Fact-checking Trump and Miller’s claims of a ‘migrant invasion’ in California

President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard to California, saying the troops need to “liberate” Los Angeles from a “migrant invasion.”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, a key architect of the president’s immigration crackdown, said on social media that the city is proof of how migration “unravels” a society.

But federal and state data tell a far different story about the Golden State than the political fury unfolding in Washington and on the streets of Los Angeles, where the administration has sent 700 Marines and 4000 National Guard troops as protests continue over recent immigration raids.

In California, violent crime is down, and the unemployment rate is close to the national average. The state recently overtook Japan as the world’s fourth-largest economy.

It has the highest number of immigrants — both legal, most of them citizens, and undocumented. But in recent years, the state has lost hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants to their homelands or to more-affordable states.

Unauthorised immigrants in California remain well below the peak of nearly 3 million more than a decade ago for reasons that often have little to do with enforcement — or Trump.

“Even the surge that we’ve seen more recently in undocumented immigration, a lot of that has not come to California,” said Eric McGhee, policy director and senior fellow at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. “If I were to hazard a guess, it’s because California’s expensive.”

Trump officials have cast undocumented immigrants as criminals, blamed them for the state’s troubles and said residents are overreacting to basic deportation operations that aim to reduce illegal immigration.

Officials have shared images of protesters flying Mexican flags and burning cars to build support for Trump’s signature tax legislation, which would add billions in funding for his quest to carry out the largest mass-deportation operation in U.S. history.

California, a state that has passed laws to shield undocumented immigrants from deportation if they have not committed serious crimes, could be a prime target if that bill passes. The state is home to nearly a quarter of the estimated 11 million unauthorised immigrants in the United States.

White House officials did not respond directly to questions about why they think the state is unraveling or being invaded, given the economic and demographic shifts and the decline in the number of undocumented immigrants over time.

“Illegal aliens and violent criminal protestors have spent the last several days attacking law enforcement, waving foreign flags, lighting cars on fire, and unleashing a state of outright anarchy,” White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson said in a statement.

“Anyone downplaying this behavior, or asking why it’s bad, is either an idiot or a propagandist for the Democrat party.”

The Biden administration refrained from deporting most undocumented immigrants unless they had recently crossed the border or committed serious crimes.

In states such as California, that policy made it even easier for people without a legal status to fit in.

Lawmakers there have passed laws stating that law enforcement will not aid in detentions and deportations unless someone has committed a serious offense.

California legislators also have granted undocumented immigrants privileges they cannot get in many states, including driver’s licenses, health care, in-state college tuition and some financial aid.

Still, the number of undocumented immigrants in California fell. The census doesn’t count unauthorized immigrants, a population that tends to fly under the radar to avoid being deported, and estimates vary widely.

The Department of Homeland Security estimates that the number of undocumented immigrants in California declined from 2.9 million in 2010 to 2.6 million in 2022, the most recent year available.

Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Research Center, said that it is likely that the number of undocumented or temporary immigrants in California increased under President Joe Biden but that it remains well below its peak. Passel said the stereotype of immigrants as single men or gang members doesn’t match the data.

“That’s not who these people are. They’re young, working families,” he said.

One reason California’s unauthorised population declined is that the number of undocumented immigrants from Mexico in the state fell from 2 million in 2010 to 1.2 million in 2023, said Robert Warren, a senior visiting fellow at the Center for Migration Studies of New York.

“That’s a huge drop,” he said.

Mexican citizens returned home as its economy and government institutions improved, analysts said, and because they were getting older, as many arrived starting in the 1990s.

“You’re not getting a large inflow of new undocumented immigrants, but there’s still a substantial number in the state who are growing older over time,” McGhee said. “Many of them have children who are citizens and are just very established in California.”

Housing costs have driven immigrants and Americans alike to other states. A mid-tier California home costs nearly $800,000, roughly double the national average, according to an April report by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office.

And in recent years hope for the opportunity to apply for legal residency had faded. The last time Congress allowed millions of unauthorised immigrants to apply for residency was in 1986, when President Ronald Reagan, a former governor of California, signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act.

Reagan said the objective was to “humanely regain control of our borders”, establish an orderly immigration system and “not to discriminate in any way against particular nations or people.”

Illegal immigration soared in the law’s aftermath, however. Trump has seized on the issue to rally his supporters, saying Biden officials allowed in millions from Venezuela and other countries who did not follow the usual process to immigrate legally. Biden officials had said people were fleeing authoritarian regimes and joblessness after the coronavirus pandemic, and economists argued that the influx boosted the robust U.S. recovery from it.

The immigration arrests in California have rattled one of the nation’s oldest and most established undocumented immigrant communities.

While city and state leaders say they do not condone any violence, they note that most demonstrations have been peaceful.

In contrast, they say, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and the Trump administration are targeting longtime residents, parents and children, and making them afraid to go to church, school or work. They say the president should try to find a legislative solution for them instead.

“There is fear. There is anxiety. There is real-life trauma happening as we speak, all being observed and absorbed by children of all ages,” said Alberto Carvalho, superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District, which has seen enrollment shrink by 130,000 students in the past decade. “Yes, we do need law and order, but at the same time, we need viable, humane solutions for children and families who are here, are working, are paying taxes, are law-abiding, and many of whom are parents to U.S.-born citizen children.”

Carvalho said he came to America from Portugal in the 1980s on a visa he overstayed, working illegally as a busboy and waiter until he bumped into Rep. E. Clay Shaw, a Florida Republican who he said helped him get a student visa and work permit that changed his life.

“Certainly when I came to this country I didn’t feel I was invading the shores of America,” Carvalho said. “I am certain, however, that when Irish and Italian families were landing on Ellis Island, there were some in the city that felt to a certain extent that it was invasion. Well, guess what? This is the history of America.”

Sen. Alex Padilla (D) said the Trump administration’s rhetoric recalled the state’s internal struggles over its shifting demographics, which it confronted decades ago as immigration transformed California from a majority-White state into one where Latinos are now the largest group.

In 1994, nearly 59 percent of California voters passed Proposition 187, a ballot initiative designed to deny public benefits to undocumented immigrants and bar their children from public schools. At the time, Gov. Pete Wilson (R) and others were blaming California’s economic troubles on immigrants.

“It was offensive. It was insulting,” said Padilla, the first Latino US senator from the state. “As a result, California’s a very different place today.”

Courts later blocked the measure. But its passage galvanized immigrants to become naturalized citizens and register to vote. It also motivated young people such as Padilla, a U.S.-born citizen and the son of undocumented immigrants, to get involved in civic life. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but traded a career in engineering for public service.

Padilla said the state’s improvements in health care, climate change and the economy are “not despite our immigrant population but because of our immigrant population, that contributes so much as workforce, as consumers, as entrepreneurs.”

“That should be something that other states and the nation should emulate, not attack,” he said.

But Corrin Rankin, chair of the California Republican Party, spoke in favor of immigration enforcement in a video posted Monday on X, saying Democratic administrations were wrong to spare many unauthorized immigrants from deportation.

“The American people voted to remove criminal illegal immigrants from our country,” she said in the video. “The president must be allowed to enforce the law. It is tragic that Democrats gave illegal immigrants false hope that they could stay regardless of their crimes.”

Over time, California’s attitudes appear to have changed. Since the late 1990s, the Public Policy Institute of California has polled residents on whether they think immigrants benefit or burden the state.

In 1998, fewer than half of the survey respondents said immigrants were good for the state. This year, 72 percent said immigrants benefit California.

“The reality is up until this last year, California was growing faster than the U.S.,” Jerry Nickelsburg, an economics professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, said in reference to the economy. “If that’s unraveling, I don’t know.”

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