Sanctuary city laws will not be enough.

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Many immigration advocates are celebrating the Los Angeles City Council’s unanimous passage of a “sanctuary city” ordinance Wednesday, expressing hope that such laws will protect millions of undocumented immigrants and members of their citizen families against Trump’s threats of mass deportation.

The Los Angeles ordinance largely codifies existing policies prohibiting local authorities from using funds for immigration enforcement and prohibiting police from reporting residents’ immigration status to the Department of Homeland Security. “We are going to send a very clear message that the city of Los Angeles will not cooperate in any way with ICE,” said City Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez, who sponsored the ordinance. “By passing this law today, we are ensuring the safety of our friends, family, neighbors and co-workers.”

The reality is that this order will do virtually nothing to protect immigrants and their families from what Trump and his far-right immigration advisers have planned. We must take them at their word when they threaten to enact mass deportations and bulldoze sanctuary city laws. “They (cities and states) don’t need to help us, but they need to get out of the way, because we’re coming, we’re going to do it,” said Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan . Newsmax last week. “Which means if I have to send twice as many resources into this sanctuary city, twice as many agents, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

And on November 29, a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck a local order issued by Seattle officials that would have restricted ICE deportation flights from a local airport. The court ruled that this effort to protect Seattle’s non-citizen residents violated the federal government’s power over immigration.

These are not empty threats. Trump says he will invoke rarely used provisions of federal law, like the Insurrection Act and the Foreign Enemies Act, that would give his administration the power to deploy federal troops and summarily deport immigrants without due process. Internment camps will be built to house immigrants in the sweltering deserts of the Southwest. Trump called for rape on the 14th^th The amendment guarantees birthright citizenship, and Homan has even called for deporting families together, regardless of their citizenship. None of this is constitutional, but that hasn’t stopped Trump in the past. Furthermore, he will count on the approval of a compliant Supreme Court that has already granted the president king-like immunity.

This means that immigration advocates must stop pretending that a local ordinance will keep immigrants safe.

Instead, we must be sober and understand that the only way to protect immigrants and their families is to mobilize people. Civil society must respond forcefully to defend our neighbors, our friends and democracy itself whenever they are threatened. Lawyers, academics, teachers, unions must all coordinate not only to fight Trump in court, but also to mobilize schools, workplaces and the public to defend immigrants and democratic rights.

According to the Public Policy Institute of California, one in eight schoolchildren in the state has an undocumented parent, meaning virtually every classroom will be affected by mass expulsion. The American Immigration Council estimates that 10% of California’s workforce is undocumented, meaning most workplaces will be affected as well. So far, national and local unions have not threatened to strike in the event of workplace searches. This silence is a dangerous sign that civil society is not yet prepared for what Trump has planned.

But regardless of how they voted in the 2024 election, most Californians don’t want to see their co-workers, their neighbors or their children’s friends uprooted from their communities, put in camps or banned from the country. The Declaration of Independence affirms that each of us has the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” and that “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these goals, the people have the right” to defend oneself. Now is the time.

Whether Trump succeeds in deporting millions of people and deploying troops to cities like Los Angeles will depend not on the city council’s vote, but on the response of the people of the city of Los Angeles and the country in as a country. entire.