California Democrats help lead counter-offensive against Trump immigration crackdown

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California Democrats have assumed leading roles in their party’s counter-offensive to the Trump administration’s massive immigration crackdown — seizing on a growing sense, shared by some Republicans, that the campaign has gotten so out of hand that the political winds have shifted heavily in their favor.They stalled Department of Homeland Security funding in the Senate and pushed the impeachment of Secretary Kristi Noem in the House.They strategized against a threatened move by President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and challenged administration policies and street tactics in federal court.

And they have shown up in Minneapolis to express outrage and demanded Department of Justice records following two fatal shootings of U.S.citizens there.The push comes at an extremely tense moment, as Minneapolis and the nation reel from the fatal weekend shooting of Alex Pretti, and served as an impetus for a spending deal reached late Thursday between Senate Democrats and the White House to avert another partial government shutdown.

The compromise would allow lawmakers to fund large parts of the federal government while giving them more time to negotiate new restrictions for immigration agents.“This is probably one of the few windows on immigration specifically where Democrats find themselves on offense,” said Mike Madrid, a California Republican political consultant.“It is a rare and extraordinary moment.”Both of the state’s Democratic senators, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, came out in staunch opposition to the latest Homeland Security funding measure in Congress, vowing to block it unless the administration scales back its street operations and reins in masked agents who have killed Americans in multiple shootings, clashed with protestors and provoked communities with aggressive tactics.Under the agreement reached Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security ...