Elected officials in California speak in a strange cant when it comes to illegal immigration, one in which immigration laws are somehow not quite real; not quite legitimate. This leads them to say & do things that seem odd to outsiders, the idea that actually enforcing immigration laws cause "panic & harm in our communities" being just one.
Another example comes to us this morning from the Los Angeles Times: "What really happened outside the Paramount Home Depot? The reality on the ground vs. the rhetoric", in which they seem to chronicle how Assemblymember José Luis Solache Jr. incited a riot. I am not a lawyer, so I certainly don't know if he bears any legal risk, but let's see what the Times reports.
He "spotted a caravan of U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicles exiting Alondra Boulevard" while driving down the freeway. "Unclear why they were there, he decided to record a post for Instagram…'This is horrible,' he said on one of the posts. 'I am literally shaking.' 'I don’t know what they’re doing inside. But, I mean, why were they in Paramount?,' he told his followers."
"Soon, protesters arrived. 'This is the situation,' Solache, the Assemblymember, said, turning the camera to show dozens of uniformed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents". After this point, Solache fades from the reporters' account. The scene "turned darker", we're told. "crowds began to form, as hundreds of rounds were shot in the late morning near the office park." As an aside, this is classic California journalism: human events in the passive voice. There were no individuals who made choices, but rather "tensions grew." "Chaos ensued."
One of the downsides to inhabiting a progressive bubble (such as the Los Angeles Times) is that you lose track of how you sound to people outside that bubble.