Cars are torched, rocks hurled at police, and progressive politicians adopt the wounded posture of democratic victimhood.One might be forgiven for imagining some profound injustice is being protested in Los Angeles. In fact, what is happening is far more prosaic — and justified. Federal agents are doing precisely what the law empowers and requires them to do, removing individuals who have entered the United States illegally and committed serious crimes.This, evidently, is too much for California’s political establishment, however. The state government finds itself facing reduced federal transfer payments and — more perilously for the Democratic Party — a shrinking voter base, to the extent that illegal entrants cannot legally cast ballots..While there is no suggestion that the state government is orchestrating violent protests, its inaction and blatantly misguided rhetoric strongly suggest a willingness to exploit public disorder in service of anti-Trump grandstanding.Let's be clear about who is being removed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It is not the people who clean the swimming pools or stack the Walmart shelves. The intended deportees are the rapists, child molesters, traffickers and known associates of drug cartels. Some are killers. And, those picked up so far are not “alleged” criminals — they are convicted felons. Some foreign regimes, freed from the burden of housing them, were only too happy to clear out their prisons and push former convicts north when the Biden administration dismantled meaningful border enforcement..They are not then, immigrants in search of honest work and a better life; they are, in the parlance of President Trump, “bad hombres.”They are not, frankly, the people you would want living on your street.And yet, the state of California — under Governor Gavin Newsom's leadership — wants Washington to leave them alone.For what possible reason?.Begin, though do not end, by following the money.California receives approximately US$160 billion annually in federal grants — a significant chunk of its US$450 billion expenditures for 2024. U.S. federal transfers fund everything from healthcare and education to infrastructure and law enforcement.Population is not the only metric in determining such transfers. But, it is a major one.It is relevant here that over the last decade, 2.2 million more people have left the state than have arrived. The state government's imperative to preserve or grow the population is thus understandable. However, that the state government would resist deporting illegal residents — including, disturbingly, those with records of violent crime — is also alarming.The state’s illegal alien population is in fact the largest in the United States, estimated by the Public Policy Institute of California at 1.8 million. This, combined with an institutional contempt for President Trump and a cultivated narrative of victimhood, helps explain Sacramento’s hostility to enforcement efforts..It also explains why Trump — much criticized though he is — sees little alternative but to uphold the law, deport illegal entrants and protect federal personnel tasked with doing so.In short, California’s Democratic elite is not acting from principle, but from political arithmetic. If the price of continued funding and electoral viability is the harbouring of foreign-born criminals, it appears they are willing to pay it — with other people’s money and other people’s safety.
