California Lieutenant Governor and gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom is ramping up his pro-amnesty rhetoric, vowing to keep California a “sanctuary state” for illegal immigrants while defying and resisting President Donald Trump.

“Let me be clear, @realDonaldTrump: California is a sanctuary state. We believe in the power of diversity. We have defied and resisted the xenophobic, hateful policies of your administration at every turn. We will do it again,” the left-wing Democrat tweeted on Friday in response to the Trump’s administration’s plans to crack down on illegal immigration in Northern California.

Newsom made his remarks just days after a Latino Community Foundation poll found former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa with a significant lead over Newsom (31 percent to 14 percent) among registered Latino voters. But 36 percent of registered Latino voters were undecided in the survey.

Last year, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill that made the state a sanctuary state after President Donald Trump decided to phase out the Deferred Action for Chilhdood Arrivals (DACA) program. The refusal of California’s cities to enforce immigration laws, especially Newsom’s home city of San Francisco, likely propelled Trump to the GOP nomination and ultimately the presidency.

As Breitbart’s Joel Pollak has extensively documented, Trump was languishing in seventh place in RealClearPolitics average of the GOP primary polls before an illegal immigrant, who admitted to authorities that he came to San Francisco after having been deported five times because he knew it was a “sanctuary city,” murdered Kate Steinle in July of 2015.

Nearly a week later, Trump met with families who had also lost loved ones due to murders committed by illegal immigrants and put a national spotlight on an issue that the legacy media, Democrats, and establishment Republicans conspired to ignore. A week after Trump met with these families, he surged to the front of the pack in the RealClearPolitics average of the polls and never looked back.