- 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)