The Brief

WASHINGTON (AP) — Arizona, California and Nevada would take less water from the Colorado River under a proposal announced Friday by the federal government to stave off crisis in the beleaguered waterway.

The proposal from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation spares Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming from facing mandatory cuts for now. But it’s a temporary fix as the states that rely on the river still fight over a long-term management plan for the dwindling resource that powers huge swaths of the Western U.S.

Under the plan, the Lower Basin states could face collective cuts up to 3 million acre-feet (130 billion cubic feet) through 2036, “subject to hydrology,” according to a press release by the Department of the Interior. That’s about enough water to serve more than 25 million people a year.

The plan would also allow annual releases between 5 million and 12 million acre-feet from Lake Powell, the basin’s second-largest reservoir. Under the 10-year federal framework, water management decisions will be made every two years.

“This framework provides the flexibility to respond to changing hydrologic conditions while preserving the opportunity for the Basin States to continue working toward durable, consensus-based solutions,” said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum in the press release.

The proposed cuts in the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada would be the biggest to date and could have huge impacts across cities and farms — higher water prices, increased groundwater reliance, more agriculture out of production and conservation mandates in places where none have existed before.

The federal plan comes after years of deadlocked negotiations and a record-dry winter that tipped Colorado River reservoirs to combined record lows. Federal officials are expected to finalize the plan in the coming days.

More than 40 million people in seven U.S. states, several tribal nations and Mexico, as well as farmers, wildlife, industries and hydropower, rely on the dwindling 1,450-mile (2,334-kilometer) Colorado River. Years of overuse combined with rising temperatures and drought have severely depleted flows in the Colorado today compared with decades past.

The federal government, under a court order to immediately improve conditions at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, said late Thursday it is working with the private contractor that runs the facility to improve conditions.

Allegations of inhumane conditions at Adelanto have been at the center of protests for months. The privately run detention facility 90 miles from downtown L.A. in San Bernardino County is now over capacity, after being nearly empty 18 months ago. Four people have died at Adelanto since September 2025.

On July 16, a U.S. District Court judge ordered federal officials to immediately improve medical care, disability accommodations, and daily conditions for people held at the Adelanto.

In her order, Judge Sunshine Suzanne Sykes gave the Department of Homeland Security 14 days to submit a plan to address alleged deficiencies long-term.

The government’s response, filed just ahead of Thursday’s deadline for a long-term improvement plan, was short on details and included pushback. Lawyers for the federal government notified the court they plan to appeal the order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and asked the court to hold off on enforcing the July 16 order until that appeal is decided.

What we do know:

• According to filings, the defendants and plaintiffs have agreed on candidates for a monitor to keep an eye on overall conditions at the facility. They have not agreed on a monitor to focus on medical conditions. The government has proposed two candidates in court filings.

• In their remediation plan, federal officials told the court that the privately run facility is already in compliance with several of the standards set in the court order, including providing timely diagnostic testing for health issues, ensuring continuous access to over-the-counter and prescribed medications and informing people held at the facility of their patients’ rights.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said in their filed plan that they have been reviewing the contract with GEO and will work to bring the facility into compliance with the full court order.

Reaction to the latest developments

A spokesperson for GEO referred LAist to ICE for comment.

In an emailed, unsigned statement, the Department of Homeland Security said claims that conditions at Adelanto are substandard are false.

“All detainees are provided with proper meals, water, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers,” the statement said, in part.

Ryan Smith, an ICE assistant field office director, told the court in a declaration that the July 16 preliminary injunction “frustrates and impedes” the agency's ability to enforce immigration laws.

Smith’s declaration said the facility already complies with many of the immediate requirements of the injunction, and that other requirements would create safety risks or an “undue burden” for ICE.

Carl Bergquist, general counsel for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, which is one of the organizations representing plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said the plaintiffs plan to formally oppose the government’s request to stay the injunction.

He also expressed concern that other aspects of the court order — including an immediate requirement to provide 24-hour access to clean drinking water, healthy meals and hygiene products — remain unaddressed, despite the government’s claims.

“All of that was supposed to be immediate upon the order coming out,” said Bergquist. “We believe we've seen instances of some of that not happening already. So that's a problem.”

Bergquist said his organization has monitored conditions at Adelanto since the July 16 order through visits once or twice a week to the detention center about 90 miles from downtown L.A. in San Bernardino County. He said they’ve also taken new reports from people who are detained there either through CHIRLA’s hotline or through family members.

Background on the lawsuit

Adelanto has a long history of complaints about its conditions. The facility was nearly shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic due to unsafe conditions.

A court ordered the facility to stop accepting new detainees, and the population remained relatively low, down to fewer than a handful of detainees by the end of the Biden administration.

The population climbed sharply with the start of intense ICE enforcement in the L.A. area in June 2025.

Bergquist called the rapid change from a nearly empty facility to one that is now over capacity “a recipe for what we're seeing now.”

Concerns about current conditions at Adelanto have been documented by state officials for more than a year. An amicus brief filed in June by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose office inspects immigration detention centers in the state, details several problems at the facility found during a July 2025 inspection.

“The Attorney General’s office found, among other things, a facility that was overwhelmed with the rapid population increase; insufficient staffing; failures to attend to urgent medical needs, to care for individuals with chronic conditions, and to ensure specialty care referrals; and use of force concerns,” according to the brief. The brief said inspectors heard reports of “murky and dirty” water and improperly cooked food.

“Almost every person interviewed complained about the quality of the food,” according to the brief.

The lawsuit that led to the July injunction was filed six months after Bonta’s inspection on behalf of four plaintiffs representing Adelanto detainees as a class.

They asked the court to “to end the unlawful and unconstitutional conditions at Adelanto, prohibit Defendants from violating their civil, constitutional, and human rights, and require Defendants to provide lawfully adequate conditions,” the complaint reads. “In other words, they ask to be treated like human beings.”

The GEO group runs Adelanto for federal officials under a contract that runs through 2029.

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Who is responsible for conditions?

In court filings, the federal government has argued it cannot be held responsible for the actions of GEO, its contractor. According to the lawsuit, ICE’s current contract with Adelanto pays GEO more than $400 million a year to run the facility. The contract was extended for five years in 2024, and is now set to expire in 2029.

While issuing the preliminary injunction, Sykes ruled that the plaintiffs demonstrated they are likely to prevail, “or at least, raise serious questions” on their claims that the facility violated their Fifth Amendment protections against inhuman conditions and will suffer “irreparable harm” if the courts don’t grant preliminary injunctive relief.

In its Thursday request to stay the injunction, the federal government reiterated its position that ICE does not “own, staff, or run” Adelanto and cannot address the conditions there on its own.

“The difficulty is not the conditions the Order describes; it is that the Order commands ICE to produce results inside a facility that The GEO Group, Inc. — a private federal contractor that is not a party in the litigation — owns, staffs, and operates every hour of every day,” the filing reads.

Bergquist said Sykes has rejected those claims.

“We argued that ICE is in charge here and those arguments are spurious. The judge agreed with that and thus moved ahead” with the preliminary injunction.

The filing states that ICE’s contract with GEO requires the facility to comply with several sets of national standards for detention and correctional health.

The government also argues several parts of the order go beyond the contractual obligations between GEO and ICE, and could be dangerous if implemented.

An independent monitor found ICE also fails to provide adequate medical care at its facility in California City.

Bergquist said lawsuits are challenging the conditions at ICE detention centers nationwide.

“I think in most of these cases that I'm aware of, including California City, the conditions are absolutely not satisfactory and injunctions are being put in place,” Bergquist said.

Details of the government's response

On July 16, a federal judge ordered the government to create a plan to improve conditions at Adelanto. The government submitted that plan on July 30. Here’s how federal officials responded:

Medical care

The requirement: Implement “documented health intake screening” for everyone held at the facility within eight hours of arrival.

ICE response: ICE says standards at the facility already require comprehensive health screening within 12 hours. They say they’ve asked GEO to comply with the standard by reducing the maximum screening time down to eight hours.

The requirement: Ensure access to “primary, secondary, and tertiary medical care” for everyone held at the facility.

ICE response: ICE says they’ve asked GEO to comply with this standard and are reviewing the standards set by the agency’s contract with the company.

The requirement: Ensure timely diagnostic testing and required timeframes for review and follow-up on results.

ICE response: ICE says the facility is already compliant.

The requirement: Continuous provision of ordered medications.

ICE response: ICE says the facility is already compliant.

The requirement: Make sure all patients are informed of their rights, with translations as needed.

ICE response: ICE says the facility is already compliant.

Disability Accommodations

The requirement: Implement a system to identify and track anyone with qualifying disabilities.

ICE response: ICE says the facility is already compliant, but that GEO is requesting additional staff to manage the process.

The requirement: Provide reasonable accommodations to people with disabilities

ICE response: ICE says the facility is already compliant, but that GEO is requesting additional staff to manage the process.

The requirement: Provide materials, with translations as needed, to inform people of their rights to accommodations.

ICE response: ICE says the facility is already compliant.

Grievance system

The requirement: Ensure there is a process for people to confidentially submit complaints or comments to the independent monitors.

ICE response: ICE says it is reviewing its contract with GEO and that the company will establish a new handwritten grievance process.

After a slow start, a program that aims to bring thousands of Angelenos living with serious mental illness under court-led care has seen a spike in petitions filed in recent months, Los Angeles County officials said.

CARE Court allows family members, first responders and others to ask a court — by way of a petition — to step in with a voluntary care agreement for someone living with serious, untreated mental illness, such as schizophrenia, to receive community-based mental health services.

If the agreement fails, a judge could order the individual to sign on to a treatment plan.

Since launching in L.A. County in December 2023, the program saw thousands fewer petitions each year than were initially projected.

But county officials said petitions filed in L.A. County jumped by about 85% between November 2025 and March 2026, with March seeing a total of 68 petitions.

Martin Jones, a program manager with the L.A. County Department of Mental Health, attributed the increase to working with hospitals, first responders and other groups to identify and refer people who might need help.

“We’re doing quite a bit of work to put tools in their hands to also help them identify and refer folks to us who might benefit from the support,” Jones told LAist. “I think we’re approaching the project from several fronts and we’re seeing the results of that.”

Jones added that a broadening of the diagnostic criteria in January to include people living with bipolar I disorder with psychotic features has also led to more petitions.

A ‘broken system’ 

Proponents of CARE Court say it provides a less restrictive and structured way to stabilize people living with a mental illness, and they say the recent increase in petitions shows that the program is gaining traction.

Some mental health and civil liberties advocates don’t see it as a positive development.

“The number of petitions says nothing about outcomes, which is the real point of the program,” said Eve Garrow, policy analyst at the ACLU of Southern California. “Positive outcomes are really miniscule compared to the population in need.”

Analysis of the program statewide has shown that about half of the petitions end up getting dismissed, but L.A. County officials say more than 4,000 Californians statewide have been set up with alternative county services when a CARE agreement or plan is not appropriate.

Some critics, including Garrow, have called the program a waste of taxpayer money.

An analysis by the state Assembly Committee on the Judiciary on CARE Court looked at the 100 participants in the program statewide in fiscal year 2024 and found the cost per person was about $713,000.

Garrow said CARE Court ultimately doesn’t address the underlying problem: a mental and behavioral health system that is underfunded.

“Basically what it does is it slaps a court order onto a broken system instead of fixing the system,” Garrow said.

Between Dec. 1, 2023, and June 30, 2026, there were 1,111 petitions filed in L.A. County, far below the roughly 3,800 state officials projected the county could expect annually.

An L.A. County Department of Mental Health spokesperson said that through June 2026, 21 people had graduated from a 12-month CARE court program, with four additional participants scheduled to graduate within the next year.

The department added that, in L.A. County, "63% of CARE Court participants have opted to continue receiving services and support through CARE instead of graduating."

Don’t understand the 70mm IMAX craze for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey?

LAist host Julia Paskin talked to Taylor Umphenour, one of L.A.’s top IMAX projectionists, on FilmWeek to understand why the format is becoming a filmmaker favorite and why audiences are clamoring to theaters to see The Odyssey in the largest format possible.

What is IMAX 70mm?

It might be easier to explain in comparison to other formats.

35mm film is 35 millimeters wide, hence its name. 70mm is two times that width.

“ What IMAX did, was they took 70mm film, which runs vertically through the projector, and they turned it on its side, and then they repeated it over three times,” said Umphenour.

Thus, IMAX 70mm is three-times the size of a conventional 70mm film stock and runs through the projector horizontally.

Take a film like Lawrence of Arabia, which was released in 1962 and shot on 70mm film.

“ When you get to IMAX — three times the size of 70 millimeter film, the height of an IMAX film frame is the width of Lawrence of Arabia,” Umphenour said.

In other words, it’s massive — top to bottom.

What does this mean for image clarity?

Again, it may be easier to explain by comparing to other formats — specifically digital.

Most of us know that digital images are made up of tiny, square pixels. The bigger the image, the more pixels it contains, so the better the resolution.

The same is essentially true for film, but film is crystallized through an emulsion process. Chemicals are blended and washed over the film, which develops the image.

Umphenour said this means the image is deeply embedded in the film itself.

“When you increase the size of the film, you increase that clarity and that sharpness because you're allowing the emulsion to contain all that information, but you're giving it a wider image area to hold it,” he said.

In other words, film formats lead to a more organic image. And the bigger the film, the more clarity.

So why aren’t all theaters showing IMAX 70mm?

Currently, there are only 25 theaters in the U.S. capable of showing The Odyssey in IMAX 70mm — theaters with screens large enough to project it.

“ Widescreen fills your field of vision left to right,” Umphenour said. “But what IMAX does, it takes that even further and it fills your field of vision all the way to the top and all the way to the bottom, in that fully expanded aspect ratio.”

So, while not all theaters house screens large enough to project the IMAX 70mm version of The Odyssey, many theaters across the country and in L.A. are able to show The Odyssey in the next best thing… 70mm.

Umphenour helped the Alex Theater in Glendale retrofit its projector and renovate the technical booth so that it could do just that, opting to keep the historical integrity of the theater.

“ We want to maximize the resolution of the film formats that we're using to project there so that people can have the best experience,” he said. “But it's ultimately a more classical, cinematic, theatrical environment.”

Where to see The Odyssey in SoCal — in its biggest 70 mm format

• Hollywood - TCL Chinese Theatres IMAX
• Irvine - Regal Irvine Spectrum & IMAX
• Los Angeles - Regal LA Live & IMAX
• Ontario - Regal Edwards Ontario Palace Stadium & IMAX
• Universal City - Universal Cinema AMC at CityWalk Hollywood & IMAX