Latest news with #Ezell
Los Angeles Times
12-07-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
The forgotten man who was California's original king of deportation
He sent federal immigration agents into Southern California communities, farms and workplaces vowing to drive 'illegal aliens' back across the border. His raids regularly netted hundreds of arrests a day and he once boasted about apprehending 70,000 people in a single month in San Diego County alone. When L.A. declared itself a 'sanctuary city' for Central American migrants, he vowed to have Washington cut off the city's federal funding. He took pride in arresting undocumented workers when they showed up to collect their lottery winnings. Time magazine once captured him surveying a crackdown on the border that netted nearly 2,800 arrests in one 24-hour period. 'Isn't this fun!' he said. Before Donald Trump and Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem, there was Harold Ezell. Ezell was a mid-level manager in the federal immigration bureaucracy who nonetheless ran one of it — not the — biggest deportation operation in California history. His title was regional commissioner of the Immigration and Nationalization Service. But with the blessing of Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, Ezell eagerly emerged as a national figure of both scorn and love, railing against illegal immigration and using his troops to, as he put it, turn back the 'invasion' and return America to 'Americans.' 'The reason why you have control of immigration is that you can assimilate a certain number of people every year into your culture, into the American way, into America, America's lifestyle,' he once explained to Times reporter Laurie Becklund. 'Already, you need to know Spanish to navigate your way around downtown.' Ezell is a largely forgotten name in a largely forgotten immigration war. It was an era before a powerful immigrant rights movement, before the rise of Latino politics in California. Until recently, it seemed to many like a throwback to an outdated, crude form of border enforcement we'd probably never see again. But it's worth considering Ezell's war and its aftermath as we try to make sense of what's happening before our eyes on the streets of Southern California. Federal agents have arrested 2,800 people since the beginning of President Trump's immigration sweeps a month ago. It feels like a stunning number, a quantification that adds to the sense of terror and upheaval spreading across immigrant communities. But compared to the heights of the Ezell raids, these numbers seem small by comparison. Of course, California was a different place in the 1980s – much more white, more Republican (Reagan won big in 1980 and 1984) and, according to polling, much more concerned about illegal immigration. As late as 1993, a Times poll found a whopping 86% of respondents said illegal immigration was a problem. Ezell is easier to understand from the prism of Reagan's 'Morning in America' era. The son of a pastor from Wilmington, Ezell made his name as an executive at the Wienerschnitzel hot dog chain before getting into Republican politics (he once quipped 'It's hamburgers that hire illegals because they have kitchens.'). Even critics who considered his policies cruel and racist – and there were many – admitted that behind the bluster there was the charm of a true believer. There was a scorched-earth quality to his raids. The feds targeted race tracks (forcing Del Mar to temporarily close), public transit and, notably, factories with the hope employers would get the message and hire citizens. This traffic sign — showing a family running across a road —came to symbolize his era. But it did not take long to see a certain futility in the crackdown. Ezell himself admitted in 1986 that all the arrests were not keeping up with the estimated 2,000 new border crossings each day. He insisted it was about sending a message. That same year, Congress passed the landmark Immigration Reform and Control Act, which gave a path to citizenship to more than three million immigrants here illegally. Ezell turned to getting the word out about amnesty, infamously donning a mariachi hat and singing 'Trio Amnestia' at one event. Ezell eventually became a major supporter of Proposition 187, the California measure that prohibited undocumented workers from receiving public assistance. The measure passed, but it began a political backlash to anti-immigration policies. Changing attitudes and demographics made California much more supportive of immigration as a benefit to the economy and the culture. Ezell died in 1998 and did not live to see the remarkable transformation. But as my colleague Gustavo Arellano noted in his excellent podcast on Prop. 187, the extremism of the 1980s and 1990s anti-immigration movement were also the seeds of its destruction. I asked Arellano about all this. 'Stephen Miller should learn well from Ezell, but not in the way he would like to think.' History has not been kind to Ezell, he said, and 'that's how history is already remembering Miller. It's not too late to change that.' William Barnes writes: 'My favorite California beach is the one of my youth, Moonlight Beach in Encinitas, Calif.' Jot McDonald writes: 'Ancillary Beach. It has the whitest sand!' Amy writes: 'Easy. Huntington Beach.' Email us at essentialcalifornia@ and your response might appear in the newsletter this week. A selection of the very best reads from The Times' 143-year archive. Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team Diamy Wang, homepage internIzzy Nunes, audience internKevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@ Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Senate Democrats asking for Trump appointees' salary details
Several Democratic senators are seeking more details about lower-level Trump administration appointees, including how much they are being paid after the federal government laid off thousands of career civil servants to cut costs earlier this year. Democratic Sens. Patty Murray (Wash.), Tim Kaine (Va.), John Fetterman (Pa.), Chris Van Hollen (Md.), Mark Warner (Va.), Angela Alsobrooks (Md.), Alex Padilla (Calif.) and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) wrote in a letter to Office of Personnel Management (OPM) acting Director Charles Ezell on Wednesday that a memo he penned last month about salary scales and pay raises piqued their interest. 'You issued a memo to the heads and acting heads of departments and agencies encouraging them to offer the maximum available salary to political appointees and sidestep the regular hiring process,' the senators wrote. 'This memo, coupled with the administration's widespread layoffs of career government workers who have loyally served in the Executive Branch for Presidents of both political parties, makes clear your intention: fire dedicated public servants in droves, cut essential government services, and use taxpayer dollars to instead hire underqualified and overpaid political cronies,' the group continued. The senators added, 'Padding the pockets of political operatives while firing food safety inspectors is nothing short of an egregious abuse of taxpayer dollars and massively wasteful.' The Democrats also requested brief job descriptions for all Schedule C appointees paid at the highest government tier, which is up to $195,200 annually. They are seeking the information from Ezell within a week. The OPM told The Hill that Schedule C employees go through rigorous vetting and background checks and are required to file financial disclosure forms. Ezell's memo didn't change that. The office added that the characterization in the senators' letter is misleading because 'Schedule C hires are very frequently involved in customer facing roles such as constituent service work.' In the initial memo, Ezell noted that agency heads have broad authority to fill and set the pay for 'Schedule C' roles that don't require civil service eligibility or competitive hiring procedures. 'Such flexibility is important to attract highly-qualified Schedule C employees to serve in important confidential, policy-determining, policy-making and policy-advocating roles,' he wrote. 'Well-qualified Schedule C employees are needed 'to drive the unusually expansive and transformative agenda the American people elected President Trump to accomplish.'' The memo came a week after a report found that the government laid off 216,215 workers in March — boosting the total federal job cuts in Trump's first three months back in office to 279,445 after the OPM and the Office of Management and Budget directed agency heads to slash employees. Updated at 12:42 p.m. EDT. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
28-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Senate Democrats asking for Trump appointees' salary details
Several Democratic senators are seeking more details about lower-level Trump administration appointees, including how much they are being paid after the federal government laid off thousands of career civil servants to cut costs earlier this year. Democratic Sens. Patty Murray (Wash.), Tim Kaine (Va.), John Fetterman (Pa.), Chris Van Hollen (Md.), Mark Warner (Va.), Angela Alsobrooks (Md.), Alex Padilla (Calif.) and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) wrote in a letter to Office of Personnel Management (OPM) acting director Charles Ezell on Wednesday that a memo he penned last month about salary scales and pay raises piqued their interest. 'You issued a memo to the heads and acting heads of departments and agencies encouraging them to offer the maximum available salary to political appointees and sidestep the regular hiring process,' the senators wrote. 'This memo, coupled with the administration's widespread layoffs of career government workers who have loyally served in the Executive Branch for Presidents of both political parties, makes clear your intention: fire dedicated public servants in droves, cut essential government services, and use taxpayer dollars to instead hire underqualified and overpaid political cronies,' the group continued. The senators added, 'Padding the pockets of political operatives while firing food safety inspectors is nothing short of an egregious abuse of taxpayer dollars and massively wasteful.' The Democrats also requested brief job descriptions for all Schedule C appointees paid at the highest government tier, which is up to $195,200 annually. They are seeking the information from Ezell within a week. OPM didn't immediately respond to The Hill's request for comment. In the initial memo, Ezell noted that agency heads have broad authority to fill and set the pay for 'Schedule C' roles that don't require civil service eligibility or competitive hiring procedures. 'Such flexibility is important to attract highly-qualified Schedule C employees to serve inimportant confidential, policy-determining, policy-making and policy-advocating roles,' he wrote. 'Well-qualified Schedule C employees are needed 'to drive the unusually expansive and transformative agenda the American people elected President Trump to accomplish.'' The memo came a week after a report found that government laid off 216,215 workers in March — boosting the total federal job cuts in Trump's first three months back in office to 279,445 after OPM and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directed agency heads to slash employees.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Democrats Demand Salary Details For Trump's Political Appointees
WASHINGTON — Democratic senators on Wednesday asked a top Trump administration official for details on the salaries of President Donald Trump's political appointees and raised questions about the administration's urging of agency leaders to max out the amount of taxpayer dollars allowed for these jobs while ignoring the standard hiring process. In a new letter to Charles Ezell, the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, eight senators asked for the salary information of all so-called 'Schedule C' appointees, or people who Trump appointed to lower-level policy roles across federal agencies. Led by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the senators asked Ezell to justify an April 10 memo he issued to the heads of all agencies, reminding them of the 'great flexibility' they have when setting the pay for Schedule C employees. In sending this memo, Ezell bypassed the authority of each agency's human resources department to set the terms for these appointments. Between the memo and the administration's efforts to purge tens of thousands of career civil servants from the U.S. government, it 'makes clear your intention,' the senators wrote to Ezell. 'Fire dedicated public servants in droves, cut essential government services, and use taxpayer dollars to instead hire underqualified and overpaid political cronies.' The senators also asked for the job descriptions of any Schedule C employees the administration has hired at the highest pay grade in the government's general pay system, which maxes out at $195,200. The letter is signed by Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine (Va.), John Fetterman (Pa.), Chris Van Hollen (Md.), Mark Warner (Va.), Angela Alsobrooks (Md.), Alex Padilla (Calif.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) and Murray. Here's a copy of their letter, obtained by HuffPost: Most of the senators on the letter represent states near Washington, D.C., that are home to large numbers of current or recently fired federal employees. Murray, though, is likely leading the effort as the top Democrat on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, which decides how much money federal agencies get. 'OPM's April 10 memo makes clear the Trump Administration's ultimate goal is to decimate the nonpolitical career civil service and use taxpayer dollars to enrich and reward political allies, all at the cost of the government services that people rely on,' the senators wrote. 'Padding the pockets of political operatives while firing food safety inspectors is nothing short of an egregious abuse of taxpayer dollars and massively wasteful.' They give Ezell until June 4, one week from Wednesday, to provide salary information on all Schedule C employees.
E&E News
05-05-2025
- Business
- E&E News
Trump admin praises feds as ‘backbone' of government
The Trump administration celebrated government workers Monday as President Donald Trump and his aides continue efforts to dramatically downsize the federal workforce. 'We are tremendously grateful to our federal employees and recognize their commitment to public service,' Chuck Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, said Monday in a statement. Ezell marked Public Service Recognition Week, an annual event that takes place from May 5-11. This week, 'we especially recognize federal employees as the backbone of a functioning government and this strong nation,' said Ezell, whose agency acts as the federal government's human resources arm. Advertisement The remarks follow a series of early moves by the Trump White House to shrink the federal government by firing employees, cutting federal spending and slashing the government's real estate footprint.
