Editor’s Note: The following Q&A was conducted as part of the story “As Trump takes office, Valley Latino legislators talk immigration and the road ahead.”
Anna Caballero represents California’s 14th State Senate District, which includes most of Merced County, plus much of Madera County and part of Fresno County.
A former attorney who previously served in the state Assembly, she has long championed the rights and wellbeing of working-class families. Prior to her time in the legislature, she was the first woman elected as mayor for the city of Salinas.
Her legislative work includes advocating for affordable housing, championing water access for rural areas and supporting immigrant rights.
In an interview with The Merced FOCUS, Caballero discussed the next four years under a Trump presidency, the key issues she’s prioritizing for her district and her perspective on leadership.
What do you see as the most significant challenges facing Latino communities under the Trump administration, particularly regarding immigration and economic policies, and how do you plan to address them?
Senator Caballero: Immigration is important because many families are recent immigrants. Some of the family members may not be documented. It becomes an issue when there are threats to the family.
What we know is that President-elect Trump has a history — and it’s not just what he has said recently. His history was fairly significant around immigration. He denigrated immigrants, basically, in terms of Mexican immigrants. (He) said that Mexico sent the worst, which is absolutely not true. It has not been my experience at all.
As part of his immigration policy, he talked about building a bigger and better wall and actually separating children from their mothers and fathers in order to deter people from coming across the border.
We all remember that children were put in cages, they were sleeping under those foil blankets, babies were crying, and older kids were having to take care of them.
Those kids, by the way, many of them have not been reunited with their families. They’re still detained or living with other people until their parents can be found, because not very good records were kept.
The legacy is inhumane and unjust and will have a tremendous psychological impact on those children and their parents in the future. So, we owe them a debt of some kind. And what that will be, I have no idea. The future will tell.
That’s in contrast to what California has done. California has officially recognized the importance of the economic contributions by immigrants to our state. When some of the policies were being proposed, we declared California a sanctuary state, which means that no state or local resources could be used for immigration purposes.
DACA students are the students … that went through our educational system. California has been their home for most of their life, and many of them were ready to go to college and were prepared for college.
We recognized that and made them eligible for benefits so that they could go to college and receive in-state tuition because their parents had paid taxes. We wanted to make sure they got a good education, and they’re contributing to the economy as well.
There’s a difference in terms of how California sees immigrants and how the federal government under a President Trump administration has acted towards immigrants. There’s likely to be conflict. He’s talked about mass deportations. The last time we had mass deportations was in the 1930s, during a very tough economic time when people who were U.S. citizens were rounded up as part of the deportees, and they were deported to countries that they never lived in.
I expect that that’s going to be a very, very touchy subject. The concern I have is that there are places that have been long recognized as sanctuary places. Churches, schools, daycare, after-school programs, recreational centers.
Those places have been reserved as safe places for families and young children. They’re not utilized as places to do raids. That’s one thing I’m very, very concerned about. The last thing I’d like to see is, is Border Patrol agents showing up at a school and starting to take children out of the control and custody of school authority. We have to wait and see what the response is going to be.
My response right after Covid was to pass the bill SB 831, which granted the governor the authority to negotiate with the head of Homeland Security, under the authority of the president, to grant a resident card to farmworkers who, during the pandemic, were declared essential workers who showed up to work every day.
There were no shortages of food because of that.
And so recognizing that, it seems illogical to me that we would then turn around and deport them when we decide that we don’t think they’re essential any longer.
I think that’s the way we can save the community. That’s also a way that we can ensure that farmers have a workforce. It’s farmworkers that do (work), many of whom may be undocumented.
Another part of the question is economic policy. We’ve had some incredible federal investment. A lot of the investments are investments that are here in our own community in the Central Valley. The number one issue that people talk about being concerned about when I do house meetings and go out and talk to people is good jobs.
They want to be paid a livable wage, and they want to have a future in the Valley that allows them to move up, an economic change so they can afford to buy their own house, pay for their children’s education, and contribute to the community.
The investment we’ve received is money for high-speed rail. In the past, President Trump has not been very supportive of the high-speed rail.
There are climate change dollars that have been allocated specifically to projects in the Valley. Those climate change (jobs) will increase the salaries. They’re good union jobs and improve our air quality.
All of that federal investment will create economic activity. And it’s economic activity that really works in rural California. The question becomes, will he rescind those grants, or will he see the value of doing that kind of work? The President-elect has been skeptical about climate change. He poo-pooed it.
Water is the lifeblood of the Valley, and it takes cooperation. If we’re fighting, then we’re suing. If we’re suing, the only people that make a lot of money are attorneys.
What specific steps are you taking to advocate for the needs and rights of Latino constituents, and are there any partnerships or coalitions you’re building to amplify their voices at the state or national level?
Senator Caballero: One of the things we’ve been working on are these house meetings that we’ve held so that people understand how to ask questions and how to participate with their government.
Our young legislators workshops teach young people how to advocate for their community. It’s giving people a voice. That voice has created a whole bunch of nonprofits and organizations that are interested in advocating for a whole variety of different issues.
I’m working with all of those organizations, but I’m also working with organizations across the state. Part of what we have to do is organize and have discussions about where we want the state to go, in a way that involves more people and more grassroots people.
It is about building coalitions, but it’s also about getting people engaged so that they can start making demands of their elected and local government and at the federal level.
How has Trump’s presidency shaped your approach to leadership? What strategies will you employ to navigate the next four years while ensuring the well-being of your community?
Senator Caballero: Trump’s presidency has not been what shaped my activism or my approach to leadership. I learned a long time ago from organizers that came right out of UFW about the need to involve the community in discussions about their future. You can’t make assumptions, and you can’t come in and tell them ‘This is what we’re going to do,’ without having a conversation about what people really want.
It’s the reason that I do house meetings. They’re very specialized house meetings, with people who have not participated in the political process in the past and who may not understand the difference between local government, state government, and federal government. They want their potholes fixed. They want their kids to be able to walk to school safely without getting hit by a car. They want to be able to earn a good living.
I think that Trump’s candidacy showed a deficiency in the Democratic Party. We don’t do enough of that kind of work. We don’t do enough of the organizing at the grassroots level so that the community feels like they have a stake in their elected officials, and they can call them, and they show up, and there’s this communication.
For me, that’s the fun of doing this work — to have conversations with people from different communities and engage them to show up at their city council meetings and ask for things, to show up at my house meetings and ask for things.
I don’t mean money. I mean action on things that they think are important, like clean water or safe streets or good schools. That’s how I find out what the issues are.
The Trump presidency hasn’t really changed my approach to leadership, but I’m hoping that people in the Democratic Party start looking at what did we not do this last election cycle, and what do we need to change in order to have people feel like we’re listening to them at the community level.