Like others throughout the United States, I’m worried about the ease at which the Trump administration is deporting people based on their beliefs or nationality.

We’ve done this before with Japanese Americans during World War II during the 1940s. It was shameful then just as much as today.

The fact that an innocent man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was deported by mistake to an El Salvadoran mega-prison, and the Trump administration is going out of its way to keep him there, is just as terrible.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also boasted recently of canceling hundreds of visas for students and others, calling them “lunatics” for openly criticizing this country or Western institutions in general.

But as for immigrants in California, according to a story by Rebecca Plevin of the Los Angeles Times, a survey finds that a majority of people support providing social services for all low-income residents in the state, regardless of immigration status.

The California Community Foundation interviewed 800 voters and found they value the contributions of immigrants, regardless of legal status, and believe their well-being is intertwined with a well-functioning state.

The poll found more than two-thirds of respondents support allowing all state residents to purchase health insurance through Covered California, regardless of immigration status. Currently, unauthorized immigrants are not eligible to buy a plan through the state’s health insurance marketplace.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents, 64%, support offering food assistance to all eligible low-income families, regardless of the parents’ immigration status. Currently, undocumented immigrants are not eligible for California’s food stamp program, but they can apply for assistance on behalf of their U.S.-born children.

Plevin also reported the survey found 57% of respondents support continuing to allow all eligible low-income residents to access medical care through Medi-Cal, regardless of their immigration status.

Last year, California became the first state in the nation to offer health insurance to all low-income undocumented immigrants.

As part of the nonpartisan survey, San Francisco-based David Binder Research interviewed voters by cellphone, landline and online, in English and Spanish, between March 19 and 24, Plevin reported. Of the respondents, 47% identified as Democrats and 28% identified as Republicans, generally reflecting the California electorate.

The research revealed moderate and swing voters in California see undocumented immigrants as essential to the economy, and are worried about the economic fallout from Trump’s pledge to carry out mass deportations, said Binder.

Participants expressed concerns that raids targeting farmworkers will drive up grocery prices and that wide-scale deportations will decimate small businesses and make it more expensive to build houses. There’s no question about that in my mind.

“They’re worried that mass deportations are going to cause disruptions in their daily routine,” Binder was quoted by Plevin as saying.

In short, we all know how critical immigrants are to the local economy, where Plevin found about 10.6 million people — or 27% of all residents — were foreign-born as of 2023.

About 1.8 million immigrants living in California — roughly 17% — were undocumented in 2022, according to the Pew Research Center.

Unauthorized immigrants accounted for an estimated 7% of the state’s workforce in 2022, Plevin discovered in a Pew Research Center report, with some sectors deeply reliant on this workforce. At least half of the estimated 255,700 farmworkers in California are undocumented, according to UC Merced Research.

We need immigrants. We know it. And we need to defend their rights as much as we need to defend our own.

Jim Smith is the former editor of The Daily Democrat, retiring in 2021 after a 27-year career at the paper.