The Brief

On a recent triple digit summer day, I made my way out to a dusty field at UC Riverside, the research center of California’s citrus universe.

The UC Riverside Citrus Research Center is lined with row after row of citrus trees. It's also home to the Climate Ready Tree test plot.

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Jacob Margolis

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Row after row of tangerines, oranges and pomelos —11,000 in total — baked under a heat dome. Off in the distance, wildfire smoke passed in front of the San Bernardino Mountains, which had been covered in thick snow just a few months ago.

The dusty field is just one of the many plots that the university uses to trial new trees, grow budwood for distribution and come up with solutions for devastating problems like Huanglongbing, a bacteria driven greening disease that’s threatening trees world wide.

However, I was there to check out a block of 48 trees sitting along a fence that look nothing like the thousands of citrus around them. Inconsequential at first glance, you could easily imagine them along any road in Los Angeles, but that’s kind of the point. The trees are being tested to see if they can survive our hellishly hot and dry future driven by climate change.

Where, how and why these trees are being tested

There are 12 different types of trees and four of each at the UC Riverside test plot.

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It’s a collection of 12 different species — four of each — pulled from around the world and being run through the gauntlet by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Planted seven years ago, they were given supplemental water to help them get established, but since then they’ve had to survive on their own through record-setting heatwaves and drought years.

The Texas, or escarpment, live oak was struggling and nearly dead at the UC Riverside plot. It's reportedly doing better at a plot along the coast.

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The trees are being assessed for a number of factors including attractiveness, whether they provide good shade, how much work it takes to maintain them (less pruning means lower maintenance costs) and whether they can survive without much water.

The experiment is expected to run for at least 20 years, but visit the plot today and it's clear which trees are thriving. Surprisingly, just because a tree comes from a hot climate doesn’t mean it’s going to do well.

“What kind of choices are we going to be able to make in the future?,” said Natalie van Doorn, U.S. Forest Service scientist and co-creator of the experiment known as Climate Ready Trees. “Are we going to have enough water to make that decision that yes we want to keep watering our trees?”

If not, we’ve got to have viable candidates that we know will thrive and provide critical tree cover, which for residents, can be a matter of life or death.

Why L.A.'s hundreds of thousands of trees matter so much

Click for more details on the benefit of trees from TreeKeeper

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Courtesy TreeKeeper

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Trees are an absolutely critical part of our infrastructure. They have a marked impact on human and ecosystem health.

The red push pistache had one of the densest canopies at the test site.

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Trees can:

• Help drop temperatures in urban areas by as much as 45 degrees
• Reduce energy use
• Suppress noise
• Improve air quality
• Sequester water
• Help provide homes to all sorts of creatures, all according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Which is why any sort of major threat to the more than 700,000 street trees planted across the city of L.A. is of major concern, and that's what climate change is doing.

Much of our urban forest, as it’s known, was planted over the past 100 years as the region developed. As people migrated from other parts of the country they often wanted to plant the trees that they were familiar with, though that could mean species from wetter climates.

The sweetgum tree, whose spiky seed balls you’ve likely stepped on while walking through a park, is a decent example. It’s originally from the eastern area of the country and doesn’t love drought conditions, thriving in the moist soils of the Mississippi Delta. More than 25,000 of them are planted across the city, according to a tree inventory.

A red pistache

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The flowers of the desert willow are a beautiful pink.

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“I think in general, many of urban forests contain what I would call legacy plantings that occurred after World War II, when people were building homes and moving in and planting trees. And so those trees now, maybe 40, 50, 60 years old, they were planted when water was abundant. They've grown accustomed to having water and of course they're not necessarily as well adapted to hot dry conditions,“ said Greg McPherson, retired research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service, and one of the creators of the experiment.

We were long able to satisfy a broad range of moisture requirements because we imported and dumped all but unlimited gallons of water all over our landscapes, often in an effort to keep our lawns green.

That is until this past decade, when drought and water cuts became the norm.

What happens to water-stressed trees

The flowers of the maverick mesquite.

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The flowers of the desert museum palo verde.

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Water-stressed trees are more susceptible to pathogens and insect attacks, and are, predictably, more likely to die than healthy happy trees. One only need look to the Sierra Nevada to understand how bad things can get. More than 100 million trees have died over the past decade in part due to drought stress.

There are no clear mortality estimates for LA’s urban forest over the past decade, so we can’t say whether extreme conditions have led to more tree deaths in our area. And unless we had a widespread, granular tree tracking program, it’s going to be tough to determine why an individual tree is lost.

There are hundreds of thousands of street trees across the city, and urban trees face all sorts of challenges trees in our forests don’t. Yard tools can damage them and lead to the introduction of disease, poor pruning practices can lessen tree resilience and sometimes people just cut them down because they want to redo their yards.

That said, conditions are becoming more challenging for our urban forest and we could be on the path to greater die off as a result. Longer, more sustained droughts are becoming more common, meaning less water for irrigated landscapes, and more extreme heat days mean trees require more water to survive.

While this palo blanco, originally from northern Mexico, was looking OK, another one was struggling substantially.

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Odds are we haven’t seen the worst of it. Even though we’ve had a handful of water cuts over the past decade, lawns are still green and trees still often getting supplemental irrigation.

Given how bad cuts got before this wet year, it’s easy to imagine a point where outdoor watering is limited to the point that lawns start to finally die off and the trees that rely on that same supplemental water start to die too.

“The roots of those trees are near the surface because turf is irrigated in frequent, but not heavy doses. So the water stays in the upper surface of the soil and that’s where the roots are,” McPherson said.

Depending on the variety, trees can take decades to become established and provide meaningful shade. If we’re planting something today with the expectation that it’ll survive in the lawn-less future we’re charging towards, it’s important to find species that can thrive on minimal supplemental inputs.

Our need for more resilient trees

McPherson’s efforts to find what the experiment is calling ‘climate-ready trees’ began about two decades ago, when he recognized what the existential threat of warming trends could mean for our urban forests.

The Desert Museum Palo Verde doesn't provide as much shade as the other trees, but it's nice to look at and likes hot weather.

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“I began in 1999 when I got a 18 wheeler full of desert trees from Arizona shipped up and planted them all around Sacramento and Davis, and really started evaluating their performance,” said McPherson.

Some, like the Palo Verde, even though it can thrive in hot climates, struggled.

“It just grew so fast that the top would outgrow the roots and it would blow over in our wind,” he said. “Some of them worked, some didn’t. But that led to the idea that we need to evaluate more species”

The rosewood tree had a sizable canopy that provided good shade.

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In 2015 he and van Doorn got a grant to begin trialing trees at a test site at UC Davis, and eventually along the coast in Irvine, and in the scorching hot environment of Riverside.

So which trees have been thriving?

Though the experiment still has a number of years to go, I made the trip to the Riverside plot because out of the two Southern California plots, I wanted to see which trees were doing the best in the most extreme conditions.

Many were thriving, but three stood out because they looked healthy, cast wonderful shade and were quite attractive. They’d be wonderful along any street.

The Red Push Pistache was the first to catch my eye in part because it had one of the thickest canopies and beautiful leaves. It’s originally from Arizona.

The red push pistache seemed to be thriving.

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The canopy of the rosewood, originally from India, rivaled the pistache and the Desert Willow, native to the southwest, put out gorgeous pink flowers.

A rosewood tree.

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The desert willow was thriving at the test plot.

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The Honey Mesquite, also native to the southwest, was covered in bright yellow flowers and teaming with so many bees that the whole tree appeared to vibrate.

The honey mesquite can be invasive in some environments.

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The ghost gum, a type of eucalyptus from Australia was also well established. However, because of their oil content eucalyptus tend to burn violently in wildfires. Maybe not the best choice for fire prone locations. And the tecate cypress is native to the region and looks like it could be trimmed into a hedge. It's struggled a bit at the plot.

The ghost gum is a type of eucalyptus from Australia.

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The Tecate Cypress is native to Southern California and could work well in a hedge.

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Then there were the ones that appeared to need more maintenance, like the Palo Verde, which I see planted in drought tolerant landscapes across the area. It can thrive in hot conditions, and with a bit of pruning it might’ve looked better. Problem is it didn’t provide much shade.

And, to me, the Texas Live Oak looked to be an outright failure, as they were close to dead. It's reportedly done better in cooler conditions at the team's other test site in Irvine.

A desert museum Palo Verde

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A live oak

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Go see the trees yourself

Each tree in the private research plot has a counterpart located in parks across the region, in an effort to help determine how they do when they’re not babied.

“If you were looking at reference versus park sites, the reference sites are doing better as far as survivorship and growth. In the park sites there just is a lot of variability,” said van Doorn.

If you’re curious about how they’re doing, you can actually go visit them in person.

Locations of tree testing in inland Southern California

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Coastal testing locations for trees.

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Courtesy UC Davis

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For instance, here’s a map of tree locations if you live near Woodley Park in the San Fernando Valley.

Or if you’re over on the west side, the trees might be performing completely differently at a spot like Vista Del Mar Park.

If you want a more granular look at all of the trees, the researchers issued an update three years ago here.

If you have any favorite drought tolerant trees, shoot me a note below.

On a recent morning, traffic sped by the Annenberg Community Beach House in Santa Monica where San Vicente and Ocean boulevards meet. A few hundred yards away, the waves crashed on the shore.

But 100 years ago, when Hollywood starlet Marion Davies lived in this once-rural spot of coast, standing this close to the house would put you knee deep in water at high tide.

“That low white concrete wall was the sea wall to protect the pool, to protect the backyard of that home,” said Tom Ford, CEO of the Santa Monica Bay Foundation, gesturing toward the house.

A century ago this wide flat beach was far narrower. Many beaches in the Santa Monica Bay were artificially widened from the 1930s through the 1960s.

The sand came from an ancient system of coastal dunes that extended from LAX all the way to the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The endangered El Segundo blue butterfly is found only in the dunes’ restored, fragmented remains.

Expanding dune restoration

Now, change is coming again to this iconic stretch of beach. For a decade, The Bay Foundation has been figuring out how to bring back pieces of those ancient dunes. So far, the nonprofit has restored small patches of dunes on beaches from Point Dume to Manhattan Beach.

Their latest, and largest dune restoration effort so far, will extend about 30 acres south of Santa Monica pier to the border with Venice. Announced last month, it’s possible thanks to a partnership with the city and a $2 million state grant.

The nonprofit first installed dunes in Santa Monica in 2016 — “installed” meaning they put in a simple rope and little wood fence around about 3 acres, then scattered a bunch of native dune plant seeds. Nature did the rest.

The historic extent of sand dunes in the southern Santa Monica Bay.

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UC Santa Barbara

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Now across about 8 acres of this beach, dunes up to 5 feet tall are crowned with low-lying plants: blossoming yellow beach evening primrose flowers, light green beach bur, saltbush — a foundational plant for growing dunes, Ford said.

“These are super tough characters. They can handle the salt water, they can handle the salt air," Ford said. “Their big roots are extending down into the beach.”

The native dune plants will provide more habitat to shorebirds, including snowy plovers, a threatened species.

Snowy plovers are a threatened species.

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Photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Southeast

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Ropes and signs surround the dunes to discourage people from trampling them.

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Within a few months of the dunes installation in 2016, a snowy plover nest appeared on Santa Monica Beach for the first time in some 70 years. Now, they can be spotted scurrying about the driftwood and dune plants.

Birds migrating thousands of miles along the Pacific Flyway will be able to rest and forage here too.

Not only that, the dunes can lessen the amount of sand that blows onto the bike path, parking lots and roads, a regular nuisance for city maintenance crews.

Dunes and sea level rise

Long term, the dunes can help combat rising sea levels.

“Between the sea level rising and getting taller, more frequent, more violent storms hitting our coastline, we're likely to lose the beach,” Ford said.

Scientists estimate that our warming planet is likely to raise ocean levels at least 3 feet. At that level, as many as 75% of California's beaches could be gone by 2100 without intervention.

But dunes “start to build a beach that grows in height, and that helps us keep up with sea level rise,” Ford said.

Tom Ford, CEO of the Santa Monica Bay Foundation.

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Ford picks up trash next to a plant blossoming on a dune.

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Sand dunes can withstand only so much water, but the Santa Monica dunes have been shown to reduce erosion and flooding.

Native dune plants hold onto sand, while allowing the dunes to remain dynamic, reducing erosion. That’s opposed to introduced species like iceplant, which have squeezed out many native dune plants and are akin to concrete to wildlife.

When not carpeted by iceplant, the dunes themselves can absorb waves’ energy, displacing less sand and redistributing it in a way that allows the beach to recover. In contrast, sea walls trigger a scouring effect when the waves reverberate off of them, said UC Santa Barbara coastal ecologist Kyle Emery, who is part of a team that has surveyed more than 120 dune restoration sites across the state, including the Santa Monica dunes.

His research found that those dunes also reduced flooding on the beach during significant storms in the winter of 2023.

“That restored dune site was able to prevent about 14 meters or 50 feet of water runup on the beach,” Emery said.

A batch of younger dunes forming on Santa Monica beach.

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There are only so many ways to adapt to rising sea levels. We may have to abandon some areas. Nourishing beaches with sand is one expensive tool.There’s hard infrastructure like sea walls, but that’s costly and worsens erosion. You can build sand berms like the ones that go up in the winter in Orange County — those can protect infrastructure, but don’t have much benefit for wildlife (or ocean views).

As for dunes?

“We've demonstrated that this nature-based solution can protect against sea level rise and storm-driven wave erosion,” Emery said.

Still, Emery emphasized, dunes are no silver bullet. Dunes won’t work everywhere, and some places are likely to simply be too inundated with water. More long-term research is needed, Emery said, but so far the research on dunes shows promise.
A 2023 state law requires all coastal areas to plan for sea level rise — dunes are mentioned as a nature-based strategy. And Proposition 4, passed by voters in 2024, provides dedicated funding for such coastal resilience efforts.

The wide, flat, groomed beach we're all used to in Santa Monica.

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Restored dunes stretch along the shore in the other direction.

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Bolsa Chica State Beach, for example, is likely to seek such funding for its own burgeoning dune restoration effort (mostly to help with sand that piles up in parking lots and on Pacific Coast Highway), as are parts of south Orange County, where beach erosion has been a major problem for infrastructure, such as the Pacific Surfliner tracks, said Riley Pratt, a senior environmental scientist for State Parks Orange Coast District.

“ I think the writing is on the wall, and we're now looking at it differently, that we really need to get ahead of this,” Pratt said.

In Santa Monica, the dunes are something of a test. We’ve become used to volleyball and sunbathing on wide, groomed stretches of sand, but maybe it’s time to make room for dunes, too. They may be cluttered with some trash, but there’s also a patchwork of plants and small birds foraging. There’s also driftwood and kelp — once the foundations of developing dunes before we came accustomed to scraping the beach clean.

It’s a more complicated version of beach, but likely a more sustainable one.

Beach evening primrose is a native dune plant that helps stabilize sandy soils and provides habitat for coastal wildlife.

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The Trump administration's unprecedented expansion of migrant detention facilities is igniting fierce opposition in communities across the political and geographic spectrum, as the administration moves to scale up its detention footprint to fuel its campaign to arrest, detain and deport the largest number of immigrants in modern U.S. history.

Flush with new cash — $85 billion in new funding, with around $45 billion specifically to expand immigration detention over four years — Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is moving fast to lease and acquire warehouses and buildings across the United States with the aim of retrofitting them into detention spaces. ICE is also expanding contracts with local jails and private prison facilities as it builds out its sprawling detention footprint. ICE is now the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the nation.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement worker stands outside a warehouse in Williamsport, Md., that's being converted into an immigration detention center with plans to hold 1,500 people, on March 9.

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Wesley Lapointe for NPR

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ICE detainees have been held at more than 220 detention sites around the country, according to government data provided by ICE in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by NPR. These sites range from dedicated ICE facilities and private prisons to county jails, military bases and newly converted warehouses. Detainees are also being held temporarily in staging areas, hospitals and holding sites. The number of sites continues to grow.

ICE's biggest detention operations are largely clustered in the southern United States. Just five states — Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Arizona and Georgia — account for just over 60% of the nation's more than 750,000 ICE detention book-ins. (In the Deportation Data Project's dataset, these book-ins are referred to as "stints." Most individuals have only one book-in per stay in detention, but some are transferred between multiple detention centers.) Texas had more than 200,000 book-ins across 115 facilities between President Trump taking office in January 2025 and mid-October 2025, the most book-ins of any state in the country.

A year ago, around 37,000 people were being held in immigration detention across the nation, according to ICE data. That number had jumped to more than 72,000 by the end of January 2026. The administration's goal is to keep expanding detention space to keep up with arrests. Ultimately, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) aims to build bed space for 100,000 immigrants alleged to be in the country illegally. On average, detention facilities daily now hold nearly 70,000 immigrants, a scale of mass detention not seen since the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans and nationals during World War II.

And most detained noncitizens are clustered at a handful of centers. Of the more than 60,000 book-ins across Arizona, nearly half were at the Florence Staging Facility. Forty-five percent of the 93,105 book-ins across Louisiana were at the Alexandria Staging Facility.

DHS documents reveal ambitious growth plans scaled up around a "Hub and Spoke Model" in which eight large detention centers holding between 7,500 and 10,000 people each are fed by 16 smaller regional processing centers holding 500 to 1,500 immigrants each. The proposed facility in Social Circle, Ga., for example, is one of the eight proposed "mega centers" positioned strategically across the nation. The new center would effectively double the town's population of roughly 5,000.

Growing frustration, local backlash

But there's growing grassroots opposition — across political and geographic lines — to ICE's detention expansion. And communities are winning. From Georgia to Texas to Arizona and in scores of towns across the U.S., residents are pushing back, citing costs and infrastructure worries, as well as zoning, political and even moral concerns.

"They're getting the wrong people," says Donnie Dagenhart, who lives not far from a proposed ICE detention center near Williamsport, Md. Dagenhart, who owns a local construction company, says he supported Trump for years but has now soured on the president largely over how immigration is being enforced. "Let's get the bad ones out. That's what we should be doing, but we're not. I just think we're living in a police state and it's getting worse," he says. "Did you see the building?" he asks of the new detention site. "It's huge."

Motorcyclists ride through Williamsport, Md., on March 9.

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Polling shows that the public has largely turned against Trump's aggressive mass deportation agenda. Sixty-five percent of Americans said ICE has "gone too far" in enforcing immigration laws, according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. That's an 11-point increase since last summer.

In New Hampshire, a "purple"' swing state that holds the nation's first presidential primary, community uproar recently forced the halt of a planned ICE detention facility in the town of Merrimack.

New Hampshire state Rep. Bill Boyd, a Republican from Merrimack who had previously reached out to DHS voicing his opposition to the facility, called it a big win.

"This community has fought giants and has come out victorious," he told NPR member station NHPR. "And it's just a testament to my neighbors and local leadership and the state leaders for taking a stand.

Backlash erupted, too, in Oklahoma City in deep-red Oklahoma when local residents learned of plans to convert a vacant warehouse into a facility to process and temporarily house immigrants. Faced with strong opposition, DHS and ICE backed away from that proposed detention site too.

Mississippi's senior U.S. senator, Roger Wicker, a Republican, has strongly opposed a proposed immigration detention center near Byhalia, Miss. "I am all for immigration enforcement, but this site was meant for economic development and job creation. We cannot suddenly flood Byhalia with an influx of up to 10,000 detainees," Wicker wrote on X last month.

Public outcry also stopped a planned detention facility in conservative Texas. The federal government planned to buy a 1 million-square-foot warehouse from Majestic Realty in Hutchins, Texas, and turn it into a holding center. But following weeks of pushback from community members and city leaders, the company decided not to sell or lease the facility to DHS.

"We're grateful for the long-term relationship we have with Mayor Mario Vasquez and the City of Hutchins and look forward to continuing our work to find a buyer or lease tenant that will help drive economic growth," a Majestic Realty spokesperson told Texas Public Radio in a statement.

The largest detention facilities in the country are run by two for-profit, private companies, Geo Group and CoreCivic. Both companies reported more than $2 billion in revenue in 2025, an 8% and 18% increase, respectively, in growth year over year. A handful of other companies also have big DHS and ICE contracts to help guard, run and support ICE detention operations, including Akima Global Services and its sister company Akima Infrastructure Protection. The Project on Government Oversight reports that CoreCivic's ICE awards have increased 45% since Trump took office for his second term.

"A majority of these locations wouldn't pass for any other venue"

In Surprise, Ariz., where DHS recently purchased a 400,000-square-foot warehouse for $70 million, NPR member station KJZZ reported that the move sparked frequent protests and community pushback. Hundreds of people swarmed Surprise's City Council meetings demanding that the city pass a resolution to make DHS and ICE publicly disclose operational plans.

These concerns are heightened as reports of overcrowding and lack of food in detention centers across the nation have proliferated. ICE is investigating numerous detainee deaths. Since October, 26 people have died in ICE custody, putting immigration detention on track for its deadliest fiscal year since the agency was founded.

Protesters gather with signs condemning Immigration and Customs Enforcement's purchase of a warehouse in Roxbury, N.J., for use as an immigrant processing facility, on March 10.

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José A. Alvarado Jr. for NPR

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Advocates say reduced oversight and record numbers of detainees are a recipe for more sickness and death in custody. "The abhorrent and worsening conditions in detention centers, gross negligence and a complete lack of oversight have contributed to yet another grim record for deaths in ICE custody," said Jennifer Ibañez Whitlock, senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center, an immigrant rights defense organization.

While there have been few to no oversight moves on the federal level, local leaders are taking action. The U.S. Conference of Mayors, a nonpartisan organization representing the more than 1,400 mayors of cities with populations over 30,000, recently passed two emergency resolutions calling for the administration to rein in ICE tactics, expand transparency and put guardrails on detention expansion.

"A majority of these locations wouldn't pass for any other venue, even possibly for a homeless shelter," the Republican mayor of Columbia, S.C., Daniel Rickenmann, told NPR. The conference called for federal immigration agencies to "assure all those detained have access to legal assistance required by law; require all buildings where people are detained to meet local health and safety standards; [and] obtain appropriate local zoning and building permit approvals to convert warehouses and other buildings to detention or deportation facilities."

Rickenmann says he and fellow mayors have grave concerns about the rapidly expanding ICE detention system: "Are they sanitary? Do they have the beds? Do they have the facilities for restrooms? Do they have places that they can provide meals that are to standards that we would require anybody, including jails, to keep up with?"

In a statement to NPR, ICE said new facilities would bring jobs, additional tax revenue and security to communities. On recently purchased warehouses in Roxbury, N.J., and Hagerstown, Md., the agency wrote: "These will not be warehouses — they will be very well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards. These sites have undergone community impact studies and a rigorous due diligence process to make sure there is no hardship on local utilities or infrastructure prior to purchase."

Local officials NPR spoke with dispute the existence of any rigorous community impact studies for new ICE facilities.

An industrial warehouse recently purchased by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for use as a detention center is seen on February 10, 2026 in Social Circle, Georgia. Local officials have expressed frustration over the planned ICE detention facility.

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Elijah Nouvelage

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Getty Images

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DHS secrecy leaves local officials in the dark

A through-line complaint across communities is lack of transparency. Representatives at all levels of government, from city councils to the U.S. Congress, complain they have been largely kept in the dark about DHS' plans. Local representatives in Oakwood, Ga., Baytown, Texas, and Highland Park, Mich., told NPR that they received no response from DHS when they inquired about facilities slated to be built in their communities.

In Social Circle, Ga., local frustrations rose so high that city leaders barred water use by ICE's planned facility until the agency provides more clarity on its plans.

"There is a lock on the meter," Eric Taylor, the city manager for Social Circle, said in a statement to NPR member station Georgia Public Broadcasting. "The lock is there until ICE indicates how water and sewer will be served without exceeding our limited infrastructure capacity."

In Merrillville, Ind., reports that ICE intended to convert a vacant 275,000-square-foot warehouse into a detention facility caught local officials completely off guard. The town quickly passed a forceful resolution opposing the conversion and publicly criticized ICE for failing to inform local officials of the move.

"We want to be clear that we've received no communication from any federal agency regarding the use of this property as a processing or detention facility, and the town has not approved or authorized any such use," Merrillville Town Council President Rick Bella said in an emailed statement to NPR.

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said that the lack of communication from ICE, as well as from the private-sector companies, is especially concerning when coupled with reports of mistreatment and abuse.

"Here in San Diego, our members of Congress are not permitted to access these facilities," Gloria said. "Our local public health officials have also been turned away. And so when you look at what's happening in public with these detention efforts, they often become extremely chaotic. It makes you wonder what's happening behind closed doors and without, you know, transparency and accountability."

In Oakwood, Ga., the mayor and City Council posted that while they support ICE's mission, they were concerned that the local government was not involved in the process of green-lighting the detention center or selecting its location. The sale was recently finalized, and Georgia Public Broadcasting reported that ICE paid $68 million for the space, which had an assessed value of around $7.2 million.

Oakwood City Manager B.R. White strongly criticized the detention center's placement next to two residential areas, an established subdivision and a building under construction, and warned that taxpayers would likely have to foot the bill, including an estimated $2.6 million in added sewer expenses alone.

"I would have liked to see [ICE representatives] come in, sit down, tell us what their plans are and discuss with us how to resolve the issues and the tax losses to the community," White told NPR.

He says the city has not received any communication from the federal government, so the city is left to deal with these issues on their own. "It was an egregious overstep by the federal government," White said. "'Get the ox and the cart out of the ditch service' is what we're having to do right now."

Some places that aren't slated to have a facility have preemptively taken action. After reports that DHS was scoping out locations for new facilities in Missouri, the Jackson County Legislature approved a plan to ban immigration detention facilities. Legislator Manny Abarca told NPR member station KCUR that it puts the county on the record as being against "the caging of people" even if the county doesn't legally have the authority to stop DHS.

A handful of communities have embraced new facilities, however warily, with an eye on the economic boost and local jobs that these detention centers bring.

In Georgia, Charlton County Administrator Glenn Hull says the county will make about $230,000 this year from the detention center contract between GEO Group and the federal government — enough to pay the salaries of 20% of the county's employees.

Hull says GEO Group has been a "great partner," providing about a dozen college scholarships and funding for holiday festivals and events, even as he acknowledges the ethical and moral costs of profiting from people being forcefully separated from their loved ones, locked away and deported.

"I hate to say it, but if not here, then somewhere else," Hull admits. "So you take advantage of what you have on your table. I hate to simplify it like that 'cause these are lives and families, but that's the reality of it."

To determine where people detained by ICE were held, NPR analyzed data provided by ICE in response to a FOIA request by the Deportation Data Project. In the Deportation Data Project's original dataset, a book-in is referred to as a "stint." Most noncitizens have only one book-in per stay in detention, but some are transferred between multiple facilities. Each transfer to a new facility counts as a separate book-in, as does a return to a facility where the person had previously been booked. Facilities range from dedicated ICE centers to local jails and hospitals.

Sergio Martinez-Beltran, Jasmine Garsd, Ximena Bustillo, Alyson Hurt, and Preeti Aroon contributed to this story.
Copyright 2026 NPR

L.A.’s main homeless services agency is at risk of blowing a federal deadline to turn in a required audit of its financial records after executives were far behind schedule in providing necessary documents, according to the lead outside auditor.

The federally-required review — known as a single audit — is one of the most important oversight checks of the L.A. Homeless Services Authority. Every year, LAHSA must hire an outside firm to determine whether the agency is accurately tracking and reporting what happens with taxpayer funds it manages. Turning it in late, or having significant negative findings, can jeopardize an organization’s federal funding.

The audit of LAHSA’s last fiscal year is due March 31, nine months after the fiscal year ended.

While government clients on that fiscal calendar would typically turn over their records to auditors by last December, LAHSA staff had failed to do so until March, lead auditor Justin Measley told LAHSA’s audit committee last Wednesday.

He said the timeline for reviewing the documents was now unusually compressed, and that the firm was doing everything it can to try to meet the deadline.

“It is possible that [LAHSA’s audit] will not meet the March 31st deadline,” Measley told the audit committee. “ It's been a few years of this sort of delay with LAHSA."

On Friday, however, LAHSA executives said the audit is on track to meet the March 31 deadline.

“We have submitted all required documentation” to the auditors and “the field work has been completed,” Janine Lim, LAHSA’s deputy CFO, told the commission’s finance committee. “At this time, we do not anticipate any issues with meeting that timeline or allowing sufficient time for review."

Lim has been stepping into her boss’ role as the top finance official for the last several weeks, while CFO Janine Trejo has been on an extended leave. The reasons for her leave have not been made public, nor has the timing of how long she’s been out.

Even after Lim’s presentation, LAHSA Commissioner Amy Perkins said she doubts the audit will be done by the deadline.

“Based on everything I know and have seen, this is very unlikely,” she said in a statement Friday.

In response to a request to LAHSA CEO Gita O’Neill for comment, LAHSA spokesperson provided a statement Thursday that the audit is “on track” to meet the deadline.

“LAHSA has provided financial and organizational documentation to our external auditors, despite a key mid-level leadership transition that required adjustments to the document-gathering timeline,” the statement provided by spokesperson Paul Rubenstein said. “As the audit nears completion, LAHSA remains committed to being a responsible steward of public funds, and we expect the audit to be completed on time.”

Auditor raised concerns in January, February and March

Measley, LAHSA’s lead contracted auditor, told the auditing committee on Wednesday that LAHSA executives had agreed in October to provide the documents by Jan. 15. LAHSA staff then confirmed multiple times in December and January that they were on track to do so, he said.

But LAHSA blew that deadline, Measley said, adding that auditors gave multiple extensions.

Measley said the records were still not provided as of March 3, even after he raised concerns about the timing with O’Neill and LAHSA’s governing commission chair, Amber Sheikh, during a meeting in early February.

On March 3, the audit firm contacted LAHSA’s governing commission about the overdue documents, Measley said.

“I felt like I exhausted my ability to work solely within management, and I needed to alert governance of the delays, which is when I sent the letter of the potential for LAHSA to not meet its regulatory deadline,” Measley told the audit committee.

In a statement, Sheikh said she met with the auditor in early February “as part of the standard annual single audit process.”

“They shared that some steps were slightly behind schedule, but they did not express concern about delivering the audit on time,” Sheikh said.

Juistin Szlasa, LAHSA’s audit committee chair, said he was not informed of any problems with the audit until March 3, despite them being flagged nearly a month earlier to O’Neill and Sheikh.

Szlasa expressed concern about the remaining timeline, saying the agency’s governing commission would still need time to review the draft audit once it’s ready and ask questions before it’s finalized. He said the draft audit should be circulated at least a week before it’s finalized.

“I don’t see how this is going to happen in a way that makes sense,” he said during Wednesday’s meeting. “I’m very disappointed,” Szlasa said. He did not fault the auditors, who he said were handling the review “with integrity and care.”

The mayor’s take

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is the only elected official on LAHSA’s governing commission, and was one of the three members of its audit committee from Aug. 22 until Jan. 23, which overlapped with the first few months of the audit. She did not attend any of the committee's four meetings during that time, according to official records.

Bass did not respond to an interview request through a spokesperson.

“Mayor Bass has been a champion for reforming L.A.’s broken homelessness system, and wants this audit done,” a statement provided by Ilana Morales, the mayor’s spokesperson, said. “She is tasking the City’s appointed LAHSA commissioners to work closely with the agency’s leadership to get this moving. After years of increases before she took office, Mayor Bass brought homelessness down, and she will not let bureaucratic failures stand in her way.”

Designers working on the logo, design and mascot for the LA 28 Olympics gave a sneak peek on Monday of what those may look like by the time the games begin in just over two years.

“We looked to the city for inspiration and we were inspired by different thematics and stories that really make this city great,” said Geoff Engelhardt, LA28's head of brand design.

One striking image stood out to them in particular: the flower super-blooms that appear in Southern California after particularly strong winter storms.

California poppies bloom next to the California State Route 138 near the Antelope Valley.

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Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times via Getty Image

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Los Angeles Times

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That led to the choice of vibrant colors like pink, orange and blue, and designs to create 13 “blooms,” representative of 13 stories and 13 thematics.

The design elements are inspired by the region's super blooms.

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Courtesy LA28 Olympics

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Those include:

• World Stage (referring to the third time L.A. has hosted the Olympics)
• Hollywood
• LA Light
• First People

An artist rendering of preliminary colors and themes of the LA28 Olympics design.

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Courtesy LA28

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The final designs will be important as they will show up on everything related to the LA28 Olympics.

“It wraps every building, every sign, every broadcast, every piece of sport equipment. If you remember the games, you remember this visual wrapper,” said Ric Edwards, LA28's vice president of brand design and executive design director.

The graphics will also adorn tons and tons of apparel and swag, licensed and unlicensed, made to promote the L.A. Olympics.

While these aren't the final designs for the LA28 Summer Olympics, they are the colors and themes designers will be using to come up with those final designs and the much-anticipated mascot of the LA28 Olympics.

An artist rendering shows preliminary design schemes for the LA28 Olympics.

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Courtesy LA28

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Designers said they did not use artificial intelligence in this process because they wanted to make sure personal connections to the region informed design decisions.

Olympics designs and mascots can become iconic and endure for years after the last medal has been given out. Take Mexico, nearly 60 years after its summer Olympics in 1968, the op-art design motifs continue to inspire popular culture and visual imagery in the country.

The public rollout for the design concepts starts Monday night at Intuit Dome in Inglewood before and after the Clippers game. The colors and designs will fill digital displays at LA Clippers Plaza.