California braces for Trump’s ‘border wall hallucination tour’ The president's base is thrilled by his first visit to the state, but Democrats are determined to make him feel unwelcome.

Donald Trump’s California supporters are “ecstatic” that the president will be making his first official visit to the state next month. But his March trip to San Diego to advance construction of a border wall is also firing up progressive activists who are determined to make him feel unwelcome.

The White House confirmation of Trump’s visit to view border wall prototypes — the preeminent symbol of his immigration policy — comes amid widespread anger on the left related to a series of immigration raids and arrests launched this week throughout California, home to an estimated 2.2 million undocumented immigrants.


The Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, which spanned from the Central Valley throughout Northern California and resulted in more than 150 arrests on Tuesday, intensified anger and political resistance to the administration in a solidly blue state where the president is already deeply unpopular.



“I have full faith that my Southern California Latino community will give Trump’s border wall hallucination tour exactly the respect it deserves: Nada, nunca, forget it,’’ said Gloria Nieto, a veteran Democratic LGBT activist in Santa Cruz. “Considering how much this administration has allowed unfit employees access to information which is a real threat to our country’s safety, this continued charade feeds a false narrative about the dangers we face. Mexicans trying to find work to feed their families are an empty threat.”

Advance reports of the raids prompted mayors like Oakland’s Libby Schaaf to push back against the administration by announcing the ICE strategy in advance to warn residents in her city. That move earned her a rebuke from ICE Deputy Director Thomas Homan, who, in a statement, called her action a “reckless decision was based on her political agenda with the very federal laws that ICE is sworn to uphold.”

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Trump’s impending visit “makes sense with his converting the U.S. presidency into reality TV,” says Chris Newman, legal director for the Los Angeles-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network – an immigrant rights group. “And if I were the producer of his game show presidency, I would do the same.

“If Trump comes to California, he’ll find that California has built an immunity to the type of fear that he’s pushing,’’ Newman said. “[H]e’s trying to spread venom — and I don’t think it will have the desired effect.”

The visit to the state was first reported by The Washington Post.

Trump’s visit to California, the nation’s political ATM, is also about money: In addition to the border visit, the president will also head a Republican National Committee fundraiser in Los Angeles. Sources familiar with the planning say Vice President Mike Pence — who raised $5 million for state House races working alongside Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy in his last visit — is also planning a return to help bulk up the coffers of GOP incumbents battling to return to Congress.

But the reaction to the presidential visit so far has focused on a border wall and the administration’s immigration policies. Trump addressed questions about the wall Wednesday in a tweet.

“I have decided that sections of the Wall that California wants built NOW will not be built until the whole Wall is approved,” Trump said.

GOP former state Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, founder of the California Minutemen Party, and who has made illegal immigration a linchpin of his political career, says he welcomes news of the president’s stop in San Diego as evidence that Trump is a “hands-on” leader who plans to make good on his “signature issue.”

“He can’t strike out on the wall. It has to work, it has to be funded — and it has to get built,’’ said Donnelly, who has launched a primary challenge against Rep. Paul Cook. He said the president’s announcement will reassure his supporters who are worried pressure in Washington will make Trump cave on a key issue. “A lot of hardcore Trump supporters are deeply concerned about this whole DACA thing becoming amnesty,’’ he said.

In the eyes of many conservatives, mayors like Oakland’s Schaff are flaunting the law. So “our supporters are just ecstatic that Trump is coming down to look at the wall,’’ said John Berry, an activist with the Redlands Tea Party Patriots. “It’s beyond insanity that Sacramento idiots are showing they care more about illegals than they do about our own citizens. Trump is coming to rescue the people of California.”

So far, some leading elected officials, including Gov. Jerry Brown have been silent on the president’s plans. But state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, a candidate for U.S. Senate and the author of SB54 — that’s known as the “sanctuary state” bill to further protecting undocumented immigrants from deportation — said he doesn’t intend to be quiet about the White House state visit.

He told POLITICO that “The great thing about California is that we welcome everyone — even a malevolent president who has spent a full year attacking our values, threatening our people and corroding the people’s trust in government.”

Hoover Institution fellow Bill Whalen, a former adviser to Gov. Pete Wilson, says Trump’s decision to set foot in California for the first time as president “raises a whole raft of California issues that he probably doesn’t want to get into — and those include the symbolism of his going to San Diego and how he’ll play with the mayor in the largest American city to have a Republican mayor. This is a Republican mayor who has been very much on point to show he is not lockstep with Donald Trump on immigration and on trade,” he said.

Whalen said the visit will dramatize the many ways in which the state and the federal government “are at loggerheads’’ on issues including the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, the administration’s stated policies on opening up offshore oil drilling off the state’s coast, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recent comments dramatizing his opposition to legal recreational cannabis, which just opened its market in California on January 1.

Opponents of the president will have plenty of reasons to protest Trump’s visit in large numbers, Whalen said, though it might actually work to the president’s advantage with his own base.

“If you believe this is a presidency that is at all times appealing to his base, that image of getting heckled in California is probably what they welcome,’’ he said. “If 500,000 people show up in Los Angeles and Mayor Eric Garcetti makes comments — that is music to [Trump’s] ears ... I think that Donald Trump just lives to torment those that torment him.”

Still, business interests in San Diego say they’re keenly interested in a Trump visit to the region, and hope to use the moment to talk to Trump on key issues like trade and the North American Free Trade Agreement, which are vital to the region.

“It gives us an opportunity to show him how well the border works in San Diego, and how close the two border communities are — San Diego and Tijuana,’’ said Jerry Sanders, who heads the San Diego Area Chamber of Commerce, which includes dozens of business leaders from both sides of a border which represents the busiest land crossing in the Western Hemisphere. “It gives us an opportunity to talk with him about how the expansion of technology would help make the border more efficient.”

And, Sanders said, “It would be great if he would meet with the mayor, who is very pro-Mexico, and we could show him the economic impacts between the two regions and the impacts on the entire U.S. from trade with Mexico ... we’d like to have him get our perspective.”

Donnelly said Trump’s base isn’t worried about the details of Trump’s border wall plan – such as the president’s promise that Mexico will pay for it.

“Trump will figure out how they can pay,’’ he said. “They’re not going to pay the bill up front — but if we save the money by not inviting another 200 million of the world’s poorest people to come in, who are very open to socialism – which means they will vote for Democrats and leftists and progressives — then over time we will have a mass savings.’’