Protesters set for fight while Trump in state
When Donald Trump makes his first presidential visit to California Tuesday, protesters from the anti-Trump resistance will be geared up for demonstrations against his plans for a wall on the Mexican border, a crackdown on sanctuary cities and increasing deportations of undocumented residents.
And that’s just fine with a president who’s spoiling for a fight.
It’s no accident that Attorney General Jeff Sessions came to Sacramento Wednesday to announce the Justice Department was suing to overturn California’s immigrant sanctuary laws, something he could have easily done from his
office in Washington, D.C., said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego.
“Sessions was a jab and Trump is ready to throw the big punch when he goes to the border wall,” he said.
A raucous, nationally televised confrontation with crowds of chanting, sign-waving California protesters could provide exactly the canvas Trump wants to show the voters of his conservative base.
“Just as California politicians score points by picking fights with the president, the president can pick fights with the liberal elites in California” and fire up his backers, Kousser said. “There are a lot of places in the United States that don’t want to be California.”
But for the Trump resistance in California, the chance to finally confront the president in person overshadows everything else.
“Trump is playing with fire,” said Aram Fischer, a co-leader of Indivisible SF, the local chapter of a progressive anti-Trump group claiming 200,000 members in California. “The more he’s here, and the more we can call attention to how he’s hurting California, the better it is for us.”
On Friday, the White House announced Trump would fly into the San Diego area late Tuesday morning. But while the president is expected to travel to the Otay Mesa border crossing to view prototypes for his long-promised but still unfunded wall and then headline a Republican National Committee fundraiser Tuesday night in Beverly Hills, no details have been released.
“We’re in the midst of coordinating with a number of border groups on an effort regarding the planned Trump visit,” Sarah Pease, founder of SD Indivisible Downtown, said in an email, but the lack of details isn’t making planning any easier.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of chatter about plans for protests.
“Donald Trump is coming to inspect his anti-immigrant wall,” the Deport Trump Brigade said in a Facebook post. “Mass mobilize and show up in masses to show (Trump) he is not welcomed in our land.”
The Unión del Barrio, another anti-Trump group, is calling for a mass demonstration at the Federal Building in downtown San Diego on Monday evening.
“We will continue defending our community when this fascist President visits Indigenous Kumeyay land to decide what prototype to use along this imposed border that divides families and further alienates Mexicans on both sides of the border,” the group said in a
Facebook post.
About 5,000 people from a wide range of progressive and anti-Trump groups already plan to show up — uninvited — at the $35,000-a-plate Beverly Hills event, said Maria Casey, founder of Venice Resistance and a coordinator of the protest.
But Trump supporters and advocates of tougher immigration rules have a different view of the president’s visit, which they say shows Trump’s continuing support for the changes in immigration regulations and enforcement he has called for since his presidential campaign.
Otay Mesa is one of two borfor der crossings in San Diego, located 6 miles east of the better-known San Ysidro crossing and just south of the city of Chula Vista. It’s also the site of an immigration detention facility.
The San Diego County Sheriff ’s Department already has put restrictions on the dusty, semi-isolated area near the spot were the prototypes were built, closing some nearby streets to cars and barring parking on others. In much of the surrounding area, there’s a ban on everything from guns and knives to bricks, baseball bats and bear spray. Poles, sticks and staffs, including those used banners and signs, aren’t allowed, as well as “any other item generally considered an ‘implement of riot,’ that can be used as a weapon,” the department said.
The department plans to provide “an area that is safe for all individuals to peacefully exercise their right to protest,” but there is no indication of how close that might be to the prototypes and to Trump.
That’s unlikely to stop the demonstrators, said Fischer of Indivisible SF.
“A lot of us are excited (Trump) is going to be in California, finally, and we’ll have a chance to say something directly,” he said. “California is motivated by the attacks” Trump has made on the state and its political leaders.
But while both Trump and the protesters welcome the president’s brief California sojourn as a chance “to clarify the battle lines in their fight,” said Kousser of UC San Diego, Republican politicians facing tough re-election fights in an increasingly Democratic state may be far less excited.
During his California stops, the president is almost guaranteed to talk about his border wall, his plans to deal with undocumented immigrants and maybe even his call for offshore oil drilling. Those are all overwhelmingly unpopular stances in the state and likely to remind voters of the GOP candidates who back Trump and his policies.
The president isn’t likely to be joined on his California travels by many threatened Republicans, Kousser said.
“They probably aren’t going to do photo ops with Trump, but if he wants to do a fundraiser for them, that’s fine,” he said.