment, are summer school teachers, our paramedics, our firefighters, our police officers,” Newsom said. “Because of the absurdity of this in this complete incapacity of the Pentagon to reconcile the fact they weren’t doing a damn thing.”
The California governor added he hopes to get the National Guard back under his control so they can be used for important tasks, such as wildfire prevention.
Following the Pentagon’s announcement, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass described the partial withdrawal as a “victory.”
“Los Angeles stood strong,” Mayor Bass said. “We organized peaceful protests, we came together at rallies, we took the Trump administration to court — all of this led to today’s retreat.”
Bass also doubled down on her previous comments that military troops were not needed in the city.
“Their primary mission here was to guard two buildings that frankly didn’t need to be guarded,” Bass said. “(They were) deployed unnecessarily, which means they had to leave their families, they had to leave their education, they had to leave their work.”
The initial deployment was for 60 days, and the court is expected to hear more arguments next month regarding the legality of the federal deployment