Trump’s more than 400 executive actions to restrict immigration have had an outsize impact on the Golden State.
He has targeted the Silicon-Valley based tech industry by squeezing high-skilled foreign labor, and has restricted immigration based on family reunification even as he’s separated thousands of migrant families at the border.
He has attempted to repeal federal protections for young immigrants who entered the country illegally as children and sidestepped the Supreme Court’s rejection of his plans. California has more residents covered by those protections, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, than any other state. He has also ended Temporary Protected Status for refugees from El Salvador and other Central American countries, a disproportionate number of whom live in the state.
And his administration has discouraged thousands of other students, refugees, asylum seekers, workers, and entrepreneurs — many headed to California — from coming to the United States at all, most recently by using the COVID-19 pandemic as a justification for largely shutting the nation’s borders.