SEIU's David Huerta is right: Immigrants helped get California the World Cup and Olympics, not Trump

San Francisco Chronicle​

4 hours ago

As I watched TV coverage of the protests in Los Angeles on Friday night, I heard mention of a name that rang a bell: David Huerta. Hey, I know that guy.
Huerta is president of the Service Employees International Union California. In L.A. functioning as a non-violent 'community observer,' Huerta was knocked to the pavement Friday night by law enforcement people, arrested, briefly hospitalized with a head injury, and charged with conspiracy to impede an officer. That's a felony that could get him six years in federal prison.
When Donald Trump took office and promised to round up and deport millions of immigrants, I wondered how that take-all-prisoners crackdown might mar an otherwise delightful day at the ballpark.
The SEIU represents, among others, about 3,200 workers at Bay Area sports venues, including Levi's Stadium, Oracle Park and Chase Center. And at just about every venue in the state.
Imagine 40,000 fans at a San Francisco Giants game, with no janitors. Those toilet-paper dispensers won't refill themselves. The mountains of trash and stuff to recycle created in every game won't march themselves to the nearest landfill.
From observation and from stories I've done, I am aware that many of the workers who make your ballpark experience so pleasant, who make it possible, are immigrants, and that at least some of them are undocumented.
What effect would Trump's promised crackdown, or merely the threat of it, have on the ballpark workers, and on fans, and even on the players? Asking for everyone. If the ballpark bathroom is shut down due to lack of maintenance, Republicans and Democrats alike will suffer the inconvenience.
So I contacted the local chapter of the SEIU and they hooked me up with Huerta for a phone interview. His words back then, in late February, seem fresh and relevant. And his place in the current national struggle gained more prominence as he sat in jail over the weekend in L.A. (He was released Monday afternoon on a $50,000 bond, without entering a plea.)
While Huerta was behind bars, national labor leaders and politicians rallied to his defense.
'His arrest has ignited even the more conservative elements of the labor movement,' Veena Dubai, a law professor at UC Irvine, told the New York Times. 'If they can go after him, the head of the largest labor union in the largest economy in a labor-friendly state, who is the government not going to go after?'
If you're a sports fan, you'd better hope they're not going to go after the lady hauling bags of trash out of a restroom at Chase Center. Whatever happens, it won't surprise Huerta. From our conversation, it was clear that he was expecting trouble.
Back then, Huerta said of Trump's announced sweep, 'It's created what he wanted, which is chaos, fear and intimidation, right? And I think it's intentional on his part, it's what he's trying to do. But even though he's done that, the community, and workers in the community on a broader scale, have been preparing for that fear, intimidation and chaos.
'I think that although people are still in a sense of uncertainty, what we're seeing is that more and more people are facing that sense of fear head-on and really preparing themselves as much as they can to confront that.'
For Trump's sweep to gain public support, the demonization of the potential deportees is essential. So Huerta surely was not surprised when Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump's deportation campaign, recently said our immigrant communities are filled with 'every kind of criminal thug that you can imagine on planet Earth.'
Instead, it seems like they're just the good folks scrubbing ballpark commodes.
'The intent is to paint with a broad brush and label everyone a criminal,' Huerta said. 'That is not lost on the immigrant community. They know they are not criminals, they're working in the service sector, not just in sports venues but across industries, to make their contribution to the country and the economy, but most of all to provide for their families.'
Huerta noted that the Bay Area, and the state, will be hosting upcoming major global sporting events — the CONCACAF Gold Cup soccer tournament in June and July, with matches at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara and PayPal Stadium in San Jose; the Super Bowl at Levi's in February; the 2026 World Cup, with matches in the Bay Area and L.A.; the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics in L.A. Those big-ticket events are already being trumpeted by Trump as examples of his ability to rule the sports world.
'I got the World Cup, I got the Olympics,' Trump bragged during a Memorial Day speech, about events already scheduled to be in California long before his re-election in November.
California, Huerta said, earned those events, and without Trump's help. They are coming to California, he said, because of the state's vibrant economy and spirit, much of it created by immigrants and their labor.
'When you look at the Olympics, even the Super Bowl, these are great opportunities,' Huerta said. 'It should not be lost on anybody, and it's something that the president's going to have to recognize, is the fact that a lot of these events are in California for a reason — because of the prosperity and because of the fact that Los Angeles, in particular, is looked at as an international city, California is looked at as an international state. So I think it's going to be very interesting as we arrive at those events, what's going to be the posture of this administration?'
The raids, the sweeps, whatever you want to call them, have started, and there is no reason to believe they will end soon, or ease up. Not with that army of alleged murderers and rapists on the loose.
Not your problem? Maybe not, until the action comes to a ballpark near you.
'I think there are multiple impacts, especially at the sports venues, the chilling effect (the sweeps) can have just in general, in these public spaces,' Huerta said. 'If ICE workers show up, that can have an adverse effect on what are considered safe spaces. It's not just the impact it can have on the workers, but the impact it can have in general.'
Will you be able to kick back and enjoy the old ballgame while masked, armed troopers are hauling away the people who were hard at work cleaning up your mess? You might get the chance to find out.