The Brief

When Jason Zapata was arrested for allegedly firing a gun into the air, he was thrown in a dimly lit holding cell with trash strewn across the floor and a broken payphone on the wall. It had nothing more than a rusted toilet, sink and three wooden benches that looked as though they had never been cleaned.

Two older men with shaved heads sat in the back, eyeing the 24-year-old’s wristband that the jail used to display his personal information. One was over 6 feet tall and 300 pounds. The other was covered in tattoos from head to foot. They were gang members, they said, in jail for murder.

It was 2015 and Zapata, a slight Hispanic man at 5 feet 9 inches tall and 180 pounds, had never been incarcerated before. His new cellmates in the Riverside County jail told him they had spent years in and out of the most violent prisons. As they boasted about the people they had stabbed to death, Zapata tried to hide how fast his heart was beating.

“Your life is in their hands,” Zapata told CalMatters in a recent interview. “Anything could happen to you in that type of environment. Not everybody makes it out. You gotta do what you need to do to survive in this place.”

When they pressed him about why he was in jail, he tried to tread lightly as he maintained his innocence. But as the hours wore on, the men accused him of disrespecting them by not coming clean. Eventually, they threatened him with a “calentada” — Spanish prison slang for a beating or stabbing.

Three months later, Zapata learned it was all a ruse: His cellmates were undercover law enforcement agents attempting to obtain information about an unsolved murder from the previous year. They were part of what is known as a “Perkins operation,” a controversial law enforcement tactic in which a police officer or civilian poses as an incarcerated person to elicit incriminating statements from a suspect.

Perkins operations are widespread in California and have helped secure hundreds of murder convictions. District attorneys say they are a powerful investigative tool that can exonerate people or solve crimes. The tactic is so popular that law enforcement officials from Riverside County, a hotbed of Perkins operations, share tips on how to conduct them at conferences around the state.

But the operations are under increasing scrutiny from judges, scholars and defense attorneys, who say they are coercive, risk false confessions, and disproportionately target Black and Latino people.

A CalMatters analysis of cases in Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside and Santa Clara counties shows that Perkins operations include false evidence ploys, jail cells outfitted with recording devices, and cash payments of up to $3,000 per day to undercover operatives, also known as Perkins agents. The agents, often described in court filings as older and physically larger than their targets, frequently presented themselves as experienced gang members with a history of violence. In some cases, as many as five were placed in a cell with one person.

“It’s psychological war,” said Michelle Luna Reynoso, a criminal defense attorney in San Diego. “How is this not considered cruel and unusual punishment?”

Riverside County’s Robert Presley Detention Center in downtown Riverside on July 1, 2026.

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Jules Hotz

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for CalMatters

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‘It could happen to anybody’

Zapata grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in Hawthorne. He lived with his parents and older sister in a two-bedroom rental. His father worked at Ford and his mother worked at Verizon. He loved her home-cooked meals, skateboarding with friends through Venice Beach, and listening to Metallica and Tupac.

But when he was 15, Zapata said he was a victim of a violent crime. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. After being shot multiple times, his family moved to Temecula. Their new two-story home, with a pool and palm tree in the backyard, made him feel as though he had made it out of the hood. After high school, he attended community college in San Diego and enrolled in classes on law, business and auto maintenance. He later worked at a Mexican bar and grill, and started an eBay store to sell electronics. And then, suddenly, he was in jail.

The two Perkins agents targeted Zapata after a 15-year-old friend of the victim accused him of the 2014 murder. At the time, she was in custody on an unrelated matter and seeking a deal. She later admitted that her statements were not true, according to court records.

Zapata repeatedly denied involvement. But when the agents threatened him, he feared what they might do, so he told them what they wanted to hear. Still, he says, he never directly admitted to the killing.

A judge set his bail at $1 million. It took roughly eight years for his case to finally come to trial. When it did, prosecutors said his statements to the Perkins agents amounted to a confession. The jury agreed. He was sentenced to 25 years to life for murder in January 2024.

“It was heartbreaking to hear the verdict,” Zapata said. “It could happen to anybody.”

Earlier this year, California’s 4th District Court of Appeal reversed Zapata’s conviction after finding that law enforcement violated his rights during the Perkins operation.

The ruling, which granted Zapata a new trial, could have wide-ranging implications for other Perkins cases, at least 10 of which are now stacked before the California Supreme Court. Of those, four defendants are Hispanic, four are Black and two are white. The youngest was 18 years old at the time of the Perkins operation.

Many of the cases center on similar issues. In some, defendants allege that Perkins agents coaxed them to waive their Miranda rights to remain silent or consult an attorney before a formal police interrogation. In others, defendants argue agents coerced them into making incriminating statements after they repeatedly invoked their Miranda rights.

California has seen previous legislative and legal challenges to Perkins operations, but its high court has never intervened.

In 2019, the California Supreme Court rejected a petition to review the case of a Kern County man who was targeted in a Perkins operation one day after he invoked his Miranda rights in a police interrogation.

Although the court declined to hear the case, Justice Goodwin Liu had harsh words for law enforcement.

“The use of deceptive schemes to elicit confessions from suspects who have invoked their Miranda rights appears to be a pervasive police practice in California,” he wrote. “How is it possible, one might ask, that the protections of Miranda are so easily evaded?”

The Miranda loophole

Perkins operations are distinct because of their timing: They typically take place after a person has been arrested and before charges are filed. That timing is critical, because once someone has been formally charged, Sixth Amendment rights kick in and the person cannot be interrogated without a lawyer present.

Protections under the Fifth Amendment, including Miranda rights, guarantee that a suspect will not be subject to custodial interrogation without a warning. Those protections, resulting from the famous 1966 United States Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona, are designed to guard against coercion in a police-dominated environment. Once invoked, all interrogation must stop.

But roughly two decades later, the court held that statements made by a suspect during a Perkins operation are voluntary; therefore, Miranda does not apply.

The 1990 ruling hinged on the case of Lloyd Perkins, who was placed in an Illinois jail cell with an undercover police officer and an incarcerated informant. They roped him into a fake plan to escape from jail. As their planning was underway, they asked him if he had ever “done” anybody. He responded by implicating himself in a murder that took place years earlier. Perkins later argued that his statements should not have been admissible because he was not advised of his Miranda rights beforehand.

In an 8-to-1 decision, the high court disagreed. So long as suspects do not know they are speaking with a government agent, justices reasoned, the pressures that exist in a custodial interrogation are absent.

“When a suspect considers himself in the company of cellmates and not officers, the coercive atmosphere is lacking,” former Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion. “Miranda forbids coercion, not mere strategic deception by taking advantage of a suspect’s misplaced trust in one he supposes to be a fellow prisoner.”

Alexandra Natapoff, a professor at Harvard Law School and one of the nation’s leading experts on confidential informants, said the decision created a loophole in Miranda.

“Perkins operations are efforts by law enforcement to take advantage of the loophole to get confessions by using informants, without triggering a finding that the suspect is actually being interrogated — in other words, being pressured in a police-dominated atmosphere to confess,” she said.

Natapoff said the use of informants and Perkins operations, in particular, are coercive, inhumane and lack transparency.

“Maybe the most famous problem with the use of informants — famous because it gets litigated the most — is the unreliability,” she said. “We know that people falsely confess to crimes they didn’t do because they feel like they need to posture or brag or protect themselves from their cellmates.”

But Greg Totten, chief executive officer of the California District Attorneys Association, said prosecutors view statements in the context of the overall case.

“We look for corroboration, when we can find it, to make sure that the statements are intrinsically accurate and sound. We do our due diligence,” he said. “In the justice system, we have a responsibility not just to secure convictions but to protect the innocent from being prosecuted.”

‘They wouldn’t stop questioning me’ 

The two Perkins agents in Zapata’s case shared a cell with him for a total of three hours and 20 minutes, according to court records. The cell was electronically monitored in real-time by James Dickey, a Riverside County Sheriff’s investigator.

After about an hour, the Perkins agents had not obtained any information about the murder, so Dickey pulled Zapata out of the cell. He took him upstairs and had him stand in a police lineup. On his way back to the cell, Dickey told Zapata that somebody had identified him as the shooter. It was a lie.

According to court records, Dickey asked Zapata whether he wanted to speak with him about the murder. At that point, Zapata invoked his right to legal counsel, saying he would not talk without an attorney present.

When Dickey returned Zapata to his cell, he announced he would be charging him with murder. He closed the cell door and walked away. No lawyer was provided.

Dickey’s gambit was the first of at least three so-called stimulation tactics that law enforcement used on Zapata, according to court records. Because people in jail are often reticent to openly discuss their charges, the ploys are intended to “stimulate” conversation by introducing new information. That can include fabricated DNA results, lineups or video surveillance that officers like Dickey present to suspects to get them to unwittingly talk about the case with the person they think is their cellmate.

Iris Blandón-Gitlin, a psychology professor at California State University Fullerton who studies Perkins operations, said the false evidence ploy is a “very dangerous tactic” because it risks coercion, false confessions and erroneous information.

“It manipulates people’s reality,” she said. “And so they believe it. They don’t understand it, but they believe it and so they choose to confess — even falsely.”

When the Perkins agents overheard Dickey say Zapata would be charged with murder, they immediately began peppering him with questions, according to court records.

“They wouldn’t stop questioning me,” Zapata testified at trial.

Zapata continued to deny the allegations, but according to court transcripts reviewed by CalMatters, the agents told him they didn’t believe him and said he was disrespecting them by not divulging details. That was when Zapata said they began to threaten him with a “calentada.”

“There was no doubt in my mind that I was in imminent danger … At that point I continued to lie and say what I said,” Zapata said. “I wouldn’t have said what I said if it wasn’t for the threats.”

When Dickey took the stand, he described his observations from across the jail, where he was watching a live feed of the operation.

“The atmosphere was upbeat,” he said. “Aggressive is not anything that I observed. Threatening was not anything I observed.”

But many parts of the recording were inaudible.

“It’s, in my view, a very poor quality tape,” said Riverside County Superior Court Judge John Davis, who eventually allowed portions of the tape to be admitted.

Hundreds of convictions

Zapata’s case unfolded about a year after Riverside County’s first Perkins operation. Since then, Dickey and others in the Riverside County District Attorney’s office have traveled the state to train law enforcement on the tactic.

In 2024, Dickey and Riverside County Deputy District Attorney David Tahan delivered a presentation at a Deputy District Attorney Association Homicide Symposium in Santa Rosa. Along with their formal titles, they introduced themselves as the “Perkins coordinator” for their respective agencies and said they had conducted hundreds of operations throughout California.

CalMatters obtained their slide presentation through a California Public Records Act request from the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office, which attended the symposium. The office initially refused to release the document, agreeing to make it public only after attorneys from the Covington & Burling law firm wrote demand letters on CalMatters’ behalf.

The presentation reveals that Riverside County conducted its first Perkins operation in 2014. Its Perkins operation program, which Dickey and Tahan referred to as “a state model,” runs multiple operations each week — approximately half of which are conducted for unnamed outside agencies. Over half of the operations involve gang-related murders, they said.

Dickey and the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department declined CalMatters’ request for an interview. Tahan and the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to multiple interview requests.

The 66-slide presentation included recommendations for recruiting agents, how to time arrests and “recipes for success.” Dickey and Tahan outlined the steps in an operation, starting with meetings and recorded pre-briefs. From there, the operation begins, stimulations follow, then an interview, and a recorded debrief. It concludes with “proper reporting / discovery.”

According to Dickey and Tahan, Riverside County Perkins operations are modeled after programs developed by the sheriff’s department and district attorney’s office in Los Angeles County, where the operations are prolific.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office established uniform procedures for Perkins operations in February 2017, according to public records obtained by CalMatters attorneys. Former Chief Deputy District Attorney John Spillane announced the new procedures in a special directive, requiring that deputies submit a filing checklist, pretrial discovery checklist and case closing checklist for all Perkins operations.

Court records from a case filed before the California Supreme Court this year show that 85 out of 400 murder convictions involving Perkins operations in Los Angeles County occurred after a suspect had invoked their Miranda rights. That accounting was from just one of several units within the office, suggesting the number is likely much higher, according to the records.

“These operations produce conviction after conviction,” said Scott Sanders, a criminal defense attorney who exposed the illegal use of jailhouse informants in Orange County more than a decade ago. “It’s a really rich zone for tons of misconduct. These cases are going to the Supreme Court because it’s an issue that is paramount to understanding how far law enforcement can go in these operations … These are the lines that you would think are too far.”

‘A linebacker sized’ cellmate

All 10 Perkins challenges before the California Supreme Court come from San Diego, Riverside and Los Angeles counties. The earliest dates to 2014.

One involves Michael Goehner, who was sentenced to 48 years to life in prison for murder in March 2024. Goehner, who is white, has maintained his innocence since his arrest in August 2021, when he was 25. In his petition, he alleged that two Perkins agents repeatedly discouraged him from speaking to an attorney and instead advised him to claim self-defense when he spoke with law enforcement.

In another case, David Allen, who is Black, was arrested on suspicion of murder in 2016 in Los Angeles County when he was 28. During an interrogation, officers lied and told him they had clear evidence he was guilty, which Allen repeatedly denied.

After he invoked his right to remain silent four times, court records show detectives unlawfully continued their interrogation. They told him he wouldn’t see his daughter again “because (he) refused to tell the truth,” according to court filings. He eventually admitted he had acted as the lookout during the shooting. But his statements could not be used in court, a prosecutor later told the detectives, “unless Allen could be made to repeat the statement to an undercover police agent.”

Three days later, Allen found himself in a cell with a man who introduced himself as a gang member. Allen was convicted of murder and sentenced to 45 years to life in prison after making incriminating statements to the Perkins agent. In a petition to the California Supreme Court, he argued that his Fifth Amendment and federal due process rights were violated and called for his convictions to be reversed.

“By deliberately creating a coercive jailhouse setting and inserting a linebacker-sized ‘gang’ cellmate to draw appellant into incriminating discussion, law enforcement did precisely what these cases forbid: It used deception and a proxy to bypass an already-triggered constitutional protection,” Allen’s attorney wrote in the petition.

Detainees walk through an outdoor yard at the Theo Lacy Facility in Orange on March 14, 2017.

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Jeff Gritchen , Orange County Register via Getty Images

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Orange County Register via Getty Images

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The California District Attorneys Association and the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office maintained Allen’s statements were voluntary, and argued that Perkins operations can benefit both the prosecution and the defense. In court filings, the office said the operations are “vital to the truth-finding process” in its Justice Conviction Review Unit, which reviews claims of innocence. Since the unit opened in 2015, the office claimed roughly one third of its 16 exonerations resulted from Perkins operations.

“In each of these cases, the evidence from Perkins operations completely proved the convicted defendant’s innocence,” attorneys wrote. “These innocent individuals would not have been exonerated but for the Perkins operations.”

But Jasmin Harris, director of policy for the California Innocence Coalition, said the office has misrepresented the ‘success’ of Perkins operations.

“It’s quite a stretch — a step too far — for them to claim that this is a tool when, really, it’s just a tool for them to feel better about reversing a conviction after the petitioner has met the legal standard,” she said. “We don’t think that deception should be used on the front side or the back side of a conviction.”

Racial disparities in who’s targeted

The California Public Defenders Association and American Civil Liberties Union urged the California Supreme Court to look closely at the highly coordinated police practice because they say it produces extreme racial disparities and perpetuates racially biased policing.

“Perkins operations are often framed as ‘gang’ investigations, which have long been directed at historically over-policed communities of color,” attorneys wrote in a brief filed in support of Allen.

They cited recent data from Riverside County Public Defender’s Office, which found significant racial disparities when it analyzed 881 murder cases between January 2015 and June 2023, including 145 Perkins targets. The analysis showed Black defendants were more than four times as likely to be targeted in a Perkins operation than white defendants. Latino defendants were targeted at over twice the rate of white defendants, they found.

Martín Flores, a gang expert who specializes in Perkins operations, has testified in more than 100 cases throughout San Diego, Riverside, Orange, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties that involved an operation. He said agents present themselves as “active, older homies with influence in the county jail and in the streets.”

“It’s someone who, in perception, can make your life miserable or harmful in the county jail,” he said. “In my opinion, most of these Perkins operations, it’s about impressing that agent…And why does that matter? Because it's survival. If you look weak and vulnerable, you're going to become the prey.”

The San Diego Central Jail in downtown San Diego on Aug. 3, 2023.

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Kristian Carreon

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for CalMatters

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Public defenders in San Diego have also voiced concern over racial bias in Perkins operations. In an analysis of roughly 40 Perkins operations, they found agents consistently used racially discriminatory language, including slurs and cultural stereotyping, to develop a false sense of rapport and generate incriminating statements.

Those findings were raised in the case of Adrian Rodriquez, a young Hispanic man who was in juvenile detention for violating his probation in May 2023. Rodriquez, then 18, was transferred to an adult jail, where he shared a cell with two Perkins agents who identified themselves as gang members. One had devil horn tattoos across his bald head and said he had stabbed his cellmate 70 times while serving time in federal prison for attempted murder, according to court filings.

Law enforcement later told Rodriquez that he had been booked for murder. His case has not yet gone to trial and he has pleaded not guilty.

In October 2025, Rodriquez filed California’s first-ever Racial Justice Act petition regarding a Perkins operation. The law, passed in 2020, allows people to challenge a prosecution, conviction or sentence that they believe was based upon racial bias. The San Diego Superior Court last month found that Rodriquez met his burden to proceed to an evidentiary hearing.

In his petition, Rodriquez argued that the Perkins agent exhibited bias toward him by exploiting his Latino identity, leading him to make incriminating statements. It detailed how an agent used “racialized manipulation” during the operation, including the use of the n-word nearly 70 times.

An expert analysis included in his petition found that Hispanic defendants in San Diego County are twice as likely to be targeted in a Perkins operation compared to white defendants. The odds go up for Hispanic teenagers, according to court filings, which said they are seven times more likely to be the subject of a Perkins operation compared to white teenagers.

San Diego District Attorney Summer Stephan told CalMatters in an interview that Perkins operations “are applied across the board, wherever it appears that a heartless murder can benefit…no matter what the race, what the gender, what the orientation, what the cultural background or anything is.”

She said Perkins operations, if done meticulously, are one of the best tools to pursue the truth. The operation is resource-intensive, she said, which means that everything must be done by the book.

“Like every tool that is available to pursue justice, it can be misused,” she said. “You can take almost any tool and if you don’t do it correctly and by the book, you’re going to mess it up. It’s not a reflection on the investigative tool being used, it’s a reflection on the people using it and that they’re not using it correctly.”

Zapata awaiting new trial

Roughly a decade after Zapata found himself in a cell with two Perkins agents, he was granted a new trial. The 4th District Court of Appeal ruled his statements should not have been admitted at trial. Zapata said he was speechless. He paced around his cell as he read through the decision.

“When a suspect invokes and does not waive the right to counsel, and a known law enforcement officer continues to ‘stimulate’ a Perkins operation in a manner that amounts to a custodial interrogation, the suspect’s resulting incriminating statements are inadmissible,” the justices wrote.

One month later, the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office requested that the California Supreme Court throw out the appellate opinion, arguing that it contradicts settled case law and creates confusion.

On May 13, the California Supreme Court rejected the request. That means Zapata will soon be transported from prison to a Riverside County jail where he will await a new trial.

Zapata said it is a win for now. He is trying to stay positive, knowing that he is returning to a county where he believes misconduct runs rampant.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get a fair trial when I go back,” he said. “I’m fighting for my life at this point. I know I’m innocent so the truth shall set me free. I’m hoping that when I get there, they recognize it and act accordingly. Hopefully, I’ll be able to be home soon.”

Cayla Mihalovich is a California Local News fellow.

Robert Meeks contributed to this story. 

This project was completed with the support of a grant from Columbia University's Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Artist Hedy Torres asked a 20-something student from Cal State Northridge to sit for a portrait nearly a decade ago. Using charcoal on paper, she drew the dark-haired young man in black and white — but she deliberately kept the portrait unfinished.

The idea was that she would complete the piece if her subject, a DACA recipient named Lino de Jesús Pérez Cuevas, ever attained lawful permanent residency.

And now he has.

DACA, which stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is a program that provides two-year work permits and deportation relief for people who were brought to the U.S. as children. The permits can be renewed, but the program does not grant a pathway to citizenship. 

In late September, Pérez Cuevas — who is now married, a father, a green card holder and an adjunct instructor at his alma mater — sat with Torres once again.

Torres’ project involves interviewing subjects as she sketches them. This year, she invited the public to watch her complete the portrait as she spoke to Pérez Cuevas about what it took for him to get a green card and what that means for his life.

About two dozen people gathered at a community center in West Hollywood’s Plummer Park to see her add details to the piece that speak to the passing of time.

“I just wanted to make people empathetic to what [immigrants] go through during this process,” she said. “You have to be very patient. There is a lot of uncertainty.”

Responding to the potential loss of relief

Pérez Cuevas, who was born in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, was brought to the U.S. by his parents when he was 2.

When Torres drew him in 2017, he was pursuing a master’s degree in kinesiology at Cal State Northridge. That year, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced intentions to rescind DACA, which had enabled him to set goals without the fear of being deported. A 2020 Supreme Court decision allowed the program to continue.

Torres was once undocumented herself, so she understood the 2017 announcement was earth-shattering for the approximately 800,000 people who were then in the program, she said.

The original, unfinished portrait of Lino de Jesús Pérez Cuevas.

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Courtesy

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Hedy Torres

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That year, Torres was also a student at CSUN, working toward a master’s in fine art.

She recalled recently that she wanted people to see DACA recipients as people, not numbers. And so, for her master's project, she proposed creating portraits of DACA beneficiaries.

The portraits would be rooted in interviews conducted as she drew her subjects. Leaving them unfinished, she said, would symbolize the precarity of the moment.

The pieces would have enough detail for viewers to see the subjects’ faces clearly, particularly their eyes and expressions. Other elements, including their bodies and clothing, would be more of an initial sketch.

The university greenlit her project and gave her a grant to pursue it. There was just one problem: Torres had to convince reticent DACA recipients to share their stories.

Building trust 

When Torres first messaged Pérez Cuevas about the project, he ignored her for two weeks, he said. But because they had a mutual friend, he eventually agreed to meet with her.

“I was trying to see whether this person was just an academic trying to complete a project for her own benefit, or whether she really cared about the community,” he told LAist.

They met at a coffee shop. Pérez Cuevas learned about the artist’s journey from the Mexican state of Colima and everything she’d lived through since.

Before 2015, for example, an undocumented person in California could not get a driver’s license. When she was undocumented, Torres was stopped by police and had her car impounded. She said he had to cobble together thousands of dollars to get her car back from a tow yard.

Pérez Cuevas could relate. He had experienced the same thing.

He decided to trust her.

After she drew him, Pérez Cuevas helped Torres connect with more DACA recipients at the university. She drew four other portraits, which were also left unfinished.

These works were acquired by the university, with the agreement that Torres would be able to borrow and complete them when — and if — her subjects attained lawful permanent residency.

Community members watch Artist Hedy Torres update the portrait at Plummer Park in West Hollywood.

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Julia Barajas

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LAist

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‘A sense of freedom’  

As she worked on the portrait, Torres added soft lines rendered in charcoal to the image of Pérez Cuevas’ face, along with a robust mustache. And she continued the interview.

“What did you imagine your life would be like when you were young?” Torres asked.

Thinking back to high school, Pérez Cuevas said he realized then that not having a social security number barred him from decent-paying work.

“I didn't really understand what I was doing with my life,” he said, adding that he used to not think higher education was for him even while he was at CSUN. “My state of mind was really dark back then.”

He credited a college counselor with helping him navigate school.

Pérez Cuevas said he has intimate knowledge of what it’s like to live with constant uncertainty: not knowing how he would pay for college because he did not qualify for federal financial aid; not being able to travel outside the country; and waiting anxiously for federal officials to make decisions on immigration laws that could transform his life.

“I can't stress enough how difficult it is psychologically to wait because it's something that can revolutionize your life,” he said. “You're betting your whole life on this approval and just that suspense of waiting, waiting, waiting, living with that anxiety.”

Torres completed her portrait of Pérez Cuevas in September 2026. Four other portraits remain unfinished.

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Julia Barajas

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LAist

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U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services continues to process renewal requests for existing DACA recipients, but the agency is no longer approving first-time applications.

Under the second Trump administration, DACA recipients are also experiencing significant delays with renewals. Some have lost their jobs. Recipients have been deported. According to the agency, the median processing time for DACA renewals was one month in 2023. Currently, it’s taking seven months to process most cases.

Pérez Cuevas said he was able to adjust his immigration status after marrying a U.S. citizen and consulting with an attorney. His lawyer helped him secure a document that allowed noncitizens to travel abroad and seek legal re-entry.

“Did getting permanent residency give you a sense of freedom, a freedom you probably didn't have when you were under DACA?” Torres asked him.

“Absolutely,” Pérez Cuevas said. “The biggest freedom was psychological freedom. You have this weight that you've been carrying all these years that finally just gets thrown off your shoulders.”

One of the things he feared most was long-term separation from his parents, he said.

When his mother and father migrated to the U.S., they did not see their own parents — his grandparents — for 40 years, Pérez Cuevas added. After his parents moved back to Mexico during the pandemic, he feared they would also go decades without seeing each other.

But having a green card enables him to travel and see his family.

Pérez Cuevas told Torres that, paradoxically, the threat of losing DACA made him “weirdly ambitious."

He said he doubled down on his studies and took on every internship he could. He figured that if the U.S. decided to deport him, he’d still have his education and work experience.

“Even on the days where I didn't necessarily have the greatest energy or the greatest state of mind, I showed up for myself,” Pérez Cuevas said.

Southern California is expected to see the longest heat wave of the season.

The National Weather Service has issued an extreme heat warning for the greater Los Angeles area from Friday through at least next Thursday, and forecasters say it’ll likely extend beyond that.

Temperatures are expected to be in the mid-90s to mid-100s, even in coastal areas.

“Unfortunately, we don't really see an end to it as far as we can tell, and that's probably the biggest thing we wanna highlight, is that while we have had hotter events this season already, this one might be the longest-lasting,” said Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Kittell said they expect to see a few daily records to be broken.

Southern California saw a record-breaking 10-day heat wave in the summer of 2022.

What does the hot weather mean for fire risk? 

Forecasters say conditions likely won’t meet the threshold for issuing red flag warnings (extremely dry air and windy conditions), but the risk of fire is still going to be high during the heat wave.

“It’s still concerning, and if a fire were to get started in the wrong area, it could grow pretty fast,” Kittell said. “ We do have a history of large fires in similar environments with similar heat, similar time of the year.”

As of Thursday afternoon, Southern California Edison said nearly 10,000 customers in parts of Riverside County were under consideration for power shutoffs, which are used to reduce the risk of electrical equipment starting a fire.

How do we manage through the heat? 

Kittell said people should make plans to stay cool during the long heat wave, and check in on neighbors who are elderly, or on families with young children.

Officials say residents should limit outdoor activities to the early morning hours, stay in air-conditioned places in the afternoon and evening hours, and stay hydrated.

When Naoko Takei Moore, the author of Simply Donabe, was growing up in Tokyo, some of her earliest memories were of the family donabe.

Donabe, which means “clay pot” in Japanese, is an earthenware cooking vessel that has been part of Japanese home cooking for centuries.

On weekends, her mother would set the donabe on a tabletop burner at the center of the table, with the broth already made and the ingredients prepped. She would let Moore, then about 4, add them to the pot.

"It made me feel like I was cooking it," Moore said. "I was a hero."

Her late mother had one piece of advice about the pot: “Just let the donabe do the work for you."

That’s what Moore wants to do at our latest Cookbook Live at the Crawford in Pasadena on Thursday Oct. 8, in partnership with the James Beard Foundation.

What a donabe can do 

"Just let the donabe do the work for you," Moore's late mother used to say.

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Matt Russell

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Courtesy Naoko Takei Moore

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Because the clay is porous, a donabe heats slowly and retains heat long after the flame is off, allowing savory, umami-rich flavors to build without heavy seasoning. It handles almost anything: hot pots, rice, braises, soups, stews and steamed dishes.

"If you have good ingredients, you really don't need to cover up the flavors with so many different things," Moore said.

In Japan, it's often served as a communal pot meal, set at the center of the table so everyone can cook and eat together.

Donabe in L.A.

When Moore moved to L.A. in 2001, she found that her friends loved sushi and ramen, but thought Japanese home cooking was too complicated. The donabe dinners she hosted changed their minds.

On a trip home to Tokyo, she tasted rice cooked in a donabe made by Nagatani-en, an eighth-generation kiln in Iga founded in 1832.

"Oh my gosh, what is this about this particular donabe?" she remembered thinking. She contacted the kiln and began importing its pots.

Moore's West Hollywood shop, TOIRO, carries an array of artisan donabe that she selects herself.

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Courtesy Naoko Takei Moore

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Moore launched TOIRO in 2008 as an online import business, shipping orders from her basement and teaching donabe classes in her home kitchen. She opened the West Hollywood shop in 2017.

"First I had to start by telling people how to pronounce it," she said. (It's doh-nah-bay.)

Now, she said, major publications print "donabe" without translating it, and in 2015 she co-wrote her first book on the subject. Simply Donabe is her second.

What's cooking Oct. 8

Naoko Takei Moore's new cookbook, Simply Donabe: Japanese One-Pot Recipes.

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Courtesy Naoko Takei Moore

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For Moore, the upcoming cooler weather means hot pot season.

"The season is changing, and it's getting cooler, which I love," she said. "I love making all different kinds of hot pot dishes."

Onstage, she'll make a chicken-and-lemon hot pot from the new book, with sweet saikyo miso, kabocha squash, enoki mushrooms, spinach and thinly sliced lemon.

"I hope you'll be surprised how simple it is," she said. "And I hope you get to smell it."

As the city of Los Angeles continues to struggle to reduce traffic deaths, local officials are planning to use new cameras to detect speeding drivers.

In a Thursday news conference, city leaders said that by the end of the year, cameras at 125 locations throughout the city will all be online. The first cameras will be operational by the end of October.

“Speed is the primary difference between a crash that injures and a crash that kills,” said L.A. Department of Transportation General Manager Laura Rubio-Cornejo at the news conference, held near an elementary school in East Hollywood where crews have installed a camera.

In the last decade, between 250 and 350 people in the city have died every year from traffic collisions. LAPD data from the end of September show that traffic deaths are up 14% compared with last year.

A program launched under former Mayor Eric Garcetti, known as Vision Zero, aimed to reduce traffic fatalities to zero by 2025. Instead, last year, 290 people died in traffic fatalities, exceeding homicides for the third year in a row.

“The implementation of speed safety systems in the city of Los Angeles is as groundbreaking and potentially lifesaving as the implementation of seat belts,” said Damian Kevitt, the head of the nonprofit Streets are for Everyone, which has long advocated for the cameras.

Where are the cameras and how will they work?

Each of the 125 locations will have two cameras monitoring cars traveling in both directions.

You can see an interactive map of camera locations here. LAist reported on the city’s methodology for choosing locations earlier this year.

If a driver is going at least 11 mph above the posted speed limit, a camera will capture a photo of the rear of the vehicle, including the rear license plate.

“This information is and will remain the sole property of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation,” Rubio-Cornejo said. “It cannot be shared with any law enforcement agencies without a court-issued subpoena.”

After the cameras at each of the locations are installed, there will be a 60-day period during which speeding drivers will receive a warning.

Citations and fines, which range from $50 to $500 depending on the severity of the speeding, will follow the warning period.

All warnings, citations and fines will be mailed to the registered owner of the offending vehicle.

Revenue generated from the cameras is required by state legislation to be invested in the city’s efforts to make streets safer.

Evidence from other cities show cameras deter speeding

L.A. is one of several cities permitted to pilot the speed cameras by state legislation authored by then-Assemblymember Laura Friedman.

“We have people who walk around our community every single day, who more and more are the victims of traffic violence from drivers who are driving recklessly and with a wanton disregard for the safety of other people,” said Friedman, who is now a Democratic U.S. Representative for California’s 30th Congressional District.

San Francisco deployed its cameras in May 2025. A year into the program, the city’s transportation agency said it had observed an 80% drop in speeding cars at camera locations. Two-thirds of drivers who were warned about or cited for speeding did not get another ticket, according to the agency.

The data is similar in Oakland, which launched its cameras in January. The Oakland Department of Transportation said that within six months, the number of cars speeding dropped by an average of 70% across the locations compared to baseline data it collected before the cameras were installed.

Other L.A. County cities, including Malibu, Glendale and Long Beach, are also participating in the program.