Politics
Column: Trump's promised deportations are on a collision course with a California economy built on hypocrisy
This country has always had a hypocritical relationship with the undocumented workers who keep America’s agricultural, construction and hospitality industries humming.
On one hand, we simply cannot function without them. On the other, xenophobic politicians whip up fear and mistrust of workers on the lowest economic rungs when it serves their purposes.
And voters, who may be angry about all sorts of things, often find it easier to blame outsiders for woes they have nothing to do with, such as inflation.
But we can’t delude ourselves: President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible threatens devastating consequences for the country’s economy, for prices and for the people who come to this country to pick our fruits and vegetables, build our homes and wash our dishes.
California, where some economists estimate that half of our 900,000 farmworkers are undocumented, would be especially hard hit.
Joe Del Bosque, 75, has grown cantaloupes, almonds and asparagus on the San Joaquin Valley’s west side for decades. During the picking season, his employment rolls can swell to as many as 200 workers, none of whom is native-born and white. Some of his workers have lived in the United States with “temporary protected status” for years, some have green cards and the rest have been able to provide documents that satisfy minimal federal requirements.
“A lot of these jobs in agriculture are not wanted by American citizens,” Del Bosque told me Wednesday. “And I don’t blame them. It’s hard work in extreme conditions out there that a lot of people don’t want to do at any wage.”
Also, he said, the work is seasonal. Farmworkers roam from crop to crop based on the time of year.
“The people that do it go from one farm to another to another,” Del Bosque said. “Who can make a living in this country working a three-month job? It’s not easy.”
The prospect of widespread immigration raids and deportations has sent chills down the spines of farmworkers and their bosses, many of whom remember when employment shortages left produce rotting in the fields as recently as 10 years ago.
“We need to get together and agree we need some form of immigration reform, especially for essential workers,” said Del Bosque. “They provide food for the country. Can’t get more essential than that.”
In the mid-1980s, when he managed cantaloupe fields, federal government pilots would fly small planes over the state’s cropland looking for large crews of workers, he recalled. The pilots would radio information about the workers to the ground, where vans full of immigration officers would storm farms to, as Del Bosque put it, “capture as many as they could.”
One raid he witnessed ended in tragedy. Two of the farmworkers fleeing the feds jumped into an aqueduct at the edge of the field and tried to swim away.
“One didn’t make it,” Del Bosque said. “He drowned on the spot. They pulled him out and he’d passed away. I remember they had a hearing in Merced, and several of us came to testify about what happened. But I don’t think anything ever came of it.”
Human Rights Watch reported that from 1974 to 1986, 15 migrant farmworkers were known to have drowned in Central Valley canals during immigration raids. Immigrant rights groups accused Border Patrol agents of deliberately herding workers toward irrigation canals, which they used as barriers to prevent flight.
Border Patrol vehicles at the time carried no lifesaving equipment, which “suggested callousness, if not criminal neglect,” Human Rights Watch argued. In 1984, Border Patrol officials belatedly announced that agents would be required to carry lifesaving equipment when working near rivers and canals.
Without question, this country’s immigration system is broken. It’s illegal to hire undocumented workers, but employers do so anyway because they can’t function without this human capital. With rare exceptions, the government looks the other way. In fact, the odds that an employer will face an inspection by immigration authorities, my colleague Don Lee recently wrote, “are even less than a taxpayer’s likelihood of being audited by the Internal Revenue Service.”
Lee’s story focused on E-Verify, the computer-based program that allows employers to check a prospective employee’s legal status easily, almost instantly and free of charge.
The problem, as Lee reported, is that most employers won’t use it. They simply do not want to know that workers are here illegally; they desperately need the labor.
The summer I graduated from high school, my sister got me a job waiting tables with her at a restaurant on Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills. The restaurant, Pages, was sort of an upscale diner, with a long counter, a pie case and booths along a picture window at the front.
Every so often, we would hear a stir in the kitchen as the Spanish-speaking men who worked in the kitchen warned each other that “la migra” — the immigration authorities — were on their way. This was long before cellphones; I don’t know who tipped them off.
From inside the restaurant, the guys would clamber up to the roof, wait for the “all clear” and then get right back to busing tables, washing dishes and cooking. Those who were apprehended and deported would soon return to work after sneaking back across the border, which was much more porous before President Reagan’s 1986 amnesty coupled with stricter border enforcement. Bosses who encouraged and condoned such attempts to evade the feds typically faced no repercussions.
It was a ritual, almost pointless dance — except that it was disruptive and scary as hell.
And it will continue unless and until Congress rectifies our incredible hypocrisy about undocumented immigrants by reforming the immigration system. It might be in Trump’s best interest to keep demonizing them, but it most definitely is not in ours.
Bluesky: @rabcarian.bsky.social. Threads: @rabcarian
The United States and Iran on Friday were taking steps to resume peace talks, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the U.S. blockade of Iranian ships and ports would continue for “as long as it takes” to get Tehran to agree to a deal.
Steve Witkoff, a U.S. special envoy, and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, planned to travel to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, on Saturday for negotiations, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Friday.
“Steve and Jared will be heading to Pakistan tomorrow to hear the Iranians out,” Ms. Leavitt told reporters outside the White House. “We hope progress will be made, and we hope that positive developments will come from this meeting.”
Mr. Trump, Vice President JD Vance, who has been leading the talks with the Iranians, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio “will be waiting here in the United States for updates,” Ms. Leavitt added.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, arrived in Islamabad on Friday, Iranian state media reported. He was carrying a written response to a U.S. proposal for a peace deal, according to two senior Iranian officials familiar with his plans.
Earlier, the Iranian officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, said Mr. Araghchi had been expected to meet with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner this weekend. But later, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said in a post on X that no meeting was planned between Iran and the United States in Pakistan and that Iran would convey its position through Pakistani officials.
While Iran has publicly rejected peace talks during the U.S. naval blockade of its ports, the two Iranian officials said that Tehran has been exchanging messages through Pakistan and engaging in diplomacy to resume talks. The Trump administration has said the military cordon is aimed at crushing the Iranian economy and pressuring Tehran to make a deal.
Mr. Hegseth said on Friday that while the naval blockade would continue, the U.S. military remained poised to attack Iran again on Mr. Trump’s orders.
“Iran knows that they still have an open window to choose wisely at the negotiating table,” Mr. Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon.
Many sticking points remain, including the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz; the fate of Iran’s highly enriched uranium; and Tehran’s demand that about $27 billion in frozen assets held abroad be released.
The United States and Iran agreed to a cease-fire more than two weeks ago. Still, tensions have remained high in and around the strait, a crucial conduit for Persian Gulf crude oil and natural gas. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said he was extending the cease-fire indefinitely. But both Iran and the United States have continued to seize vessels they said have violated their restrictions on shipping in the waterway.
On Friday, the U.S. Treasury Department rolled out a blitz of new sanctions targeting 40 shipping firms and vessels it said were part of Iran’s “shadow fleet” of oil tankers. It also imposed sanctions on a China-based independent refinery, Hengli, which the Treasury identified as one of Iran’s largest customers for crude oil and other petroleum products.
The United States and Iran moved to resume talks as clashes between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia, intensified in Lebanon on Friday, straining a separate cease-fire that was also extended by the White House.
Mr. Trump announced a three-week extension of the truce in Lebanon on Thursday, after hosting Israeli and Lebanese diplomats at the White House. Hezbollah, which is not part of the negotiations, has signaled it intends to abide by the truce if Israel does the same.
Strikes between Israel and Hezbollah have plummeted since an initial cease-fire was announced last week. But both sides have continued to exchange fire, raising fears that the truce could collapse into an all-out war.
“Cease-fire? What cease-fire while drones are still hovering above us?” said Fatima al-Masri, 49, who was in the southern Lebanese town of Qana on Friday. She was visiting the grave of her husband, an emergency worker, who had been killed in the conflict.
“What cease-fire while we are still losing our men and our loved ones?” she said, adding, “We want this war to be over.”
The current conflict that began last month has killed about 2,500 people in Lebanon, the country’s health ministry said, as well as two civilians and 15 soldiers in Israel, officials said.
The fighting began last month, when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel in support of Iran, setting off a large-scale Israeli bombing campaign and ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Israeli forces are still deployed in a broad section of the country’s south, which Israeli officials have said they plan to occupy indefinitely.
Israel appeared to escalate its operations on Friday, issuing evacuation warnings for the southern Lebanese town of Deir Aames before launching airstrikes hours later. The town lies beyond the six-mile-deep “forward defense line” that Israel said it would control amid the cease-fire, suggesting that Israel’s strikes were widening.
The Israeli military said in a statement that Hezbollah had launched rockets from the town a day earlier toward northern Israel. Hezbollah also said it had again fired drones at Israeli troops in southern Lebanon on Friday.
Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, has pledged to continue demolishing border towns and villages amid the cease-fire. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese remain displaced from the region, many with little idea if or when they can return.
During the talks at the White House on Thursday, Lebanon called for an end to those demolitions, according to a senior Lebanese official briefed on the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
Hezbollah, for its part, expressed contempt for the state of the cease-fire on Friday, pointing to the continued Israeli military operations and reiterating its pledges to respond with force.
Mohamad Raad, Hezbollah’s leader in the Lebanese Parliament, said in a statement that the truce was “not a cease-fire at all,” and he urged the Lebanese government to withdraw from direct negotiations with Israel.
“The authorities should feel ashamed before their people,” Mr. Raad said, raising already simmering tensions between the Lebanese government and Hezbollah, a group it does not control.
Israel’s strikes this week killed Amal Khalil, a reporter for the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, and wounded another person in southern Lebanon, further rattling the tenuous truce.
The cease-fire agreement, released last week by the State Department, said that Israel would cease “offensive military operations” in Lebanon but “preserve its right to take all necessary measures in self-defense, at any time, against planned, imminent or ongoing attacks.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel accused Hezbollah in a recorded video statement on Friday of moving to “sabotage” peace efforts between Israel and Lebanon, signaling the military had no intention to cease attacks against the group.
“We have maintained full freedom of action against any threat, including emerging threats,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “We attacked yesterday, we attacked today. We are determined to restore security to the residents of the north.”
Reporting was contributed by Helene Cooper, Alan Rappeport, Pranav Baskar, Sarah Chaayto, John Ismay, Michael Levenson and Abdi Latif Dahir.
Politics
Florida Dem filed for re-election days before resignation as House Ethics Committee ramped up pressure
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Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick is still registered to run for re-election despite having resigned from office amid congressional and federal probes for allegedly mishandling disaster relief funding for personal gain.
On April 17, Cherfilus-McCormick submitted a notice of her candidacy to the Florida Department of State as a Democrat just a week before officially stepping down from office.
She resigned on Tuesday.
The filing raises questions about whether Cherfilus-McCormick believes she can still pursue political office despite facing intense scrutiny at the moment.
NANCY MACE CALLS ON CONGRESS TO RELEASE SEXUAL HARASSMENT RECORDS, WANTS AN ‘AVALANCHE OF RESIGNATIONS’
Former Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., speaks after being sworn in during a ceremony in the Broward County Commission chambers in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Jan. 27, 2025. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service)
Her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cherfilus-McCormick’s decision to resign from office came right before the House Ethics Committee was scheduled to recommend she be punished for misusing disaster relief funding that she allegedly funneled through several companies into her campaign coffers.
The committee found that she had committed 18 campaign finance violations, five counts of false financial disclosures, three counts of misusing official funds and one count of lack of candor.
Cherfilus-McCormick maintained her innocence but announced that she would defend herself outside of her time in office.
Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla. (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service)
“This was not a fair process. The Ethics Committee refused my new attorney’s reasonable request for time to prepare my defense. I simply cannot stand by and allow my due process rights to be trampled on, and my good name to be tarnished,” Cherfilus-McCormick said in a press release.
“Rather than play these political games, I choose to step away so that I can devote my time to fighting for my neighbors in Florida’s 20th district. I hereby resign from the 119th Congress, effective immediately.”
While Cherfilus-McCormick’s departure from Congress halted the Ethics Committee’s authority over her, she also faces federal charges.
FEDERAL CHARGES FILED AGAINST DEM CONGRESSWOMAN FOLLOWING CONFRONTATION AT ICE FACILITY
Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., leaves the U.S. Capitol after the last votes of the week on March 27, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images)
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She was indicted by a Miami grand jury in November for allegedly stealing $5 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has not yet announced a date for a special election to fill her vacant seat.
SACRAMENTO — A ballot measure that would require Californians to show identification every time they vote in person, or use a special pin number when submitting mail-in ballots, has qualified for the November ballot, elections officials announced Friday.
The measure also would require election officials to verify registered voters are U.S. citizens, aligning with a Republican-led push for new restrictions on voters in the wake of President Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and that undocumented immigrants are swaying elections by voting illegally.
Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio from San Diego has been pushing the measure for several years, while Trump and Republicans also are seeking a similar initiative at the federal level.
If passed, the California ballot measure would require a voter to present government-issued identification, such as a state driver’s license, every time they vote. Voters mailing ballots would be required to write a four-digit number, essentially a pin number, on their ballots matching the one generated when they registered to vote.
The pin would come from ID such as a driver’s license, or could be generated from the county. The vast majority of Californians mail in their ballots in elections.
Under the measure, election officials also must ensure that registered voters are U.S. citizens by using information from government records, which could include information in the federal Social Security Administration database, and maintain accurate voter registration lists.
DeMaio said the measure is different than a federal proposal, known as the SAVE Act, which stalled out in the U.S. Senate this week.
DeMaio said the state ballot measure “does not do away with mail in ballots, because voters of all political backgrounds like the convenience of mail in ballots. So we want to keep that convenience.”
The ballot measure needs a simple majority to pass.
Under current law, Californians are not required to show or provide identification when casting a ballot in person or by mail. They are required to provide identification when registering to vote, and must swear under penalty of perjury, a felony, that they are eligible to vote and a U.S. citizen.
Jenny Farrell, executive director of the League of Women Voters of California, told The Times that her group is committed to fighting the measure, arguing it would make it harder for people in the state to vote.
She said that people may forget to use a pin on their mail-in ballot, leading to their vote being disqualified. Similar changes in Texas, she said, led to a rise in rejected ballots due to technical errors.
“It doesn’t really weed out illegal voting,” which doesn’t actually exist, she said, “but it does cause more ballots to be incorrectly flagged and ultimately rejected.”
ACLU of Northern and Southern California, Common Cause, Disability Rights California also oppose the measure.
DeMaio filed for the ballot initiative in 2021 and 2023, but did not move forward with the signature collection process in order to fine-tune the ballot language.
He said his ballot measure wasn’t focused primarily about making sure that undocumented people don’t vote.
“That’s one element of concern that we’ve heard from some groups, but it really is making sure that, No. 1, we properly maintain our voter rolls,” he said.
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