Here are the morning’s top stories on Tuesday, February 4, 2025…
- Schools and colleges are some of the places where the fear of President Donald Trump’s pledge of “mass deportations” is hitting hardest. That’s especially after the administration reversed a policy keeping immigration agents away from schools, churches and other “sensitive locations.” In California there are laws to limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. But some lawmakers want to go further to protect classrooms.
- In the wake of the devastating Los Angeles fires, State Farm, the largest homeowners’ insurance company in California, is seeking an emergency rate hike from the state. Those fires resulted in more than 8,700 claims made to State Farm and more than a billion dollars, so far, in payouts.
Schools Help Families Navigate Immigration Questions
On a Saturday morning in Pittsburg, a working class city in Contra Costa County, hundreds of families have come out to an immigration forum at a local elementary school. There’s a ‘know your rights’ workshop, where a lawyer says: if agents are at your door, you don’t have to let them in – unless they can show a warrant signed by a judge.
Under California’s sanctuary law – schools, courts and other public institutions won’t voluntarily work with immigration agents. And the state has just rolled out guidance on how to put that in practice. Pittsburg schools superintendent Janet Schulze helped organize this immigration clinic. “We already had a process in place for the unlikely event if immigration comes to any of our schools. So we are training our front office staff so that they are aware of what to do,” she said.
Some California lawmakers don’t think the state’s existing laws are strong enough. Democratic Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi introduced one of three new bills aiming to keep immigration agents away from schools. “Children should not feel threatened by going to school. They should feel safe by going to school. And parents should feel safe in dropping their kids off at school,” Muratsuchi said.
State Farm Seeks Emergency Rate Hike In California After LA Fires
State Farm is asking California regulators to approve a significant emergency rate hike, saying it is needed to avert a “dire situation for our customers and the insurance market in the state” accelerated by the disastrous wildfires across Southern California.