Republican frontrunner Donald Trump wants to round up and deport millions of undocumented workers. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal wants to arrest the mayors of so-called Sanctuary Cities — such as Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie wants to track immigrants like FedEx packages. Former HP executive Carly Fiorina wants to make English the only official language of the United States for the first time in the nation’s history. Former neurosurgeon Ben Carson wants to funnel millions of immigrants into temporary guest worker programs, where abuse is rampant and detainees are sometimes kept in slave-like conditions.
When these GOP candidates for president gather with about a dozen others Wednesday night for two rounds of debate at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, these harsh immigration policies will likely take center stage.
Pollsters and prominent Republicans warn that such rhetoric is alienating the voters of color the GOP desperately needs to win. In 2016, the Republican presidential candidate will need to garner twice as many Latino votes at Mitt Romney won in 2012 in order to win the race.
That said, the White House hopefuls need look no further than California for a cautionary tale.
In the early 1990s, a spike in undocumented immigration and the subsequent wave of nativist fear pushed then-Gov. Governor Pete Wilson (R) to sign legislation stripping undocumented residents of access to basic government services, such as public education and hospitals. Not only did a federal court find the law unconstitutional, but it triggered a political backlash from California’s diverse electorate.
The California Republican Party never recovered, and the state has never voted for a Republican president or Senator since then. Today, California has two Democratic senators, a Democratic governor, and Democrats control both chambers in the state legislature. The state also now has a slate of progressive immigration policies — including drivers licenses and subsidized health insurance for undocumented residents, and sanctuary cities that refuse to make their local police into immigration agents.
Those sanctuary cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, made the decision not to deputize their local law enforcement to carry out immigration law out of concern for public safety. As California Attorney General Kamala Harris explained, “Sanctuary cities evolved around the idea that we also don’t want to deny access to public safety, public health, public education for anyone who is living in our community. As a prosecutor, I don’t want an undocumented immigrant who is the victim of rape or child molestation or domestic violence to not come forward and receive the benefit of our public safety or public health system because the perpetrator or the predator convinces her that if she comes forward, it is she who will be treated as a criminal.”
Yet some candidates in the 2016 race, such as Jindal, say it’s officials in those states and cities who should be treated as criminals.
“I know Congress wants to defund sanctuary cities and that’s great, but we need to go further,” Jindal told ThinkProgress. “Mayors and councilmen should be held criminally responsible, criminally liable as accessories to the crimes committed by those who shouldn’t be here in the first place if they decide to flout federal law. I bet if you did that, if you locked up a couple folks, you wouldn’t have sanctuary cities anymore.”
Firstly, sanctuary city officials did not “flout federal law” — because cooperation with federal immigration officials is voluntary.
And when ThinkProgress asked if Jindal acknowledges that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born Americans, he responded: “One violent crime that could have been prevented is one too many.”
Yet California’s attorney general and others who support sanctuary cities say the policy prevents far more violent crimes than it allows by making sure everyone feels comfortable taking to the police regardless of their immigration status. A 2015 National Latin@ Network for Healthy Families and Communities survey found that 41 percent of foreign-born Latinas interviewed reported that they were afraid to call the police or go to court because they feared they could be deported. But in sanctuary cities, with this fear somewhat removed, community policing has proven to be more effective. That’s why some law enforcement groups have voiced opposition to recent attempts by Congress to cut federal funding to sanctuary cities, saying it would “undermine trust between immigrant communities and state and local law enforcement.”
When the GOP candidates gather for Wednesday night’s debate, they may be pressed on how their recent immigration rhetoric squares with advice from their own party to better reach out to voters of color. But they may evade these questions, as they have recently sidestepped inquiries into how they would actually carry out their immigration plans.
Though all candidates will likely invoke the memory of Ronald Reagan multiple times during the debate, they have so far ignored the political lessons from a post-Reagan California.