“That is not the easiest entrance I’ve ever made,” Trump told the California GOP convention in Burlingame, south of San Francisco.
Coverage of the protests captured Trump and his security detail traversing unkempt terrain in order to enter the venue without confrontation.
“We went under a fence and through a fence,” Trump added. “Oh boy, it felt like I was crossing the border, actually. I was crossing the border, but I got here.”
Several hundred protesters gathered outside the hotel in Burlingame, California. Some carried Mexican flags and held signs protesting Trump’s controversial plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent illegal immigration.
A man wearing a red hat bearing the Trump campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” was punched in the head from behind while being jostled by a group of shouting protesters. Another Trump supporter said he was punched and spit upon by demonstrators who also threw his phone to the ground.
“It went gangbusters. They attacked me,” said Chris Conway, a mortgage broker from San Mateo.
Burlingame is right outside San Francisco, a liberal bastion that became the focal point of the immigration debate last year when an immigrant in the country illegally, and who had been deported multiple times, shot and killed a woman walking with her father.
Immigration has been one of Trump’s main issues and he often has highlighted the San Francisco killing while touting his plan to build a wall along the entire Mexican border.
California’s primary is June 7, a date once seen as too late to influence the selection process. Now it is seen as the election that either gets Trump over the threshold needed for the nomination or leaves him just short.
He’ll likely make many visits to California in coming weeks. That and his hard stand on immigration in a state where millions of immigrants live and that’s run by Democrats who generally support more benefits, services and job opportunities for those in the country illegally raise the prospects of more raucous demonstrations.
In Orange County, once a Republican stronghold but now home to a surging Hispanic population, a vocal but peaceful demonstration before a rally and Trump speech turned violent afterward. At least 17 people were arrested, five police cars were damaged and an officer was hit in the head by a rock but not seriously hurt, authorities said.
One Trump supporter had his face bloodied in a scuffle as he tried to drive out of the Pacific Amphitheatre area.
Dozens of cars – including those of Trump supporters trying to leave – were stuck in the street as several hundred demonstrators blocked the road, waved Mexican flags and posed for selfies in front of lines of riot police.
There were no major injuries and police did not use any force.
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