Former Assembly speaker: Being Latino means being targeted in California | Opinion

I love this country. My parents came to America as farm workers in the 1950s through the Bracero Program. They believed in the promise of hard work and opportunity — and I am the product of their faith in that dream.

Right now, that dream is under attack. President Donald Trump has unlawfully deployed the military to our streets, and masked agents are detaining both citizens and non-citizens alike. The nation’s reaction has been swift, with an estimated 5 million people turning out to protests throughout the country to oppose what’s happening in our country right now.

The raids in Los Angeles carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are not about public safety or national security. They are a theater of cruelty — a show of unconstitutional force aimed at anyone who isn’t white.

As an Angeleno, I’ve attended many of the peaceful rallies in downtown Los Angeles, speaking with Californians from every walk of life — folks who showed up spontaneously to reject the militarization of our streets and the cruelty of ICE raids targeting our communities. Legal residents have had their rights violated by aggressive ICE agents who refuse to show identification, let alone court-issued deportation orders. Their targets are overwhelmingly Latino — seized in schools, hospitals, churches, Home Depot parking lots, construction sites and anywhere else our communities gather. Their goal is to meet quotas, even if it means trampling civil rights.

We’ve heard from a U.S.-born pregnant Latina mother, a third-generation American car mechanic and a group of friends chatting outside a store — all of them swept up in these tactics. Their stories remind us that in the eyes of MAGA, just being Latino is enough to be treated as a criminal.

The dehumanization of immigrants is a stain on our nation’s history that is again starting to rear its ugly head.

The Bracero Program, which brought my parents to this country, was a temporary worker program that lasted from 1942-64. It was backbreaking labor in fields and on railroads, often harvesting crops in extreme heat or freezing conditions, all while living in squalid conditions, facing wage theft and being treated as disposable labor rather than human beings.

When I learned about how the government had stripped workers naked and sprayed them with toxic pesticides like DDT, I asked my father about it. I’ll never forget the look on his face: one of quiet humility.

Despite having gone through these experiences, my dad always believed in the hope and promise of America.

I still believe in that promise because I’ve lived it. My parents picked fruit with their bare hands in the California sun so I could go to school and serve this state. Growing up as the son of immigrant parents, you learn the value of hard work — my mom worked as a maid while my dad worked two jobs and had a gardening business on the side (which he’d get us kids to help with). I saw the sacrifice they made every day, putting their life aside so we could have better opportunities and so we didn’t have to go through what they endured.

Despite everything they went through, not once did my mom or dad complain about this country — not once.

Through the work of immigrants like my parents, you learn about what dignity and respect is — not in words, but in their behavior. I could see the pride in my parents’ eyes when I was sworn in as the California Speaker of the Assembly.

This is the type of resilience that defines California.

I’m reminded of 1994, when Californians rose up to protest Proposition 187, a mean-spirited ballot measure that sought to strip immigrants of basic rights. We marched peacefully and fought in court. We thought we had buried that kind of racism. Yet here we are, in 2025, facing it again in new uniforms and red hats.

I know Los Angeles and California are not reflections of the MAGA movement. And I know Trump and his propaganda machine want to paint us as radicals for standing up to his racist policies. But here’s the truth: states like Arkansas and South Carolina — where MAGA runs strong — depend on the tax dollars of hard-working immigrants here in California. Our labor and sacrifice subsidize their schools, roads and public services. California provides roughly $80 billion more in taxes to the federal government than it receives in return. The irony is staggering.

This nation still has the potential to be what it aspires to be: a place where race, gender and background does not determine your worth. But we must fight to reclaim that promise. We must come together — not just in California, but across the country — to rebuild an America rooted in dignity, opportunity and democracy.

From the steps of Los Angeles City Hall to the shaded corners of Pershing Square, I have stood with students, nurses, carpenters and grandparents who gathered — often on a moment’s notice — to protest the ICE raids sweeping through our neighborhoods. These are not routine law enforcement operations. They are unconstitutional spectacles targeting people for the color of their skin or the sound of their name.

Agents in unmarked vests storm schools, clinics, churches and parking lots — often without warrants, rarely identifying themselves. Legal residents and even U.S. citizens have been detained simply because they “look” undocumented. This echoes an older terror: the knock at dawn, the raid at night. We thought this had ended in 1994. But the same fear is back.

From Little Rock to Los Angeles, and from Charleston to Chico, let us reject fear-based policies and craft laws rooted in humanity. Let us speak up in city halls, vote in every election and stand up when our neighbors are targeted.

America has never moved forward by turning inward. It has grown greater by widening the circle of belonging. It’s time to widen that circle. Until no family fears the midnight knock. Until every child believes this land was made for them, too.