Trump Orders ICE To Increase Raids In LA Area, But Not Against Farmworkers, Hotels or Restaurants

President Donald Trump has directed federal immigration officials to prioritize deportations from Democratic-run cities.

On his official megaphone social media .. he called on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials “to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.”

Stephen Miller … the former Santa Monica High student who is now the White House deputy chief of staff … said ICE officers would target at least 3,000 arrests a day

That’s up from about 650 a day during the first five months of Trump’s second term.

Trump ordered ICE to pause arrests at farms, restaurants and hotels.

Trump expressed alarm about the impact aggressive enforcement is having on those industries.

Immigrant farm workers and others were stopped on Pacific Coast Highway just west of Malibu last week … but there have been no roundups that we know of in our city.

Voices From The Street, More Than 1,000 People Line Civic Center Way With Funny Signs On Deadly-Serious Topic

On Saturday … more than 1000 people lined Civic Center Way in downtown Malibu on… protesting Donald Trump’s version of America.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators fanned out across Southern California on Saturday.

The “No Kings Day” protests against President Trump went off without a hitch in nearly all of the region. 

All across the nation … and across L-A … sings  with crossed-out crowns; American flags .. and the words “protest is patriotic”.

The Los Angeles Times reported this stood in stark contrast to displays in Washington, D.C.

That’s where Trump’s birthday coincided with a day of carefully orchestrated concerts and exhibitions … celebrating MAGA and the U.S. Army’s 250th birthday … 

Plus the 45 million dollar parade with tanks and soldiers in fatigues.

In Malibu, we saw a total of three opposition demonstrators present.

A man and a woman … lookin very small in a Hummer with a Trump flag and their windows rolled up. 

He was attempting to transmit some sort of message with a Mister Microphone and the Hummer’s external speaker… which came out as unintelligible electronic noise. 

Another man in a big black pickup truck slowed for the crowd … then sped up to make a big rumble down the center turn lane. 

Mostly … it was a boisterous and behaved crowd.

Cars honking in support. 

Tge biggest noise was when an LA county fire truck drove thru … the firetruck honing… the firefighters waving at the crowd.

It was the biggest crowd ever in Malibu history … and here are what some of the the signs said.

“The people, united, will never be divided.   The people, united, will never be divided.   The people, united, will never be divided…..”

[SOUNDS OF CARS HONKING AND JOVIAL CROWD SATURDAY]  

Mostly, it was a boisterous and a behaved crowd. Cars, honking, and support.

[MORE SOUNDS OF COWDS AND HORNS]]

The biggest cheers arguably were for Los Angeles county fire department truck … the firefighters inside cheering the crowd, the crowd outside cheering back.

[SOUND OF FIRE TRUCK MAKING LOUD HONKS, AND CHEERS]

Several sheriffs department deputies were on hand, keeping an eye on things and the sheriffs helicopter flew over once.

When the sidewalk got crowded and people started standing in the street… a sheriff’s motorcycle unit rode through the crowd … politely asking people to step back towards the sidewalk.

[SOUNDS OF FESTIVE CROWD AND VPICE OVER POLICE LOUDSPEAKER:]

“Please stay on the sidewalk.  Keep a lane clear.  Keep a lane clear,”

To our knowledge, this was the biggest political crowd ever in Malibu, political history. And here are some of what the signs said.

CHILD: “My sign says ‘Trumpkin: orange on the outside, hollow on the inside and should be thrown away in November. 

MAN: “Orange taco man said we’re all paid troublemakers, agitators and insurrectionists. Where is my paycheck? 

OTHER MAN: “My sign says ‘prison without due process is a concentration camp.’

REPORTER: “What does your sign say?”

CHILD: “Um, my sign says ‘super cali-facist racist extra braggadocious.’”

WOMAN: “My sign says ‘WWJD: who would Jesus deport?’ ”

MAN: “It says ‘Suck Frump.”

REPORTER: “Can you tell me what your sign says?”

WOMAN: “It says ‘we didn’t survive a fire to watch our rights go up in smoke.’

MAN: “Uh, Deport Trump keep the immigrants,’ and ‘pro-immigrant anti-fascist.’ Love the immigrants.” 

WOMAN: “It says ‘Congress if you’re afraid to do your job step aside.  We are the land of the free and the home of the brave.

OTHER WOMAN: “My sign says ‘now you’ve pissed off the grandmothers,’ and I am a grandmother and I am pissed off. 

ANOTHER WOMAN: “My sign says ‘if Trump wants a big parade in his honor, all he has to do is resign.’

ANOTHER WOMAN: “I have a flag in distress, the military code for our country in distress. My other sign says ‘grade school civics: the Constitution is the rule of land in the USA, not autocratic executive orders.’ ”

MAN: “The sign says ‘the Nazis were just following orders.”

WOMAN: “America we have a problem, Mayday Mayday. Our democracy is dying.”

MAN:  “My sign says ‘terrible things are happening outside. Families are torn apart. Children come home from school to find out that their parents have disappeared.’ Ann Frank said that in 1943. Not yesterday in Los Angeles, but in Holland in 1943, but here we are now.”

CHILD:  “My sign says ‘too young to vote but old enough to know this is wrong.’

The voices of Malibu as expressed by their signs and voiced by the sign holders yesterday on Civic Center Way.”

The sounds of Malibu’s Civic Center Way … Sunday.

Woman Walking Home From No Kings Rally Critically Injured 100 Miles East Of Malibu

A woman who had been taking part in a protest in Riverside on Saturday night was seriously injured … when someone is an SUV ran into the corwd. 

The 21-year-old woman was seriously injured.

It was a hit-and-run crash. 

The coward behind the wheel remains at large.

The attack happened on University Avenue in Riverside, as a large group of of protesters walked towards the UC Riverside main gate. 

Part-Time Malibu Billionaire Sponsored Trump’s Army Parade/Birthday Bash In Washington

There is a Malibu connection to the Trump parade.

Malibu mansion owner Larry Ellison … a co-founder of the computer server giant called Oracle … was a sponsor of the president’s military parade in Washington.

The New York Times reports that Larry Ellison enjoys close proximity to the president . And the White House said Oracle was an official sponsor of the military parade. 

The president has said he wants Ellison to buy Tik Tok…. Which the president is trying to take away from its Chinese owners.

The 80 year old Palo Alto resident owns as many as nine mansions along PCH between the pier and the Carbon Canyon fire station … including some that burned in the Palisades Fire. 

The New York Times reported last month that Larry Ellison may be closer to Trump than any mogul other than Elon Musk … but that was before last week’s presidential meltdown with his former best tech pal.

LA and Palisades Protests Uneventful, But Anarchists Linger After Curfew In DTLA

Saturday’s protests were peaceful.

There were no incidents at all in Santa Monica … about 3,000 protestors there. 

Police in downtown Los Angeles used tear gas and crowd-control munitions to clear out agitators who remained on the streets after the protest itself had ended.

City of LA Lifts Final Evacuation Closure in Palisade Fire Zone

Evacuation orders have been fully lifted for all zones affected by January’s deadly Palisades Fire officials said Sunday.

On Sunday … the city of The Los Angeles Fire Department lifted the final order for the area where the fire started … near the Palisades Hills Recreation Center.

The fee department says its order had remained in place because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies monitoring air and soil quality and hazardous debris wanted people to stay out of the area.

County Asks City To Endorse Countywide Authority That Could Aid Home Rebuilding, Or Could Buy Burned Land At Fair Market Value 

The Malibu city council is being asked to endorse a countywide rebuilding authority … under control of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

Among the things… the rebuilding authority could purchase burned out lots at a fair price for land banking … retiring land in hazadopus locations from residential reconstruction. 

L A County supervisor Lindsay Horvath .. who represents the westside … says the idea is to give returning residents and their families what she calls “first look sale options.”

But of the families choose …. The authority could create community amenities such as open space.

There have been quiet murmurings that beachfront house owners may want to sell their property rather than invest on the millions of dollars … maybe tens of millions in some cases … for armoring their eroding bluffs … sinking piers into the ocean … and building sewers.

Horvath says approaching this recovery with a business-as-usual model will not meet the moment. 

Quoting now …

“In times of great community need the government is best suited to step up and create effective systems to assist fire survivors in their recovery and rebuilding. We need to reduce the levels of government and layers of bureaucracy involved in typical construction projects if we want to successfully get people in their homes and reopen their businesses faster.

“After other major natural disasters including the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, September 11th Terrorist Attacks, and Hurricane Katrina, unified reconstruction authorities were established to effectively plan, implement, and recover.” 

County superucosr Lindsey Horvath … in a statement read by a KBUU reporter.

Horvath says a unified reconstruction authority can help homeowners faced with trying to manage a ground-up new construction project, let alone one in as competitive of a marketplace as this recovery will likely be. 

Many impacted families are looking for both the construction management and financial assistance that will help them rebuild in a safe and accelerated way … Horvath says.

The concept goes before the Malibu city council next Monday.

Edison Negligence In Altadena May Force Every Ratepayer In California To Pay More

Electric rates everywhere in the state of California may have to go up … to pay for Southern California Edison’s apparent negligence in causing the Eaton Fire.

Damage from that fire … which leveled Altadena … may top 45 billion dollars.

If the utility is found to have caused the fire thru negligence …  the utility would be run thru the 21 billion dollars available in a statewide contingency fund for catastrophic utility losses.

And under state law … that means the investor owned utility SCE will get bailed out by ratepayers everywhere in the state.

And that means rates will go up. 

There have been no formal findings that Southern California Edison caused the Altadena fire. But suspicion has centered on a 100 year old powerline that was abandoned 54 years ago… but never torn out and allowed to stand next to existing hot powerlines.

The theory is that induction from the live wires energized the parallel long-dead circuit … which then shorted out and sparked the fire.

Charter Loses Its Spectrum To Idiot Copper Thieves Who Learn To ‘Eat Less Fiber’

Charter cable is trying to get its Spectrum service back up in Malibu and other parts of the area …

Thieves truing to steal copper apparently were too stupid to realize that the lines they were cutting into were in fact fiber optic lines. 

This happened Van Niys … but it took out Spectrum all across the western part of the county.

Charter says multiple fiber lines were cut off of poles … knocking out landline phones … cable TV and Internet … sometime after midnight Sunday morning.

Systems were out in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday and throughout the day — with some voicing frustration over the disruption occurring on Father’s Day.

Spectrum called in extra crews to splice fiber … a painstaking operation that involves microscopes and small optic lasers to melt individual glass strands back together. 

The company says it is losing  “thousands” of fiber lines to copper thieves too daft to understand that fiber liens do not have any copper in them.

Tourism Industry Teeters On Collapse In SM, And That Was Before Trump Starting Endangering Foreign Tourists

It’s had to gauge the economic impact of tourism in Malibu … other than by looking at empty parking lots and restaurants during the PCH closures. 

But there is a tourism office in Santa Monica. … and they report that the tourism industry there was dealt a setback for the second straight year … in 2024. 

There was a steep drop in domestic visitors … tourists from the U-S-A.

But the number of tourists from overseas was up … a bump that is certain to flatten out with the fears of arrest or rejected entry spreading outside our borders.

An estimated 4.2 million visitors traveled to Santa Monica last year … a 9 percent decrease from the 4.6 million visitors the year before. 

Again … that was before the twin tourism disasters of the fire and Trump’s hostility to foreign visitors.

For example … the German government has issued a travel auvicosyr warning that tourists to the United States face traumatic detentions and interrogations at US airports. 

And that’s even if they have valid passports and entry visas.

Last year … Santa Monica’s vital tourism industry saw strong recovery of international demand … up 67 percent.

That was before Trump was inaugurated.

The combination of Trump’s trade policies and hostile rhetoric toward the rest of the world might have a significant economic impact.

One Wall Street firm projects U.S. revenue from foreign tourists could collapse by as much as $90 billion this year.