Makenna Cramer
covers the daily drumbeat of Southern California — events, processes and nuances making it a unique place to call home.
Published October 16, 2025 3:16 PM
A female Caribbean fruit fly.
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California Department of Food and Agriculture
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CDFA
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Topline:
Hold onto your homegrown fruits and vegetables — invasive fruit flies have sparked a quarantine in parts of Los Angeles County.
Why now: Five Caribbean fruit flies have been detected in the area since late September, including four adults, marking the state’s first quarantine for the species since 1985.
Why it matters: Victoria Hornbaker, who directs plant health and pest prevention services at the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), told LAist that Caribbean fruit flies can cause billions of dollars in damage to the state’s agriculture.
The backstory: There’s been an uptick in people shipping produce from the Caribbean and Florida, according to Hornbaker, particularly through online marketplaces that likely aren’t using the appropriate inspection procedures.
What's next: If you think you see an invasive fruit fly or have questions about the quarantine, you can call the CDFA Pest Hotline at (800) 491-1899.
Hold onto your homegrown fruits and vegetables — invasive fruit flies have sparked a quarantine in parts of Los Angeles County.
Caribbean fruit flies, which California officials say are a serious threat to state resources, have been detected in and around Montebello.
People living in the 75-square-mile quarantine zone are warned not to move homegrown fruits and vegetables from their property. That means not sharing your harvest with neighbors, friends or family.
Victoria Hornbaker, who directs plant health and pest prevention services at the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), told LAist that Caribbean fruit flies can cause billions of dollars in damage to the state’s agriculture.
“That's going to impact our ability to feed our families,” she said. “Our ability to grow fruit that feeds the world.”
About the quarantine
The quarantine area is bordered by Alhambra to the north, Downey to the south, Huntington Park to the west and South El Monte to the east.
Five Caribbean fruit flies have been detected in the area since late September, including four adults, marking the state’s first quarantine for the species since 1985.
The quarantine area is bordered by Alhambra to the north, Downey to the south, Huntington Park to the west and South El Monte to the east.
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The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA)
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You can check if your address is affected by typing it into the CDFA map here. Moving or sharing fruit inside the quarantine zone can spread the flies.
“You could inadvertently be taking a piece of fruit that has a larvae, moving it to a new area, which could create a whole new quarantine, a whole new infestation,” Hornbaker said.
You can still snack on or process the produce by juicing, freezing or cooking it at the same place it was picked. If you throw any fruits or veggies away, use double plastic bags and put them in the garbage — not the compost or green bin.
“We want it going into the general waste stream where you bag it … and it gets buried at the landfill,” she said.
If the quarantine goes well and the species doesn’t spread further, Hornbaker said it’s expected to be lifted next summer.
What are Caribbean fruit flies?
Caribbean fruit flies are small — about a third of an inch long. But they’re bigger than the gnat-type flies you shoo away from the overripe bananas in your kitchen.
Their “striking” brownish-orange bodies and striped clear wings can make them look more like a bee or a small house fly, Hornbaker said.
Caribbean fruit fly larvae on fruit.
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California Department of Food and Agriculture
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www.alamy.com
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The female fruit flies will lay white, somewhat banana-shaped eggs inside the skin of a host fruit or vegetable, including avocados, citrus, tomatoes, figs and pears. You can find a full list of the more than 200 fruits and vegetables that could host Caribbean fruit flies here.
Those eggs will grow into maggots, which will burrow through the produce until they eventually emerge, making those fruits and vegetables inedible to us humans.
How did they get here?
Invasive fruit flies usually "hitchhike" in fruits and vegetables being brought to California as travelers return from infested regions around the world. They can also be unknowingly shipped along with packages of homegrown produce from other states or countries.
Caribbean fruit flies in particular can be found in the Caribbean, of course, and Florida.
There’s been an uptick in people shipping produce from both of those regions lately, according to Hornbaker, particularly through online marketplaces that likely aren’t using the appropriate inspection procedures.
“We want to remind folks not to purchase fruits and vegetables from, you know, through Etsy, through Facebook Marketplace from places like Florida and the Caribbean,” she said. “Because it's likely going to be bringing in Caribbean fruit fly larvae.”
Officials are encouraging people to shop for produce locally from the more than 400 specialty crops grown in California or at least purchase them through the appropriate channels.
If you think you see an invasive fruit fly or have questions about the quarantine, you can call the CDFA Pest Hotline at (800) 491-1899. You can learn more about reporting a potential pest here.
If agricultural officials knock on your door and ask to cut your produce, let them. They’re trying to get rid of any eggs or larvae from the area. They may also ask to place traps in your yard or set up bait station treatments with an organic pesticide to help remove any live adult fruit flies.
Aaron Schrank
has been on the ground, reporting on homelessness and other issues in L.A. for more than a decade.
Published March 31, 2026 5:55 PM
This April 2025 image shows an agency logo on a wall inside a LAHSA Commission meeting.
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Samanta Helou Hernandez
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LAist
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Topline:
The Los Angeles region’s homelessness agency missed a Tuesday deadline to submit a federally required annual audit of the agency’s financial records, which could jeopardize its federal funding.
The agency's interim CEO blamed the blown deadline on leadership turnover and competing demands on the finance team.
Why it matters: LAHSA manages hundreds of millions in federal dollars for homelessness services across L.A. County. Missing the audit deadline could put that funding at risk.
LAHSA officials say the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — or HUD — seems understanding. LAist reached out to HUD for comment but hasn't received any.
How we got here: An outside auditor said LAHSA was supposed to turn over its financial statements around December but didn't submit them until March. The auditor's draft report also flags a "significant deficiency" in how LAHSA detects accounting errors — a finding LAHSA may contest.
What's next: On Tuesday, LAHSA officials said the single audit would be filed within the next few weeks.
LAHSA also said it has tapped accounting firm KPMG to overhaul its financial systems. The agency's interim CEO acknowledged that the current system "is not working at all."
The Los Angeles region’s homelessness agency will miss a Tuesday deadline for submitting its federally required annual audit of the agency’s financial records, which could jeopardize its federal funding.
LAHSA executives blamed the delay on a “perfect storm” of leadership changes and competing priorities within LAHSA’s finance department, including an L.A. County review of LAHSA’s delayed payments to contractors.
“Our staff made a good-faith effort to meet the deadline,” interim CEO Gita O’Neill said at a LAHSA Commission meeting Tuesday. “However, over the past year, we've experienced several transitions. As a result, we could not get all the required materials to the auditors as quickly as needed.”
Each year, LAHSA, like all non-federal agencies and organizations that get substantial federal dollars, is required to hire an outside auditor to determine whether it’s properly tracking and reporting the taxpayer funds it manages.
LAHSA’s single audit report for last fiscal year was due March 31, nine months after fiscal year 2024-2025 ended. Earlier this month, LAHSA officials said they were on track to meet the March 31 deadline.
Justin Measley, lead auditor for the firm CliftonLarsonAllen, had warned that LAHSA was months behind schedule turning over records.
At a meeting Tuesday, Measley explained that because of LAHSA’s earlier delays, the firm would need at least an additional week to complete a quality-control review process.
“We’re moving at the fastest pace we possibly can,” Measley said.
On Tuesday, LAHSA officials said the single audit will be filed “at the earliest possible opportunity,” within the next few weeks.
Federal funds at risk
LAHSA manages hundreds of millions of federal dollars each year, through grants from the U.S. Office of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.
O’Neill said the agency has been communicating with HUD officials regularly about the missed audit deadline and is “hoping for understanding.”
Janine Lim, LAHSA’s deputy chief financial officer, said she’s also been talking with HUD.
“They seem amenable to our situation and to our stated timelines,” Lim said. “So, we are hopeful that this will be a good outcome, despite having missed the deadline.”
HUD did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment Tuesday.
What went wrong
Measley said LAHSA’s financial statements should have been turned over around last December, but LAHSA only submitted them this month, after blowing through multiple extended deadlines.
Measley said he contacted LAHSA’s governing commission about the overdue documents March 3.
He said he also previewed his firm’s findings, noting one “significant deficiency” in its draft report, related to LAHSA’s timeliness in detecting accounting errors.
LAHSA could contest those findings, officials said. That would add additional back-and-forth between the homelessness agency and accounting firm before the audit report is ready to file.
Justin Szlasa, a LAHSA commissioner who chairs the audit subcommittee, told LAHSA’s CEO he’s concerned that there was no time provided for LAHSA’s governing body to review the audit report.
“Next year, we will absolutely do that,” O’Neill responded. “I think this year, we were under the gun, and so we felt it was the most important thing was to get it uploaded on time.”
O’Neill said the agency hired accounting firm KPMG to help modernize LAHSA’s financial systems, with a focus on its contractor payments.
“We have an outside, trusted voice to help us create a system that works going forward because the system we have is not working at all, in finance,” O’Neill said.
President Donald Trump has escalated his efforts to influence American elections, signing an executive order that the White House says seeks to create a list of confirmed U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state and use the U.S. Postal Service to "verify" mail ballots are for voters.
Why it matters: Trump has long railed — baselessly — about widespread illegal voting by noncitizens and mail voting fraud. The executive order comes as Trump's Justice Department is seeking sensitive voter data from states, and is engaged in more than two dozen lawsuits for that data. The administration claims it needs the data to enforce states' voter list maintenance. The order also comes as Trump pressures Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping election overhaul that would impose new voter identification and documentation requirements. That bill is stalled in the Senate due to Democratic opposition and the legislative filibuster.
What's next: Trump said he believes the order is "foolproof." But election experts have already said the order — which was first reported by The Daily Caller — would face immediate legal challenges.
Updated March 31, 2026 at 20:44 PM ET
President Trump on Tuesday escalated his efforts to reshape American elections, signing an executive order that seeks to create lists of U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state, and instructing the U.S. Postal Service to send mail ballots only to verified voters.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he believes the order is legally "foolproof." But election experts said the order was unconstitutional, and voting rights advocates and Democratic state officials quickly pledged to sue to block the order from going into effect.
A previous executive order on elections, signed about a year ago, has been blocked by federal judges who said the president lacked the constitutional authority to set voting policy.
The Constitution says the "Times, Places and Manner" of federal elections are determined by individual states, with Congress able to enact changes.
"This Executive Order is a disgusting overreach from the federal government and shows how little the Trump Administration understands about election administration," Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state of Arizona, said in a statement Tuesday. "We will not let this order stand without a fight and will meet the federal government in court," he added.
Arizona is among more than two dozen states Trump's Department of Justice has sued over access to sensitive voter data.
The Trump administration claims it needs the data to enforce states' voter list maintenance. Federal judges in three states have dismissed the Justice Department's lawsuits in those states.
In another case, a DOJ official admitted in court last week that the department plans to share that voter data with the Department of Homeland Security, to run it through the so-called SAVE system to search for noncitizens.
Trump has long railed — baselessly — about widespread illegal voting by noncitizens and fraud associated with mail ballots.
The new executive order — which was first reported by The Daily Caller — takes aim at both.
It instructs the Department of Homeland Security, working in conjunction with the Social Security Administration, to "compile and transmit to the chief election official of each State a list of individuals confirmed to be United States citizens who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming Federal election and who maintain a residence in the subject State."
The order then "requires the USPS to transmit ballots only to individuals enrolled on a State-specific Mail-in and Absentee Participation List, ensuring that only eligible absentee or mail-in voters receive absentee or mail-in ballots," according to a White House fact sheet.
Trump's executive order claims that "additional measures are necessary" to secure voting by mail, a form of voting he has used himself — including last week — but also falsely maligned for years. In the 2024 general election, nearly a third of all voters cast mail ballots.
The Postal Service should also review the design of mail ballot envelopes to protect "the integrity of Federal elections," the order says.
Collectively, the provisions would be a significant change to how mail ballot programs are currently administered in American elections, which are largely carried out by state and local officials.
"Our government's citizenship lists are incomplete and inaccurate. The United States Postal Service is overburdened and inadequate. This combines a car crash with a train wreck," the Brennan Center for Justice, which advocates for expanded voting access and sued to block Trump's 2025 election executive order, said in a statement.
Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA, wrote on his blog that the order is likely unconstitutional. And regardless, he added, "the timing here makes this virtually impossible to implement in time for November's elections. … It seems highly unlikely any of this could be implemented for 2026, even if it were not blocked by courts."
The order comes as Trump pressures Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping election overhaul that would impose new voter identification and documentation requirements.
That bill is stalled in the Senate due to Democratic opposition and the legislative filibuster.
The Supreme Court is also expected to rule this year on whether Mississippi should be allowed to count mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received by election officials after Election Day.
The legal challenge, which could have sweeping implications for mail voting nationwide, was filed by the Republican National Committee and Trump's 2024 presidential campaign.
Copyright 2026 NPR
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Federal agents stand guard outside of a federal building and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in downtown Los Angeles during a demonstration in June.
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Spencer Platt
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Getty Images
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Topline:
Federal immigration officials arrested more than 14,000 people in the greater Los Angeles area in 2025 — the majority of whom had no criminal record, according to an LAist analysis of new data from the Deportation Data Project.
What’s new: In 2025, federal officials arrested 14,394 people, up from 4,681 the year prior. Forty-six percent of people arrested had criminal convictions, 15% had pending charges and 39% had no criminal charges or convictions.
Why it matters: Federal officials have highlighted the arrests of the “worst of the worst” in the immigration raids that began in June, including "murderers, kidnappers, sexual predators and armed carjackers,” but haven’t published the details of the number of people who had criminal records.
Federal immigration officials arrested more than 14,000 people in the greater Los Angeles area in 2025 — the majority of whom had no criminal record, according to an LAist analysis of new data from the Deportation Data Project.
The data project, an initiative between UCLA and UC Berkeley, publishes federal data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
In 2025, federal officials arrested 14,394 people, up from 4,681 the year prior. Forty-six percent of people arrested had criminal convictions, 15% had pending charges, and 39% had no criminal charges or convictions.
In a December news release, the Department of Homeland Security said it had arrested more than 10,000 people in the L.A. area since immigration raids began in June of last year, including "murderers, kidnappers, sexual predators and armed carjackers,” but did not publish details of the number of people who had criminal records.
The data from the Deportation Data Project shows that arrests in L.A. spiked in June, and about two-thirds of people arrested that month had no criminal convictions.
More than 313,000 people were arrested by ICE nationwide in 2025, according to an LAist analysis.
In a statement, a DHS spokesperson said the agency has not “verified the accuracy, methodology or analysis of the project and its results” and said “this only reveals how data is manipulated to peddle the false narrative that DHS is not targeting the worst of the worst.” The spokesperson said 61% of people ICE arrested across the country either had criminal convictions or pending charges.
The agency has regularly published press releases identifying people they have arrested and who they have called “the worst of the worst,” including from the raids in L.A. in June. But an LAist investigation and reporting from other outlets has found that some of the people on those lists already has been in custody and were serving lengthy sentences.
Like many vendors along the El Salvador Corridor in Pico Union, Maria Godoy sells goods alongside others on the sidewalk of Vermont Avenue between 11th and 12th streets.
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Gary Coronado / For The LA Local
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Topline:
Small businesses struggling financially in the neighborhoods of the neighborhoods of Koreatown, Pico Union, Westlake, MacArthur Park and Highland Park could qualify for to help pay the bills.
About the grants: Individual brick-and-mortar businesses can qualify for grants ranging from $5,000 to $10,000, while street vendors can receive about $3,000, according to city officials. A total of $400,000 is available through the program, and applications are now open. Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez announced the program’s goal, describing it as a way to support locally owned businesses navigating rising operating costs, shifting customer patterns, and the impacts of recent wide-scale events, like the ongoing immigration raids, along with wildfires, and broader economic uncertainty.
Who is eligible: To qualify, businesses must have a valid Los Angeles business license and have been operating in Council District 1 since December 2020, with some flexibility for street vendors. They also need to show they’ve been financially impacted by any largescale events, like the COVID pandemic, immigration enforcement, or the broader economy. Funding will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis, with applications remaining open until funds run out.
Read on . . . for information on how to apply.
Small businesses struggling financially have another program they could qualify for to help pay the bills.
The program is for businesses in Council District 1, which includes the neighborhoods of Koreatown, Pico Union, Westlake, MacArthur Park and Highland Park.
Individual brick-and-mortar businesses can qualify for grants ranging from $5,000 to $10,000, while street vendors can receive about $3,000, according to city officials. A total of $400,000 is available through the program, and applications are now open.
Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez announced the program’s goal, describing it as a way to support locally owned businesses navigating rising operating costs, shifting customer patterns, and the impacts of recent wide-scale events, like the ongoing immigration raids, along with wildfires, and broader economic uncertainty.
Small businesses struggling financially have another program they could qualify for to help pay the bills.
Who is eligible?
The program is open to independently owned businesses and street vendors located within District 1.
To qualify, businesses must have a valid Los Angeles business license and have been operating in Council District 1 since December 2020, with some flexibility for street vendors. They also need to show they’ve been financially impacted by any largescale events, like the COVID pandemic, immigration enforcement, or the broader economy. Businesses that changed owners can also apply if they’re essentially running the same operation.
How can the money be used?
Grants can be used for daily operational expenses, including rent, payroll, utilities, overhead and other business costs. Roochnik said the funding could also help businesses cover missed rent payments.
Who is running the program?
The grants will be distributed in partnership with the PACE Business Development Center and New Economics for Women. The two organizations provide support to small and immigrant-owned businesses across Los Angeles.
How will recipients be selected?
Funding will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis, with applications remaining open until funds run out, Roochnik said.
What’s the goal?
Hernandez said the program is meant to help stabilize neighborhoods that have been affected by immigration enforcement and economic hardships.
“These small businesses are the backbone of our neighborhoods,” she said, adding the funding is meant to help them “stay open, keep workers employed, and continue serving our communities.”
Naomi Villagomez Roochnik, CD1 communications director, said the announcement was made during a press conference at Delicias Bakery and Some, a longtime Latina-owned business in Highland Park. The neighborhood has experienced significant rising rents due to gentrification and the location was meant to highlight the kinds of businesses the program is meant to support.
Is this a one-time program or part of a larger effort?
The grant is part of a pilot program, with the possibility of it expanding depending on demand and outcomes. The council office has launched similar aid efforts in the past, Roochnik said, such as food distribution and rental assistance.
Businesses that may not qualify for this specific grant can be connected to other resources, according to Roochnik, including the city’s legacy business program, which is for businesses operating for at least 20 years.
