Here are the morning’s top stories on Thursday, July 31, 2025…
- California’s tenant protection laws are among some of the strongest in the nation. But the recent increase in immigration enforcement is impacting the dynamic between landlords and undocumented tenants. That’s according to a story from our California newsroom partner, Cal Matters.
- California politicos are reacting to a decision by former Vice President Kamala Harris not to run for governor of California.
- A dozen Democrats in Congress, including five from California, are suing the Trump administration for denying them access to immigration detention facilities.
They Already Live On The Edge. Trump’s Immigration Crackdowns Now Threaten Their Housing
In Santa Rosa, a mother of six children says she’s struggling to pay the rent following her husband’s deportation — but fears eviction if she even requests to move into a smaller place from her landlord. In Los Angeles, a Latino family sued their landlord and a real estate agent over illegal eviction, only for an attorney to suggest they were likely to be detained by immigration agents before the case could go to trial. In Oakland, renters have been asked if they were “legal” by a landlord seeking to push them out.
Across the state, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has scooped up swaths of household breadwinners, leaving their families scrambling to afford rent while grieving their absent loved ones. But the impact of those operations stretches further: The fear of deportation alone has discouraged many immigrants from exercising their rights as tenants.
It’s hard enough to be a tenant in California, where rents are among the highest in the country. Immigrants who are living illegally in the country often lack a reliable credit history and work low-paying jobs with tenuous benefits. They already find it harder to secure housing, pay more for the housing they do get, are more likely to live in overcrowded conditions and may be more likely to face eviction.
President Donald Trump’s intensifying immigration crackdown leaves those renters more vulnerable to eviction and exploitation, which could plunge more immigrants into homelessness or overcrowding, or even lead some to “voluntarily” leave the country, housing rights attorneys and scholars say. The fear of retaliation from landlords has created what advocates describe as a chilling effect on immigrant renters, which “substantially undercuts” California’s strong tenant protection laws, said David Hall, co-directing tenants’ rights attorney with Centro Legal de La Raza, a nonprofit legal aid group in Oakland. “You can have the most protective laws in the world, but if people are afraid to enforce those laws … it’s like for those people, those laws don’t exist,” he said.
Kamala Harris Won’t Run For California Governor
Former Vice President Kamala Harris announced Wednesday that she’s not running to be California’s next governor in 2026, when Gov. Gavin Newsom is termed out. Her decision clears the field for the other prominent Democrats already in the race.
