California Gov. Gavin Newsom told U.S. President Donald Trump to “just get it over with, arrest me” as the pair clashed over immigration raids in the city and how to handle the disorder that erupted from the protests against them.
Trump had said he would arrest Newsom if he were the White House border czar Tom Homan, calling it a “great thing”. Homan had earlier said those harboring illegal immigrants would face the law, and the Democratic governor of California is not excluded from that risk.
Newsom called it a “sober and serious moment” in remarks to MeidasTouch, a liberal activist media group, on Monday evening.
“This is why I told the president, just get it over with, arrest me, move on. If you need some head to scalp, do it with me, but stop messing with these kids,” Newsom said.
“Stop messing with four-year-olds. Kids in elementary school. We’ve got kids. We have hundreds of graduations down here.
“Kids are not going to their own graduations, families, grandparents, here legally. Mixed status families in some cases, scared to death to go to a graduation. People are scared to walk down the streets.”
Newsom said he was aware of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) running “checkpoints, checking people’s IDs” in Los Angeles.
“We’ve never seen this kind of deployment in so many accents,” Newsom said.
“It’s mass panic out here in the nation’s largest county, in the nation’s largest state. Good, hardworking people, decent people. These are not the criminals. These are not the thugs.”
This is a developing article. Updates to follow.
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