The Brief

For the third time in a little over three weeks, Texas has sent migrants on an overnight bus ride from the state's border to Los Angeles.

According to the L.A. Welcomes Collective, a network of immigrant rights advocates and faith organizations including the Archdiocese of L.A., the migrants arrived at Union Station around 12:40 p.m. It was the second bus to arrive from Brownsville, Texas; the previous bus from there arrived July 1.

Advocates said the Norteño Express charter bus was delayed by overheating as it made its way across the blistering Southwest.

"I think they were in the bus for about 30 hours plus," said Martha Arevalo with the Central American Resource Center, or CARECEN, one of the groups in the collective. "It was a bus that was malfunctioning a little bit, so it took a lot longer than expected. So, they were hungry, they were hot, they were thirsty."

Migrants from Haiti, Venezuela and Mexico

They said 30 people, including six children, traveled to Los Angeles, and that five others who boarded in Texas were dropped off at destinations along the way. Arevalo said the migrants on board this time were from Haiti, Venezuela and Mexico.

The white charter bus pulled in to the rear of the train station, where its passengers were promptly loaded onto two city Department of Transportation shuttles and whisked off to St. Anthony’s Croatian Catholic Church in nearby Chinatown. There, a number of local groups were on hand to provide food, water and medical assistance and connect them with local relatives. Some family members arrived soon afterward and waited outside.

One was Gladys Leon of Glassell Park, who came to pick up a cousin and her family.

Gladys Leon, a Glassell Park resident, waits in a parking garage at St. Anthony's Croatian Church in Chinatown for the arrival of a cousin and two children who were among 30 migrants bused to L.A. from Brownsville, Texas.

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Leslie Berestein Rojas

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LAist

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She said her cousin, who was traveling with her two children and possibly her husband, came from Guerrero, Mexico and was seeking asylum due to violence there.

After being admitted to the United States, they were offered bus tickets to Los Angeles — Leon wasn't sure who offered them the tickets, but that they gladly took them.

Her cousin called her early Wednesday morning before they departed Brownsville, to say "that she was already on her way, and she didn't know when she was going to get here."

According to immigrant rights advocates, most of the passengers have family in the L.A. region, as did those who arrived on the two previous buses.

Migrant drop-offs continue

This is the latest in a string of migrant drop-offs by bus and plane in Democratic-led cities and states, orchestrated by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and his fellow Republican, Florida Gov. Ron De Santis. These have included migrants being sent to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts and being left in front of Vice President Kamala Harris’ home in freezing weather on Christmas Eve.

More recently, migrants were flown by the state Florida from Texas to Sacramento, prompting calls from state leaders for an investigation into what California Attorney General Rob Bonta referred to as "state-sanctioned kidnapping."

In some instances, migrants have reported being duped into taking these trips, which have been widely criticized by Democratic leaders as political theater that takes advantage of vulnerable individuals.

But migrants on the recent buses to Los Angeles have reported differently: That they were asked once in the United States where they were going, and offered tickets to their destination, which they voluntarily accepted.

'We saw it as a help'

Maurini, a woman who arrived in L.A. with her husband July 1 from Brownsville, told LAist, “We saw it as a help, because it was free, and they were going to transport us to where we were going.”

The legal firm working with the couple did not want to use Maurini's last name for safety reasons; She and her husband are seeking political asylum from Venezuela's repressive regime.

Maurini described how after they were admitted into the country, they were taken by U.S. border officials to a facility near the bus station in Brownsville, where they were interviewed then offered free tickets to L.A. The couple were going to stay with a friend in Riverside County.

They had to wait a little more than a week until there were enough passengers bound for Los Angeles for a bus to leave. Maurini did not know if it was a government agency or a nonprofit that provided the tickets.

Local immigrant advocates said the city of Brownsville has taken an active role in helping migrants get to their destinations in an organized manner.

"I know that the city of Brownsville has tried very hard to make sure that they are treated humanely," Arevalo said, adding that the city has cooperated with advocacy groups "to make sure that the bus is coming and to assure us that they've done what they can to intervene, to make sure that they have food and water."

Assistance to asylum-seekers

Arevalo with CARECEN said the welcome center at the church would offer as much assistance as possible before the migrants went on their way with family or friends to await their court dates.

"We have a safe space where they can at least breathe and feel that they're safe, and communicate with their families," she said. "We also have mental health services, we have general health services, and also legal services. We're connecting them with legal services for their immigration cases."

The main goal right now, Arevalo said, "is to reunite people with their families. If they have a family here or a sponsor here, to reunite them as soon as possible."

She said while most would stay locally, "there are some people that are going to have to travel outside of Los Angeles to be reunited with their families. And so we're trying to make those arrangements as well."

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

After weeks of stifling heat, Long Beach is preparing for a different kind of weather: powerful southerly swells, followed by rain showers as early as Saturday, all courtesy of a hurricane expected to make landfall in California this weekend.

Waves arrived along the Peninsula on Wednesday — sending water onto the boardwalk and side streets — and returned Thursday, slapping against the already weakened bulkhead that serves as the last line of defense for a number of beach homes.

With a coastal advisory in effect through Friday, experts say 3-to-6-foot waves are being carried to shore by tides reaching 7 feet high and leaving behind dangerous rip currents.

City crews were busy the past several days stowing hundreds of sandbags beneath the boardwalk as a second barrier, with emergency pumps ready. The work is complicated by the short window between recurring high tides and a limited supply of sand.

“We’re just basically trying to create a buffer between that impact zone, the energy of the impact, and that wall,” said Marine Safety Chief Gonzalo Medina. “I do expect that we will see some activity and some water intrusion out onto the streets, certainly the boardwalk.”

Marine and fire crews are expected to stand by overnight to monitor water levels and assist residents.

The area has already been tested this year, taking damage from Hurricane Marie over Labor Day weekend, followed by Hurricane Polo in late September. The National Weather Service says this week’s flooding will probably exceed Polo’s but fall short of Marie’s.

Kristan Lund, a meteorologist with the NWS office in Oxnard, said swells are forecast to peak Thursday through Saturday during the morning and evening tides.

It’s another example of an abnormal season, Lund said, where tides are running 1 to 2 feet higher than usual, well “above the astronomical tide charts.”

Waves are being charged north by Hurricane Rachel, which is expected to weaken considerably before it makes landfall 100 miles south of San Diego early Sunday and reaches the California-New Mexico border by Monday.

In comparison to the 2023 tropical storm Hillary, which wrought widespread flooding that necessitated rescues in desert towns, Lund said this storm is farther south and entering at a more horizontal angle toward New Mexico.

But it’s still “hard to tell for right now” how the storm will progress, Lund said, saying higher-resolution models should be released Friday or Saturday that more accurately predict its path.

Forecasters say the system should still deliver heavy rain, gusty winds, dangerous surf and localized flooding, with hazardous zones stretching as far north as Orange County.

In Long Beach, rain could start as early as Saturday morning and linger through Tuesday night, with the best chance from Sunday morning through Monday evening.

Totals are expected to be modest, roughly a quarter to three-quarters of an inch, with a small chance of thunderstorms. South-to-west gusts of 20 to 35 mph are likely from Saturday through Monday, adding the risk of fallen trees and power lines.

“The wind would actually be a lot more problematic than the rain,” Medina said. “You have a lot of trees already that we’re seeing, just from this heat, that have fallen. This heat has weakened the structure of a lot of these trees. And now you bring wind into the equation. The trees bring down power lines, and it gets complicated after that.”

Why is this happening?

The storm arrives at the tail end of a weekslong heat wave that experts say is a consequence of climate change compounded by El Niño, which has kept nights unusually warm and humid.

“At night it’s not cooling off as much, and that ends up being pretty consequential,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources. “Because obviously the night is when people would usually cool down.”

El Niño also helps explain the high number of hurricanes and storm systems like Rachel and its predecessors, Swain said. “El Niño also increases hurricane activity in the eastern Pacific Ocean,” Swain said, describing a season that ranks as either the most or second most active on record depending on the metric.

The result has been repeated surges of tropical moisture toward Southern California, leaving humidity high.

Ocean temperatures off the coast are now about 7 to 8 degrees above average, and the Pacific from central Baja California to Southern California is at record warmth in data going back to 1982. Warm water expands, and a Kelvin wave, an underwater ripple that becomes “coastally trapped” as it reaches the Americas, can add 6 to 12 inches to background sea levels, potentially for months.

Swain said harbor masters and fire departments in coastal Los Angeles County have been calling him. “They’re like, ‘I’ve never seen water this high,'” he said, adding one told him it was the highest in 30 years, on a day that wasn’t supposed to be a particularly high tide.

And he expects it to get worse. “That’s something that’s actually going to get worse as we go into November and December.”

More Kelvin waves are expected this season, and scientists worry about one coinciding with a king tide, a major storm or both. The Climate Prediction Center is forecasting a wetter-than-average winter for Southern California, and Swain sees little doubt.

“All signs continue to point toward a very wet winter in coastal Southern California,” he said. “I would be very surprised if we did not have that.”

For now, the city is focused on the week ahead. Sandbag distribution sites open Thursday at 10 a.m. at Fire Stations 7, 12, 13 and 14, and at the Claremont Beach parking lot, through Tuesday.

Empty sandbags are available at all LBFD neighborhood Fire Stations. While the Claremont Beach Parking Lot (5400 E. Ocean Blvd.) site is offering sand and sandbags through Tuesday. Sand and sandbags are also available at the locations listed below starting Thursday, Oct. 8, at 10 a.m.:

• Fire Station 7 – 2295 Elm St.
• Fire Station 12 – 1199 E. Artesia Blvd.
• Fire Station 13 – 2475 Adriatic Ave.
• Fire Station 14 – 5200 E. Eliot St.

Find more ways to be prepared at LBPost.com/elnino

The first bite at n/naka, the acclaimed Westside Japanese restaurant, asks you to slow down. The meal opens with an oyster dressed with asparagus, elderflower, dill and horseradish, served beside caviar on a puffed-rice crisp over a bed of juniper sprigs.

The oyster's briny, meaty texture meets earthy, herbal notes and a touch of sweetness from the produce. It's a bite with weight, enough to carry you somewhere else entirely: a forest at the edge of a rugged coastal range, waves crashing at your feet.

It’s the kind of moment that chefs Niki Nakayama and Carole Iida-Nakayama have been building for 15 years.

Understanding kaiseki

Kaiseki is a traditional multicourse Japanese meal built from a series of small, seasonal dishes. Its roots are often traced to both the quiet meals served before a tea ceremony and the more elaborate banquets paired with sake. Today, the style is defined less by a single origin than by its emphasis on seasonality, balance and presentation.

The zensai course arrives as a bamboo basket of small bites, including shrimp, chawanmushi and a beef taquito, a nod to Nakayama’s L.A. upbringing.

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Gab Chabrán

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The tiny, unassuming Michelin-starred restaurant — which seats only 26 people at a time — is located on a quiet corner in the Palms neighborhood. n/naka was one of the first restaurants in America to serve modern kaiseki; Nakayama, who was born and raised in Los Angeles, helped introduce kaiseki to the city when n/naka opened in 2011. She describes the restaurant’s style of cuisine as “a modern California Japanese kaiseki," and her skills have been repeatedly recognized; she's been nominated as an outstanding chef by the James Beard Foundation twice, most recently in 2026.

In a city where restaurants regularly close after a few years, still being in existence — and thriving — after 15 years deserves its own acknowledgment.

Celebrating with friends

Instead of throwing a party for their 15th anniversary, the two chefs, who are partners both in business and in life, invited like-minded chefs from New York to Lima to cook with them in a series of one-night-only dinners.

n/naka chefs Carole Iida-Nakayama (left) and Niki Nakayama (right), with Micha Tsumura of Maido, one of the guest chefs in the restaurant’s anniversary dinner series.

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Zen Sekizawa Photography

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“I really wanted to not just collab for the sake of doing collabs,” she said. She wanted the chefs “that had the same angle and story as ours, where they’re coming from somewhere else, and they’re recreating the food from their personal perspective.”

Each dinner has its own theme, Nakayama said. A collaboration with Emma Bengtsson of the two-Michelin-star restaurant Aquavit in New York honored women in the industry. A partnership with Micha Tsumura of Maido in Lima, Peru — named the World's Best Restaurant in 2025 by World's 50 Best — explored diaspora. There’s one dinner left — on December 15, with Shinichi Aoki of Hashiri Bettei Kaiseki in the Bay Area. Aoki’s will bring together traditional kaiseki and n/naka’s modern version.

The menu

If you're lucky enough to get a reservation for their regular menu, however, you can still expect a spectacular meal. (I grabbed the chance to attend a rare media tasting). 12 vibrant courses for $395 per person, with a wine pairing of $195.

The meal weaves together a range of influences, beginning with the oyster. From there, it moves to the zensai, a bamboo basket of delicately crafted bites that looks like a bejeweled version of Thanos' Infinity Gauntlet. It holds a tiny beef taquito, California blue shrimp, chawanmushi topped with a single slice of mushroom, and corn tempura.

California seems top of mind in every morsel, starting with the taquito. Nakayama says tacos appeared on past menus throughout the years. "Those are experiences that I've had growing up," she said. "They deserve to be celebrated within this context."

A steamed course of a crab-and-shrimp dumpling, floating in tomato dashi, finished with lemongrass and basil oil.

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Gab Chabrán

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LAist

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Another course crosses cultures: a steamed crab-and-shrimp dumpling in tomato dashi, finished with lemongrass and basil oil. Lemongrass is a staple of Southeast Asian cooking, and Nakayama said she has never seen it used in Japanese food. "I think we can put it all together and still make it work and ultimately still have it feel very Japanese," she said.

As the meal progresses, the dishes grow richer. One is spaghetti studded with fish roe and topped with abalone and shaved truffle. Another is A5 wagyu served alongside a hollowed-out squash packed with sweet corn, finished with a crisp, butterfly-shaped cracker. The beef's melt-in-your-mouth richness plays against the vegetables' delicacy, and the plate feels whole.

‘One time, one meeting’

The back of the menu carries an old Japanese proverb, ichi-go, ichi-e, which means "one time, one meeting." It embodies the idea that every encounter should be treasured because it will never happen again. Below it, the menu calls California n/naka's "living landscape" and kaiseki its "culinary medium," setting the tone for the evening.

Nakayama said the idea guides her kitchen. "You will never have this day, this hour, this minute back," she said. "So be in the moment."

Looking ahead, she hopes the restaurant can be a refuge. "I think there's so much stress in the world that if there's a place you can step into that's a reprieve from that, I would hope that a place like ours fills that space," she said.

Inglewood Mayor James Butts didn’t show up to The LA Local’s mayoral candidate forum Wednesday night, but the five candidates challenging his bid for reelection weren’t shy about criticizing his 15-year tenure at the city’s helm.

Mayoral candidates Raina Carrillo, Fre’Drisha Dixon, Gloria Gray, Arturo Martinez and Joseph Soto all joined the forum and laid out their ideas about everything from housing affordability to traffic. 

The five challengers agreed on the need for term limits for city officials, a forensic audit of city finances and a change from 2 p.m. City Council meetings to a more publicly accessible evening slot. They lashed out at the city’s handling of Inglewood’s video billboards, the flagging Market Street commercial corridor and Bryan Bostic’s death in police custody during Butts’ time in office.

The LA Local invited Butts to attend the forum and held a chair open for him on stage throughout the event. A full video of the forum will be available online on Thursday. 

Voting has already begun in Inglewood and will continue until Nov. 3. The stakes are high amid an ongoing dispute between the city and its major venues, and stadium and billboard interests have already poured millions into the election.

LA Local reporter LaMonica Peters and youth journalist Lakshmi Leon moderated the forum, asking questions gathered from The LA Local’s community survey and from the more than 100 community members in the audience. 

Lead moderator, LaMonica Peters, left, reporter with The LA Local, and Lakshmi Leon, 17, student reporter and a junior at Inglewood High School, ask questions to the mayoral candidates during the Inglewood Mayoral Candidates Forum held at Inglewood High School.

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Gary Coronado

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The LA Local

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Nicole Sims was part of the audience in the auditorium of the former Morningside High School —  temporarily the home of Inglewood High School. 

The lifelong Inglewood resident said she hoped to hear ideas from the fresher faces in Inglewood politics, especially candidates who have come from the community and haven’t held elected office before.

“Just because someone has been in the office doesn’t mean they’re necessarily the best candidate to push the city forward,” Sims said. 

Jessica Foard, a teacher, said she had hoped Butts would attend the forum so she and Bostic’s family could ask questions about how the mayor has handled Bostic’s case, but wasn’t surprised he didn’t attend.

“He doesn’t feel like he needs to answer to anybody,” Foard said. 

Inglewood’s election season has been contentious as candidates spar with each other online and at city meetings, trading barbs and allegations of misconduct. 

Wednesday’s forum remained largely cordial. Dixon called out Gray twice, asking why she hasn’t pushed harder as a council member for more transparency or information about Bostic’s death. Gray rebutted that she’s been active about both issues within the constraints of her job. 

Central to the election is the city’s relationship with its crown jewel stadiums and fleet of video billboards, which collectively bring millions in revenue to the city’s budget and have changed the rhythm of daily life for residents. 

Candidates critiqued the city’s current financial arrangement with video billboard company WOW Media. They pitched a variety of solutions for the traffic jams and parking snags that are a feature of major events in the city, from barricading side streets to building an Elon Musk-inspired traffic tunnel.

Some took aim at the city’s parking permit program, which charges residents in some neighborhoods for extra streetside permits.

With new development continuing around Inglewood, the candidates proposed a range of housing affordability fixes from property tax relief to affordable dwelling units, or ADUs.

Chibby Azingee-Welton, of Inglewood, snaps her fingers in agreement at the Inglewood Mayoral Candidates Forum held at Inglewood High School on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026, in Inglewood.

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Gary Coronado

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Anil Raj, one of the attendees, said he was impressed with Dixon’s proposals and with the passion from Martinez and Soto. Gray, he said, seemed to represent Inglewood’s past. 

Inglewood’s mayoral election is a primary, meaning the top two vote-getters will move on to a runoff in the spring unless one gets more than half of votes cast by Nov. 3. Butts first needed a runoff to win office in 2011, but wrapped up dominant November wins in 2014, 2018 and 2022. 

Carrillo, Dixon and Soto have all made runs for mayor before. Gray, who is on the board of the West Basin Municipal Water District in addition to being a council member, is the only candidate besides Butts currently holding elected office.

Inglewood resident Sandra Jones said she hopes people will go vote.

“We can complain as citizens of this community,” Jones said, “but we actually need to get out and vote and make a change.”

Check out our voter guides

Inglewood’s ballot is packed beyond the mayor’s race with voters set to weigh in on two City Council members, three school board members and three ballot initiatives.

Check out The LA Local’s voter guides below: 

• Your LA Local Voter Guide: Inglewood Mayor 
• Your LA Local Voter Guide: Inglewood City Council 
• Your LA Local Voter Guide: Inglewood Board of Education 
• Your LA Local Voter Guide: Measure AT, the Ordinance to Amend the Admissions Tax for Large Venues
• Your LA Local Voter Guide: Measure BB, the Ordinance to Eliminate Advertising on Public Right-of-Way
• Your LA Local Voter Guide: Inglewood Unified School District Measure MM

The post Inglewood mayoral challengers weigh in on video billboards and transparency while Butts skips The LA Local’s candidate forum  appeared first on LA Local.