The Brief

California’s mandate requiring later start times for middle and high schools is already yielding results, with students sleeping more, reporting better mental health and scoring higher math and English scores, according to a new study.

The new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research examines the effects of Senate Bill 328, California’s statewide mandate for later school start times. The law, which went into effect in 2022, requires most middle schools to start no earlier than 8 a.m. and high schools no earlier than 8:30 a.m.

The study found that the new law increased the share of students sleeping at least eight hours per night by 13%, meeting the minimum recommended for adolescents by health experts. The largest jump was among boys.

The study shows that “rest and sleep are incredibly important in the function of schools,” said Osea Giuntella, an author of the report. Although the short-term increase in sleep is moderate, it has led to significant improvements in mental health and academic outcomes, he said.

Giuntella, a University of Pittsburgh researcher who studies sleep and economics, said the study’s first-year results are consistent with previous research linking better sleep to improved student well-being and academic performance. The study used changes in teachers’ commute arrival times from the American Community Survey as a proxy for later school start times, comparing sleep and mental health data before and after SB 328 took effect in the 2022-2023 school year and tracking academic gains from 2022 through 2025.

Gains in sleep, mental health, English and math

Students reported experiencing better mental health since schools shifted to later start times, with boys reporting the largest reductions in sadness, hopelessness and suicidal ideation, and Hispanic students reporting the biggest drop in difficulties concentrating.

Terra Ziporyn, executive director at nonprofit Start Schools Later and longtime advocate of later school start times, said SB 328 was a key part of California’s response to what schools have described as a student mental health crisis.

“The first step in addressing student mental health problems is to not create them in the first place,” Ziporyn said. “You can get a lot of counselors, but systematically depriving an entire adolescent population of adequate sleep is a surefire way to hurt their mental health.”

The study also found significant improvements in academic achievement, with eighth grade students making measurable gains in math and English, particularly among Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students.

Giuntella, the study’s author, said the improvement in scores was likely “largely driven by the change in sleep” based on comparable studies where increased sleep led to higher GPAs. That’s also why Hispanic students, who are already less likely to get adequate sleep than white students due to lower family income and family and work responsibilities, improved their math and English scores the most, Giuntella said.

Parents struggle with new schedules

The state mandate is the only one in the nation.

“California set a huge precedent for the whole nation by saying, ‘We cannot leave what is essentially a public health decision in the hands of local districts,’ ” Ziproyn said. “It’s not just a negotiable school budget item that you trade off against anything else.”

But some parents have said later start times complicate work commutes, push back sports and extracurricular activities and lead to some students simply pushing back the time they go to bed.

The study found that sports and extracurricular activities did start later after the change to later start times, but the changes were “marginal and not statistically significant,” Giuntella said.

“And it’s true that, yes, students may even go to bed a little later than they were, but they are definitely sleeping in more in the morning,” she said.

Guintella described later start times as just “one institutional factor” that may help address a complex sleep-deprivation problem, pointing to issues like the rise in nighttime screen use.

‘Too hard and too expensive’ for some districts

Some school districts found the transition to later school start times “too hard and too expensive,” Ziporyn said. Ziporyn said district administrators could have received more guidance from the state Department of Education to explain the benefits of later start times, and involve families in finding solutions to logistical problems.

“(Schools) have to fully understand why this is being done and communicate it with confidence to the community that they’re doing the right thing for kids,” Ziporyn said.

San Francisco Unified, for example, worked with operations experts at the Yale School of Management, Georgia Tech University and Northwestern University to redesign their bus routes in response to the change. With more than 120 schools and 18 different start times, the district generated about 1,000 new feasible bus schedules, which ended up saving the district about $5 million and with a majority of families and staff members satisfied with the transition to later start times, according to a report by Yale Insights. 

But most schools in California did not have access to dedicated consultants to ease the transition, Ziporyn said.

“California could have improved making these resources more readily available to the districts,” Ziporyn said. “Built into the law was that there was supposed to be help from the state Department of Education about getting this done, and building that community buy-in is part of it.”

Giuntella said the state can improve its implementation of SB 328 by collecting statewide data on later school start times to “assess the impact of the reform.” In the meantime, schools can take from the study that later start times are “effective and powerful tools” for student outcomes.

“This happens often with some shock to individual and families’ habits, and so it also requires the ability to navigate this transition in a way that doesn’t backfire,” Giuntella said.

As fights about data centers erupt nationwide, California lawmakers have approved a pair of bills to make data center developers disclose how much water they really use.

The bills are a new test of whether California will set limits on an industry that’s becoming a flashpoint over water, electricity and the environmental consequences of artificial intelligence.

Lawmakers on Monday cleared Assembly Bill 2469 by Assemblymember Diane Papan, a Democrat from San Mateo. The bill bars local governments from approving new or expanded data centers unless the developer discloses its water plans and covers the full cost of any new water pipes, treatment or storage for the facility. 

This bill will now join Papan’s Assembly Bill 2619 on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.

California senators last week, in a decisive 30 to 9 vote, approved the measure requiring data center operators to report their estimated or actual water sources and use — under penalty of perjury — when seeking and renewing a business license or permit.

It’s almost identical to a bill Papan authored last year, which Newsom vetoed amid pressure from the tech industry.

Newsom said at the time he was “reluctant to impose rigid reporting requirements … without understanding the full impact on businesses and the consumers of their technology.”

Papan said she’s often asked whether she thinks her do-over will survive Newsom’s desk, this time.

“To which I say, the opportunity for leadership has not gone away. If anything, it has been amplified,” Papan told CalMatters.

Since Newsom’s veto last year, public sentiment has shifted, with bipartisan backlash building against facilities that have become the ganglia of artificial intelligence.

A Public Policy Institute of California survey found that a majority of residents oppose construction of data centers in their areas, and are concerned about the environmental impacts.

“We currently are seeing a phase of heightened concern because of the rapid evolution of the industry — and the lack of transparency,” said Iris Stewart-Frey, an environmental science professor at Santa Clara University who led a study this year highlighting how rarely data center developers disclose their water use.

“I think that's where these bills can really make some progress in getting the sides back to the table and conversation,” Stewart-Frey said, “and also recreate some of this public trust.”

Lack of oversight, local bans

Opacity around data centers’ environmental impact is fueling fights around the state, from the desert and parched Imperial County to cities and farm towns.

With little oversight and even less state direction, local governments are saying no to data centers, citing concerns about environmental issues, electricity rates, and often, water.

Monterey Park, in the San Gabriel Valley, led the way when voters approved a permanent ban in June. The Coachella City Council approved its own ban last week to public applause. Others including the Tulare County Board of Supervisors are pausing as they weigh more permanent moratoriums.

Nationally, New York State has enacted a yearlong moratorium, and 70% of Americans told a Gallup poll that they oppose the facilities.

A fight over a data center in the city of Gilroy, in Santa Clara County, recently made national news, which Stewart-Frey attributed to growing public awareness and distrust of the secretive industry.

“It's also emblematic of the fact that the data center industry in California has not been releasing actual water use data, right?” said Stewart-Frey. “This lack of transparency is also biting them in the back here.”

Papan said that’s the point of her bills.

“I don't think we should be eliminating anything without sufficient knowledge about what their needs are, and then how can we meet those needs,” Papan said. “Help us help you,” she said, to data center developers, “because if you go into an area that doesn't have sufficient water supply for you, it's not going to work.”

The usual suspects, and new wildcards

The usual coalitions have lined up. Environmental and community groups back the bills, seeking more transparency over how much water these facilities really use. On the other side are the heavy-hitting and big-spending tech industry and business groups.

Khara Boender, a Western government affairs director for the Data Center Coalition, said the trade association is concerned that these bills single out data centers from other non-agricultural water users.

Reporting tied to receiving a business license or permit “should apply to other similar commercial and industrial users, as that would provide context and a holistic view of water demands,” Boender told CalMatters.

A few wildcards have also entered the fight. As of mid-August, the League of California Cities, the California State Association of Counties, and the Rural County Representatives of California opposed Papan’s bill requiring developers to disclose water plans and pay for upgrades.

In a July letter the groups said the measure — which would bar local governments from approving data centers that fail to disclose required information about their water plans — “undermines local governments’ ability to protect and represent their communities through established permitting mechanisms and community engagement processes.”

Water agencies have mostly stayed quiet, raising only technical issues, with one exception: Santa Clara Valley Water District, a water wholesaler in a data center hotspot, supported both bills.

“Despite local efforts to mitigate the impact of data center water demand, more information on water use could help local water agencies, such as Valley Water, plan for actual needs,” Joshua Golka, head of state government relations for Valley Water, said in a letter to Papan Friday.

Necessary but not sufficient 

Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the UC Berkeley Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment, called Papan’s bills “necessary, but not sufficient.”

He expects that even with more data, small communities with limited resources and staff will still struggle to assess the benefits and risks. The version of AB 2619 that senators approved last week cut an earlier provision requiring California agencies to develop guidance for local governments.

Papan said that guidance would have been nice to have, but that there were state costs associated with developing it. An Assembly analysis estimated that developing water-use and emerging technology guidelines would cost $2 million the first year, and $1 million annually after that.

“The main goal has been transparency. Let me give you the data, and let's go from there,” Papan told CalMatters. “I just didn't want anything to divert from that main goal.”

Kiparsky called for the state to establish a strike team to help small communities analyze the data that would be produced under the legislation. He also thinks the state should post this information in one place so officials and academics can assess the impacts of data centers and the policies regulating them.

“To be really clear, data centers are not bad or good … we use them every day for just about everything we do involving technology,” Kiparsky said.

The real question, he said, is whether a given community — and its specific mix of land, water, and energy resources — is the right spot for one.

“You can’t answer those questions just with what’s required from this bill — you need to have the understanding that comes from experts looking at it,” Kiparsky said. “The state, in my opinion, can and should provide that.”

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

Erik and Lyle Menendez may get another chance at parole — and a bit sooner than expected.

The brothers were convicted of murder for the August 1989 shotgun killings of their parents in their Beverly Hills home. They’ve been held in prison for more than three decades.

On Monday, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation revealed the brothers had been granted a parole suitability hearing tentatively scheduled for March 2027. Previously, the state had determined they would not get another parole hearing until August 2028.

The Menendez family issued a statement Monday, expressing appreciation to the Parole Board for recognizing the brothers’ efforts to change themselves and help others in prison.

“For almost 40 years, Erik and Lyle have worked to take responsibility for their actions, confront and heal from the unimaginable abuse and trauma they endured, grow as individuals, and dedicate themselves to serving others,” the statement read.

It continued: “Through efforts such as helping to establish a hospice program and creating Green Space, they have sought to build an environment that reminds people serving life sentences that their lives still have meaning and that, regardless of their circumstances, they can choose each day to grow, heal, accept accountability, and contribute something of value to the world around them.”

Background

Erik Menendez was 18 years old at the time of the murders. He’s now 55.

Lyle Menendez is now 58. He was 21 in 1989.

The brothers were tried twice in the 1990s in connection with the killings of their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez. The brothers claimed they were sexually abused by their father, a wealthy business and former music executive, and that their mother had been complicit.

The first trial ended in a hung jury and a mistrial.

The defense argued that the brothers believed their lives were in danger at the time of the killings, and that their actions were not murder but imperfect self defense, meaning they genuinely believed the danger was imminent even if they were wrong.

In the second trial, the sexual abuse evidence was limited, and the jury reached a verdict.

The brothers were sentenced to life in prison without parole.

A chance at parole

After they spent decades in prison, the brothers' asked the court for a hearing that would give them a chance at getting out. A judge later resentenced each of them to 50 years to life, making them eligible for parole.

Last August, the brothers were denied parole for three years.

Parole commissioners said they took into account the brothers’ positive actions while in prison as well as their ages at the time of their crimes. But the commissioners also found each sibling would still pose a danger to the public if released, despite their efforts at rehabilitation.

It’s not clear why parole authorities moved up the brothers’ tentative parole suitability hearing date, but family members said they were grateful.

The family said in the statement that the move brings them “one step closer to a future with [the brothers] that once seemed impossible.”

Tropical Storm Marie dumped around an inch of rain in the Southern California region over the Labor Day weekend. Forecasters say we might see minimal rain on Tuesday in the region, and temperatures are expected to rise for a hot and humid week ahead.

Coastal flood and high surf advisories are in effect for Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange and San Diego counties until Tuesday 11 p.m.

Officials with the National Weather Service warned beachgoers that there was an increased risk of drowning in the ocean.

“Rip currents will be widespread and very strong, potentially pulling swimmers and surfers out to sea,” the advisory read.

They also advised beachgoers to remain out of the water or, if they do go in, to stay near occupied lifeguard towers and away from rock jetties.

Effects of Marie

Southern California felt the effects of the tropical storm on Sunday particularly along the coast. In Long Beach, one person was injured after being hit by a piece of plywood while prepping their home for the storm.

Long Beach Fire Department Capt. Jack Crabtree told LAist that 12 garages and two homes in the city flooded. City lifeguards and Fire Department personnel rescued three surfers, he said.

Waves pushed Long Beach’s water taxi, the Aqua Link, into the Alamitos Jetty. The Fire Department’s Marine Safety Division pushed it back onto the water, Crabtree said.

In Newport Beach, Adam Yacenda, lifeguard battalion chief for the Fire Department in Newport Beach, told LAist the department had conducted 187 rescues over the weekend as of Monday morning.

The majority of those rescues — 177 — happened Saturday.

Even so, he said, “the rain was a nice reprieve,” from most long weekends, when the department is usually much busier. He said many people stayed away from the beaches. The red flag surf warnings were also a deterrent.

Because of the high surf advisory, Yacenda advised beachgoers to stay out of the water through Tuesday. But for those who plan to get into the water anyway, he recommended speaking with a lifeguard who can provide advice on some locations that are safer than others.

Further south in San Clemente, high surf damaged the Metrolink Pacific Surfliner track. Service was paused from the Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo station in Orange County to the Oceanside stop in San Diego County while crews made emergency repairs.

Two beach parking lots are closed in Seal Beach because of flooding concerns.

What’s ahead

Rose Schoenfeld, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, told LAist there is a small chance of thunderstorms Monday and Tuesday afternoon.

 ”We're not completely out of the woods for any precipitation, but should be much more isolated, generally more minimal,” she said.

Schoenfeld said she expects a warming trend to start Monday and continue through the week.

 ”By Wednesday when temperatures will be peaking, we're looking at temperatures even at the coast, 90s to maybe around 106,” she said. “That's pretty warm.

"And then if you add on top of that the tropical humidity that we still will have lingering in the area, we're looking at a pretty significant heat event, especially for those near the coast without air conditioning,” she continued.

Because of the humidity, low temperatures later in the day won’t be as cooling as they would be otherwise.

A federal judge in Los Angeles is weighing whether to place new restrictions on immigration agents arresting people without warrants — a decision that could shape enforcement across Southern California. That decision, expected any day, echoes a fight already playing out in the Central Valley, where farmworkers had won a court order that shielded them for more than a year.

On Aug. 24, a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel put that Central Valley injunction on hold.

That order had blocked Border Patrol from the race-based stops and warrantless arrests that swept through Bakersfield in January 2025, when agents fanned out through farm towns as part of "Operation Return to Sender."

For Rosa, a 37-year-old farmworker from Oaxaca, Mexico, news of the raids arrived by text message. She was working a grape field near Bakersfield on Jan. 8, 2025, when word spread that immigration agents were sweeping the town. Her son was at school. She remembers wanting to go to her son and fear freezing her and other parents in place.

"We just wanted to reunite with them and know they were OK," Rosa said in Spanish.

She said her son called her asking if she was OK and he warned her: "... things are happening. The school has started telling the kids that [immigration agents are] everywhere, and I want you to take care of yourself.'"

What happened in Bakersfield matters in Los Angeles now because the same tactics — and some of the same lawyers — are at the center of the case pending before U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong. United Farm Workers and the American Civil Liberties Union, who won the Central Valley injunction, are also representing plaintiffs in the L.A. case.

What happened in Bakersfield

“Operation Return to Sender” took place before the new Trump administration even began, and it set the tone for immigration enforcement actions to come. Around 60 Border Patrol agents moved into the Central Valley in a show of force. After the three-day operation, Department of Homeland Security officials issued a statement claiming to have arrested 78 people.

Of those arrested, all but one person had no criminal history, according to court documents filed in the case.

In a Facebook post, Border Patrol called the operation an “overwhelming success.” Federal officials made statements signaling the agency intended to return to Bakersfield and deploy the same tactics throughout California.

Lawyers representing several people caught up in the raids and the United Farm Workers called the operation disruptive and unlawful.

In a lawsuit in February 2025, they asked the courts to put a stop to tactics used during “Operation Return to Sender” saying “agents indiscriminately arrested people…, including people with pending immigration applications, no criminal history, established residences in the community, steady employment, family in the United States, or other community ties mitigating any purported flight risk.”

They argued those tactics violated the Constitution, immigration law and the Department of Homeland Security’s stated policies.

The raids shook the Central Valley “to its core,” the plaintiffs argued. “Agricultural fields were deserted and school attendance dipped, as farmworkers and their families feared being profiled by Border Patrol Agents.”

In April 2025, District Court Judge Jennifer Thurston, who serves the Eastern District of California, made two key findings: that the plaintiffs were likely to win their case, and that the practices described in the lawsuit threatened irreparable harm to people living in the district. To stop that immediate harm, she issued a preliminary injunction barring Border Patrol from using those tactics there until the lawsuit could be resolved.

That order stood until the ruling late last month when, more than a year and four months after it was put in place, a panel of judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals put the injunction on hold. The federal government did not defend Border Patrol’s conduct in the Eastern District, but instead argued the plaintiffs’ allegations did not describe an imminent threat of harm, so they lacked standing to call for an injunction. The 9th Circuit said the lower court must now address the issue of standing.

The 9th Circuit’s decision strips the Eastern District of the injunction’s protections, but Mayra Joachin, an attorney with the ACLU of Southern California, said it does not give the government free rein.

“The order itself does not give Border Patrol any license to violate the Constitution or federal law,” Joachin said. “The government does nonetheless still need to comply with the law when conducting stops and arrests.”

The order also recognizes the lower court can issue new forms of relief in response to new allegations of harm, Joachin said. “We will be monitoring to see what happens, and we will be prepared to return to court in the event that we see any unlawful stops or arrests.”

LAist asked DHS officials about the stay and how that might change their enforcement actions in Bakersfield. We also asked whether they'd challenge a similar injunction in the L.A. region.

The emailed response did not directly address those questions but said:

“ICE has authority for lawful arrests where authorized under 8 USC 1357. Law enforcement officers use ‘reasonable suspicion’ to investigate immigration status and probable cause to make arrests consistent with the statute and the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court has already vindicated us on these practices.”

What this means for other litigation

Similar lawsuits to the one being fought out in Bakersfield have been filed in districts across the country, including one in the Central District of California which covers Los Angeles and parts of Southern California. U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong in Los Angeles is now considering issuing a preliminary injunction setting limits on immigration officers' practice of arresting someone without a warrant.

The case before Frimpong was brought in July 2025 by five people and three organizations: the Los Angeles Worker Center Network, United Farm Workers, and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. The plaintiffs quickly secured a temporary restraining order that same month that barred immigration agents from stopping people without reasonable suspicion that they were violating immigration law and from relying on their race, spoken language or occupation as a basis for the stops. The U.S. Supreme Court voted to stay that order in September 2025.

Joachin said the decision by the Supreme Court has, in part, led the court to speed up the discovery process, so the plaintiffs have been able to take depositions from federal immigration officials.

“Through those depositions, as well as other evidence that we’ve uncovered through the government, it has confirmed what we understood to be the nature of these operations,” Joachin said. “Which is that they are indeed unlawful, lacking any information about the person that they're stopping before they proceed to the stop, and also unlawful with regards to conducting arrests without warrants and any assessments of escape risk.”

Joachin and other attorneys on the case said they are hopeful Frimpong will issue an injunction regarding those warrantless arrests soon.

Fear spreads through the Central Valley

At the height of the raids in Bakersfield, Erika Navarrete, vice president of the United Farm Workers, said she heard stories of people across the Central Valley sleeping in fruit orchards to avoid contact with immigration authorities.

“People would speak in hushed tones — 'Don't be scared, come out, they're gone, they're gone,’” Navarrete told LAist in Spanish. “But many people didn't want to come out; they waited because they didn't trust the situation — they just didn't trust it.”

The lawsuit, which is ongoing, alleges Border Patrol agents subjected plaintiffs and people to three unlawful acts:

• Stops based on race and occupation, rather than grounded in evidence of legal status, which violates the Fourth Amendment protecting people from unreasonable search and seizure.
• Warrantless arrests conducted without an individualized determination that the person violated immigration law and was likely to escape before a warrant could be obtained, as required by immigration law.
• Coercing people to accept voluntary deportations without fully understanding their right to an immigration court hearing, which violates the Fifth Amendment protections of due process.

Those same tactics are described in the lawsuit against ICE and DHS in the Central District. UFW is also one of the plaintiff organizations in that lawsuit.

Navarrete said that fear lingered for months after the January raids, slowing work in the fields and disrupting daily life throughout the region.

“Our people didn't want to leave their homes; they didn't want to go to the store. I mean, they weren't living their daily lives,” she added.

Erika Navarrete, vice president of the UFW, has been helping farmworkers and their families deal with the raids' aftermath.

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Navarrete said she still gets goosebumps when she thinks about how the raids impacted children in the area.

“If they saw any white van or white car . . . or vehicles that didn't have California license plates or whatever, they’d immediately ask, ‘Mom, is that la migra?’ Is la migra going to take us away?’"

Other kids would tell Navarrete they had a backpack ready so they could go with their parents if they were deported.

Preliminary injunction provides some relief

In issuing the now-on-hold injunction in April 2025, Judge Thurston wrote: “The evidence before the court is that Border Patrol agents under DHS authority engaged in conduct that violated well established constitutional rights.”

Despite public statements indicating they planned to come back to Bakersfield, Border Patrol never returned with the same kind of large-scale operation.

In July 2025, when Border Patrol agents staged a raid at a Home Depot in Sacramento, the government was required under the court order to provide documentation to the plaintiffs.

“Having carefully examined the entire record, including the recorded footage of the Sacramento action, the court finds that Defendants have again detained people without reasonable suspicion for doing so,” Thurston wrote in her order enforcing the preliminary injunction.

Federal agents submitted 11 forms, known as I-213s, documenting the circumstances of the arrests in Sacramento. Thurston determined that those forms “rely on unsupported assumptions, hunches and generalizations.”

During the proceedings, federal agents admitted to retroactively modifying at least two of the forms “to reflect descriptions of the circumstances that are flatly incorrect,” Thurston wrote in the order, which required immigration officials to improve the way they document arrests.

The “clear lesson,” according to Joachin, “is that injunctions work.”

“While one would expect federal agents to comply with the law, we know that they're not,” Joachin said. “When we see immigration agents asked to comply with the law, the number of stops and arrests significantly plummet.”

The injunction, while it was in place, didn’t completely ease the fears of community members. Immigration officials have continued to arrest people in the months since. But in small, important ways, it did provide a return to some kind of normalcy for the people in Bakersfield.

Leticia, who's been a farmworker for over two decades, takes a break with her daughter at a park in Bakersfield.

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Leticia, a 40-year-old mother of four, said she stayed home from work from January until May.

Leticia has since returned to work harvesting carrots, a physically grueling job that requires her to be on her knees most of the day. She said that while parties were canceled last year, she now planned to celebrate a baptism with friends the weekend after speaking with LAist.

Where things stand in Los Angeles

In July 2025, attorneys representing five individuals and three organizations filed a lawsuit against the federal government in the Central District, which includes Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California, alleging a similar pattern to the raids seen in Bakersfield.

“The tactics challenged here — including widespread racial profiling, suspicion-less stops, and warrantless arrests without determination of flight risk — bear the unmistakable hallmarks of ‘Operation Return to Sender,’” the complaint states.

Lawyers representing plaintiffs in both cases say the issues in the case carry national implications.

While the case continues to move through the Eastern District, the court recently ordered the federal government to turn over documents showing national DHS policies that plaintiffs argue informed the raids in Bakersfield and, by extension, Los Angeles.

“We haven't seen what they've produced yet in response to that order,” said Bree Bernwanger, a lawyer with the ACLU who is representing plaintiffs in both cases. “We expect to see and be able to put into the record evidence of what we all know these agencies have been doing nationwide since the early raids in Bakersfield.”

In August, attorneys held a press conference ahead of a hearing for Vasquez Perdomo v. Mullin, the lawsuit filed in the Central District of California.

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Similar to the situation in Bakersfield, high-profile confrontations with large groups of immigration agents have died down in Los Angeles, but Joachin, who is also representing the UFW in the Central District case, said officials are still arresting people using tactics that violate the law.

“There continue to be roving patrol operations,” Joachin said. “The only difference is that now they're stopping a fewer number of individuals, and they are still stopping individuals based on perceived characteristics of whom they presume to be undocumented.”

A masked man in plain clothes pointed a rifle at Rev. Tanya Lopez, the senior pastor at Downey Memorial Christian Church, when she witnessed an arrest in her parish’s parking lot last June.

Lopez said the threat of indiscriminate enforcement has spread fear throughout Los Angeles.

“It’s been so heavy,” Lopez said. “Whether or not you’re undocumented, these raids, these stops have been without a doubt conducted to racially profile people.”

Frimpong issued one preliminary injunction in the case in July 2025 barring immigration agents from stopping people without reasonable suspicion that they were violating immigration law, but the U.S. Supreme Court paused that order in September.

Frimpong is now considering issuing another injunction, this one aimed at curtailing warrantless arrests.

(Third from the right) Rev. Tanya Lopez participated in a rally outside a federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles.

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Lopez said she is now, like many other people in Southern California, eagerly waiting on the judge’s decision. Earlier this summer, she attended a hearing in federal court, clad in a clerical collar and stole.

“While it doesn’t undo the harm and all of the trauma that’s already been inflicted, [the lawsuit] represents one step towards accountability and the long road towards justice,” she said.

“I think we’re learning that it’s up to us as people, right? We, the people, have to essentially hold agencies — our government, even law enforcement — accountable,” Lopez said. “It has impacts for all of us.”