The Brief

The Trump administration is shifting its tone on how it handles immigrants brought to the U.S. as children under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Also known as DACA, the program was created in 2012 to protect children who arrived in the country illegally prior to 2007 from deportation.

In recent months, the administration has tried to strip 525,000 DACA recipients, also known as Dreamers, of benefits, although no regulatory changes have been made to end the program.

For example, the Health and Human Services Department said it would make DACA recipients ineligible for the federal healthcare marketplace in June. Then last week, the Education Department said it was looking into five universities that offer financial help for DACA recipients. Also, immigration enforcement officers have arrested and detained DACA recipients throughout the country, which immigrant advocates said weakens protections of this group.

"Illegal aliens who claim to be recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) are not automatically protected from deportations," DHS assistant press secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to NPR. "DACA does not confer any form of legal status in this country."

McLaughlin added that any DACA recipient may be subject to arrest and deportation for a number of reasons, including if they've committed a crime. McLaughlin then urged recipients to self-deport.

"We encourage every person here illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the chance to come back to the U.S. the right legal way," McLaughlin said.

The call for self-deportation of DACA recipients sends another mixed message in the administration's immigration enforcement policy. At the start of the 2024 presidential campaign, now-White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said President Trump would end the program. After winning the election, Trump said he wanted DACA recipients to stay.

"We've known that DACA remains a program that has been temporary. We've sounded the alarms over that," said Anabel Mendoza, communications director for United We Dream, an immigrant youth organization. "What we are seeing now is that DACA is being chipped away at."

What are DACA's protections?

DACA offers temporary protection from deportation but is not an immediate path to citizenship or a green card. Participants in the program have to renew their protection every two years.

It provides a work permit and can be adjusted if a person leaves the U.S. and comes back with a visa or marries a U.S. citizen, among other options.

When it was created under the Obama administration, the program took eligible children "out of the immigration enforcement system," said Claire McNulty, a former DHS Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who worked at the department when DACA was created. McNulty was later politically appointed by former President Joe Biden to a senior counselor position in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

"If somebody was eligible for DACA, that might mean that they would be released from detention or their case in the immigration court system would be administratively closed so that they could then pursue that sort of administrative relief," McNulty said.

The roughly 500,000 DACA recipients — counted as of the second quarter of this year — are from more than 150 countries. The majority are from Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala, according to the USCIS. Most recipients are 35 years old or younger, but some are in their late 30s and early 40s.

So far there has been no effort by this second Trump administration to rescind the program, as Trump tried in his first term. A lawsuit filed by Texas is challenging the program's protections from deportations and work permits for participants in the state.

"The notion that it does not provide protection is simply false," said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, adding that there are reasons DACA protections can be revoked from an individual, including being charged with a crime, which would make them vulnerable to deportation.

Other lawyers point to infractions like driving under the influence of alcohol as a reason DACA and its protections can be revoked.

Saenz said DACA should provide protection from being caught up in a raid by immigration agents or indiscriminately targeted for arrest on the street.

If the administration wanted to take steps to change that, it would need to submit a proposed rule change with the Federal Register, or at least publicly state that position, neither of which has been done, he said. But the administration, he said, appears to have a broader approach to immigration enforcement that's sweeping in DACA recipients.

"Reported arrests of DACA recipients has other DACA recipients very concerned and we've heard it from them," Saenz said.

Enforcement incidents lead to fear

In March, officials deported Evenezer Cortez Martinez, a DACA recipient in Missouri, to Mexico.

He was allowed to return after two weeks. In California, DACA recipients have been detained after a worksite raid and an accidental wrong turn off the freeway. In Florida, a DACA recipient was among the first held at the newly opened Everglades detention center.

"This administration is very strict on how they're applying all of the law and how they're interpreting all of the law. DACA at least used to be a topic that was much more sympathetic in politics," Mendoza said. "And that sympathy is now less and less."

Polls conducted over the last five years have shown most Americans support the creation of a legal pathway for DACA recipients. With respect to polling on Trump's immigration policies overall, 43% approve of his handling of the issue so far, according to the most recent NPR/PBS News/Marist poll published earlier this month.

Reyna Montoya is the founder of Aliento, a nonprofit that supports DACA recipients and other immigrants, and is a DACA recipient herself. She has been involved with advocating for DACA since 2010. Now 34, she said she has spent most of her young adult life advocating for the program.

"It's been a roller coaster between the three branches of government," Montoya said, adding that the mixed messaging from the administration is adding to the fear. "My livelihood and the livelihood of so many Dreamers is at stake and that we could potentially be subject to being deported to countries that we don't really know or we don't call home."

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That ocean breeze is just not cutting it in schools in Torrance and Long Beach as Southern California reels from a heat wave.

Parents have taken to social media, created petitions and are proposing a bond measure in order to address the sweltering classrooms as temperatures hit triple digits in some areas.

Only 25% of Torrance Unified classrooms have air conditioning, according to a district spokesperson. And while 90% of Long Beach Unified schools have air conditioning, the schools without air conditioning have to bear this heat spell until the end of 2027 when new air conditioning will be in all classrooms.

What are schools doing to beat the heat?

In Long Beach, the district says there are portable fans in classrooms without AC and the district has installed heat-blocking window covers.

"The things that we do immediately and have been doing for several years, hydration stations,” Keith Butler, the deputy superintendent at TUSD, told the school board early this week. “So our nutrition services freezes blocks of ice, puts them into containers with water, and students are — and staff are able to rotate through and at least get ice water.”

There is also a classroom rotation system so everyone gets a turn in cooling zones, he said.

Can schools close on extreme heat days?

Eric Mitchell, a spokesperson for LBUSD, told LAist, “The District will not close schools because of extreme weather unless the City of Long Beach Public Health Department or a state-authorized emergency response agency directs it.”

Baillie echoed his words adding that a state-declared emergency allows schools to close temporarily without needing to make up teaching time. School funding is dependent on attendance and instructional time.

If a local emergency is declared, school districts, she said, must consult with labor unions to adjust the school schedule to either extend the school year or move to a student-free professional development day.

“Our district is actively discussing creating union-approved ‘weather days’ that would provide a mechanism to adjust the schedule,” Baillie said. “Thresholds would be part of that discussion and might focus on when national weather alerts elevate a heat advisory to an extreme heat event, as they did this week.”

So how can Torrance get ACs in the classroom?

School districts like Torrance pay for facility upgrades like new ACs through district issued bond measures. A school district takes a loan and the people in that city pay back that loan through an increase in their property taxes. That is because there is no specific state allocation of funding for major upgrades or construction. Most of the money schools get from the state is spent on instruction and other student services. There have been some occasional grant programs, like CalShape, but no ongoing source of funding.

This week, a petition to get TUSD to place a bond measure on the ballot to fund ACs has already garnered over 1500 signatures.

But, Baillie said, “Third-party polling completed earlier this year showed a willingness to vote for additional future bonds; however, when specifically asked about the costs of specific bonds to fund the $520 million needed to upgrade the electrical systems and install AC at all 34 campuses, polling showed there would not be enough support (bonds require 55% +1 of voters in an election) to pass a bond for AC.”

And so the bond measure was not placed on the upcoming ballot.

Butler, the deputy superintendent, explained during this week’s school board meeting that parents cannot simply donate an AC unit.

“ One [reason] is it's not super effective to have a typical window unit from a home that would be trying to cool a 960 sq. ft. classroom with 27 students and a teacher, maybe an instructional aide,” he said. “But the bigger issue is the ones that are large enough to really do that, the room has to have a large electrical load, and our electrical system within our buildings where most of them were built in the 1960s, it's just not meant to handle what it does.”

LAist reporter Mariana Dale contributed to this article. 

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office is hosting a buyback event Sunday where people can exchange their e-bikes and e-motorcycles for up to $1,000 in gift cards. The goal is to reduce the number of illegal bikes on the road, and give parents an incentive to get dangerous vehicles out of kids’ hands.

“These vehicles are not child’s play, and the consequences are incredibly dangerous and increasingly deadly,” DA Todd Spitzer said in a news release announcing the event.

Communities in Orange County have been grappling with a surge in e-bikes and e-motos on the road, including among young kids, and an accompanying increase in serious crashes.

“Our area has pretty much the highest concentration of e-bike injuries and e-bike accidents in the country,” said Dr. Tetsuya Takeuchi, the trauma medical director at Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo.

Takeuchi said  just over 70% of the children treated at the hospital for e-bike injuries had some level of head injury, “from a simple concussion to devastating brain damage, brain bleed and skull fracture."

A lot of those injuries are among teenagers not wearing helmets, he said. Plus, many e-bikes on the market are too heavy and fast for children to control, Takeuchi said.

Besides safety concerns, tensions have flared with other drivers, pedestrians, and neighbors in areas with heavy concentrations of e-bikes.

Newport-Mesa Unified School District became one of the first districts in the country this year to restrict e-bikes to high school campuses only. District leaders say the policy is working to disincentivize young students from riding e-bikes to school. But at one middle school, students with e-bikes have opted to ride them anyway, parking in the surrounding neighborhood and raising the ire of homeowners.

The DA’s approach

The DA’s office has started to target parents who allow their children to ride e-bikes and e-motorcycles that have been illegally modified for high speeds, sometimes with deadly consequences. In April, the district attorney filed child endangerment charges against a mother from Aliso Viejo after her 14-year-old son struck and killed an 81-year-old man while doing wheelies in the street in Lake Forest. The boy was riding an e-motorcycle souped up to reach 60 mph.

Details of the buyback program

The e-bike and e-motorcycle buyback program is part of the DA’s plan to address safety concerns with e-bikes. Local police departments, hospitals and the California Office of Traffic Safety will also be onsite with information booths.

People can bring in functioning or non-functioning e-bikes, e-motorcycles, e-scooters and pocket bikes and exchange them for gift cards worth up to $1,000 — while supplies last.

The event takes place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 13, at Angel Stadium in Anaheim.

An appeals court issued a ruling Friday that strikes down a federal government effort to block a lower court’s order requiring the construction of 2,550 new housing units on the Veterans Affairs campus in West Los Angeles.

The long-running case, brought forward by disabled veterans struggling with homelessness in the L.A. area, has centered on the use of the sprawling 400-acre VA campus.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter had previously scrutinized leases for the private Brentwood School’s athletic facilities, a parking lot company, an oil drilling enterprise and UCLA’s baseball stadium.

Ruling that the campus was meant to aid veterans, Carter ordered the VA to not renew the leases and quickly build 750 units of temporary housing and 1,800 units of permanent housing.

But Carter’s September 2024 order has been on hold ever since the defendants asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to review his decision.

Case returns to lower court

On Friday, more than two-thirds of the court’s 29 judges ruled against the VA’s petition for a rehearing.

“It's a historic day for veterans,” said Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Counsel representing the plaintiffs.

“The government has been fighting their veterans, who went to fight on behalf of the nation,” he added. “They've been fighting them like they are the enemy. They went to the district court to fight. They lost.”

Rosenbaum said he’s pleased to see the case return to Carter’s courtroom after a long appeals process. Carter, himself a Marine Corps veteran who served in the Vietnam War, took an active role in pushing the VA to address a homelessness crisis that has thousands of former service members experiencing homelessness on any given night in L.A. County.

Could the VA pursue further appeals? 

Carter has also ordered the VA to stop using veterans' disability payment benefits as a reason to make them ineligible for supportive housing programs due to income restrictions.

But Rob Reynolds, an Iraq War veteran who advocates for L.A.’s veteran community, said the federal government’s attempts to win an appeal could continue.

“The government can still appeal this to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Reynolds said.

When veterans involved in the case first heard today’s news on the 9th Circuit ruling, he said they immediately asked about the potential for further appeals.

“All of us are really hoping that the government stops this fight, and that we can get housing built for our veterans and end this madness once and for all,” Reynolds said.

A spokesperson for the VA declined to comment on the ruling, saying the department does not discuss pending litigation.

Jenny Yang, a comedian from L.A., has been traveling across the country turning immigrant grocery stores into comedy hubs. Now she’s back in L.A. getting ready to start a mini-residency in Highland Park, tape her first one-hour special and share moments from the tour.

Yang kicked off her Good Egg Immigrant Grocery Store Standup Comedy Tour in June in L.A., then took it to 15 cities across the country. She told LAist the decision came as a way to cope with the grief from her dad’s death, 10 failed in vitro fertilization treatments between 2020 and 2025 and seeing the news of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids spread across the country.

She said the idea to tour grocery stores was a way to reclaim those spaces, after immigration enforcement left many afraid to go out and do simple tasks like buying groceries.

“If we cannot laugh in front of a wall of instant ramen around our bok choy," Yang said, "then what is the American dream for?"

Her routine wove in stories about her fertility struggles and the challenges of having to be a “good egg” growing up as the child of immigrant parents from Taiwan. Her hope for the tour was to connect with people, to make jokes and help people feel lighter after.

The tour proceeds went to local nonprofits serving immigrant communities, and Yang said those organizations helped recruit the grocery stores. She said some stores said no at first — they felt overwhelmed by ICE activity in their city, had lost staff or worried about drawing attention.

“That's part of the story of the tour is it's one thing to want to imagine this beautiful world where you can tell jokes inside of immigrant grocery stores," Yang said. "It's another thing to know what those obstacles are, and I think that's still very telling for where we are as a country.”

One moment stood out to Yang: performing at Shuang Hur Supermarket in Minneapolis. It’s near the memorial for Alex Pretti, the nurse that a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed in January as federal agents carried out immigration enforcement in the city.

“I was able to talk to Henry, the owner who’s a Chinese American uncle. [He] was so proud of being able to help his regular patrons, who for the most part even though it was an Asian centered grocery store, were majority Latino,” Yang said. “I was able to bear witness to their resilience as a community, what they did to take care of each other.”

Now she’s back in L.A. and is doing a mini-residency at the Outside In Theater at 5317 York Blvd. in Highland Park. Her first show is 6 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 12, followed by shows on Sept. 19 and 26 at the same time. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, and you can find them at Outside In's website.

In February 2027, Yang will be taping her first one-hour special at Rancho Meat Market #1 in Lincoln Heights. She describes it as a love letter to Los Angeles that’s endured so much, from the ICE raids to the January fires.

You can follow Jenny Yang’s work here.