SANTA ANA, Calif. -- More local governments in California are protesting the state's efforts to resist a federal crackdown on illegal aliens.
Analysts see politics at play, arguing that Republicans are trying to fire up voters in California.
Since the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, sued California last month over its so-called sanctuary state law that limits police collaboration with immigration agents, at least a dozen local governments have voted to either join or support the lawsuit, or they have passed resolutions opposing the state's position. Those include the Board of Supervisors in Orange County, where more than 3 million people live.
More action is coming this week, with leaders in the Orange County city of Los Alamitos scheduled to vote today on a proposal for a local measure to exempt the community of 12,000 from the state law. On Tuesday, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors is meeting to consider joining the lawsuit pursued by President Donald Trump's administration.
Immigration and illegal aliens were lightning-rod issues in California even before Trump campaigned in 2016 on promises of tougher enforcement and a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The state in the 1990s passed a measure backed by Republican Gov. Pete Wilson to deny public health care and education to people in the country illegally. It was later overturned, but it left a lingering resentment among the state's growing Hispanic population.
In recent years, California Republicans have taken a less strident approach to immigration in a state where one in four people are foreign-born. But the Trump administration lawsuit has energized many in a party that has been rendered nearly irrelevant at the state level, where Democrats control every key office.
"When the attorney general of the United States decides to take a firm position against it, I think that gave a signal to a lot of us that, 'Hey, California is on the wrong side of this thing,'" said Fred Whitaker, chairman of the Republican Party in Orange County. As a council member in the city of Orange, Whitaker proposed a resolution on the issue that passed this month.
Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles, said it's not surprising that the immigration issue has galvanized Republicans.
"Politics is very much about emotions, especially in midterms," he said. "I think it was only a matter of time when people went back to the issue that actually hits the nerve in the Republican base these days more than any other."
Under Democratic leadership, California has enacted a series of laws in recent years aimed at helping aliens, including issuing driver's licenses regardless of legal status and assisting with tuition at state universities. After Trump was elected, lawmakers passed the measure to limit police collaboration with federal immigration agents.
Civil-rights advocates applauded the measure, known as SB54, as a way to encourage aliens to report crime to police without fearing deportation. Critics said it would make it too hard for federal agents to find and deport ex-convicts who are a danger to communities.
Most of the local governments siding with the Trump administration are in Orange County, an area once considered a GOP stronghold but that voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. But the effort is starting to spread.
Escondido, in San Diego County, has voted to support the federal lawsuit, as has the small city of Ripon in the state's Central Valley.
Some of the supervisors pushing the issue in Orange and San Diego counties are Republicans running for Congress, and they may see this as a way to generate needed enthusiasm, said Louis DeSipio, a political science professor at the University of California, Irvine.
"The mobilization that could come from introducing immigration debates into county political races may be a critical element in a year like 2018 when Democrats will likely be more mobilized than Republicans," he said.
A Section on 04/16/2018