A city of immigrants moves to resist Trump. How far can L.A. leaders go?

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Tony Barboza, with help from my colleagues David Zahniser and Julia Wick, giving you the latest on city and county government.

For most of this week, downtown Los Angeles has been buzzing with protesters, including high school students walking out of class, who are decrying President Trump’s mass deportation plans. The demonstrators with Mexican, Guatemalan and Salvadoran flags, who gathered outside City Hall, marched through the streets and shut down the 101 Freeway, were a reminder that L.A. is a city of immigrants and a place where, for many years now, support for immigrant communities has been politically popular.

That reality was evident inside City Hall too, where Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez and several colleagues on Tuesday introduced a series of proposals to ramp up the city’s response to the Trump immigration crackdown. The proposals, which are relatively limited in scope, could require businesses to report federal immigration raids and audits to the city, set aside space at LAX for legal assistance, fund legal service groups and launch a comprehensive “know your rights” campaign for immigrants, among other steps.

Still, the legislation, which came after Mayor Karen Bass signed a sanctuary city ordinance into law in December, shows city leaders’ willingness to carry the mantle of resistance to Trump’s anti-immigration agenda. That’s significant, given the risk of antagonizing a president who has already threatened to punish “sanctuary cities” by starving them of federal funds — money that L.A. needs to recover from the recent wildfires.

Soto-Martínez said in an interview Friday that “this is just the beginning of a very long four years. This is our opening salvo, but there will be many more.”

He said his office decided on the proposals to introduce this week after bringing together a collection of people working on the front lines in immigrant communities.

“We had other ideas as well, but we felt that these were the ones that we needed to put forward the quickest,” Soto-Martínez said, without detailing what other measures were under consideration.

Because most immigration policy happens at the federal level, he added, the city’s ability to respond “is going to be totally dependent on our ability to be creative” and also on how outraged and activated communities get in response to Trump’s actions.

The Los Angeles County Republican Party, which has little influence at City Hall and has previously criticized L.A.’s “sanctuary city” policy, responded to the council’s new immigration proposals by suggesting that it instead “crack down on follow-home robberies, or looting, or homeless encampment fires.”

“Maybe the good people of Los Angeles could attend fully funded ‘know your rights’ seminars about how to rebuild after incompetent city leadership allowed their homes to burn to a crisp due to gross mismanagement,” Roxanne Hoge, who chairs the L.A. County Republican Party, said Friday. “It is embarrassing that people who were elected to fill potholes and run public transit but who can do neither have anything to say about federal immigration enforcement.”

Councilmember John Lee — a former Republican who changed his registration to “no party preference” on an overwhelmingly Democratic City Council — said he would like to see amendments to this week’s proposals to exclude participation for people convicted of violent crimes, his office said this week.

Meanwhile, immigrant rights groups have been pushing the city to go beyond its sanctuary law and take more proactive steps. Organized labor is a powerful ally and has stood beside those groups in calling for more action.

“Immigrant rights are workers’ rights,” Yvonne Wheeler, president of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, said at a rally outside City Hall this week. “Absolutely no one should live in fear of deportation. No one should live in fear that their loved ones will be targeted in schools, churches and places of worship.”

Angélica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, one of the groups championing the sanctuary city ordinance and other local actions to protect immigrants, said the motions introduced this week are only a first step in a response that must evolve and adapt over the next four years.

“I know that this City Council, the majority of them, are with us. They are with us, and they want to support our families,” she said.

While there’s a lot of support for educating people about their constitutional rights, she said, “these actions are not enough to stop the ferocious attack on immigrants by the administration that it feels like comes up with something new by which to attack us every single day. It’s going to require more action that is both proactive and responsive.”

Salas would like to see more city investment in community-led rapid response teams, with hotlines to report and document immigration raids and other enforcement activity and connect people to legal services and support. She thinks the city should also support programs to offer free legal services in schools.

Seeing crowds of young people protesting in the streets this week gave hope to Salas, who got her start in the immigrant rights movement during the 1990s in opposition to Proposition 187, the ballot measure that sought to deny services to immigrants without legal status and sparked a new generation of activists to fight for immigrant rights.

“At that time, I just thought ‘Oh, my God, they’re attacking my family,’ and that’s how I got into this movement,” she said. “So it fills me with just so much admiration for these young people who are standing up for their parents. Many of them are also undocumented.”

One official who is key to the city’s response is Claudia Aragon, director of the Office of Immigrant Affairs for Bass. She started the job in 2023, at a time when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was putting migrants seeking asylum onto buses and sending them to Los Angeles and other Democratic-run cities. Aragon helped manage the migrants’ arrival and connect them with organizations to find housing and services.

Now that the Trump administration is launching a flurry of anti-immigration executive orders and other actions, Aragon said the city is working to inform immigrant Angelenos through “know your rights” and family preparedness workshops, and by directing them to providers of pro bono immigration legal services.

Aragon said that L.A.’s immigrant communities are in “fear of what they can expect when they leave their door every day.” She wants them to know that “during this time, the mayor’s office is here working every day for them, and we will stand with them, and we will continue to work every single day for them, like we did when the buses arrived.”

Bass’ office didn’t directly answer questions from The Times about the mayor’s position on the council’s immigration proposals and whether any additional actions are needed to protect immigrants from the Trump administration.

In a statement, Bass pointed to her office’s work with nonprofits to provide “know your rights” training and to educate immigrants about available resources. “No one should live in fear due to their immigration status,” she said.

Asked about the council’s immigration proposals, Solomon Rivera, Bass’ deputy chief of staff, said that “a lot of them make sense.”

The mayor “has to see where the council ends up on these, but is really supportive of protecting all Angelenos, and the council’s done a good job on leading on that,” he said.

The next hearing on the proposals is scheduled for Feb. 21 at the council’s committee on civil rights and immigration.

State of play

— REOPENING REVERSAL: Bass announced late last week that the fire-ravaged Pacific Palisades would reopen to the general public, sparking criticism from residents and opposition from Councilmember Traci Park, who represents the area, as well as the mayor’s recovery czar, Steve Soboroff. A day later, hours before the neighborhood was set to reopen, Bass changed course, saying the checkpoints blocking off the area would remain in place.

— MASTERS OF DISASTER: The mayor has selected Hagerty Consulting, a firm that specializes in disaster preparedness and response, to help the city recover from the Palisades fire. It’s still not clear how much the firm will be paid or for how long.

— COLLATERAL DAMAGE: The plan to expand and modernize the Los Angeles Convention Center by the 2028 Olympic Games is no longer feasible, city officials said. High-level city analysts reported this week that the new focus on wildfire recovery will make it impossible to marshal the resources to finish the $1.4-billion project by that date. The council will decide in coming weeks whether to rework the project or abandon it.

— CARUSO COMMITTEE: Speaking of wildfire recovery, real estate developer and unsuccessful mayoral candidate Rick Caruso has formed a nonprofit foundation, bringing in various business leaders to look at strategies for quickly rebuilding from last month’s fires. Caruso announced his picks days after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced his own recovery panel, which is populated by a different set of business leaders.

— ROGAN’S HERO: Meanwhile, Caruso spent nearly two hours hanging out with podcaster Joe Rogan, using that platform to call for the firing of Janisse Quiñones, chief executive at the Department of Water and Power, over her agency’s preparation for and response to the recent Palisades fire. Bass has, in recent weeks, promised a full accounting of the city’s handling of the emergency.

— HEADED TO COURT: A.F. Gilmore Co., which owns the Original Farmers Market, filed a lawsuit this week seeking to overturn the City Council’s approval of the $1-billion TVC project, which would expand and modernize the Television City property at Beverly Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue. The lawsuit claims that the city did not comply with state environmental law while reviewing the project, among other things.

— MYSTERY MAN (OR WOMAN): The City Council awarded a $40,000 contract to Bienart Katzman Littrell Williams, a law firm that will represent city officials in a “federal criminal investigation related to a city employee.” City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto did not respond to inquiries from The Times asking whether the contract is connected to the FBI’s investigation into Deputy Mayor Brian Williams, who was put on leave in December amid allegations that he called in a fake bomb threat. (Williams, through his lawyer, has denied the allegations.) A Bass aide referred questions to Feldstein Soto.

— COUNTY CRACKDOWN: Los Angeles County supervisors are looking to crack down on post-wildfire price gouging by handing out fines of up to $50,000 to landlords who dramatically hike rents. “There are still bad actors who are taking advantage of this crisis,” said Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, whose district includes the blackened Pacific Palisades.

— EASTSIDE HIRE: Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents parts of the Eastside, has brought on a new press deputy: Lisa Marroquin, who was until recently public affairs director for the Central City Assn., a downtown business group. Before that, Marroquin spent a few years with M Strategic Communications, which has lobbied City Hall on behalf of clients including Waymo, Airbnb and engineering giant AECOM.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature homelessness program went to the area around Clovis Avenue and 111th Place, an area represented by Councilmembers Tim McOsker and Marqueece Harris-Dawson. Outreach workers also revisited a section of Harbor City, a McOsker aide said.
  
• On the docket for next week: The council’s transportation and public works committees meet Wednesday to discuss strategies for implementing Measure HLA, which requires the installation of bus and bike lanes on designated streets when they receive repairs.