Three ways CA immigrants are struggling

President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign has disrupted the lives of California immigrants involved in the state’s early child care industry, commercial trucking business and court system. Let’s dive into the details:

• Child care: Trump’s immigration crackdown has had a particularly adverse effect on the child care industry — both on child care centers where almost 40% of the workforce in California is born outside the U.S., and the families that rely on providers so they can go to work. Child care centers have lost staff, according to recent reports. Providers in Alameda County, for example, are avoiding public parks and playgrounds. This disruption can have an outsized impact on kids, said Patricia Lozano, the executive director of Early Edge California, which advocates for early childhood education: “Kids benefit from going to child care. That’s a healthy, safe place for them to be.” Read more CalMatters’ from Carolyn Jones.

• Commercial truck drivers: Truckers in the California Sikh community have had their lives upended, following the Trump administration’s September audit that disputed the legality of thousands of California commercial driver’s licenses held by immigrants. The state’s plan to rescind licenses from as many as 61,000 truck drivers in the next few years has hit the Sikh community especially hard, since 35% of the state’s commercial drivers are believed to belong to the Indian religion. In one truck depot in Stockton, dozens of trucks sit still after drivers were notified last fall that the Department of Motor Vehicles was canceling their commercial driver’s licenses. “We have lost nearly $2 million in the last four months while paying $200,000 monthly to the bank and insurers for 35 parked trucks,” said Bikramjeet Singh Gill, the owner of the trucking operation. Read more from Gagandeep Singh for CalMatters.

• Courthouse arrests: As the California Legislature weighs two bills that aim to curb immigration arrests at courthouses, the state’s top judge also said she wants to ensure that people have safe access to the courts. California Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero said the Judicial Council, the policymaking body of the California courts, will consider a proposal to formalize the process of tracking immigration arrests in and around superior courthouses by April. Courts would be required to regularly submit data on civil arrests, which will then be submitted to the California attorney general’s office. Read more from CalMatters’ Cayla Mihalovich.

Casting the deciding vote to pass Trump’s sweeping federal spending plan may come back to haunt a Republican California member of Congress, writes CalMatters’ Maya C. Miller.

Roughly 64% of constituents in U.S. Rep. David Valadao’s Central Valley district are enrolled in Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicaid, which is the highest enrollment rate of any Republican seat in the country. But last year, Valadao voted to pass Trump’s bill that includes cutting nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid over 10 years, putting millions of Californians at risk of losing their Medi-Cal coverage.

In the runup to the November election, Democratic challengers for Valadao’s seat are criticizing Valadao over his vote. But one Republican political strategist argues that this vote does not guarantee residents would turn their backs on Valadao as he makes a bid for reelection. Out of seven elections during his congressional career, Valadao only lost once in 2018, and he later reclaimed his seat in 2020.

• Rob Stutzman, a GOP political strategist: “He’s now a long-term incumbent. He’s got a lot of muscle and strength in that district.”

Read more.

The Trump administration summoned top officials from California and the six other states of the Colorado River basin to Washington, D.C. on Friday to discuss how to share the dwindling water supply of the all-important river. The issue has been fraught and ongoing.

As CalMatters’ Rachel Becker explains, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum led the two-hour meeting, after he called in the governors of California, Arizona and Nevada of the lower basin, and Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico of the upstream states. Gov. Gavin Newsom couldn’t attend the meeting due to a longstanding prior engagement, and sent the state’s Natural Resources Secretary to speak on behalf of California.

Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources, told Rachel that bringing the governors into a single room with the secretary is unusual — to her knowledge, it’s never happened before in the negotiations over the river. Nemeth gave Rachel an inside look at what this newfound pressure to come to a deal looked like.

The deadline for a resolution over the river’s water usage is Valentine’s Day. Will there be love among the states? 

Read more.

For the first time in 30 years, teachers in San Diego plan to go on strike. The district-wide work stoppage, scheduled to take place on Feb. 26, is over disagreements with the school district about special education staffing and services. Read more from CalMatter’s Deborah Brennan.