A Tale of Two Sanctuary States in the Age of Trump

As Republicans and Democrats in Washington battle over immigration, the real war is being waged at the state and local level, where police and politicians have to weigh the needs of their communities against President Trump’s agenda to crack down on undocumented immigrants. The country’s two most populous states, California and Texas, offer competing visions of how to deal with long-established immigrant communities in the Age of Trump.

California’s Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, has given the entire state sanctuary status, blocking local officials from complying with federal immigration directives. His Republican counterpart in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott, has done the opposite—signing a law criminalizing local officials who shelter undocumented immigrants from deportation. While the laws are in line with the states’ different views on immigration, they illustrate the polarizing impact of Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric. “California is as deep blue as Texas is deep red,” says Cal Jillson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University. Even so, “in pre-Trump America,” the laws “wouldn’t have been possible.”