- Perhaps no issue highlights the divisions
of the Trump era more than immigration.
Whether it's the fight over building a border wall,
policies that separate migrant children
from their parents, or the harsh
rhetoric coming from the President.
- But while it might seem new, that rhetoric
contains echos of another anti-immigration
backlash from 25 years ago.
- Our country is out of control.
People are pouring across the southern border.
- Indiscriminate floods of illegals across our borders.
- Day one of my presidency, they're getting out.
- Deport every illegal alien
in the United States immediately.
(crowd chants "build that wall")
- I will build a security fence
and we will seal the border of this country.
- I was badly criticized for using the word invasion.
It's an invasion.
- [Female Host] The 1990s were a time
of building anger over immigration.
And it started in a place that might surprise you.
California.
- [Reporter] Illegal immigration is a
serious problem in California.
- [FH] Undocumented immigrants
coming across the border were concerning
to Peter Nunez, a former federal
prosecutor who lived in San Diego.
- Every night the groups would gather
on the Mexican side waiting for the sun to go down.
And they would gather by the hundreds if not the thousands.
And at a certain point the groups
just charged across the border.
- [Reporter] It's been dubbed the Banzai Dash.
Human waves overwhelm border guards
and race into California.
- The number of border patrol agents was totally inadequate.
So it was totally out of control.
- [FH] California was in the middle of a recession.
And while the downturn was primarily
from the loss of manufacturing jobs,
immigrants quickly got the blame.
- [Reporter] Groups worried and angry about
the impact of rampant immigration are multiplying.
- People are losing their jobs left and right
and they felt this was because of the influx
of illegals coming and taking their jobs.
- [FH] Robert Kiley was a political consultant.
He and his wife started working with grassroots
citizens groups who were angry that
undocumented immigrants were using
taxpayer-funded social services.
- When they went to the hospital, to the emergency,
they were full of people there
that weren't from this country.
They were illegals, they were
getting medical services free.
Schools were being impacted, cities were being impacted.
- [FH] The Kileys helped come up with Proposition 187.
A ballot initiative that would deny
government benefits to undocumented immigrants.
Peter Nunez became an early supporter.
- The ideas was let's make California
an unfriendly place for people who were here illegally.
With hope that no more would come
and that those that were here would leave.
- [Reporter] Their children would be
kicked out of public schools.
Educators and health care workers
would be required to report anyone
they suspect of being illegal.
- [FH] It was considered an extreme idea
by democrats and some republicans who said
it would unfairly target immigrants
for the state's economic trouble.
- The immigrants that were coming here
were doing jobs that nobody wanted to do.
They were farm workers, they were,
people were janitors or maids.
- [Reporter] Opponents labeled
Proposition 187 immoral and racist.
- Taking innocent children and throwing them
out on the streets, that that somehow is gonna solve
our illegal immigration problem, is simply filaceous.
- People thought it wasn't really
gonna have much of a chance.
But it turned out it hit a nerve.
- [Reporter] More than 600,000 Californians
have signed petitions calling for a halt
to services illegal residents receive.
- And then it got picked up by the politicians.
- [FH] Republican Governor Pete Wilson,
who was in a tight race for reelection,
threw his campaign behind Prop 187.
- [Reporter] Governor Pete Wilson asking the state
with the highest unemployment to give him a second term.
Wilson says don't blame him, blame illegal immigrants.
- [Narrator] The federal government won't stop them
at the border, yet requires us to pay
millions to take care of them.
- [FH] Wilson's campaign ad felt like
a personal attack to Kevin de Leon
even though he was a citizen.
His mother had come to California
illegally before becoming a legal resident.
- It was something that was deeply personal
because I witnessed my mother, I witnessed
my aunts who worked their fingers to the bone.
Who helped build this economy.
- [Reporter] For Hispanics, the largest
immigrant group in the state,
it had become a highly emotional issue.
- The politicians were scapegoating,
demonizing, looking for someone to blame.
That's not the America that I know.
- [FH] De Leon didn't have much experience in politics,
but he helped organize anti-prop 187 marches.
- And they all brought Mexican flags.
Boy that ticked off a lot of people.
That polarized the issue.
Polarized it.
Are you for it or against it?
- The tensions just hit a fever pitch.
As a young Latino I felt unease I think
for the first time in my own city.
My own country, my own state where I grew up.
- Yes to 187!
Time to get out!
- Prop 187 was an expression of unhappiness
with a community that was rapidly
becoming less and less white.
There was a kind of anxiety, anger,
rejection out there in the country.
- [FH] Proposition 187 and Pete Wilson won
in a landslide, but the courts ruled that only
the federal government can regulate immigration.
And Prop 187 never went into effect.
- What happened almost immediately after
is a surge of citizenship applications
and of people saying they were gonna vote.
A million new registered voters
who were Latino in California.
- I thought for the very first time
perhaps we have to run for office.
Enough with the demonization, enough with the scapegoating.
We want to be full-fledged Americans,
we wanna have our voices heard.
We wanna have a say.
- [FH] Kevin de Leon did run for office,
and 20 years after Prop 187, he became the first
Latino President of the State Senate in more than a century.
- My story should not be the exception.
My story should be the rule.
- [FH] Before leaving office in 2018,
he and other Latino politicians helped
make California one of the most liberal
and immigrant friendly states in the country.
A change fueled by a long term
demographic shift in the state.
- It's not just the rise of the Latino vote
that has turned California so blue.
From the mid-1990s up until the early part
of this decade, there's a mass exodus
of white working class voters.
They went to surrounding states.
They were being replaced by younger,
poorer immigrant voters, and that combined,
that mix, is what has made California
the bluest state in the Union.
- [FH] But Proposition 187 had an impact beyond California.
Even though it never went into effect,
it added fuel to an immigration crackdown
that spread across the country in the mid-90s.
- [Reporter] It was Prop 187 that began
the anti-immigration fever, a fever
which has now spread to Washington.
- Immigration went to the top of the agenda.
The Clinton Administration started ratcheting up
immigration enforcement efforts because they were
scared to death of what Prop 187 symbolized.
- [FH] Calls for additional border barriers,
expedited deportations, and for local police
to enforce immigration law, started to grow.
And it was a democrat who signed those ideas into law.
- That's why our administration has moved
aggressively to secure our borders more
by hiring a record number of new border guards.
By deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before.
- It was a really fundamental change in the way
the federal government goes about
enforcing immigration policy.
And created the basis for the large scale
removals that we've experienced in this country.
- We'll build the wall, but who's gonna pay for the wall?
- [Rally] Mexico!
- Who?
- [FH] Since the 2016 election,
immigration has divided much of the country.
And there were echos of Proposition 187.
From the anger.
- Go back to Mexico!
- [FH] To the rhetoric.
- They come over to the border.
They have the baby in the United States.
We now take care of that baby.
Social security, Medicare, education.
Give me a break.
- It's this mix of economic insecurity
combined with dramatic changes in our demography.
We're seeing the story replay itself.
- [FH] Today the Trump Administration is taking
a harsher approach to immigration.
- [Reporter] President Trump has decided
to slash the US refugee program almost in half.
- [FH] New policies have expanded the categories
for immigrants targeted for deportation.
They've also made it harder to apply
for asylum and enacted aggressive
family detention policies at the border.
- [Reporter] Lawyers say hundreds of migrant children
were forced to sleep on the floor
for weeks without enough food.
- [FH] But California's experience
in the years since Proposition 187
suggests that it's hard to predict
what the current crackdown will lead to.
- They're not gonna realize what seeds were being planted.
It's never a simple story of a melting pot,
and it's not a simple story of they're taking over.
It's this constant struggle between feelings of being
threatened and trying to create a larger community.
I think 187 was a signpost on that.
(dramatic atmosphere music)