ICE deported a six-year-old deaf boy from Hayward along with his mom and brother, but Eric Swalwell is trying to win the return of this family of three, and his staff did at least get the kid his hearing aids.

We reported last week on the story of Lesly Rodriguez Gutierrez, a single mom from Colombia who has living here in Hayward with her five- and six-year-old boys. The seven-year-old is deaf, which makes it particularly heartbreaking that the whole family was detained, arrested, and deported back to Colombia last Tuesday during a routine check-in at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement office on Tehama Street And further, the deaf son was not allowed to take his hearing aid with him.

Now this week, KGO reports that the district’s congressman (and gubernatorial candidate) Eric Swalwell is now getting involved. Swalwell has staffers on the ground in Colombia, who brought the deaf boy his hearing aid.

"As we stand here, my staff has just landed in Colombia and is placing the hearing devices back in the boy's ear," Swalwell said at a Monday press conference. "To the child we have returned his sound, but to our nation, what has happened to our soul."

"If you want to deport a cartel boss, everyone here will help you pack their bags," Swalwell added. "But if you're coming for a 6-year-old, you have to go through us...How does ruining the life of a 6-year-old deaf child make our community or our country any safer? It doesn't, it makes the country darker."

For their part, ICE gave a statement to KRON on why they deported the Gutierrez family. ICE claims the family entered the country illegally in 2022, that a judge ordered them removed as of June 24, 2024, and that the mother refused to comply with "multiple directives" to leave the country.

Gutierrez said last week that she had fled Colombia four years ago in order to flee an ex-boyfriend with whom she was in an abusive relationship, and who was linked to a violent street gang.

Related: Hayward Family of Three Deported at Routine SF Immigration Check-in, Including Deaf Six-Year-Old Boy

Image Courtesy Family Of Lesly Rodriguez Gutierrez

More pointless cruelty in the SF immigration courts under Trump, as a mother and her two kids, one of them deaf, checked in for their SF immigration appointment and were heartlessly shipped to Colombia.

It's another story of immigrants very much attempting to play by the rules to establish their citizenship status, but the Trump administration cruelly just shipping them off to secret detention centers. The Chronicle has the story of Lesly Rodriguez Gutierrez, a mother of a five- and seven-year-old (who happens to be deaf) who reported Tuesday for her required check-in at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement office on Tehama Street. But the entire family of three was detained, arrested, and deported including the deaf seven-year-old, who is without his hearing aids. The family’s attorney says they’ve been given the runaround, with inaccurate information about where the family is now.

“This obfuscation, this false information, these different stories for different people — it’s just chaos at best and intentional,” Centro Legal de la Raza immigration attorney Nikolas De Bremaeker told the Chronicle. “The fact that she has a severely disabled child … is very strong humanitarian grounds to not deport a 7-year-old.”

Per the Chronicle's Thursday reporting, the attorneys “can’t find them” and "ICE officials have given attorneys and Gutierrez’s family confusing and false information about which detention center Gutierrez was sent to." KTVU has some later Thursday reporting saying that the family was deported to Colombia, though that information is not confirmed, as no one has been able to contact the Gutierrez family.

The Gutierrez family is from Colombia, though have been living in Hayward for about four years since Lesly fled Colombia to escape an abusive relationship with a man she says was involved with a violent gang.

"She was afraid her ex-partner would harm her and her two children," one of her relatives told KTVU through an interpreter. "He was part of a gang in the city that committed murders and robberies. We had already received several threats from him."

De Bremaeker says he will continue to file emergency appeals through the weekend.

Related: Undocumented Immigrant Detained by ICE in Front of Home in San Jose [SFist]

Image Courtesy Family Of Lesly Rodriguez Gutierrez

The new “woke pope” seems to be trickling his wokeness down to even the ultraconservative Archbishop of San Francisco, who just joined more than 200 other US bishops in condemning Trump’s immigration crackdown.

There is no question that Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of the Archdiocese of San Francisco has long been a massive Trumper. He’s been virulently against same-sex marriage forever, he flouted COVID restrictions during the deadliest days of the pandemic, he never missed an opportunity to publicly attack Nancy Pelosi or then-President Joe Biden. His Twitter posts of late are often making a martyr out of Charlie Kirk. Trump even named Cordileone to his so-called Religious Liberty Commission.

But Cordileone just publicly rebuked Trump, seemingly for the first time. The Chronicle reports that Cordileone joined 216 Catholic bishops in making a statement to condemn the Trump administration’s mass deportation tactics. The statement was a “special statement” from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. That too is highly unusual, as special statements are considered a “particularly urgent way of speaking as a body of bishops,” and that conference has not issued any other special statements in the last 13 years.

The statement comes after the new Pope Leo XIV has publicly urged US bishops to condemn the immigration crackdowns last month.

“We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people,” the statement from the bishops said. “We pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement.”

The Chronicle reported in May that Catholic mass attendance was down by as much as 45% at some Mission District parishes, as ICE agents have been doing raids at churches in order to meet their Trump-mandated quotas of immigrants to arrest.

"We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools,” the statement continued. “We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.”

You can read the full statement from the Catholic bishops here. It does not mention Trump by name, and only refers to "the leaders of our nation." Though while it is a strongly and compassionately worded statement, we cannot imagine it's going to have any influence on the thinking of Donald Trump.

Related: SF’s Nutty Archbishop Takes On Pelosi in National Advertising Campaign [SFist]

Image: @ArchCordileone via Twitter

Governor Gavin Newsom just signed a fairly sensible-sounding bill allowing immigrant parents to name a caregiver for their kids in case they are deported. Crazed conservatives are reacting by calling it the “Legalized Child Kidnapping Bill.”

You are well aware by now that in the Bay Area, and nationwide, the Trump administration is detaining and deporting people like mad, even some who are legitimately US citizens. Many of the people being detained and deported are parents with children.

So what happens to the kids when their parents are deported? A recent CNN article notes that many have “ended up in the care of relatives, neighbors, friends, coworkers and even strangers after ICE detained or deported their parents,” and adds that quite a few just end up shoved into the foster care system.

Governor Gavin Newsom's office says that “In California, nearly a million US citizen children are estimated to be at risk of being separated from a parent because of immigration enforcement.” And for that reason, Newsom just signed a bill allowing immigrant parents to designate a caretaker for their children, as the Associated Press reports.

“Our children deserve to feel safe at home, in school and in the community,” Newsom said in a Sunday night press release after he signed the bill. “We are putting on record that we stand by our families and their right to keep their private information safe, maintain parental rights and help families prepare in case of emergencies.”

There are a few other aspects to this AB 495 bill that’s dubbed "Family Preparedness Plan Act of 2025." The bill also bars childcare providers from collecting immigration information about parents, and allows parents to nominate designated temporary legal guardians in family court. But the part allowing for parents who are the victims of family separation to “expand the type of relative who is authorized to execute a caregiver’s authorization affidavit,” (that is, letting relatives become the child’s caretaker when the parent suddenly disappears) has provoked right-wing outrage.

What kind of right-wing outrage?

Check out the tweet above from the Monterey County Republican Party, with an AI-generated Devil Gavin, calling the bill “A Child Trafficker’s and Kidnapper’s Dream Bill” and saying it “creates legal loopholes that make kidnapping children easy.” The inference seems to be that immigrants’ relatives are somehow much more likely to be kidnappers or involved in child trafficking.

Funny, though… who exactly have we seen legally kidnapping children here?

California has passed a number of other bills trying to push back against ICE in the current legislative session, though many of them are unlikely to accomplish anything. ICE is a federal agency that the state cannot control, and they will continue their lawbreaking at Trump’s behest regardless. But this particular new law could at least influence things, because ICE does not have jurisdiction over family courts, and how those courts resolve custody matters.

And there are likely many more cases of custody involving parents who’ve been deported coming to those family courts in the weeks and months to come.

Related: Leaders Across Bay Area Launch Fund for Families of Immigrants Targeted by ICE [SFist]

Image: SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA - AUGUST 21: California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs bills related to redrawing the state’s congressional maps on August 21, 2025 in Sacramento, California. In a move to counter Texas House Republicans’ plan to redraw the state’s congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, California Democrats took up a proposed constitutional amendment to temporarily redraw their own congressional maps, potentially creating five additional U.S. House seats for their party. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

• Both houses approved a bill Wednesday that would reverse the new 19% state excise tax rate on cannabis products back to 15%, which took effect in July. The measure was introduced by Assemblymember Matt Haney who says the new hike has impacted sales negatively statewide. [KPIX]
• The Associated Press awarded Golden State Valkyries Coach Natalie Nakase “Coach of the Year” Friday, and Vs guard Veronica Burton received “Most Improved Player.” With Nakase’s guidance, the team has “wildly outperformed expectations” and is the first expansion team in history to make it to the playoffs in its first year. [ESPN]
• Tesla board chair Robyn Denholm is pushing shareholders to approve Elon Musk’s nearly $1 trillion pay package, while critics point to Tesla’s falling sales, shrinking profits, and the flopped Cybertruck. [New York Times]
• Legislators have approved a bill that would ban local, out-of-state, and federal law enforcement officers from wearing face masks, which awaits Newsom’s decision. [NBC Bay Area]

• Here’s a reminder that not too long ago a large number of cities in the Bay Area were once considered sundown towns where Black, Latino, and Asian Americans were strictly allowed to enter for work during daytime hours and then escorted out by police at dusk. [Paralegal_ via Bay Area Alert]

National:

• In some strange news, two Cornell students legally hunted a black bear and brought it back to their dorm to skin and butcher, prompting complaints but no charges. Bears have long been part of Cornell tradition, appearing in school imagery and on fan gear, though not as the official mascot. [NBC News]
• A new study suggests that allergy nasal sprays containing the ingredient azelastine may significantly reduce the risk of contracting COVID-19 and other respiratory infections, though it’s not FDA-approved for that use. [CNN]
• A federal judge in Arizona has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting dozens of Guatemalan and Honduran children in U.S. shelters and foster care, extending the order until September 26. [Associated Press]

Video of the Day:

The clowns are yucking — and mucking — things up in front of the SF Immigration Court at 100 Montgomery Street every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. Join them!

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

A Livermore man who has lived in the Bay Area his entire adult life and raised three children here remains in Mexico, where he has no family, after being deported, while his wife and family here await his next immigration hearing.

"He tells me, 'You've got to promise me you are not going to cry anymore,' but it's impossible," says Rosa Lopez, the wife of Miguel Angel Lopez Luvian, who was detained on May 27 at a routine immigration appointment in SF, and is now staying in Mexico City. Rosa Lopez spoke to KTVU this week, saying she has now been to visit her husband twice, but she can't easily afford the travel. And the couple has a three-year-old grandchild whom he can only interact with on video calls.

Miguel Lopez, 47, has lived in the Livermore area for 29 years, and worked as a welder and at a Livermore winery. He married his wife, a US citizen, in 2001, and at one point held a green card, but that was revoked. They have three children, ages 25, 24, and 17.

Rosa Lopez tells KTVU, "Getting status here in the United States is not as easy as filling out an application, like getting a job. It's not. It's all a process. We’ve spent a lot of money on this."

In contrast to many similar cases in which the Trump administration has directed the extralegal detention and deportation of immigrants who have lived here peacefully for years and attempted to gain citizenship through all legal channels, Lopez's case has gained wide attention here in the Bay Area, which may help in the end.

Congressman Eric Swalwell posted a video to Instagram last week of a meeting he had with Rosa Lopez.

"He's a friend, a neighbor, a Livermore resident, who was unlawfully removed by ICE after doing everything you're supposed to do," Swalwell said of Miguel Lopez.

Swalwell reportedly helped to get Lopez's passport back from ICE, but there is no immediate change in his case.

A federal judge already ruled in early June, issuing a temporary restraining order against the government halting Lopez's deportation, but they went ahead and deported him anyway. US District Court Judge Trina Thompson wrote in her decision that the government's case for deportation was one of the flimsier she had seen, and "The inequities seep from the pages, staining every word."

Rosa Lopez says she hopes to go visit her husband again in Mexico City next month, and he is now sceduled for his next immigration hearing in October.

His attorney, Saad Admad, tells KTVU in a statement, "We believe there would be a gross miscarriage of justice if Mr. Lopez's green card is taken away without him getting the opportunity to seek review of that decision. We have a long battle ahead of us. It's going to be a difficult case, no question about it."

Previously: Trump Administration Deports Livermore Man to Mexico, Even After Federal Judge Ordered Him to Be Kept Here

Miguel Angel Lopez has lived in the Bay Area for 27 years, and is father to three US citizens. But the “law and order” Trump administration has ignored legal orders to let him stay here, and he was just deported to Mexico.

When ICE agents showed up at an SF federal courthouse on May 27 and just started grabbing and detaining people who were showing up for their immigration cases (rather than, you know, pursuing actual criminals), one of the more heartbreaking stories was the detainment of Miguel Angel Lopez, a 27-year resident of Livermore and father the three US citizens who was simply attending a routine check-in appointment. Lopez was hauled off to a detention facility in Southern California.    

A week and a half later on June 6, US District Court Judge Trina Thompson put a temporary restraining order on Lopez’s deportation, saying the federal government’s case against him was one of the Trump administration's flimsier cases that prosecuted a law-abiding resident with no criminal history. “The facts of this case highlight one of those moments,” Thompson wrote in her ruling, according to the Bay Area News Group. “The inequities seep from the pages, staining every word.”

But the typical lawless Trump administration simply ignored that order, and Lopez’s wife says he was deported to Mexico last Saturday, according to the Chronicle. His spouse Rosa Lopez says he was told to “grab his stuff” where he’d been in a Kern County facility for ten days, before being transferred to Bakersfield, and then deported to a migrant shelter in Tijuana. Rosa Lopez has since flown to Mexico to meet him there.

“On top of having to worry about paying rent for him here (in Mexico) and having to pay my stuff out there (in Northern California), it stresses me out,” Rosa Lopez told the Chronicle in a phone interview from Mexico. The deported Miguel Angel Lopez is the primary income earner in that household.

Lopez arrived in the US when he was 18, and got married to a US citizen in 2001. He’s been trying to get a green card since 2007, but that request has been tied up in the courts. Yet the whole time, Lopez has been working, paying taxes (he’s even paid off his mortgage), and has absolutely no criminal history.

President Trump has claimed the immigrants he’s been deporting are “bloodthirsty” criminals, but the administration's methods of snatching people to deport strongly indicate otherwise. ICE has been targeting people showing up for their immigration court hearings and check-ins, working manual labor shifts on farms or in sweatshops, or looking for day work in Home Depot parking lots. In other words, these deporations themselves are often more unlawful than the people being deported.

Related: Bay Area Father of Three, Who Lived Here 25 Years, Detained By ICE at Routine Appointment In SF [SFist]

Image courtesy Lopez Family

The Los Angeles ICE raids are spreading northward in California, with new workplace raids targeting immigrant farmworkers now taking place along the Central Coast and the San Joaquin Valley, and employees are terrified to go to work.

As another day of Trump's mass deportation attempts dawned on Thursday, Trump took to his beloved Truth Social to post a word-salad self-own that basically admits these ICE raids are fucking up the economy. “Our Great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking good, long time workers away from them, with these jobs being almost impossible to replace,” Trump posted. So yeah, the raids are having a negative effect on the economy, by Trump's own admission.

According to a Wednesday report on KPIX, the administration claims that all of this ICE raid-ing has brought 330 immigrants into custody since Friday, and that “a third of those detained had criminal convictions.” So basically, all of this disruption just to catch about 100 criminals, and two-thirds of the people caught up in this dragnet were not criminals.

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Yet the sweeps continue. The video above is from a reported 6 am Tuesday ICE raid at a produce farm in the Southern California community of Oxnard, leaving that community gripped in fear and outrage.

"These actions are completely unjustified and harmful. They create chaos and distress in our community without contributing much to public safety," Oxnard Mayor Luis McArthur told Glendale’s KABC. “The individuals affected by these operations, they're not criminals. They are hardworking families who make meaningful contributions to our local economy and to our greater community.”

And the raids are apparently making their way north. The Fresno Bee reported Thursday morning that ICE agents have been spotted along the Central Coast and the San Joaquin Valley, notably in rural areas of Tulare, Fresno and Ventura counties.

A new KPIX segment says the fears of ICE showing up and dragging farmworkers away have spread to Monterey and San Mateo counties, and the people who work on farms there. “They don’t know how to decide on going to work or staying home,” United Farm Workers Foundation spokesperson Mari Cruz told KPIX. “It’s scary. I either go to work and get money to feed my family, but I risk getting caught and then not seeing my family again. So it’s pretty scary.”

The fact that ICE needs to raid workplaces, and haul away workers who are on duty, pretty obviously shows the lie in the claim that these people are violent criminals. They're at work! How can they be busy doing crimes?

But ICE apparently needs to lower their standards on who they arrest, just to meet the quotas that Trump is apparently demanding. And it's an incredibly expensive undertaking that's catching very few criminals, and adds another unpredictable risk for the larger agriculture industry.

Related: Analysts Warn That Trump Could Send National Guard Here to San Francisco, Too [SFist]

Image: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 10: California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers arrest 67 people suspected of going onto the 101 freeway as protests continue in Los Angeles following days of clashes with police after a series of immigration raids, on June 10, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. Protests escalated after President Donald Trump authorized military forces to protect federal property against the wishes of city and state officials who say that the Los Angeles police have the expertise and decades of experience to handle large protest crowds. National Guard troops have so far played no role in quelling violence in the streets, according to Mayor Bass, but are stationed to guard federal buildings. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

• Also, here are some mini Constitutions people are passing out to fellow citizens in need of support during challenging confrontations with authorities. [ACLU]
• Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, a US-born American citizen and Georgia resident who was wrongfully arrested and detained by ICE in Florida, has been released. [Guardian]
• San Jose police are looking for a missing 15-year-old girl who was last seen around 8:20 a.m. on Saturday near Piedmont High School wearing a black T-shirt with no sleeves, black pants, a purple backpack and a blue tote bag. [KRON]
• A 33-year-old Oakland man was killed in a shooting that occurred around 12:40 a.m. on Saturday morning on the 500 block of 18th Street, marking 26 homicides in 2025 in Oakland, compared to 24 this time last year. [East Bay Times]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

While there is no evidence yet that anyone was detained, San Jose officials have confirmed that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were carrying out some sort of operation Sunday, and a watchdog group says they were back at it Monday morning.

It’s difficult to be sure about rumors after last week’s false claim that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were interrogating SF schoolchildren on a Muni bus. But KTVU reported late Sunday afternoon that ICE agents had been spotted carrying out an operation in San Jose, and KRON4 has confirmed with San Jose city officials that ICE was indeed there performing some sort of operation.

Though KTVU does add that eyewitnesses “didn't see anyone being detained based on the agents' actions and what their workers present heard."

KRON4 has some user-submitted video of the incident seen above, though it shows little more than agents milling around in the department-issued jackets. Per KTVU, the agents were spotted outside a San Jose residence on South White Road at Tully Road in San Jose, and behind a Target store at King and Story Roads.  Social media posts indicate the agents were at these locations somewhere between 12:30 pm and 3:30 pm Sunday afternoon.

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan confirmed the operations in a statement to KRON4. “Our police department was notified today that ICE is carrying out an operation in San Jose,” Mahan’s statement said. “We do not have any additional details at this time. SJPD does not assist with or participate in these operations in any way. I sincerely hope that ICE remains focused on enforcement actions related to violent and serious criminals harming our city, not neighbors who are contributing and law-abiding members of our community.”

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The community defense group Rapid Response Network In Santa Clara County posted a claim that more agents were spotted Monday morning, though this has not been confirmed.

ICE is claiming that a nationwide Sunday sweep brought 956 arrests and 554 detainments. But just as with the unverified rumors that ICE agents had been spotted, it may also be wise to be skeptical of that agency’s claims. A Syracuse immigration professor explains why in a lengthy thread above.

The TLDR here is that it is conspicuously unusual for ICE to be publishing same-day arrest and detainment numbers. These numbers come from a vast array of data sources, and it seems implausible that any same-day numbers would be accurate. And realize also that during the previous Trump administration, some very hyped-up ICE raids ended up yielding very few arrests or detainments.  

Related: ICE Fail: Only 35 Arrests Made Out Of 2,100 Immigrants Targeted [SFist]

Image: MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN - July 17: A law enforcement office stands guard outside of a security zone checkpoint by the Fiserv Forum as the RNC continues on July 17, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Security throughout downtown Milwaukee remains high following the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump over the weekend. Thousands of delegates, politicians and the Republican faithful are arriving into the traditionally Democratic city over the next few days for the annual convention which will conclude with former President Donald Trump accepting his party's presidential nomination. The RNC takes place from July 15-18. (Photo by Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)

Japanese Americans in the Bay Area and beyond are understandably upset about Donald Trump talking about reviving a 227-year-old law that was used to round up and incarcerate their relatives during World War II.

If Trump follows through on his threat to begin mass deportations as soon as he takes office next week, this will set off a maelstrom of legal fights and protests, and it could have potentially disastrous effects on the US economy. But Trump is mostly concerned with immigration, specifically the immigration of brown people across the southern border, and he'll want to show his base that he's more serious this time than he was about building that wall.

How far this effort actually gets we'll have to wait and see. But Japanese Americans are sounding alarm bells about the danger inherent in reviving the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which is the federal law Trump is threatening to invoke to conduct his deportations.

"That it’s being resurrected like a zombie is really upsetting to a lot of Japanese Americans," says Susan Hayase, speaking to the Chronicle this week. "We have to stop this."

Hayase and her husband Tom Izu are contributing to an exhibit at the Japanese American Museum of San Jose that looks at the history of the Redress Movement, the movement to extract reparations from the US government for Japanese American internment during World War II. Hayase and Izu both had relatives who were interred or sought after by the feds, and both were activists in the Redress Movement in the 1970s and 80s.

Several politicians have sought to get the Alien Enemies Act repealed over the years, including Rep. Ilhan Omar in 2020. But Omar's Neighbors Not Enemies Act essentially died in committee and has gone nowhere.

Japanese Americans around the country similarly rallied during the last Trump administration, pointing out the historical links between their ancestors' experience and the separation and incarceration of migrant families at the border in 2019.

The Japanese American Museum is also celebrating Korematsu Day on January 25, as it does every year, in honor of Fred Korematsu and the landmark Supreme Court case he was a part of in 1944 that has stood as discredited precedent and has been called the "legalization of racism."

Korematsu had been arrested for refusing to go an internment camp, and the high court ultimately ruled in the government's favor, The Redress Movement helped to revive the case, and in 1983, Korematsu had his name cleared by a lower court in San Francisco, which voided the 1944 decision on the grounds that the solicitor general at the time had suppressed an intelligence report that suggested there was no evidence that Japanese Americans were acting as spies.

The Korematsu decision was cited by current Chief Justice John Roberts when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration in Trump v. Hawaii in 2018, which related to the infamous Muslim ban. Roberts cited the precedent set by Korematsu when it comes to executive power and the limiting of entry to the country by certain foreign nationals. However Roberts was careful to state that Korematsu "was gravely wrong the day it was decided, [and] has been overruled in the court of history," when it comes to the unlawful internment of citizens.

Whether the high court continues to show such deference to Trump in all things, we'll have to see, but the signs point to yes. Still, there will be legal battles over whether the Alien Enemies Act can be invoked in peacetime, or whether undocument immigrants from Mexico or Venezuela or Honduras constitute "enemies."

Izu and Hayase tell the Chronicle that they are currently leading trainings for undocumented immigrants in the Bay Area about what to do if ICE comes to their door.

And, Hayase tells the paper, "We’re worried that a lot of people don’t understand the tie between what’s happening now to other immigrants and what happened to Japanese Americans [83 years ago]."

Top image: INDEPENDENCE, CA - DECEMBER 09: PA vintage photograph is displayed at Manzanar War Relocation Center at Manzanar National Historic Site on December 9, 2015 near Independence, California. Recent presidential campaign rhetoric against Muslims in the wake of terror attacks has drawn comparisons to World War II era incarceration of Japanese Americans. Manzanar War Relocation Center was one of ten internment camps where Japanese American citizens and resident Japanese aliens were incarcerated from 1942 to 1945 during World War II. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

In preparing for Trump’s return to power, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sounds like he’s ready to sue the Trump administration at every turn, vowing “We won’t be flat-footed come January,” particularly on mass deportation attempts.

The Chronicle has a story today saying that President-Elect Trump has “vowed revenge on California” in his second term, mostly in terms of mass deportations, abortion rights, and climate policies. In response, Governor Gavin Newsom has called the state legislature into a special session in December to supposedly “Trump-proof” state laws, according to the AP.

But California Attorney General Rob Bonta is not waiting until December. Bonta was out at SF’s Crissy Field in front of the Golden Gate Bridge Thursday, and KGO reported beforehand that he intended to share his plans to fight Trump’s agenda in California.    

“We’ve been here before, we lived through Trump 1.0. We know what he's capable of, we know what plans he has in store,” Bonta said in the press conference above. “We won’t be flat-footed come January.”

He noted that former state Attorney General (AG) Javier Becerra sued the Trump administration many times, with around a hundred lawsuits, and Bonta said California won a “super majority” of those lawsuits. And there are probably more to come, as Bonta has been in contact with other state AGs, and they’ve already drafted their lawsuits.

“We’ve been talking for months with attorneys general throughout the nation, preparing, planning, strategizing for the possibility for this day,” he noted, mentioning immigration, civil rights, and gun laws. “We expect certain actions to come from the federal government, and certain litigation that we will take in response.”

But Bonta says he’s most zeroed-in on disrupting Trump’s plans for mass deportations.

“We're well aware of the articulated action regarding mass deportations,” Bonta declared.  “We have put in place many protections for our immigrants, and we are dusting off those important laws to make sure that we reinforce them and make them more robust, and that we are ready.

“I can promise to the undocumented immigrant community in California that I and my team have been thinking about you for months. We have planned for you, we have prepared for you, We have put in place steps to take, when to take them, and we will do everything in out power, and use the full authority of the office to protect you.”

Reporters pointed out that Trump said he’d be using the US military to carry out these mass deportations.

“The military is not appropriate to use for mass deportations. Does that mean he won’t try? It doesn't mean he won’t try. His brand is to do unlawful things,” Bonta responded. “If he doesn’t do a single thing that’s unlawful, there won’t be a single lawsuit. I very much doubt that, based on what he said he plans to do.”

“California did not vote for him,” Bonta concluded. “We rejected Trump here in California. That is consistent with who we are and our values.”

Bonta’s current term lasts until the 2026 elections (Trump’s midterms, by the way), so Bonta may not be AG through this whole coming four-year Trump term. But Bonta seems to realize that his odds of 2026 reelection — or his run for governor that year? — depends on how much of a pain in Donald Trump’s ass he can be.  

Related: What Happens When Billionaires Own the Media: Two Major US Newspapers Decline to Endorse Harris Over a Fascist [SFist]

Image: @AGRobBonta via Twitter

After allegedly being beaten, sexually assaulted, threatened by a Guatemalan congressman, and chronically harassed by Guatemalan police, gay Bay Area resident Saul Martinez fled to the United States in 1992. Now, after years of living in the U.S., the Feds are trying to send him back to his country of origin. According to the National Center for Lesbian Rights:

In 1992, when Martinez initially applied for asylum, the U.S. had not yet recognized sexual orientation as a ground for asylum. Afraid of being forced back to Guatemala, where he feared for his life, and unaware that persecution based on sexual orientation might be a basis for asylum in this country, Martinez did not disclose his sexual orientation in his initial asylum application, stating that he feared returning to Guatemala because of his political opinion.

Unfortunately, since Martinez failed to claim sexual orientation as his reason for escape, and with a jarring disregard to Guatemala's treatment of LGBT ilk, the Ninth Circuit says he's not credible and denied his claim to stay in the U.S. Even though "Martinez’s life partner testified in court about their relationship," there's a very good chance he will be sent back to a place where he must live in fear. Again. (At the very least, aome of this mess, perhaps, might not be problem if same-sex marriage was still legal in California.)