The Brief

A typical single-family house is encircled by green, its shrubs and plants sitting just under windows and hugging exterior walls. It's an image that California is trying to get homeowners to rethink as the state's risk of extreme wildfires grows.

One year after the fast-moving Eaton and Palisades Fires destroyed more than 16,000 structures in the L.A. area, California is drafting the toughest statewide rules in the country for vegetation. In areas at risk of wildfires, homeowners would be required to clear some or all of the plants within 5 feet of their house, depending on what regulators decide. Well-maintained trees would still be allowed.

The idea, called Zone Zero, is to prevent plants and flammable items from igniting during a wildfire, spreading flames to the house and the surrounding neighborhood. In high winds, most homes burn down due to embers, the tiny bits of burning debris carried by the wind.

Still, the pushback has been strong, even in the Los Angeles area neighborhoods where so many lost homes. In public meetings, homeowners have voiced concerns about losing greenery and shade, as well as the cost of clearing the vegetation. Some say they believe plants and hedges saved their homes by acting as a buffer, though many scientific studies show that vegetation increases the risk a building will burn.

The new defensible space rules will affect about 17% of buildings in California. But they could set a much bigger precedent across the West, as more states deal with wildfires growing increasingly destructive as the climate gets hotter.

High winds spread burning embers into Altadena during the Eaton Fire, leading to the fire's rapid spread through neighborhoods.

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"How we step up and do this is hard, but I think we have to adapt and change a bit if we're going to try to not keep losing our homes," says Michael Gollner, who runs the Berkeley Fire Research Lab at UC Berkeley.

Hundreds of tiny fires

When the Eaton Fire broke out the evening of Jan. 7, Richard Snyder was at his home in Pasadena, working on a slide presentation about wildfire risk. Snyder had spent more than 30 years in firefighting before retiring and now does wildfire risk consulting. So when he saw the smoke in the nearby foothills, driven by powerful winds, he knew it didn't look good.

"I know where the smoke is going is going to be where the fire is going, and I saw this smoke heading off into Pasadena," Snyder says.

He told his wife to evacuate and started telling neighbors to be ready. Snyder decided to stay. Although the fire itself was still more than a mile away, he knew the biggest danger was the glowing embers being blown into his neighborhood by the wind.
"And then it happened," he recalls. "There was a palm tree that lit off and showered our neighborhood with embers and it started a fence on fire at my neighbor's house. Myself and two other retired firefighters tried to put that fire out with garden hoses, and it wouldn't work. It was too hot and the wind was too strong."

In windy conditions, embers can rapidly spread a fire, landing in dry leaves in a roof gutter, bark mulch on the ground or even being sucked into an attic through a vent. Once that fire gets going, the extreme heat and embers help it spread to neighboring buildings.

"I'm looking over and I'm seeing my St. Augustine grass burning," Snyder says. "Who would have thought that green St. Augustine grass would start burning? There's hundreds of little tiny fires burning in the yards and next to the houses of my neighbors."

Several homes in Snyder's neighborhood were lost. His own survived, but with damage. While he says it was a shock, it wasn't surprising to him. For years, wildfire experts had been finding that houses are vulnerable to wildfires both because of the building materials they're constructed with and when something flammable is next to the house. The concept of Zone Zero focuses on the crucial zone within five feet of a structure.

"We're not going to stop the fires, but we can absolutely keep them from burning our houses down," Snyder says. "But it's a change."

Public meetings get heated

California regulators are creating rules for the "ember-resistant zone" next to houses under state law. The original deadline was 2023, but the effort flagged. After the Los Angeles fires, Gov. Gavin Newsom set a new deadline for the end of 2025. With all the debate, regulators pushed past that deadline and say they expect to keep working through March to gather more feedback.

The proposed rules would prohibit flammable items such as firewood, bark mulch, dead leaves and weeds within five feet of a house. Fences and gates would need to be made of metal or other non-combustible materials in that zone. The rules wouldn't go into effect for existing homes for three years and local fire agencies would have some discretion over tailoring it for their areas.

The sticking point is over green vegetation. Trees would be allowed as long as they're well-maintained, by keeping branches five feet above the roofline, for example. When it comes to plants, regulators are considering several options: only allowing potted plants in Zone Zero, allowing plants under 18 inches, or allowing any well-maintained plants with no dead material.

Steve Hawks of the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety inspects a home after the Eaton Fire. Embers caught a pile of flammable material, but the house's fire-resistant siding prevented it from spreading.

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The change isn't being welcomed by some California residents. In September, California's Board of Forestry and Fire Protection held a public hearing in Pasadena to gather feedback on the proposed rules.

"Our community just endured the most destructive residential fire disasters in modern history, yet this board is pushing Zone Zero policies that completely miss the mark," Jessica Rogers of the Pacific Palisades Resident Association said at the hearing. "My home and my neighbors' homes burned because of adjacent structures, not vegetation."

In the hours of public testimony, some residents spoke in support of clearing Zone Zero to prepare for wildfires that will inevitably come again. Other residents pushed back, worried that houses on small lots would lose too much greenery and shade, reducing wildlife habitat. Some raised concerns about the cost, since the new rules wouldn't include funding for landscaping work, though California is developing other programs for that. A few residents noted that in the aftermath of the fires, some plants were still left standing.

"I saw the well-hydrated hedges that I had planted protecting my house, acting as a fire catcher, essentially, because they were upwind," Pacific Palisades resident Martin Hak testified at the hearing.

"We know that not everyone will agree with every decision or aspect of what comes next," Board of Forestry and Fire Protection executive officer Tony Andersen wrote about the Zone Zero rules. "But we do know that many Californians agree that protecting our communities is not a passing fad or a momentary response."

The board also posted its responses to many of the questions raised at the hearings.

Do green plants burn?

"We don't really know how often plants can be 'protective' and provide a buffer for homes," says Max Moritz, wildfire specialist with the University of California Cooperative Extension at UC Santa Barbara.

The destruction in a wildfire can be a patchwork, with some homes and plants left standing directly next to others burned to the ground. In the aftermath, it's difficult to know when vegetation was responsible for spreading fire because the evidence is often completely destroyed.

Ember-driven wildfires can leave a patchwork of destruction behind. In Altadena, some buildings and vegetation were left intact, while others were destroyed

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Moritz is one of the few fire experts who say that green plants may not pose a risk to houses and that more research needs to be done. Greener plants, which hold water in their leaves, are harder to ignite. He agrees that some plants, like highly flammable juniper and cypress, should not be allowed, nor should plants with dead leaves or dry branches.

"The really important aspect to the plants is the dead material," he says. "If most homeowners are just going to let dead material accumulate in Zone Zero anyway, then it makes sense that there shouldn't be any plants in Zone Zero."

Other wildfire experts warn that in the hot, windy conditions of an extreme wildfire, all vegetation poses a potential threat.

"Just because a plant is very moist doesn't mean it's non-flammable," says Gollner of UC Berkeley. "Having a well-watered plant is less of a risk, but it's not no risk."

What makes things burn

Gollner runs a "burn lab" on campus, where his team studies how and why materials burn. There, they place a well-watered shrub inside a special chamber lined with sensors. They ignite a small bit of mulch under the plant. After a few minutes, the flames creep up into the base of the plant.

"You can see, once the flames touch the leaves, they immediately dry out and burn," he says.

Gollner says in a wildfire, if a neighbor's fence or shed is on fire, it can dry out and ignite the vegetation next to a home. If those plants are within Zone Zero, the fire can then reach a neighboring house. Even shrubs and hedges that look healthy on the outside are often dry and bare in the interior. At a recent California Board of Forestry meeting, Gollner's colleagues presented their recent experiments about how green plants can burn.

Other scientific studies show that vegetation is influential in wildfire risk. A team from the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, a non-profit research group funded by the insurance industry, inspected damage at more than 250 homes in the Los Angeles fires. They found when Zone Zero had vegetation in quarter or more of it, the chances that a home was damaged or destroyed were almost 90%.

Michael Gollner watches a burn test in his lab at UC Berkeley. Green plants take longer to ignite, but he says leaves can dry out quickly in hot, dry conditions during a wildfire.

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Gollner and colleagues also looked at several of California's recent wildfires and used computer models to simulate those burns under different conditions. Their study found Zone Zero rules could have reduced structure losses by 17%. Another study looking at the 2018 Camp Fire and the 2017 Thomas Fire found having mostly vegetation within six feet of the walls was a big factor in whether the building was lost. Other studies have also shown the importance of defensible space.

Still, minimizing vegetation alone won't guarantee that homes survive. Wildfire experts say buildings need to be fire-resistant as well, a crucial factor in reducing fire risk. Many older homes have wood roofs, wood siding or single-paned windows, which are much more vulnerable to burning. Gutters need to be clear of dead leaves and attic vents need to be covered in a fine mesh, so embers don't get inside.

Homes built after 2007 in wildfire zones are required to meet California's building codes for fire-resistant materials, but most of the state's housing stock is older than that. Some vulnerabilities can't be changed, like when houses are built close together on smaller lots.

With wildfires, neighborhoods are only as strong as their weakest link. Once a fire starts, it can spread from house to house, so wildfire preparation is far more effective when an entire community fortifies itself — something regulators have cited as a reason for the new vegetation rules.

"It's a change of aesthetic, and it's incredibly difficult because it's people's private property," Gollner says. "But a wildland fire is unique amongst all catastrophes in that what your neighbor does directly affects you. We know that whatever we do, it's got to be across the community."

Copyright 2026 NPR

In a February 2026 interview, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass drew a clear line on drug enforcement around MacArthur Park: The city's focus would be on traffickers, not people who were in the park to use drugs.

On June 4, 2026, LAPD officers, working with federal agents, started arresting people in the park for being under the influence, drinking or carrying bulky items. Two days later, at a World Cup watch party in the park, I asked Bass whether she had approved the shift. She told me she had not.

A federal prosecutor who oversaw the operation said she did

Los Angeles Police Department officers stand near two handcuffed men in MacArthur Park on June 4, 2026.

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Police officers and federal agents gather at MacArthur Park on June 4, 2026.

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Law enforcement officials watch as LAPD officers and federal agents sweep through the park to arrest drug users on June 4, 2026.

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Law enforcement officers and officials observe during a drug enforcement operation on June 4, 2026.

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Other members of the Southern California Drug Task Force joined the LAPD for a joint drug enforcement operation on June 4, 2026.

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From left, L.A. County District Attorney Nathan Hochman, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli and DEA Special Agent in Charge Anthony Chrysanthis speak at a press conference after a drug enforcement operation on June 4, 2026.

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First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli and L.A. County District Attorney Nathan Hochman were at the park as the arrests were being made. They told reporters on the scene this was a new stage of operations following the arrests of alleged 18th Street gang leaders and drug distributors.

“This is our third phase of this operation,” Essayli said. “Phase three will be a consistent law enforcement presence in the park to enforce state law, which prohibits people from being under the influence of narcotics and possessing drugs with the intent to use them.”

Hochman said people who were in the park to use drugs would still get assistance with substance use treatment, mental health care or housing. But he said that by bringing demand for drugs to the park, buyers were enabling the illicit trade and turning the park into a “cemetery.”

“If there's no one demanding drugs in the park,” Hochman said, “the suppliers have nowhere to go.”

That framing — that law enforcement would be cracking down on drug use — was a departure from what Bass had told me four months earlier.

In February 2026, I asked Bass about the city's strategy at MacArthur Park. She was direct.

“There is a difference between drug use and drug sales and trafficking,” she told me. “My focus is not on the users, but what I want to do with the users is provide more access to drug treatment programs.”

Enforcement that made a difference, she said, needed to focus on people “trafficking girls,” drugs and stolen goods.

“You can arrest somebody who is under the influence,” she said. “That's not going to go anywhere.”

On June 4, the LAPD arrested people who were under the influence.

On the ground in the park that week, some people told me arresting drug users didn’t seem to change much.

“This park's always gonna be like this, man …” one man, who asked to be identified only as Don't-do-dat, told me. ”We had the DEA and all that raid. Man, that's just for a little while. [People using fentanyl are] gonna be out here again the next day.”

A man who goes by Don't-do-dat sits on a bench in MacArthur Park on June 15, 2026.

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Others welcomed the new enforcement.

“A lot of the people here in the community were happy that there was operations here,” Elaine Alaniz, president of the Westlake North Neighborhood Council, said. “It was temporary, but we got to see, actually, families at the bus stops with their kids — before it wasn’t like that.”

A student at a nearby high school said she doesn’t use the park because she doesn’t feel safe in the area.

“Going outside is pretty scary for me and for my family, because we just see a lot of [people using drugs] and everything going around,” she told me. “I would like to see more kids and families able to just walk around here freely.”

Local and federal agencies conducted two more operations near the park by the end of June, arresting people who were dealing or using drugs.

'That is not coming from the city'

Two days after the June 4 sweep, I asked Bass whether she had approved the targeted arrests of people using drugs.

She was at the park for a World Cup watch party. Federal and county prosecutors had said, on the record and in front of me, that this was a coordinated operation with the mayor's support.

“I've personally spoken with Mayor Bass,” Essayli had told reporters in the park on June 4. “She supports this operation, and LAPD would not be here without her support.”

Bass told me something different.

“That is not coming from the city,” she said about targeting drug users. “I'm sure that you're aware of that. That's coming from the federal government.”

I asked the mayor's office to clarify her remarks, which appeared to contradict what Essayli had said and what I had seen in the park. A spokesperson replied by email that the office would not comment on law enforcement operations, but that “Mayor Bass has directed the LAPD to utilize every resource available to stop the flow of narcotics and stolen merchandise in the park and surrounding area.”

The statement called on L.A. County to increase services in the area.

“Because the State and County — not the City — are responsible for providing mental health and drug treatment services, they must increase funding for treatment facilities and recovery services to stop the revolving door between jail and our parks,” the statement said.

I reached out to County Supervisor Hilda Solis for comment. Solis said the county has expanded services for behavioral health care, substance use treatment and housing in the MacArthur Park area.

“Through these ongoing efforts,” Solis said in an emailed statement, “over 3,000 lives were saved since 2023, and more than 750 were linked to treatment and medication.”

An earlier statement from Bass' office, sent when I first asked whether the city's stance had shifted on the LAPD targeting drug users, did not address the question directly. It said the office would not comment on law enforcement investigations, but that “the park is no place for drug use and criminal activity of any kind.”

“After decades of failures from City Hall, Mayor Bass is leading the way to restore MacArthur Park to families,” the spokesperson wrote.

What remains unresolved: LAPD officers made the arrests. A federal prosecutor watching on said Bass approved. Bass told me she did not.

What happened to those who were arrested?

Over the weeks following the June 4 operation, I asked the district attorney and city attorney's offices whether charges had been filed for the arrests and citations made that day or in similar sweeps that followed. Both offices said they had not been presented with any such cases from the LAPD.

The LAPD did not respond to my request for identifying information about those arrested — information the prosecutors' offices need to search their records and determine whether any of those arrested or cited were placed in diversionary treatment programs.

So the question of what the June 4 arrests actually accomplished — whether they routed people into the treatment Bass said she wanted for users, or moved them somewhere else in the neighborhood — cannot yet be answered from the public record.

What is clear, however, is that the focus on arresting people using drugs in the park wasn’t permanent.

By August, an LAPD officer told the MacArthur Park Neighborhood Council during an online meeting that they would not see any more joint operations between the police department, the DEA and other law enforcement agencies in the park.

The LAPD was transitioning to a final phase of operations, connecting people dependent on drugs in and around MacArthur Park with services while continuing to target suspected drug dealers.

I spoke with LAPD Capt. Ben Fernandes during a town hall on Oct. 13 to get his perspective on what had happened during the June 4 operation.

Fernandes leads the Rampart Division and was on the scene that day.

“The mayor's our boss,” Fernandes said. “But we're peace officers, and we follow the law — and we follow what the chief of police tells us.”

He told me the department tries to follow the mayor’s requests, but that they are “duty-bound” to arrest people when they see them breaking the law.

“I wouldn't say that there was any conflict [with the mayor] there at all,” Fernandes told me. “I would say that we worked with our federal partners and went out and took bad actors to jail, and some of them are going to prison.”

Bass had a different perspective when asked during a DTLA Residents Association forum on Oct. 15 whether she would instruct LAPD to cite or arrest people using drugs in public.

“When LAPD does that, they don't arrest anybody — it's a cite and release,” Bass said. “They don't even get in the car, so I think it's fake. I think what is real is holding people accountable for their drug use.”

Bass said she supports drug court, where some people arrested on nonviolent felony drug charges can have their cases dismissed if they agree to go to supervised recovery programs.

“You can go into treatment or you take a stint in jail,” Bass said.

L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, Bass’ opponent in the race for L.A. mayor, answered the same question by saying she would “direct LAPD to enforce the laws, and they are welcome to enforce the laws however they see fit.”

Cole’s French Dip, the iconic downtown Los Angeles restaurant that closed its doors in March, is set to return. New owners Sean Maloney and Jeremy Fall are looking to open by Thanksgiving.

The new owners were recent guests on LAist 89.3’s AirTalk, where they discussed their vision for the space. They said they're planning an updated menu, with a new pastrami French dip using thin-sliced pastrami from Langer’s Deli and a custom loaf from Clark Street Bread.

Maloney, who comes from Nancy Silverton’s Mozza group, joked that Fall had talked him into it — but that if no one else had saved Cole’s, it would have been him.

Behind the bar at Cole’s before it closed in March.

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Fall grew up two blocks from Cole’s, where his family ran a restaurant, and said he wants to draw diners from all over L.A. to give people more reasons to come downtown.

Many former staff members are returning, Maloney said. He wants to create a “Cheers”-style space that’s also financially sustainable.

Both remain committed to preserving the building’s historic elements, which they're restoring within its landmark protections. They're also adding more seating, including banquettes. The bar will stay the same, but the overall feel will shift toward a sit-down restaurant.

Storied history

Cole’s is one of L.A.’s oldest restaurants, dating back to 1908, when it began as Cole’s P.E. Buffet, serving Pacific Electric streetcar commuters. Its main claim to fame is having invented the French dip sandwich, a title it has long disputed with Philippe’s the Original in Chinatown.

In 2007, Cedd Moses of 213 Hospitality, now known as Pouring With Heart, restored the interior with a reported $1.6 million. The restoration earned a Los Angeles Conservancy Preservation Award in 2009.

The move also helped spark downtown’s cocktail and nightlife revival, along with the Varnish, Cole’s hidden speakeasy.

In July 2025, however, Moses announced Cole’s would close, citing the pandemic's ongoing effects, the Hollywood strikes, crime, rising rents and operating costs. As fans continued to line up for a final visit, Moses pushed the closing date back several times until it finally shut its doors in March.

A visit to MacArthur Park on a typical day makes this much clear: Local and federal officials have yet to bring down the park’s infamous underground drug market.

That doesn’t mean nothing has changed.

In 2023, a 35% spike pushed violence in and around the park to levels not seen in nearly three decades. Now, rates have fallen close to what they were before that spike began — although the area remains one of the most dangerous in L.A.

Still, more families are slowly starting to come back to the park and visit the shops that line Alvarado Street — shops that now have fewer people using drugs right outside their front doors.

The changes have made some in the community hopeful MacArthur Park will continue to become a safer place for families. Others worry some law enforcement actions may be doing more harm than good.

“It feels like there’s all this focus to clear the park,” said Mireya Valencia, president of the MacArthur Park Neighborhood Council, at an Aug. 5 council meeting. “All it’s doing is just pushing the issue onto our sidewalks and onto our doorsteps.”

She has faced more safety issues on her block in recent months than she has seen in a long time, she said, even as the city tried to “put on a show” at the park during the World Cup.

I have spent more than a year reporting from MacArthur Park to understand the crises that have long made this stretch of the Westlake neighborhood one of the most dangerous parts of L.A., second only to downtown’s Skid Row. In that time, the city’s approach to the park has transformed.

A shooting, a fence and a promise

In the early hours of Jan. 22, 2025, a shooter wounded five people. It was the kind of violence that had persisted throughout the previous two years — and a worrisome signal that the new year could bring more of the same.

City leaders decided something had to be done.

Within days, Mayor Karen Bass called for increased LAPD presence and installed a temporary chain-link fence across from the park on Alvarado Street in an effort to disrupt the trafficking of drugs and stolen goods.

Community violence prevention workers contracted by the mayor’s office and Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez also stepped in to stop conflict from escalating between three gangs that claim territory in and around the park.

Five weeks after the shooting, Bass celebrated what she said was a 57% decrease in violent crime in the area. Police data show that some of that improvement lasted through 2025, with a nearly 19% decrease in reported violent crime compared with 2024.

The fence, however, was immediately controversial. Residents said it was an eyesore, and it prevented longtime vendors from setting up their stands on the street.

Hernandez, who represents the district including MacArthur Park, told me she was not involved in the decision to install the fence. She said she was focused on working with the mayor’s office to develop permanent infrastructure like bike lanes, trees and solar street lighting.

“I believe that we should not be putting the crises of MacArthur Park on the backs of street vendors,” Hernandez said in March 2025.

City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez called using fences to obstruct vendors an “overcorrection” during a City Council meeting within days of the fence going up. She urged the council to find a balance across the city between enforcement against vendors who don’t follow the law and providing the support they need to become compliant.

Around MacArthur Park, though, vendors have been accused of more than operating without the right permits. Residents told me they saw some selling drugs and stolen goods. While no street vendors told me directly that they were coerced by gangs to sell drugs, some in the area said vendors they knew were being extorted and forced to pay “rent” to local gangs for their spaces on the sidewalk.

Bass said she understood there was some opposition to the fence. She also said it was an important step to bring down drug use around the park.

“I have certainly seen drug use,” she told me in an interview a year after the fence went up. “But I will tell you that it is nothing like it was when the vendors were there.”

Bass said she didn’t see the vendors as criminals but as victims working under threat from gangs. Her focus, she said, was the traffickers.

One street vendor near the park, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, told me visible drug trafficking slowed after the fence went up. A man I met in the park, Anush, put it more plainly.

“It’s like 10 times as hard to find drugs now,” he said.

Anush also lamented that the fence forced out food vendors selling tamales and pupusas.

“F— the fence, dude,” he told me. “I’ll take fentanyl and pupusas.”

Immigration raids change the tone

Federal immigration agents rode into MacArthur Park in armored vehicles, carrying assault rifles and escorted by National Guard troops. Border Patrol agents marched through the park, some on horseback, as protesters and journalists gathered nearby. By then, the usually busy park was empty of almost everyone else.

It was July 7, 2025, one month into a mass deportation campaign across L.A. County.

Federal agents descend on MacArthur Park in Los Angeles on July 7, 2025.

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Federal agents ride on an armored vehicle driving slowly down Wilshire Boulevard near MacArthur Park in Los Angeles on July 7, 2025.

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Federal immigration agents poured into MacArthur Park on July 7, 2025.

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Federal immigration agents poured into MacArthur Park on July 7, 2025.

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Federal immigration agents poured into MacArthur Park on July 7, 2025.

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Federal immigration agents poured into MacArthur Park on July 7, 2025.

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That day, city officials — including Bass, City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Hernandez — denounced the Trump administration for what they called an effort to instill fear in Angelenos.

In the coming months, people in the neighborhood saw their friends and neighbors be detained or deported.

Mikem Nahmir stands in a crowd of protesters after federal immigration agents flooded MacArthur Park on July 7, 2025. “ If you come around me thinking you finna just grab somebody, I'm not about to get to chanting,” he said. “ I'm gonna punch you in your face.”

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After the raids, many street vendors, storefronts and restaurants reported taking an economic hit beyond anything they had seen in years — far worse than the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the same time, they told me federal agents who flooded the streets seemed to do nothing to stem MacArthur Park’s longstanding underground market of drugs and stolen goods.

An economic toll driven by immigration enforcement

By the end of August 2025, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was celebrating 5,000 immigration arrests in L.A., promising that it was “just the beginning.” By year’s end, the tally of people arrested was nearly triple that. Border Patrol and ICE agents around L.A. detained more than 14,000 people in 2025 — a sharp increase from 2024, when agents detained fewer than 5,000 people in total, according to an LAist analysis of DHS data acquired by the Deportation Data Project.

The risk for undocumented street vendors around MacArthur Park was clear: going to work meant risking separation from their families. President Donald Trump campaigned to return to the White House on the promise that he would deport the “worst of the worst” of undocumented immigrants. Many of those afraid to go to work said they have lived in the U.S. for many years, paid sales and other taxes and contributed to their communities.

“For the most part, the vendors aren’t going out after the ICE raids,” Veronica Lopez, a business counseling manager at the PACE Business Development Center, told me in November 2025. “Financially, they are suffering.”

Without their main source of income, she said, many were relying on their savings to get by. Not only was it not worth the risk to go to work, but clients told her they were afraid to go shopping or to community events, worrying that ICE would show up.

As their savings ran out, some people began to set out toward the park with their stands once again, even as the threat of being detained remained high.

One vendor, Magdalena Garcia, said she decided to go back to work near MacArthur Park in December 2025. Three weeks later, she witnessed immigration agents taking a colleague away.

“They took a fruit vendor,” she told me, speaking in Spanish.

She said, even months later, she still felt pain when she thought about what she witnessed. She said she agreed with the Trump administration removing serious criminals from the country. What’s not fair, she said, is that they seemed to be going after peaceful, hardworking people.

I talked with more than a dozen people who run shops and stands nearby. They told me the immigration operations, combined with rampant open-air drug use, violence and trash accumulation around the park, had caused an economic downturn far worse than the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even people who had lived in the area for decades said they no longer felt safe walking the streets around MacArthur Park. At night, I saw pedestrians running past Alvarado Street or walking on the roadway itself, risking being hit by a car to avoid passing too close to those selling drugs — or having to step over people passed out on the ground from drug use.

“After the pandemic, it’s gotten really awful,” Garcia said. “The fire department is always coming, the police are always passing by. It doesn’t feel safe anymore.”

Law enforcement focus on drug dealers is welcome

On March 5, 2026, the LAPD, FBI and other members of the Southern California Drug Task Force led by the Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, arrested 12 people alleged to be connected to drug trafficking near the park. During a three-day operation, law enforcement officials said they also seized 10 pounds of fentanyl, 5 pounds of methamphetamine and $80,000 in gang proceeds.

Government officials allege some of those arrested were leaders of the 18th Street gang. The LAPD and DEA describe the 18th Street gang as one of the largest in L.A., with roots going back to the 1960s. Both agencies say the gang now controls much of the drug trafficking in MacArthur Park and Skid Row, and that it operates under the direction of the Mexican Mafia — funneling new recruits into the mafia and handing it a cut of local proceeds, a practice law enforcement officials refer to as paying “extortionate taxes.”

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said one of the people arrested was Keiko Marie Gonzalez, 59, whom he alleged was enforcing control over the gang on behalf of Jorge Gonzales, 71. Prosecutors say Jorge Gonzales, who is incarcerated at a California state prison, was directing the gang’s operations by way of smuggled cellphones and that he is a member of the Mexican Mafia.

On top of drug charges, prosecutors allege Keiko Gonzalez ordered multiple killings targeting members of 18th Street, other gangs and drug dealers, including one dealer who was working in 18th Street’s claimed territory without paying the gang a cut. Gonzalez pleaded not guilty to these charges.

Those arrests only briefly depressed the local drug trade. Just weeks later, investigators saw a resurgence in drug sales at MacArthur Park.

On May 6, 2026, task force members arrested another 18 alleged drug dealers and distributors, including two people alleged to have been the main source of fentanyl and methamphetamine in MacArthur Park. Federal and local officials said they seized about 40 pounds of fentanyl powder at a single defendant’s residence in Calabasas. The DEA claims in court documents that the same defendant, 40-year-old Yolanda Iriarte-Avila, sold one kilogram of fentanyl powder to a confidential source for the agency in exchange for $10,000 in February 2026. DEA Special Agent in Charge Anthony Chrysanthis said the agency identified the source of the drugs as the Sinaloa Cartel.

“I promised our community members and warned the criminals that the LAPD would not stand idle if they dared to reorganize and continue their deadly trade,” McDonnell told reporters in the park. “As today’s operation illustrated, apparently some people didn’t get that message.”

Iriarte-Avila pleaded not guilty, court records show. Then, on Sept. 7, 2026, she signed an agreement with federal prosecutors that she would plead guilty to possession and intent to sell at least 400 grams of a mixture containing fentanyl.

Some residents told me the arrests began to bring a sense of hope that violence and drug use near the park could be reduced. Emma Carr, who lives nearby, said she was excited when she heard in June there would be more police activity around the park.

“I just moved out here about two years ago, and so having to witness and see all of this, it hurts me,” Carr said, describing how she regularly passes people as they use drugs on the sidewalk. “I have my young daughter and always having to tell people, ‘Excuse me,’ or, ‘Kids walking, kids walking.’”

Emma Carr stands with her daughter near MacArthur Park on June 4, 2026. “I just see it, my child has to see it. . .  The homeless are just in a group huddling and this is really, really bad," she said, "I don't like living here and it's very inhumane.”

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A “significant dent” but a job still unfinished

Capt. Ben Fernandes, the LAPD’s area commanding officer for the Rampart Division, told me in June that the operations over the previous three months put “a significant dent” in the area’s fentanyl supply. But he acknowledged the job wasn’t done.

With other gangs like MS-13 and the Crazy Riders nearby, he said there is a risk they or others will try to step in where those who were arrested in recent months had been operating.

As drugs get harder to obtain, he said, people in the area suffering from addiction may also be more likely to steal or resort to violence.

To pay for drugs, people buying them around the park have often relied on what’s known as boosting — stealing items to resell them for a profit. It’s common for thieves to target big-box retailers, Fernandes said, but one small shop owner told me she had recently opened her shop’s doors to find thousands of dollars of products stolen overnight.

Walking down Alvarado Street across from the park, you can see deals for anything from shampoo and cigarettes to expensive power tools and computer parts — many of questionable origin. One storefront worker told me not all of the shops buy and resell stolen goods, but if they don’t, they know someone down the street will.

Fernandes said the LAPD has been working with local store owners to catch the thieves, sometimes making 10 or more arrests at a time. But he said it is not only retailers who are at risk from people trying to score drugs.

“In the past, when the narcotics trade was flowing, they were able to get a chunk of fentanyl and then a bunch of [people] could sort of take pieces off of it,” Fernandes said. “And now they’re desperate just to get their own fix, not able to get a bigger piece.”

That desperation can lead to anything from shoving matches to someone pulling a knife or gun, he said, and someone getting hurt. Multiple people I talked to in the park said they regularly see people with knives or guns, and police data show those weapons were being used more and more often in violent crimes there until this year.

There have been fewer than half as many crimes involving firearms through September 2026 as there were over the same period last year, LAPD data show, and the department told CBS News in August that no one had been hit by gunfire near the park since January.

The reprieve from shootings ended Oct. 12, when a man was shot and taken to a hospital.

LAPD officers and federal drug enforcement agents have continued to conduct operations around the park. In June, they targeted those using drugs there when they made more than a dozen arrests and citations.

That month saw the end of large-scale operations in MacArthur Park, but Fernandes told me in an interview on Oct. 13 that the LAPD still has officers constantly policing the area.

He said they have since run into minor setbacks as some of the people they arrested during the drug enforcement operations were released from jail pending trial and have returned to the park. Now, Fernandes said, the department’s main priority is connecting people who are addicted to drugs with treatment services, while continuing to arrest dealers and violent criminals.

The L.A. County District Attorney’s Office has filed felony charges against four more people prosecutors allege to have sold drugs in the park in the past four months, according to records shared by the office.

One woman who works nearby said she has still seen violence at the park since June, including a machete attack and what she suspects to be the abduction of young women who were under the influence of drugs.

“I seen them every day because they was living out here,” she told me, talking about one of the women. “But since she got in the car with that person, I don’t see her no more.”

She said she has tried to intervene when she has seen other young women being lured into strangers’ cars.

Sometimes, she said, she has been successful in getting the women to stay by her side. She watched others be driven away, later recognizing them in parents’ photos as they searched the park for their missing daughters.

More uncertainty for vendors

After standing for nearly 16 months, the fence Bass installed across Alvarado Street was replaced in May by planters and large cement bollards, more permanent obstacles for street vendors who used to set up along the sidewalk.

Some store owners and vendors who stayed near the park say they appreciated the increased police activity that came with the fence, seeing more customers come through since the drug enforcement operations began in March. Business remained far worse than before the immigration sweeps, but was slowly getting better, some said.

In June, Fernandes told me the LAPD was trying to help vendors and shop owners near the park do business safely and legally.

“There are a lot of vendors out there that are just trying to provide for their families,” Fernandes said. “They’re just trying to make an honest living by selling food goods or other items. And what we try to do is be decent with them and work with them, you know, explain the rules.”

Then, as enforcement against people using drugs in the park increased, the rules for street vendors also seemed to change.

Vendors who had worked near the park for years say they were again pushed further out of the area by police officers who told them to pack up their things and move. At least three were cited in July on anti-camping violations for setting up their stands within 500 feet of the park, according to the Unión Popular de Vendedores, which represents vendors in the area.

Blanca Estela González told LAist reporter Julia Barajas and me that she has been selling things like clothes, shoes and coffee near the park for 18 years.

She said officers told her to pack up and leave her new spot in August, but she just wants to be allowed to work.

“Around here, if you don’t pay the bills, you end up on the street,” González said in Spanish. “So, how is one supposed to survive?”

A 2018 state law allows vendors to work without the risk of criminal penalties in most places where they don’t pose health, safety or welfare concerns. It is unclear who may have directed citations to be given, but Bass said they were issued by mistake.

“At the direction of Mayor Bass’ office, the LAPD has stopped issuing criminal citations to street vendors and is working to dismiss all criminal citations issued in error, ensuring they are not left with criminal records for working to provide for their families,” her office told me in a statement on Sept. 3.

“We’ve had each other’s backs”

Robert Escobar sells backpacks and strollers at the Bonito Swap Meet on June 15, 2026.

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Robert Escobar sells backpacks and strollers at the Bonito Swap Meet across Alvarado Street from the park.

The one-time movie theater is packed with dozens of people running stands like his, doing their best to weather the storms that have all converged around MacArthur Park: violent crime, the opioid epidemic and fears of immigration enforcement all taking their toll.

Escobar is hopeful that conditions will continue to improve over time, but says he wishes the area’s troubles didn’t keep visitors from meeting the great people he’s come to know there.

“I always hear people say, ‘Oh, you know, MacArthur Park this, MacArthur Park that,’” he told me. “But they weren’t here before it was all that — before it was too bad.”

Escobar found community with the vendors after coming to the area when he was about 9 years old. Now 19, he said they have watched him grow up.

“We’ve had each other’s backs,” he said, “through good and bad times.”

The Trump administration is still detaining pregnant migrant youth in a region of Texas where a lack of specialized obstetric care can be life-threatening for them, an investigation by The California Newsroom and The Texas Newsroom has found. The practice continues despite vocal concern from its own current and former officials, and from members of Congress.

Government records also show that at least four pregnant girls in detention have had to be transferred out of state since last July to receive specialized medical care, including at least one abortion, that is unavailable in Texas.

“The first time that happened should have been a wake-up call for the administration, and they should have stopped placing kids in any remote area where they can't get care,” said Jen Smyers, who during the Biden administration helped oversee the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is responsible for migrant youth who are apprehended without a parent or guardian.

She called the policy to send pregnant children to South Texas “enraging.”

This spring, The California Newsroom and The Texas Newsroom published a joint investigation revealing the administration’s policy of detaining pregnant unaccompanied minors as young as 13 at a single shelter near the border with Mexico. The investigation detailed serious concerns that health experts inside and outside the government had raised about the policy, given that adolescent pregnancies are inherently high risk and there is a lack of specialized obstetric care in the region.

Since then, the administration has denied the policy exists and said it is ensuring that the girls have access to the care they need.

In an unsigned email in September, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees ORR, wrote that "ORR's policies for placing children in its custody into care provider facilities are based on child welfare best practices in order to provide a safe environment and place the child in the least restrictive setting appropriate for the child’s needs. This is especially true for expectant minors in ORR care.”

Yet the administration’s own records, as well as interviews with multiple government officials, suggest otherwise.

The documents, which were obtained through a public records request, show that ORR explicitly directed its staff in July 2025 to send all pregnant youth to the shelter in San Benito, Tex., just outside Brownsville.

Several months later, internal agency data showed that pregnant girls started being funneled to a different shelter nearby instead, according to three ORR officials who asked not to be named because they feared retaliation.

Forty-eight Democratic members of Congress had also expressed concerns about the policy in a pointed letter to the Department of Health and Human Services back in April. They received a response in September from an assistant secretary at HHS, Alex J. Adams, who wrote that ORR “does not make placement decisions for pregnant youth based on a blanket rule or one-size-fits-all approach” and that it “takes seriously its responsibility to protect the health, safety, dignity, and well-being of every unaccompanied alien child in its custody.”

HHS did not respond to requests for comment about why, contrary to Adams' statement that there was no "one-size-fits-all approach," the government's own records indicate that all unaccompanied youth with known pregnancies have been sent to specific Texas shelters.

“They're definitely playing games,” said U.S. Rep. Gil Cisneros, (D-Calif.). “They're not looking out for the welfare of these young women.”

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-TX, whose office authored the letter to HHS, called it “irresponsible that they would wait several months to respond to basic questions about the care of some of the most vulnerable people within the system,” adding that the administration failed to explain “what seems to be an informal but strict policy of sending these girls to deep South Texas, which lacks the medical care that the girls need.”

Unaccompanied migrant children have historically been placed in shelters across the United States, but this summer, the Trump administration began detaining far more of them — even those who are not pregnant — in Texas. According to internal reports provided independently by two officials at ORR, both of whom asked not to be named due to fear of reprisal by their supervisors, 95% of the roughly 300 children apprehended by immigration officials in September were placed in detention in Texas, up from 45% in June.

Advocates for unaccompanied migrant children, former government officials, and some Democratic members of Congress have criticized the move, arguing that the state is not prepared to handle an influx of vulnerable children who need special care.

The fact that ORR has had to transfer several pregnant unaccompanied minors from Texas to California, New York and Arizona to receive medical care, they say, proves their point.

“If the government had to fly or transport these pregnant children across the country to get them the medical care they need, why on earth did it deliberately send them to Texas in the first place?” said U.S. Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., who was unaware of the transfers until a journalist described the newsrooms’ findings. Chu’s district, California’s 28th, is home to several communities with high numbers of immigrants, such as Rosemead and Monterey Park.

Chu expressed concern that many of the pregnant children who enter federal immigration custody are victims of sexual assault.

“If there is a 13-year-old girl who has survived rape,” she said, “she should be met with compassion, safety and appropriate medical care. Instead, this administration is placing children like her in a state where they will be deprived of access to basic healthcare. It's dangerous, and it's cruel, and there's no excuse for treating children this way.”

Government records contradict Trump administration’s claims

Unlike Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which detains migrant adults and families in large, prison-like facilities, ORR detains unaccompanied children in group or foster homes overseen by private contractors. Laws, agency regulations and court orders require that the children receive comprehensive healthcare and appropriate education while they’re detained.

In an unsigned email last month, a spokesperson for HHS said that placing children in Texas is “operationally efficient” and that ORR’s facilities in the state “provide all requirements and more.”

Records obtained through a public information request cast doubt on that assertion. The records show that between July of 2025, when ORR began placing pregnant girls in South Texas, and May of 2026, four of them had to be transferred to other states to receive medical care.

That’s roughly one in five of the more than 20 pregnant girls the agency placed in the region in that time frame, according to one ORR official.

In detailed notes for one of those cases, ORR staff wrote that a pregnant 12-year-old girl was transferred from South Texas to a shelter in New York on the recommendation of ORR’s division of health. The records note that the child needed access to specialists whose availability in South Texas is “extremely limited.”

An excerpt from an Office of Refugee Resettlement record detailing the transfers of pregnant unaccompanied minors out of Texas to get medical care, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

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In a note for another case, staff wrote that a pregnant girl was transferred to California due to an unspecified “high risk medical need.” In at least one case, a girl was transferred out of Texas because she had requested an abortion, the records show.

Marsha Griffin, a retired professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine, said such outcomes were inevitable. Griffin said the shelters have very few medical staff on hand and the region does not have enough specialized obstetricians.

“Young girls who are pregnant, especially those from 10 to 14 years of age, are automatically a high-risk population,” said Griffin, who oversaw medical students volunteering in ORR facilities in South Texas.

Internal communications, also obtained through a public records request, show that officials in ORR’s own division of health warned the agency’s leadership about the lack of pregnancy-related healthcare in the region of South Texas where the girls are held.

“Texas has one of the worst rates of maternal mortality in the U.S.,” wrote Joanna Gaines, who at the time was ORR’s acting health director, in a July 18, 2025, email to Melissa Johnston, the agency’s head of operations. Gaines added that the state “lack[s] access to quality perinatal healthcare” and that “Cameron County has one of the higher rates of infant mortality in Texas.”

Four days later, ORR issued a directive to begin placing “any pregnant children” at a shelter in Cameron County called Urban Strategies San Benito.

An excerpt from a July 18, 2025 email from ORR’s acting health director to Melissa Johnston, the agency’s head of operations, warning about the dangers of detaining pregnant children in South Texas.

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On July 22, 2025, Johnston instructed staff to begin placing pregnant children at the San Benito shelter, citing a directive from ORR’s acting director, Angie Salazar.

Tracey Wilkinson, a pediatrician in Indiana who specializes in reproductive healthcare access for minors, said that even if the government is transferring children to get medical care, waiting until they need it puts them in danger.

“When you're talking about labor or pregnancy complications, every minute counts,” Wilkinson said. “If it was a medical emergency that required this young person to be transported out of the state, the risk to her survival would be lower for no reason other than she was placed in the middle of nowhere, far away from medical care.”

‘They are trying to deliberately mislead Congress members’

Shortly after The California Newsroom and The Texas Newsroom revealed the Trump administration’s policy of detaining pregnant migrant youth in Texas, Castro launched an inquiry into the practice. He soon arranged a visit to the San Benito shelter.

By the time of his visit on April 7, internal agency data showed that ORR had stopped placing newly detained children with known pregnancies at the facility, three ORR officials said. Instead, the agency was sending them to a different shelter, in Los Fresnos, just 20 minutes away.

Castro said he was not told of the change at the time of his visit, nor was it mentioned in ORR’s formal response to the congressional inquiry last month.

In a recent interview, he described his visit to the San Benito shelter as “a very secretive process” and said he was not allowed to see or speak with any of the children there.

An HHS spokesperson did not respond to questions about the location change, writing only that “there have been no operational changes regarding the placement of pregnant unaccompanied children.”

Chu said she believed the Trump administration made the change in order to “deliberately mislead Congress members as well as the public from really knowing where these pregnant children have been.”

Compass Connections, the San Antonio-based nonprofit that operates the shelter in Los Fresnos where pregnant girls are now being held, is one of the largest ORR contractors; it has been awarded more than $1.9 billion in federal grants to house and care for unaccompanied minors over the past four years, according to USAspending.gov.

Asked for comment, the company referred the newsrooms to HHS.

In his letter to Castro, Assistant Secretary Adams wrote that “placement and transfer decisions are individualized and consider the child’s safety, medical and behavioral health needs, pregnancy-related needs, available services, legal access, family unity, least restrictive placement requirements, and the best interest of the child.”

‘In California, they would have more access to all reproductive healthcare’ 

Congress members and advocates in California said their state offers much more support for pregnant girls in federal custody than they can receive in Texas.

“One thing is very clear,” Chu said: “There are many of us that care about what's happening to our immigrants.”

As the Trump administration has withdrawn federal support for legal representation of unaccompanied children — and at the same time streamlined the process of deporting them — the state of California, as well as several of its cities and counties, have ramped up funding for their own legal services programs for undocumented kids.

“Pregnant unaccompanied children have rights to medical care, safety, family unity and due process, but those rights mean little without a lawyer to defend them,” said Marion "Mickey" Donovan-Kaloust, director of legal services at Immigrant Defenders in Los Angeles. “California's support systems can provide pregnant unaccompanied children with the stability, dignity and specialized care they need to be safe and thrive.”

In addition to concerns about their access to healthcare and legal services, advocates worry that the Trump administration is knowingly putting pregnant children at risk to advance an ideological goal: denying them access to abortions by placing them in Texas, where abortion is virtually banned.

Current federal regulations require the government to move detained minors who request abortions to states where it’s legal. In January, the Trump administration announced it plans to rescind that rule, though it hasn’t yet done so.

An HHS spokesperson said in February that claims the department is attempting to restrict unaccompanied children’s access to abortion are “completely inaccurate.”

Cisneros said that “In California, they would have more access to all reproductive healthcare, and then they could make decisions based on discussions with their healthcare professional and what's best for them.”

Chu noted that next month’s election will determine whether Democrats regain control of the House. If they do, she said, they will redouble their efforts to ensure pregnant children in federal immigration custody are given proper care.

“There will be greater oversight,” she said, “and we will hold the decision-makers responsible.”

Mark Betancourt is a freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C.

This article is a collaboration between The California Newsroom and The Texas Newsroom.