LA riots proved Trump right – but he learned a hard lesson about immigration | Opinion

Show Caption

The most interesting aspect of the 2025 Los Angeles immigration raids and riots is how quickly they vanished from the news.

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-California, had just punched his 15 minutes of fame on June 12 when the Israeli air force took off for Tehran and whispers of World War III wiped LA from the national consciousness.

Padilla was back on the U.S. Senate floor five days later trying to reprise the impromptu speech he gave after the Trump FBI ran him out of a Homeland Security news conference and handcuffed him on the floor. But his words were lost in the torrent of news flashes from the Middle East. Americans were talking about bunker busters and missile defense, the Mullahs and Bibi. 

Burning Waymos had become an afterthought. 

Trump can't deport all immigrants, try as he might

In those few smoke-filled days, however, Los Angeles had reaffirmed a long established truth in this country: It’s a lot easier to bring migrants into America than to push them out. 

If the Trump administration had ambitions of deporting every last one of the 11 million-plus undocumented immigrants now in the United States – and don’t put it past White House aide Stephen Miller to believe he can do that – today the president is the wiser.

He has to be. Right?

For a moment, it looked like President Donald Trump would backtrack from deporting undocumented farm and hospitality workers, but already facing a MAGA insurrection on Iran, he quickly reversed, yet again.  

But Trump has to know. There isn’t enough time, money, federal officers or political capital to repeat for much longer what happened in Los Angeles.

History is clear: Americans won't stand for it

You can deport violent offenders by the millions, as the Obama administration proved over and over, but you’ll never deport the millions of migrants whose only crime was to cross the U.S.-Mexico border to partake in American prosperity. 

History keeps teaching that lesson:

• “Operation Wetback,” 1954. The program to deport Mexican workers is short-lived and highly controversial, even in the Eisenhower era.
• California Proposition 187, 1994. The successful ballot measure to cut off migrants from social services ends in its obliteration by the courts. The California Republican Party slinks into irrelevancy. 
• “Chandler Roundup,” 1997. The papers-please arrests of those who look undocumented leads to recriminations and recall efforts against the mayor and two council members. 
• Arizona Senate Bill 1070, 2010. Hard-nosed immigration law provokes boycotts against the state and is dismantled by the courts.
• Los Angeles ICE raids, 2025. A week of protest and rioting against Immigration and Customs Enforcement tells the Trump administration it can try to deport 11 million-plus people but will do so at its peril.

Left-wing rent-a-mob did the damage in LA

The Los Angeles protests were infiltrated by the so-called Omnicause, the left-wing rent-a-mob that moves from city to city trying to destabilize the old order. It's a motley crew of anarchists, ethno-nationalists and Marxists that bring their black bloc and umbrellas to social justice protests, university encampments and now immigration pushback. 

It wasn’t migrant dishwashers who burned Waymos or menaced ICE agents in LA.

“The people who are out there doing the violence ... they have a hoodie on, they have a face mask on ... these are people who do this all the time,” said Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell, as reported by Los Angeles Magazine. “Many come in from other places just to hurt people and cause havoc. ... The violence I have seen is disgusting."

But California has also become an experiment in how far you can press the immigration accelerator and still maintain a cohesive society. 

Opinion: Waymo cars get torched by LA protesters, burning Google – an immigration ally

Biden let millions of immigrants in. That produced a reaction.

The Los Angeles protests were as much a production of the Biden White House as they were the reactionary Trump administration. 

Democrats used the Biden years to stoke the largest mass migration of immigrants in this country’s history, The New York Times reported in December. An average 2.4 million people annually poured across the border from 2021 to 2023. 

“Even after taking into account today’s larger U.S. population, the recent surge is the most rapid since at least 1850,” The Times reported.

By 2023, the share of the U.S. population born in another country had soared to a new high ‒ 15.2%, The Times reported. 

In California that number is much larger – 27%, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. As for Los Angeles County, a third of its residents are now foreign born.

It is not a political statement to say that mass migration is disruptive. Virtually everywhere you see it today, in the United States, Western Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, it roils the masses. 

There is a reaction, and one that is often consequential.

Trump is the least of California's problems

The Los Angeles ICE raids were the reaction to the Biden immigration surge. Trump swooped in with federal agents, National Guard and the U.S. military with little or no consultation with his California counterparts. 

That triggered a counterreaction. But Trump is the least of the worries confronting California and its biggest city. 

Opinion: Democrats scream democracy is in peril ... while proving that it's absolutely fine

Joel Kotkin, a longtime Angelino and national expert on urban form and policy, wrote in his June 11 Spiked column “Los Angeles has fallen” that the city “offers a masterclass in urban dysfunction."

“Drive through the streets of the South Side or along Central Avenue," he said, "and the ambience increasingly resembles that of Mexico City or Mumbai: cracked pavements, dilapidated buildings, outdoor swap-meet markets and food stalls serving customers, much as one would see in the developing world."

Kotkin continued: “LA’s political establishment is now dominated by people who barely, if at all, support capitalism. While cities such as San Francisco, Houston and even New York shift back towards the political center ground, Los Angeles in 2022 elected Mayor Karen Bass, a lifelong leftist who travelled to Castro’s Cuba as part of the Venceremos brigade.”

The cost of living is pushing out the working class

Kotkin isn’t the voice of MAGA. He’s a fierce Trump critic who was a lifelong Democrat until he grew disillusioned with both parties and registered independent. 

The one-party state of California has produced taxation and regulation that has been raising the cost of living and housing and pushing Californians – and in particular, the working class – out. 

That puts the state on track to lose four of its 52 congressional seats by 2030, according to the Public Policy Institute. 

Today, there is evidence that even in immigrant-friendly California, where Latinos are a plurality, patience is wearing thin.

Asked in February 2024 if immigrants are a benefit or a burden to California, 60% of Californians said immigrants are a benefit. But that was down from 66% in June 2023 and 78% in February 2021, the Public Policy Institute reported.  

Latinos oppose LA riots and Trump's raids even more

We have seen nationally that Latinos are assimilating into American culture and are becoming less of a distinguishable voting bloc for any political party. 

Opinion: Trump isn't destroying our 'democratic norms.' Progressives are.

Perhaps that is why a YouGov survey of American attitudes on the Los Angeles protests shows that a plurality of Latinos, 44%, disapprove while 39% approve. 

That almost mirrors American attitudes across the board, with 45% disapproval and 36% approval.

Good news for the Trump administration? Yes. 

But the same poll shows Latinos and Americans think even less of his immigration raids: 50% of Americans, including 55% of Latinos, disapprove of how Trump is conducting the ICE raids. 

If that isn’t clear to Trump, let me make it clear. 

It’s time to tune out your fanatic in the West Wing – Stephen Miller – and get a grip. You can’t deport 11 million hardworking immigrants. You can deport the much smaller subgroup of bad guys who commit serious crimes.  

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with The Arizona Republic, where this column originally published. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com