Trump’s promises of mass deportations could impact San Diego’s economy

Good Morning, I’m Katie Hyson in for Debbie Cruz. It’s Friday, January 17th.

Trump’s promises of mass deportations could impact San Diego’s economy

More on that next. But first, let’s do the headlines.

Costco union members held a practice picket in San Diego yesterday afternoon (Thursday).

They're preparing ahead of their contract expiring at the end of this month.

The union represents more than 18 thousand workers nationwide.

They say they're ready to strike if the company doesn't deliver a strong contract.

This is the fourth practice picket held nationwide by the union.

The final round of negotiations is set to begin January 20th.

A local update to animal rescue efforts in LA.

Fifty animals displaced by the wildfires will be flown to Northern California and Portland to free up space in local shelters.

The effort is being carried out by staff and volunteers from Greater Good Charities and the San Diego Humane Society.

The flight takes off from Gillespie Field this morning.

City and county offices are observing Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, which means some buildings will be closed.

Here are some closures to keep in mind:

County offices, family resource centers, library branches and animal shelters will be closed.

Law enforcement and other essential services will continue through the holiday.

And county parks, campgrounds and neighborhood parks will remain open.

From KPBS, you’re listening to San Diego News Now. Stay with me for more of the local news you need.

President-Elect Donald Trump’s inauguration is just days away. Investigative border reporter Gustavo Solis spoke with a local expert about how Trump's promise of mass deportations could impact the San Diego region.

“San Diego has a lot at stake when it comes to things like Trump’s promises to mass deport undocumented immigrants.” That’s Tom Wong. Founding director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at UC San Diego. He uses U.S. Census data to get a sense of the size and scope of San Diego’s immigrant population. Approximately 170,000 people in San Diego County do not have legal status. And an additional 150,000 live with people without legal status. And most of them have been here for years. “Roughly six out of every 10 undocumented immigrants have lived in the U.S. for 10 years or longer.” It’s unclear at this point how, or even if, Trump could fulfill his promise of mass deportations. But Wong says that they would likely have a devastating impact on the local economy. “San Diego thrives on tourism and the backbone of the tourism industry is service. Again, nearly one out of every five undocumented immigrants works in the service industry.” And roughly one out of every ten work in the construction industry. Gustavo Solis, KPBS News

This week we’ve been bringing you stories about the widespread shift away from democrats and toward the Republican party.

Like Imperial County, south county at large also saw these changes.

Voice of San Diego reporter Jim Hinch says voters in the traditionally democratic stronghold swung notably to the right.

Democrats won most races in South County. But the margin of victory shrank. In National City, Joe Biden won more than two-thirds of votes in 2020. But in November, Donald Trump gained ground by nearly 10 percentage points. The swing to Republicans was even larger in border communities such as San Ysidro and Nestor. Voters gave several reasons for the shift. They said rising costs, growing homelessness and a surge of immigrants at the border made them feel insecure. Leaders’ seemed  unable to tackle major problems—and that led to a desire for change. Micaela Polanco is an Independent from Bonita. She voted for Kamala Harris. But she says other people in her community didn’t because they felt Democrats had failed to deliver. “People really believe that Trump will at least have more of an enforcement to the immigration rules and regulations, whereas under the Biden and Kamala Harris administration, it was more loose or they weren't really tying up the enforcement.” Even registered Democrats expressed disappointment with their party’s performance on major challenges facing the San Diego region.

That was Jim Hinch with the Voice of San Diego. This story is part of our Public Matters initiative. To see similar stories, go to KPBS dot org slash vote shift.

In his book “On Tyranny,” Yale university history professor Tim Snyder writes, “You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case.”

As we begin a second Donald Trump presidency, Snyder spoke to Public Matters reporter Amita Sharma about what the next four years might look like.

In your book on tyranny, you write, the mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions even when that is exactly what they have announced that they will do. Explain this quote's relevance to America right now as we head into president-elect Trump's second term in the White House. Yeah. It's been completely normal for aspiring authoritarians to try to win elections and then get inside the system and make the system less democratic. We have to remember that democracy is a matter of the spirit and a matter of the future and not just a matter of the outcome of a given election. A lot has been written about people voting against their own interests. In a place like San Diego, where the cost of rent and childcare are sky high, The median price of a home is up to 9 times the median household income. And we have some of the highest electricity rates in the country. Are people who are just struggling to get by more apt to know their interests and vote accordingly under these conditions? Or are they even more susceptible to manipulation and possibly tyranny? In order for people to make good choices about the future for their children and themselves, they have to have a certain level of access to shelter and food. They have to be able to live in a decent way. And so the people who are trying to undo democracy, it will turn out, are also the same people who are trying to make lives harder. And I'm afraid we're gonna see a good deal of that in weeks and months to come. We reported recently that thousands of Democratic voters in some of San Diego's poorest communities either sat out the November election or voted Republican. Many citing the high cost of living, pretty much echoing what happened elsewhere in the country. If Trump goes ahead with promised tariffs, the prices of groceries and other goods will go up. How do you expect those voters and Wall Street to react? And what might resistance look like? Yeah. I think resist I mean, that's the key. If you want to if you want to oppose this, you have to have an alternative to it. You can't say, oh, look. We told you so back in November of 2024. You have to say, look. If we win next time, if our group is in power, this is what we will do. You have to have some kind of a vision. If it's just about the past, you're gonna get trapped and you're gonna lose. The fact that Trump is gonna make a lot of people miserable, which he will, is only good for the opposition if the opposition is ready to say, okay. We have something that's better than 2024 for you. We, you know, you can't get trapped in competing about, like, which past you're going back to, Trump in the 1930s and the Democrats, 2024. You have to have a vision of the future where people can say, oh, okay. I now, you know, I now see it. The penny has dropped. I understand how, if I vote for you guys, things might change for the better. Do you feel like Democrats have a vision for the future? The Democrats are trapped by Trump because what Trump forces them to do is to simultaneously be the party that defends order and be the party that has a vision for the future, and that's a tough role to have. Now that Trump controls effectively the Supreme Court, both houses of Congress, and the executive branch, the Democrats have a chance to be that party of the future. So I think it's a chance they have to seize, especially in the next 6 months as the contradictions of the Musk-Trump program start to reveal themselves. The democrats will have to take advantage of those openings. I'm not saying that they can or they will. I'm saying that, like, that will be the time for new people to profile themselves. Elected officials across San Diego County say threats against them have gone up dramatically in recent years. Some of that intimidation came through social media. You have said social media is set up for disinformation and drives people to do things that are anti democratic and against their own interest. How optimistic are you that these platforms will get regulated given that the tech, big tech, appears to have Trump's ear? Yeah. I mean, I would add to your list anti anti human. The algorithms train us to react negatively to other humans and to treat humans as enemies. I think the fundamental problem is that they are anti human in that basic sense. And if you're anti human, then you can't be pro democratic. You can't be pro freedom. I'm not optimistic, I'm sad to say about that at all. There are too few platforms, and those too few platforms are too unregulated. The hope would have to come from citizens who unhook themselves, but also from school districts and states who choose to enact policies that allow young people to at least have time at school, which is away from the screens. 

Coming up, Imperial Beach city council considers new tenant protections, following mass evictions.

We’ll have that story and more, just after the break.

Imperial Beach is proposing new tenant protections after mass evictions hit the city late last year. But South Bay reporter Kori Suzuki says the city council stopped short of actually halting those evictions.

The proposed law was unveiled on Wednesday at the city council’s regular meeting. It’ll tighten the definition of certain types of evictions. And raise the amount of rental assistance that landlords of big apartment complexes need to give their tenants. It would also require landlords to start reporting eviction data to the city. This comes after the owners of two large apartment complexes in Imperial Beach began issuing eviction notices in recent months. Dozens of renters there hoped the Council would intervene. But the proposed law is not retroactive and will not affect those renters or halt their evictions. Brenda Bautista lives at the Sussex Gardens apartments. She received an eviction notice last week. “Our elected officials turned their backs on us. And did not support us at all. And we gave them enough time to do these votes. It might help protect others, but it’s not protecting me.” Mayor Paloma Aguirre says a stronger ordinance wouldn’t have had enough support among city leadership. Even this version was opposed by two council members. “To the residents of Hawaiian Gardens and Sussex, I’m sorry we couldn’t help you.” The City Council will vote on the proposed protections in the coming weeks. In Imperial Beach, Kori Suzuki, KPBS News.

Plans to build a protected bike path from La Mesa to central San Diego have hit a setback.

Metro reporter Andrew Bowen says it comes as inflation continues to impact the cost of infrastructure.

"University Avenue — biking on it, walking on it, honestly even driving on it is a nightmare." I meet Anar Salayev, president of BikeSD, at the corner of University Avenue and 54th Street. "Very difficult for bicyclists to ride along with traffic. A lot of them do in fact ride on the sidewalk, which then poses a hazard for pedestrians." For more than a decade, San Diego County's transportation agency SANDAG has planned to build protected bike lanes here, along with improvements for pedestrians and bus riders. “As really the only east-west corridor from the Mid-City neighborhoods to La Mesa, it's certainly one that we should invest in and make it safer for everybody." But the University Bikeway hit a snag last month. Construction bids came in over budget. So SANDAG is tweaking the project's design to include lower-cost building materials. San Diego City Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera says that should be the norm. "We can do better to look at the low-cost, quick option first …  We get more projects done. The projects provide the benefit more quickly to the community. And I think that those are benefits well worth pursuing as a default, not as a sometimes." SANDAG has to award a contract to build the University Bikeway by the end of June. If it misses that deadline, it'll have to send state grant funding back to Sacramento. Andrew Bowen, KPBS news.

People throughout the county will honor Martin Luther King Jr. Day this weekend and Monday.

The holiday is celebrated on January 20th.

Volunteer events led by Hands On San Diego and the NAACP will happen in Oceanside, Lemon Grove, Escondido, San Diego and Spring Valley.

The 43rd annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Parade will also kick off at 11 a.m. on Sunday.

The procession will start on Harbor Drive South from Ash Street to Pacific Street.

The parade will feature floats, bands, churches and civic and youth groups.

There will also be a 5k Walk/Fun Run and a festival at Waterfront Park starting at 9 a.m. Sunday.

That’s it for the podcast today. This week, the podcast was produced by Elaine Alfaro, Brenden Tuccinardi and Lara McCaffrey. It’s edited by Brooke Ruth. As always you can find more San Diego news online at KPBS dot org.

I’m Katie Hyson. Thanks for listening and have a great weekend.