The Brief

A church-going agricultural worker. An Echo Park man taking his son to school. A 16-year-old kid searching for work to support his family in Mexico.

Three weeks into President Donald Trump’s second term, a clearer picture is beginning to emerge of some of the first Californians targeted in his high-profile immigration crackdown. It’s very different from the descriptions of hardened criminals President Donald Trump has touted. People CalMatters interviewed about the raids across California suggested those swept up in them are dedicated family members and employees, their lives deeply woven into their communities. None appeared to pose the risks to national security or public safety Trump promised he’d target during his campaign.

The state has only begun to grapple with the resulting fear and need for reliable information. Last week Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law legislation allocating $25 million to provide immigrants with legal services to fight immigration proceedings against them.

A spokesman for ICE said officers do not target noncitizens indiscriminately. “ICE’s enforcement resources are based on intelligence-driven leads,” said Richard Beam, a spokesman for ICE’s Los Angeles office.

Some people detained during the statewide crackdown said that’s not what it feels like on the ground.

“It was just a regular morning,” said Loreal Duran from Echo Park in Los Angeles, describing her family’s before-school rush to get the kids out the door and loaded into the car.

But on the morning in question, Jan. 23, as her husband fastened their two young children into their seats, an immigration officer walked up, asking Loreal to show identification. “As he got closer to the car, he saw my husband, and basically, he just went around to the other side to grab my husband out of the car and take him away.”

Loreal Duran holds a photo of her with her husband Giovanni Duran at her apartment in Los Angeles on Feb. 8, 2025.

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Joel Angel Juarez

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CalMatters

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The Durans’ one-year-old daughter, whose identity is being withheld for privacy concerns, eats breakfast at their apartment in Los Angeles.

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Joel Angel Juarez

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CalMatters

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The Durans’ eight-year-old son, whose identity is being withheld for privacy concerns, sits on their bed at their apartment on Feb. 8, 2025.

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Joel Angel Juarez

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CalMatters

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Giovanni Duran, 42, came to California from El Salvador without federal authorization when he was 2 years old, brought by his family. He worked as a busser in a sushi restaurant in Los Angeles, Loreal said. Duran is now being held in the Adelanto detention facility, run by a private company under contract to ICE, awaiting deportation to a country he doesn’t know.

“I haven’t talked to him in almost two days,” said Loreal last week. She’s had to get counseling for her 7-year-old son after he saw his dad taken away by officers.

“He was telling his classmates, ‘Oh, daddy got arrested for not wearing his seatbelt,’” Duran recounted. Later, the second grader asked his mom, “Did daddy get arrested because he’s Brown? I replied back to him, I go: ‘Yea, he kinda did.'”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported on social media 8,276 arrests nationwide between Jan. 22 and Jan. 31. The agency would not break out those numbers for California or different cities.

Casting a wide net

ProPublica and the Texas Tribune reported less than half of the approximately 8,200 people arrested from Jan. 20 through Feb. 2, so far have criminal convictions, according to government data they obtained.

In California, the apparently broad crackdown has immigrant advocates working around the clock. There have been several high-profile protests – one that shuttered a freeway in Los Angeles and another that prompted police to fire off tear gas at people in National City. Social media channels have been flooded by reported sightings of immigration officers and phones have been ringing nonstop.

“You can sense that kind of panic and also hunger; hunger for correct, reliable information as to what they should do in times of a raid or in times of an encounter with an immigration agent,” said Ian M. Seruelo, an immigration attorney in San Diego.

Two days after President Donald Trump visited wildfire-scarred Los Angeles, promising to work with California on needed federal assistance for recovery, his administration announced, with few details, immigration enforcement operations in the city carried out by federal agencies, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Justice Department, “and other federal law enforcement partners.” Video released with the announcement showed officers in camouflaged uniforms and bullet-proof vests approaching apartment buildings and standing around armored vehicles and mobile command centers.

Trump authorized law enforcement agents from across the federal government to participate in immigration enforcement activities. He also lifted longtime guidelines restricting ICE from operating at “sensitive locations” such as schools, churches or hospitals.

ICE messaging about its enforcement actions has emphasized the apprehension of criminals. Last week, Enforcement and Removal Operations Los Angeles, a part of the agency, said officers arrested a 47-year-old non-citizen who was convicted of DUI. “This noncitizen had previously been arrested for driving without a license and evading a peace officer,” officials said on social media. They also said they arrested an “unlawfully present Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang member. This noncitizen is currently in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.”

Law enforcement officials spread out through an apartment complex during a raid in Denver on Feb. 5, 2025. Officials have also been conducting immigration enforcement activities across California.

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David Zalubowski

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Nayna Gupta, the policy director at the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group for immigrants, said for the Trump administration to deport millions of people as the president promised, it will have to target people who have not had contact with the criminal system.

“Based on recent data, we know that fewer than 1 in 10 undocumented immigrants has a criminal record,” said Gupta.

More than one in three people in Los Angeles County are immigrants, according to a report last year from the University of Southern California. Tens of thousands of county residents had to evacuate following a series of wildfires that began in early January.

“It is unconscionable to have or plan for immigration enforcement activities in a natural disaster,” said Angelica Salas, the executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. ICE did not respond to a request for comment on the issue.

In the name of public safety

California Republicans appear to be on board with Trump’s actions so far. They urged Newsom to veto two bills signed into law last week. One was the $25 million for immigrant legal defense and the other allocated another $25 million for Attorney General Rob Bonta to pursue litigation against the Trump administration.

“We have a public safety problem in California, and a big component of that is international gangs and cartels. Human trafficking has exploded, and it knows no bounds,” said Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares, a Republican from Santa Clarita, during a floor debate on the legislation.

During his campaign, Trump and his advisors repeatedly invoked hardened criminals and threats to national security when promising mass detentions and deportations of undocumented immigrants.

That’s what Estefany Peña, 30, from Lincoln, California, believed when she supported Trump for reelection.

“I thought they were going to be targeting criminals. No one mentioned during the campaigning of Donald Trump that residents … legal residents … were going to have to go through this,” she said. Her husband, who came to the country legally in 1999 and has a green card, went to an immigration office in San Francisco for a check-in in late January and still hasn’t come home, she said.

“Everything just came crumbling down,” she said of when immigration officers wouldn’t let her husband leave.

The husband, Joel Jacuinde, 40, is the breadwinner for his family, working at a rice dryer company east of San Francisco. Peña said he also volunteers for his church and provides the primary source of transportation for the family, regularly taking their 11-year-old son for treatment for his asthma. Both children are covered for health care under Jacuinde’s Medi-Cal account, she said.

“My kids are very close to their dad, so it’s taken a terrible toll on them,” she said.

Jacuinde doesn’t show up in a database of people being detained by ICE. Peña said he was told he was not free to leave the immigration office and that agents were holding him to pressure him to sign a voluntary removal form. The family has contacted dozens of attorneys but hasn’t been able to secure legal representation, she said.

In Tijuana, outside a federal shelter set up to assist recently deported Mexicans, a 16-year-old told CalMatters he had been detained trying to reach Stockton to find work. “They grabbed me,” he said, and within hours, he was back in Mexico.

Leaving the same Tijuana shelter, Mario Guerra, 39, a construction worker from Bakersfield, said he ran from about seven or eight ICE agents on Jan. 31. Though he grew up in Bakersfield, he said he was in the U.S. without federal authorization. Guerra said the agents caught him, detained him, and sent him back to Mexico after two days in detention.

Protesters gather over U.S. Route 101 in Downtown Los Angeles in support of the “Day Without Immigrants” march on Feb. 3, 2025.

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J.W. Hendricks

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Guerra said the officers handcuffed his feet and hands and left him in a transportation van for hours from Bakersfield to San Ysidro with no restroom breaks and nothing to drink.

“We were, basically, telling them that we needed to use the restroom, but they didn’t answer at all,” he said.

“The kids are the ones who are going to suffer the most,” he added about his children who are still in Bakersfield.

Thirty-four-year-old Vilma Ordóñez said she and her husband and children went out to eat in East Los Angeles on Jan. 26. As they got out of the car in front of the restaurant, two agents wearing bulletproof vests approached “and told my husband that he looked like someone they were looking for,” Ordóñez described.

Her stomach dropped as she remembered advice she’d read online, telling her husband, who is in the U.S. without legal status, “Let’s not say anything; let’s just look for an attorney.” The agents kept insisting the couple show them their IDs, she said.

“He had to take out his ID,” she said. “He showed it to them, and they said, ‘Oh, we knew you were not the right person.’”

“They knew he was not the right person, but yet they still insisted on asking him for his ID?” she asked in Spanish.

It’s possible the agents were looking for indications on Ordóñez’s husband’s ID that he was not an authorized immigrant. In 2013, California passed the Safe and Responsible Drivers Act, granting undocumented residents the ability to obtain driver’s licenses. More than a million undocumented Californians got the special licenses, which look slightly different than regular state licenses. Some advocates worried at the time the licenses could be misused by immigration authorities to identify people who are undocumented. ICE did not respond to a request for comment about whether it is identifying immigrants without legal status by their AB60 driver’s licenses.

Ordóñez said the agents let them go, so they went into the restaurant with their children and had dinner. But when they returned to the parking lot, four agents were standing around their car.

“They told him he had signed a voluntary return in 1996 and had not left the country, and so they were going to detain him and take him,” she said, adding that he’s currently being held in a California detention facility. Ordóñez said her husband never signed the voluntary return form.

“The father has a very important role in the family, and right now, our children are traumatized. More than anything, our kids are suffering,” said Ordóñez. “My husband has always paid his taxes every single year since he entered, and he’s always worked and taken care of his family.”

Attention: If someone close to you has recently been detained by immigration agents, and you want to share your story, please reach out to us via wendy@calmatters.org.

Atención: Si tienes un ser querido que recientemente ha sido detenido por agentes de migración y quieres compartir tu historia, por favor comunícate con nosotros: wendy@calmatters.org.

With tensions already high in Minnesota after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer killed Renee Macklin Good, the Trump administration is ramping up the pressure on cities and states to cooperate with its immigration crackdown.

The administration had already surged federal agents — sometimes accompanied by military troops — to Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago, Charlotte, Memphis, Washington D.C. and New Orleans.

Now the White House is threatening to cut funding for sanctuary cities. Here's a brief explanation of how local governments interact with federal immigration enforcement, and what the White House can and can't require from them.

A fight over federal money 

President Trump threatened this week to cut "significant" federal funding to sanctuary cities. He hasn't said exactly what money his administration wants to cut, though he gave a deadline of Feb. 1.

Nor has Trump said exactly which cities or states will be targeted, though the Department of Justice did publish a list of more than 30 cities, states and counties in August. (That list includes the state of Minnesota, though not Minneapolis or St. Paul or their respective counties).

In remarks on Tuesday at the Detroit Economic Club, Trump seemed to be focused on places that limit their cooperation with ICE.

"They do everything possible to protect criminals at the expense of American citizens. And it breeds fraud and crime and all of the other problems that come," Trump said. "So we're not making any payment to anybody that supports sanctuary cities."

This is not the first time President Trump has made a threat like this. During his first term, the president tried to withhold some federal funding from sanctuary cities. More recently, Trump signed an executive order nearly a year ago directing the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to make a list of sanctuary cities and withhold money from them.

But courts have sided against the administration in nearly every case, saying that the federal government cannot use funding to coerce state and local governments into changing their policies on immigration.

"Here we are again," U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco wrote in April. Orrick granted (and later extended) a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from withholding federal funds from 16 jurisdictions, including San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, St. Paul and New Haven.

"The threat to withhold funding causes them irreparable injury in the form of budgetary uncertainty, deprivation of constitutional rights, and undermining trust between the Cities and Counties and the communities they serve," Orrick said.

No precise legal definition of 'sanctuary'

There's no exact legal definition of "sanctuary city." But broadly speaking, the term refers to any city, state or county that limits its cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

The legal questions here are nuanced. Local law enforcement cannot block federal agents from doing their work but courts have said that state and city officers can withhold some cooperation.

The legal arguments are rooted in the U.S. Constitution and the division of powers between the federal government, which is in charge of immigration enforcement, and state and local governments, which run their own police and sheriffs' departments.

Courts have backed states that don't want to share data on residents in their records, including information about driver's licenses. And in many places, state and local law enforcement will not honor what's known as a "detainer request" from ICE, which essentially asks police to hold someone in detention until immigration authorities can take custody.

Local officials push back 

Virtually all the cities and states the administration has focused on so far are led by Democrats, who don't seem to be backing down after Trump's threat to cut federal money.

"This is just a threat to intimidate states like New York into bowing into submission. And that is something we'll never do," New York Governor Kathy Hochul said earlier this week. "You touch any more money from the state of New York, we'll see you in court."

State and city leaders argue there is a fundamental public safety rationale for their sanctuary policies. They say that working with ICE would undermine trust and cooperation between local law enforcement and immigrant communities as they seek to prevent crime.

There's clearly a political aspect to this as well. In many sanctuary cities, voters are asking Democratic leaders not to give in to the White House and its immigration agenda, so local leaders may have a strong incentive to dig in their heels.

Why local cooperation matters 

In the past, ICE has found that it's faster and safer to arrest people who are already being held in local jails. And that's one reason ICE was able to make so many arrests during the administration of President Obama, for example, before sanctuary policies were as widespread as they are now.

The White House says a lack of local cooperation is hindering its efforts to build "the largest deportation operation in the history of our country," a pledge Trump made frequently during his reelection campaign.

"Minnesota's 'leaders' have chosen defiance over partnership," the White House said in a statement on Friday.

But Democrats say the administration is deliberately creating confrontations in cities and states that are led by political opponents, provoking chaotic scenes on purpose for reasons that go beyond simply enforcing immigration law.

Copyright 2026 NPR

On a recent Saturday, a group of teenage musicians took to a stage inside an unlikely place: an unassuming unit in a business park at the bottom of Lincoln Avenue in Pasadena.

This space has a stage sitting on its concrete floor with the words "Backyard Party" playfully scrawled across the bottom.

The members of a band called The Wendolls sound checked with Matt Chait at the mixing board.

Backyard Party, one of the area’s newest all-ages venues, is the brainchild of Chait and fellow organizer Sandra Denver.

“The fires crushed garages where kids would have been playing. It burnt backyards where they would have been playing. It burnt down the schools where they would have been playing. So this is the communal backyard party. That’s specifically what we built and why we built it,” Chait said just outside the makeshift venue. The only thing that sets it apart from the nondescript units around it is a handwritten sign that says ‘No Ins and Outs.’

Chait, who was evacuated from his residence during the Eaton Fire, teamed up with Denver to manage the volunteer-run Backyard Party a few months ago. Her daughter sung lead vocals in a band called Sly, one of four bands on the lineup.

“We wanted to provide a space for all of the teen bands all around to come and play and help them create a kind of scene,” Denver said.

It’s the type of spot Denver said she wishes she had growing up in Phoenix, Arizona.

The tip box at Backyard Party

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And she’s just one of several supportive parents here who are helping load in amps and guitars and bass drums.

Sixteen-year-old Jett Bizon is the drummer for Saints of Sinners, one of the bands on the bill. He said there’s another reason there are so many parents in the crowd.

“Well, nobody drives. Everybody needs a ride,” Bizon said with a chuckle.

With his long dark hair, Bizon explained that he’s already played some legendary local venues like The Whiskey a Go Go. But he said it feels like Backyard Party is becoming a much needed space for younger musicians in the area.

“We need to let out some type of energy and everybody’s putting it into music,” Bizon said. “I think it’s a great thing. Finally a scene again, it’s fun.”

As Bizon and his bandmates played their set of hard rock songs, the only people on their phones in the crowd were parents filming.

Some of the young folks taking the stage were affected by the Eaton Fire in one way or another. Some of them were evacuated. Others lost homes or saw their friends displaced.

Payton Owen was part of the crew running the door, taking tickets and dolling out snacks. She too is a musician and writes reviews of some of the concerts here.

“I think it’s amazing. I think it’s really like a point of community,” she said from behind a glass case filled with bags of popcorn and candy. “It’s a really nice opportunity for kids to really have somewhere where they can go.”

Teenager Elise Lamond agreed. She’d been following Chait around all night, learning how to set levels for the musicians, run the house lights and more.

“Most people at this age don’t have those kinds of opportunities,” she said, adding that, as a musician herself, she appreciated having free access to the venue’s music equipment, too.

Chait, who had a hand in running the now closed AAA Electra 99 venue in Anaheim and has been a musician since he was 12, said Pasadena and Altadena have a noteworthy music pedigree.

“I mean, Van Halen started in quite literal ‘backyard parties’ over on Allen. I think it lives here,” he said.

And Chait said he’s blown away by the new talent that’s come to this stage. For his part, he thinks it’s the start of a new scene that will balloon beyond Altadena and Pasadena.

Matt Chait going over the sound setup with Elise Lamond at Backyard Party.

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“The fact that these kids who are now, let's say, 15-20 all lived through COVID and were very separated from each other. And now, in this particular neighborhood, are also separated again because of the fires. And they have supportive parents and now they have the physical place to be... All of the pieces of the puzzle are here,” Chait said.

For now, Chait said this is a labor of love. The space here is provided by Altadena Musicians, a non-profit that’s working to get instruments back in the hands of people who lost their gear in the fires. And as for ticket sales?

“It is the best part of running the venue: the end of the night, when we hand cash to these kids for playing,” Chait said.

Tonight’s bounty from a full-house? $320.

“There’s a couple of these kids, if they play one or two more times, we’re going to have to give them 1099s,” he said.

How to catch a BYP show

Backyard Party
1260 Lincoln Ave. #1300
Pasadena

For a calendar of upcoming shows, check out BYP’s website and Instagram.

On Friday, Southern California Edison filed lawsuits against Los Angeles County and several other agencies over their alleged roles in the Eaton Fire.

Two lawsuits were filed.

In one suit, the utility company alleges Southern California Gas delayed shutting off gas in the burn area for several days after the fire, making the blaze worse.

“SoCalGas’ design and actions caused gas leaks, gas fires, reignition of fires, gas explosions and secondary ignitions during the critical early stages of the Eaton Fire,” according to the suit.

The claim goes on to say this contributed to the spread of the fire and made firefighting and evacuation efforts more difficult.

In the second suit, the utility company alleges the Eaton Fire was made worse by the local government response, “including due to the failures of LASD, LACoFD, OEM and GENASYS in issuing timely evacuation alerts and notifications,” the claim reads.

The same filing says L.A. County was to blame for vegetation and overgrown brush in the Eaton Canyon area that fueled the blaze.

It also named the city of Pasadena and its utility system, Pasadena Water and Power, the city of Sierra Madre, Kinneloa Irrigation District, Rubio Cañon Land & Water Association, Las Flores Water Company and Lincoln Avenue Water Company as parties responsible for water systems running dry in Altadena as the fire broke out.

Edison says hydrants running dry compounded the extent of the disaster.

Those claims will be heard in the L.A. County Superior Court, which is also handling L.A. County’s lawsuit against SoCal Edison.

Edison itself is the subject of hundreds of lawsuits from survivors of the Eaton Fire, which could cost the company billions of dollars in settlements.

Edison has said its equipment likely sparked the Eaton Fire and filed these suits, in part, because it believes these various entities should share some of the blame for the disaster, which resulted in the destruction of thousands of buildings and the deaths of 19 people.

A compensation program Edison established for fire survivors who forgo suing the company has made settlement offers to more than 80 of those who applied.

A new organization is taking over production of the MLK Day Parade, almost 40 years after the first parade was held in South L.A. to commemorate the civil rights leader.

Bakewell Media, publisher of the Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper (a partner of The LA Local), was granted the permit in September to organize the parade for the first time by the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners. Formerly called the Kingdom Day Parade, the parade has been rebranded as the Los Angeles Official Martin Luther King Day Parade. The parade was previously produced and organized by Adrian Dove and the L.A. chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality California (CORE-CA).

With less than a week before the parade kicks off, LA Local reporter LaMonica Peters sat down with Danny Bakewell Jr., president and executive editor of the LA Sentinel, to discuss the details and what attendees should expect.

This Jan. 12 interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Why did you decide to produce the MLK Day Parade this year?

Bakewell: It all started because Adrian Dove, who was the previous promoter, had announced that he was retiring. When he announced he was retiring, LAPD, city council offices and other people said, “Hey, we still want to do the MLK Day parade. Would you guys be interested? You have the infrastructure to put it together.” And we said yes.

What’s different about this year’s production?

We’re going to start the parade with a singer performing “Lift Every Voice.” We’re going to play the message from Bernice King at the start of the show. Obviously, we have Cedric the Entertainer as our grand marshal to add the entertainment value, but the community has always been and will continue to be a major part of this parade.

Is ABC 7 covering the parade this year? 

It’s still going to be televised by ABC. We’re working diligently on how the show is going to be, but ABC has been a great partner.

What was the preparation for this parade?

Thanks to our corporate sponsors, we have a number of bands. The truth is, particularly in LAUSD at this time, and other school districts, they don’t have the funding to just get a bus and get here. I can’t say enough about Airbnb to Bank of America, all of our corporate sponsors, who are supporting all of the youth organizations.

Were there any unexpected challenges while preparing for this parade? 

This [The LA Sentinel office on Crenshaw Blvd.] is usually our command center during The Taste of Soul. It dawned on me last week that we’re going to be a mile away [from the parade route]. So, we made the decision to bring in a trailer to be our office at the corner of King and Crenshaw boulevards.

Any special guests this year besides the grand marshal?

I’m working on a surprise guest to be the singer for the national anthem. No matter what, we will give tribute to the Black national anthem “Lift Every Voice” as loud as we can next Monday.

What’s the long-term vision for this parade, if Bakewell Media continues to produce it?

We see the MLK Day Parade, and we want the world to see and expect to see this parade, the same way they see the Macy’s Parade, the Hollywood Parade or the Rose Parade. BET has come in this year as a partner. So there’s an opportunity to possibly do a national broadcast on BET. Not that we would lose our local television, but we see this as a major parade in this community and in the national African American community, celebrating the great work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. So, we are very excited.