Democratic lawmakers are harshly criticizing the Trump administration’s attempt to defy the intent of a new state law banning privately run prisons and detention centers.

On Oct. 11, when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 32, liberal activists rejoiced. Private prisons are considered far more likely to be inhumane and generally use non-union workers. Private detention centers holding unauthorized immigrants are seen as a symbol of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency that has become a target for the left since President Donald Trump’s election.

But while the law takes effect Jan. 1, it allows existing contracts to be honored. Five days after Newsom’s signing of AB32, ICE put out a solicitation on the Federal Business Opportunities website for contractors to run detention centers in the general areas of Northern California, Los Angeles and San Diego that had a total of 5,000 beds.

A month later, California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris and 19 fellow Democrats in the Golden State’s House of Representatives delegation are crying foul. They say ICE is flouting normal procedures in an attempt to ensure three existing facilities keep operating.

“Given the timing and terms of this solicitation – particularly in light of ICE’s history of suspect contract activities and insufficient oversight – we are understandably concerned that the solicitation is intended to favor incumbent contractors,” the 21 Democrats wrote in a letter to several federal agencies. “If so, these efforts would be in direct contradiction with the spirit of full and open competition required by federal procurement law.”

The solicitation asked for interested parties to respond within two weeks instead of the usual 30 days. It also specified that bidders had to have “turnkey ready” facilities with specific ranges of available beds. The contracts are for five years, with the option for two five-year extensions.

Democrats say bidding process is rigged

Democrats said this ensured that the only applicants would be the three companies that are already running federal immigration detention centers in California: GEO Group, which has centers in Adelanto in the Inland Empire and Bakersfield; CoreCivic, which runs a center in San Diego; and the Management and Training Corp., which has one in Calexico in Imperial County, east of San Diego.

ICE signed a $62 million contract with GEO for the Adelanto facility in March in which GEO was the only bidder. Democrats didn’t object to the contract at the time but now say it also was awarded in a way that violated the spirit of federal procurement laws by essentially ensuring only one company had a chance to win.

But an ICE official told the Palm Springs Desert Sun that the agency “remains compliant with federal contract and acquisitions regulations, as we advertise opportunity notices and subsequently implement the decision process.”

AB32’s author – Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland – blasted ICE in comments to the Desert Sun, saying the agency was attempting to “circumvent the will of the people of California.”

ICE’s parent agency – the Department of Homeland Security – has a history of claiming more flexibility under federal rules than its critics say it has. The same goes for the Trump administration, most notably in its use of $6.1 billion in defense funding to build sections of a border wall without congressional authorization.

In their letter to DHS and other agencies, the California Democratic lawmakers asked for information on how ICE crafted its solicitation for detention center bids.

Their chances of getting a quick response are unclear. ICE has long faced criticism over its handling of public record requests, which it is supposed to respond to in 20 days or less. The agency was sued earlier this month by the Project on Government Oversight for allegedly withholding information over how it used facial recognition and other technology in surveillance and data collection programs.

A bill with the potential to worsen California’s already-frosty relationship with the Trump administration passed the Legislature on a near-party-line vote in late August and was presented to Gov. Jerry Brown for his signature last week.

Senate Bill 349, by state Sen. Ricardo Lara (pictured), D-Bell Gardens, is a direct response to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s embrace of the tactic of detaining unauthorized immigrants when they come to state courthouses to deal with matters in the California criminal justice system.

Exact statistics are not provided by ICE on its detentions. But there have been regular reports of ICE raids at state courts and their parking lots in California – especially in the Fresno area – as well as in Arizona, Texas and Colorado within the last year.

ICE officials issued a formal notice in January of their intent to go after targeted individuals when they have scheduled appearances in state courts. Some have said they moved to adopt new policies after the California Legislature adopted and Gov. Brown signed “sanctuary state” legislation last year limiting state cooperation with federal immigration officials.

Lara’s bill would specify that state court officials have the authority to block activities that interfere with the proceedings and operations at state courts. It would require federal immigration agents to have a warrant before they can enter schools, courthouses and state buildings to arrest or question people. It would ban civil arrests in courthouses and authorize the state Attorney General’s Office to pursue civil claims against individuals who violated SB349’s provisions.

The legislative aides who wrote the analysis of the bill cited historical evidence that the practice of not picking up people at courthouses for offenses unrelated to their visits – known as “the common law privilege for civil arrests” – goes back hundreds of years and far predates any controversy over illegal immigration.

Brown and state Attorney General Xavier Becerra have been joined in their sharp criticism of ICE’s tactics by California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye. In a statement issued last month, she blasted arrests at state courts as “disruptive, shortsighted, and counterproductive … . It is damaging to community safety and disrespects the state court system.”

Some sheriffs want more cooperation with feds

Nonetheless, conservative sheriffs in some counties who oppose “sanctuary” policies are supportive of ICE’s aggressive tactics, according to a recent report in the Los Angeles Times. Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims is openly looking for ways to increase her department’s cooperation with ICE in spite of the state law.

That suggests that even if Lara’s bill is signed by Brown, some police agencies may be far less enthusiastic about enforcing it than others. Court battles over what exactly “sanctuary”-style laws compel these agencies to do seem likely.

At issue is the scope of the generally accepted doctrine that the federal government cannot compel state law enforcement agents to enforce federal regulations and that state laws prevail unless they directly conflict with federal laws.

Historically, conservatives in the post-Reagan era and Southern Democrats in the 1950s and 1960s have had more of a “states’ rights” approach to interpreting this doctrine, while liberals have leaned more toward the idea that the federal government deserves deference in gray areas open to different interpretations.

In the Golden State, these political roles have been swapped in the Trump era.

While sharply critical of the Trump White House on many immigration issues, Brown has not commented specifically on Lara’s bill. He has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto it and the hundreds of other passed bills he has not yet made a decision on.

Lara is the Democratic candidate for state insurance commissioner on the November ballot. He is running against Steve Poizner, who is now an independent after serving as insurance commissioner from 2007-2011 as a Republican.

The amended Senate Bill 54 “prevents our state and local law enforcement resources from being diverted to tear families apart. California will protect our communities from the Trump administration’s radical and hateful immigration policy agenda,” de León said in a statement.

As part of the compromise, under the revised SB54, police can share information with federal authorities about inmates convicted of hundreds of crimes that were not part of the original language. These crimes include serious or violent felonies, felony drunk driving, unlawful possession of a deadly weapon and felony drug crimes.

But the bill still prohibits law enforcement from inquiring as to a person’s immigration status, detaining suspected illegal immigrants for ICE, and from acting as federal immigration agents.

“This bill protects public safety and people who come to California to work hard and make this state a better place,” Gov. Brown’s statement read.

Under the amendment, federal agents will be permitted to interview suspected illegal aliens in jails and to access state databases – actions that were previously prohibited.

The California Sheriffs Association still opposes the bill, despite the changes, believing it puts too great of a barrier between local enforcement and federal authorities.

Activists on the left largely praised the agreement. Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, called the deal a “victory for migrants,” according to the Sacramento Bee.

The bill must still be passed by the state Assembly.

SB54 comes amid a larger national debate about “sanctuary” policies, with conservatives and many law enforcement groups maintaining that they provide a safe haven for violate criminal aliens, while liberals and immigration activists argue the so-called “sanctuaries” encourage undocumented aliens to cooperate with police without fear of deportation.

The bill could also be a model for other states eager to push back against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

For California, it’s just the latest act of defiance against the Trump agenda in Washington, as Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Monday sued the administration over its decision to rescind the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, arguing that doing away with the order violates the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, citing fears that the administration may use “Dreamer” data to find and deport them.

However, President Trump has said there will be “no action” to that effect for six months as Congress attempts to craft a legislative fix.

“I think everyone recognizes the scope and breadth of the Trump decision to terminate DACA hits hardest here,” Becerra said.

About one quarter of the 800,000 recipients of DACA live in the Golden State.

New Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids have rolled out across Southern California, roiling state officials and triggering rumors of broader actions. But though the Trump administration has focused on expanding the scope and strength of enforcement, the current raids trace back to planning conducted at the tail end of President Obama’s term in office. 

“Immigration arrests across Southern California over the past week were planned before President Trump took office and could be compared to similar operations the occurred last summer, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said,” Fox News noted. “A decade ago, immigration officers searching for specific individuals would often arrest others found along the way, a practice that drew criticism from advocates. Under the Obama administration, agents also carried out arrests but focused more narrowly on specific individuals.”

Political pushback

But while California Democrats have felt more uncertainty and anxiety around immigration in the early days of the Trump administration, they have also felt a greater latitude to object to federal enforcement. “Democrats have complained about getting little or conflicting information about who was targeted in the raids that have panicked many in the immigrant community,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Democrats in Congress say Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told them Thursday the agency plans to employ a broader brush in making immigration arrests, armed with a new executive order from President Trump. Democrats and Republicans in House leadership met in a closed-door meeting with Acting ICE Director Thomas Homan to talk about last week’s immigration raids in Los Angeles and other cities, which netted nearly 700 people across the country last week.”

Fraught nerves have spread throughout areas of the state where support for so-called sanctuary cities, and opposition to the new administration, is high. “Rumors that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is rounding up undocumented residents throughout the Bay Area are just that — rumors, according to a spokesman for the federal agency,” according to the San Jose Mercury News. “One of those rumors resulted in an ‘urgent notification’ Tuesday to parents of students at a charter school in San Jose, said James Schwab, a spokesman for the federal agency. Similar rumors have circulated in El Cerrito, Oakland, Richmond and San Pablo. All of them have been false, Schwab said.”

Continuity and change

But confusion has persisted, and not only in California, over exactly how ICE has altered its approach to the current round of enforcement. “Under Obama, ICE agents mainly picked up what they called criminal aliens from jails around the country. But with this operation, you’re seeing these immigration agents fanning out into streets and neighborhoods,” John Burnett reported from Texas on NPR. “And that’s what left people so alarmed. I spoke with the Mexican consul here in Austin, Carlos Gonzalez, earlier today. The numbers he gave me was he says 49 Mexican nationals were picked up Thursday, Friday and today. He said that’s a significant increase over the usual apprehensions of undocumenteds here in Austin. And, of course, that doesn’t even include Central Americans or other nationalities that would’ve been picked up.”

The Obama administration’s official trigger for action, a so-called “threat to the community,” was not always applied by ICE this time around. Jorge-Mario Cabrera, communications director for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, told LA Weekly that an unofficial “sense of respect for families and immigrants” was “not always respected” by the previous administration, but did color its approach to enforcement and deportation. ICE senior spokeswoman Virginia C. Kice, told the paper the current actions were consistent with past practices. “Kice points to a series of targeted enforcement actions taken under the Obama administration in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2015, which netted 10 to nearly 20 times as many arrests as occurred last week,” the Weekly noted. 

The city of Los Angeles has become a focal point for several different efforts, triggered by raids last month that “swept up more than 100 people from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras who entered the country and stayed illegally,” as the Los Angeles times noted.

“The seizures motivated church leaders nationwide who say they feel compelled to offer physical protection on their premises even if it violates federal law,” as the paper added, with at least three L.A.-area churches “vowing in recent weeks to offer refuge to Central Americans with deportation orders[.]” It is the Obama administration that has taken heat for the roundups:

“Lutherans, Methodists, Catholics and other Christian leaders across the country say they are outraged with the Obama administration’s actions, said Noel Andersen, a grass-roots coordinator with the Church World Service group for refugees. The group has built a network of sanctuaries for Central Americans targeted by ICE.”

Sanctuary schools

At the same time that California churches have shifted toward the approach that defined the state’s so-called “sanctuary cities,” schools and universities have also advanced complementary new policies. Los Angeles Unified Schools, for instance, have declared themselves to be ICE-free zones. “The school board has banned Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from setting foot on any campus without the district’s permission,” according to Fox 11 Los Angeles. Not only must the Superintendent of Schools approve any ICE presence, by the terms of the new vote, but LAUSD lawyers must as well:

“ICE claims that they do not come to schools looking for students, but parents fear sending their kids to school after information they received of ICE agents conducting a series of raids across the U.S. in January targeting Central American immigrants.”

Simultaneously, administrators in the UC system have forged ahead with plans to extend so-called DREAM loans to students who could potentially be deported. “Officials at California’s four-year public universities are reaching out to an estimated 10,000 undergraduate students who might qualify for a special loan aimed at reducing their tuition,” as U-T San Diego reported, “a program that further distinguishes the state as a national trendsetter in providing services to unauthorized immigrants.”

“The California DREAM loan program’s initial $7 million allotment — $5 million for the UC and $2 million for CSU — will be distributed to eligible applicants in the following weeks,” the paper noted. “The state provided half of the sum and the two university systems covered the other half. The loans are for the 2015-16 academic year, and they’re retroactive to last fall.”

Driving policy

As the public education establishment has come to the aid of would-be deportees, the state of California itself has continued to reward those who go public in some fashion with their legal status. California’s program to extend slightly modified drivers license privileges to otherwise undocumented immigrants far outpaced predicted demand. “Under the new law, 605,000 undocumented residents received licenses, accounting for 40 percent of all of the licenses issued last year,” the International Business Times reported. “Exceeding expectations, even more attempted to obtain a license: Around 830,000 undocumented immigrants have applied for a license since Jan. 2, 2015, the first day of the new policy at the Department of Motor Vehicles.”

The state’s aggressive action on normalizing residents who immigrated unlawfully has been rooted in two realities — first, the relatively vast and stable population of long-time residents crossing over from Mexico and Central America, and, second, the prevailing political agenda of Democrats wielding near one-party control over state policy for years on end. “California is among 12 states that now allow immigrants in the country illegally to obtain driver’s licenses, areas covering an estimated 37 percent of that population,” the Times observed, citing a recent Pew report. But California has also surpassed all other states in its percentage of unlawful residents eligible for a license, according to the report.

By Katy Grimes

SACRAMENTO — At a Capitol hearing Wednesday, Assemblyman Roger Hernandez, D-West Covina, charged that California employers frequently threaten immigrant workers with deportation and abuse.

The Assembly Labor and Employment Committee hearing took place after a press conference and announcement of a new bill by Hernandez, AB 263. The bill will include stiff new labor laws aimed at abusive employers who retaliate against undocumented workers by calling the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency federal agents to arrest the undocumented workers.

The “abuse and exploitation” is made worse by “the added injustice of intimidation based on immigration status,” Hernandez said. “I, for one, am not content to stand by and wait for the federal government to do its job.”

State’s role not covered

But what wasn’t covered at the hearing is the lead role the state of California itself takes in controlling the lives of undocumented day laborers. California law allows state-licensed farm labor contractors total control over the wages and pay, and even transportation and housing of documented and undocumented agricultural workers.

Will the state of California and lawmakers go after their own flawed policies and laws? It appears that, while lawmakers and special-interest groups blame unscrupulous employers, it is the lawmakers themselves who have facilitated the biggest illegal immigration racket in the country, and hijacked the process in the path to citizenship by undocumented immigrants.

The incomplete hearing

The hearing centered around the question, “Is California doing enough to protect immigrant workers from retaliation and other abuses?”

The bulk of the hearing was devoted to testimony about extreme employer retaliation against undocumented workers. The National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C. and Oakland, Calif., whose partners include “worker centers and unions, immigrant rights groups, progressive lawyers, and community organizations,” led the hearing.

“Employers and their agents have far too frequently shown that they will use immigration status as a tool against labor organizing campaigns and worker claims,” said the executive summary of a new report just published by the group.

“Our model is to develop and test new policies at the state and local level, then scale them up to spur change at the national level,” the project said on its website. “We partner with strong advocacy networks, grounded in the full range of stakeholders — grassroots groups and national organizations, worker centers and unions, policymakers and think tanks.”

The group claims:

“Globalization has combined with domestic policy choices to yield an economy that creates too many low-wage jobs and not nearly enough good ones. Lax enforcement of workers’ rights, increased subcontracting and misclassification of employees as independent contractors, and failed immigration policies have heightened insecurity for all workers. Inequality has grown to historic levels, the middle class is imperiled, and many fear our best days are behind us.”

The report found the weak labor market, with high unemployment, gives employers a tremendous advantage over people vying for scarce jobs. “This imbalance gives employers great power to set the terms and conditions of employment and to violate workers’ rights without fear of consequences.”

But several of the hearing speakers admitted that California already has labor laws in place to remedy these injustices. The laws just aren’t enforced.

Extreme cases

Betty Hung of the Asian Pacific Legal Center, named as a source in the report, recounted the 2012 story of a Thai immigrant working as a restaurant delivery driver. He worked 11-hour days, five days a week, for a flat daily rate of $60. The driver finally reported to labor officials that he did not receive overtime pay, or any breaks during his workday.

Hung said the U.S. Labor Department ordered the driver’s employer to pay $23,000 in hourly wages and mileage expenses. But, in a retaliatory move, the employer then told the delivery driver he had to repay the money, and threatened to have him deported.

Similar stories were heard throughout the hearing.

The right to work under a contract

Hernandez and Democratic legislators called for Congress and President Barack Obama to pass a comprehensive immigration reform package, including a path toward citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

Together with Hernandez’s legislation, the apparent goal is to be the first state in the country with the toughest laws aimed directly at employers.

“My children have a better life than my father had,” Ashley Alvarado told the committee. She is the president of the Teamsters Cannery Council, located in Visalia, Calif. “Everybody has the right to this, and to work under a contract.”

Alvarado named the Marquez Brothers as employers who regularly retaliate against undocumented immigrant workers. “It’s why the Marquez Brothers send their lawyers,” she said, as she gestured to the back of the hearing room. “I command you to stand up to the Marquez Brothers tortilla factory, which hides incentives, and doesn’t pay taxes. They are cheating us from much needed revenue, and getting rich by cheating our government,” Alvarado said. “Workers should not have to live in fear.”

Her command was echoed by Hung. “You can make history,” Hung told the committee. “Your leadership can set the tone for Congress.”

State licenses

But according to a source I spoke with who worked as an agriculture day laborer at age 13, the real abuse, cheating and threats come from the farm-labor contractors.

Ironically, it’s the state of California which licenses farm labor contractors, allowing them complete control over the lives of the day laborers and undocumented workers.

According to the California Department of Industrial Relations Labor Code section 1682(b):

“Farm labor contractor” designates any person who, for a fee, employs workers to render personal services in connection with the production of any farm products to, for, or under the direction of a third person, or who recruits, solicits, supplies, or hires workers on behalf of an employer engaged in the growing or producing of farm products, and who, for a fee, provides in connection therewith one or more of the following services: furnishes board, lodging, or transportation for those workers; supervises, times, checks, counts, weighs, or otherwise directs or measures their work; or disburses wage payments to these persons.”

The state knowingly allows licensed farm labor contractors access to day laborer’s wages, housing and transportation, giving the labor contractors unbridled control over the vulnerable population of undocumented immigrants.

Federal government

Each of the speakers at the hearing said the federal government’s E-Verify system is used by employers to retaliate against undocumented workers. “U.S. law requires companies to employ only individuals who may legally work in the United States — either U.S. citizens, or foreign citizens who have the necessary authorization,” the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency says on its website. “E-Verify is an Internet-based system that allows businesses to determine the eligibility of their employees to work in the United States.”

U.S. employers are placed in a precarious position of being either legally required to hire only authorized, documented workers or end up being accused of using the verification system as a retaliatory measure.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement tries to stay out of these matters, spokeswoman Virginia Kice explained. It is standard practice for federal immigration officers to avoid getting involved in employer-employee labor issues.

The National Employment Law Project says employer abuses could be remedied in a number of ways, at least in California, including:

By Katy Grimes

California Democrats worked overtime last week to set up a separate set of new rules and laws for illegal immigrants. While most agree that the federal government is not properly addressing illegal immigration, California is going in the opposite direction, and providing drivers licenses, education, health care, welfare and now a “safe harbor” for people in the state illegally.

The Legislature even is saying that if illegal aliens in California pay income taxes, they can enjoy amnesty for five years.

‘California Prosperity and Opportunity Act’

Call it “Pay to Stay.”

A failed ballot initiative also called the “California Prosperity and Opportunity Act” estimated that as many as a million new taxpayers would contribute $325 million annually in general revenue to California, likely a high number. It was sold as a way to fund “desperately needed police and fire services.”

But the ballot initiative failed to get the necessary signatures to put it on the ballot. Instead, Steinberg and Fuentes gutted another bill, and placed the amnesty language into it, avoiding the standard public bill process entirely.

“You still are trying to buy votes,” Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, told Democratic colleagues in the Assembly on Friday, the last day of the two-year session. “This is yet another example of us veering off course. We are setting up a brand new society, with a separate set of rules for those who break the law.”

“This bill is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said Assemblyman Charles Calderon, D-Whittier. Calderon said that illegal immigrants will end up paying more than anyone else because they won’t be able to take any deductions.

Republican Assemblywoman Diane Harkey said that Democrats were using the issue to make points in the press during an election year. “The president had an opportunity to correct this and did not,” Harkey said. “This is window dressing at best.”

Steinberg appeared in the Assembly during floor debate and lobbied hard for votes for SB 901. The first Assembly vote failed to get the 41 “yes” votes needed, and stalled at 38-27. But later in the day, after more lobbying, the bill passed 43-32, entirely along party lines.

Take the bus, train or drive a car?

While legal California drivers are practically being forced out of cars and onto public transportation, the Legislature passed a bill last week which will allow illegal immigrants to obtain a legal California Driver’s License.

California already provides illegal immigrants a public education through college,  public health care and, in many cases, welfare and food stamps.

However, there is nothing in AB 2189, by Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, requiring the drivers to purchase auto insurance. And many are concerned that a driver’s license provides the identification needed to illegally cast a vote in the upcoming November election.

Cedillo has tried nine times since 1998 to get bills passed that would allow illegal aliens to obtain driver’s licenses. All those previous efforts failed. Cedillo is also the author of the California Dream Act, passed in 2011, which allows illegal aliens to obtain financial aid for college.

Pay-to-stay taxes

Then there is the bill establishing “a voluntary program to encourage certain immigrants to pay state income taxes, and requests the federal government not to expend resources on enforcement of immigration laws against program participants.”

“The California Opportunity and Prosperity Act,” by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes, D-San Fernando, would create a five-year pilot program for illegal aliens living in California since 2008; whose who cannot get Social Security numbers would be exempt from “apprehension, detention or removal” by the federal government.

The Los Angeles Times stated that “it only makes sense.”

SB 901 was an 11th-hour gut-and-amend bill, and was not vetted publicly. (Proposition 31, on the November ballot, would seek to end the gut-and-amend practice.) SB 901 is “intended to encourage certain immigrants in California to file state income tax returns and potentially generate a substantial amount of new tax revenue for the state.”

SB 901 would direct Gov. Jerry Brown to ask President Barack Obama to suspend programs of the federal immigration and security agencies for the duration of California’s five-year program. It’s a five-year amnesty program for illegal immigrants who pay state income tax. It could be billed as a pay-to-stay tax.

This bill is another example of California overreaching its authority. There is nothing in federal law allowing the government to abdicate its authority over illegal aliens and shift that authority to a state.

The absurdity of the bill is the notion that, if illegal aliens pay state income taxes, they will not be subject to deportation. There are no such protections. Even the bill analysis recognizes this:  “Federal preemption carries particular force in the context of immigration because the federal government has broad, undoubted power over immigration and the status of aliens. (See, e.g., Toll v. Moreno, 458 U. S. 1, 10 (1982).

“Because this bill delves so closely into the subject of immigration, it is important to consider whether this bill may be preempted by federal law should it ultimately become law in California.”

Deferred action program

Most people agree that the lack of enforcement of U.S. immigration laws is a big problem, especially for border states. President Barack Obama made the problem worse earlier this year when he announced that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would no longer deport illegal aliens who were in the U.S. prior to their 16th birthday. The law also states that illegal aliens 30 years old or younger are also eligible.

In addition to allowing millions of illegal immigrants to stay in the country, California will be providing them driver’s licenses and financial aid for college. Fuentes and Steinberg should have called the bill “the California Amnesty, Education and Identification Voter Act.”