In Los Angeles, federal agents carrying out deportations on behalf of the Trump administration are clashing with protesters, some lawful, others unlawfully disruptive and even violent. The Trump administration has ordered in the National Guard and threatened to send in the Marines. Governor Gavin Newsom calls this willful escalation. Trump-administration officials say they must protect federal agents engaged in lawful immigration actions––enforcement that some protesters regard as cruel and immoral, regardless of legality.
Anytime that American citizens clash in the streets with armed agents of the state, something has gone wrong. Today’s civil unrest risks expanding into the sort of violence that kills lots of people and strains civic bonds for decades. And every time looting and rioting occur in Los Angeles, its poorest neighborhoods suffer the aftereffects for years. Stepping back from the brink is in America’s interest, regardless of where one attributes blame. As a Californian, I am especially dismayed to see this happen in L.A., a city I adore, where I long lived and where I have many friends and loved ones. For all Angelenos, so recently traumatized by this year’s devastating wildfires, and for the many Americans who feel dismay when watching fellow citizens clash, I pray the turmoil ends without loss of life.
My fear that it may instead intensify is informed by several background conditions.
Among them are President Donald Trump’s incentives. On X, many of his supporters are gleeful about the prospect of a clash that ends in bloodied leftists wearing handcuffs and facing felonies. Even setting aside the most negatively polarized segment of the Republican base, Trump has a strong incentive to redirect public attention away from his feud with Elon Musk, his underwater approval rating on the economy, and the fight over a spending bill that divides his coalition, and toward immigration enforcement, an issue on which his approval rating is still positive. What’s more, this clash concerns deportation actions that are apparently lawful, as opposed to Trump’s unconstitutional deportations of foreigners to a Salvadoran prison.
Newsom has urged nonviolence, but California officials also have incentives to focus on opposing Trump rather than restoring calm to protect innocents. Golden State polls show not only that Trump is more unpopular in the state than he is in the nation, but that immigration is a bad issue for him locally. Regarding undocumented immigrants, the Public Policy Institute of California finds that “overwhelming majorities of adults (73%) and likely voters (71%) say that there should be a way for them to stay in the country legally, if certain requirements are met”; that “eight in ten adults (79%) and likely voters (80%) favor the protections given by DACA—Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals—to undocumented immigrants brought into the US as children”; and that “about six in ten adults (63%) and likely voters (62%) favor the California state and local governments making their own policies and taking actions, separate from the federal government, to protect the legal rights of undocumented immigrants in California.”
Sentiments in Los Angeles are surely even more antagonistic to Trump’s position, and the stakes for Angelenos with family members and friends who live there without legal status are high––in protesting, within or outside of the law, many seek to preserve their communities or perhaps their very families. And Trump, by his own unlawful actions, has made many fear that their intimates may not be simply deported back to their home country but may instead be disappeared into the prison system of an authoritarian regime.
Federal and local cops have cause to feel threatened, too. More than 900 suffered injuries during the 2020 unrest that followed the killing of George Floyd. Multiple federal, state, and local agencies trying to keep order, while federal, state, and local officials fight rather than coordinate, only raises the probability of bad outcomes. And today’s social-media environment facilitates the rapid communication of where deportation raids are occurring, enabling not just peaceful protesters but also, potentially, nihilistic inciters of chaos to rush to the scene.
Immigration-enforcement raids will continue so long as Trump is president and the law of the land is unchanged. Opponents of such actions, even those that are entirely lawful, have every right under the Constitution to peaceably assemble to protest them.
Farsighted protest leaders should do everything in their power to keep those demonstrations law-abiding. Under the Trump administration, the rule of law is among the most precious safeguards Americans possess. Appealing to it, Trump critics have repeatedly prevailed in courtrooms, where Trump is least likely to succeed with his most dangerous gambits. In contrast, street violence gives Trump the ability to fight his enemies with the law on his side and with trained, armed personnel to enforce it.
In such a fight, Trump may well prevail in the court of public opinion. But if he is seen as needlessly escalating the dispute, and bloodshed follows, more Americans may come to reflect that the same man was president during the civil unrest of summer 2020; the civil unrest of January 6, 2021; and the civil unrest of today. Whether one attributes blame to Trump himself or so-called Trump derangement syndrome, the sad and dangerous spectacle of Americans fighting one another happens alarmingly often when Trump is in the White House. A president attuned to America’s long-term interests and the many global challenges our nation confronts would try to lower the temperature, rather than inflame a clash that could have deadly results.
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