The Brief

When Alberto Román was a boy growing up in the Mexican state of Durango, his father was often far from home. Most times, he’d be gone for months.

Román’s father, Javier, had a third-grade education. And when work was scarce in Mexico, he’d venture north to the United Sates and take whatever job he could find.

Javier washed cars. He worked in factories. He picked crops. He built houses.

“He was a guy you would find at Home Depot,” Román told LAist. “He did whatever it took to put food on the table and provide [his family] with shelter.”

Román missed his father terribly, and he relished the time alone with him. When his father would return to Mexico, they'd hike to a majestic statue of the revolutionary Pancho Villa, where Román and his father could also look out at their city.

Román did not know it then but, soon, that view would become a memory. When he was eight, his father returned; but, this time, Javier took his son, his daughter, and his wife with him back to the U.S. The family settled in Rialto, in California's Inland Empire. Suddenly, Román had a new home and new challenges to contend with.

A young Alberto Román (right) with his sister, mother and father in Durango, Mexico.

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Courtesy Alberto Román

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The move to Rialto unfurled a series of labels and experiences. Román became undocumented; an “English language learner”; a teenage father; a parenting student. With time, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen and, then, a first-generation college graduate who would one day earn a doctorate.

Today, Román serves as chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District, which includes nine campuses and more than 200,000 students.

A lot of these students are parents like he was, Román said, and the vast majority of them have to work to help put themselves through school.

And many of them are also immigrants.

Leading LACCD's response to immigration policy

Román was appointed chancellor last May. Soon after, the Trump administration unleashed its militarized mass deportation effort, which included raids and a show of force throughout L.A. County.

One of the chancellor’s responsibilities is managing LACCD’s response to the Trump administration.

Undocumented college students in the U.S. are racially and ethnically diverse. California has an estimated 100,000 undocumented students, who make up a small percentage of the overall higher ed population. The majority of those undocumented students are enrolled in community colleges.

In conversation with LAist, Román referred to the ongoing raids and immigration detentions as “inhumane.” He also described the experience of a student whose father didn’t come home one night. After being detained by immigration agents, Román said, the student’s family “didn't know where he was for two months.”

The student was 20 years old when her father was taken. Overnight, she became the head of her household. Now, on top of fulfilling her responsibilities at school, she has to figure out how to keep herself and her younger siblings housed and fed.

To support students in mixed-status families, the district’s Dream Resource Centers provide them with legal support, temporary housing options, additional mental health services and food vouchers.

Alouette Cervantes-Salazar coordinates East Los Angeles College’s Dream Resource Center, which provides support and services for undocumented students; DACA and TPS recipients; and students in mixed-status families.

According to Cervantes-Salazar, the Trump administration’s deportation effort has transformed campus life. When the raids began last summer, she said, “quite a bit” of students who used to take classes in person moved to complete the semester online.

For some, Cervantes-Salazar added, online coursework has become preferable because it enables students to better juggle school and work. For others, the fear of getting to and from campus amid roving immigration patrols has become a decisive factor.

Whether the Dream Resource Centers' support will be enough to meet student needs remains to be seen, but Román takes their stories to heart.

“These are the stories of our community,” he said. “These are the stories of our students. These are the stories of their parents. And they are our stories, because they come to us for an education.”

From 'English language learner' to college graduate  

Román’s story in the U.S. began in the 1980s. After moving to California, it took Román about two years to learn enough English to communicate with his classmates. Until then, his time in school was lonely.

Back then, dual language immersion programs — an educational model that teaches students in English and another language (such as Spanish or Mandarin) to achieve biliteracy — were rare in the U.S. At Román’s elementary school, he said, they were nonexistent.

To help him learn English, Román’s educators placed him in a separate room for about three hours a day. He was given a stack of books. His job was to put on headphones, listen to audio recordings of the texts and do his best to follow along.

When Román tried speaking English, some students made fun of his accent. A bilingual child who struggled with Spanish was tasked with serving as his interpreter.

Román said he cried to his parents. “I'm not happy here,” he told them. "Let's go back.”

His parents made it clear that returning to Mexico was not an option. They’d been poor and had limited schooling, and they wanted something different for their children. Though neither of Román’s parents got to finish high school, he said, they were determined to send their children to college.

Román’s older sister graduated at the top of her class and went on to UCLA. Román aimed to follow in her footsteps.

But, when he was a high school senior, Román learned his girlfriend was pregnant. He was 17, and he wasn’t sure how fatherhood would square with pursuing higher education.

When Román told his parents there was a baby on the way, they remained steadfast. "Now you have all the more reason to go to college," his father told him. That fall, Román enrolled at UC Riverside.

To help provide for his son, Román got a job at Payless ShoeSource, where he worked up to 40 hours a week. When possible, Román stacked his classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, to keep the rest of the week open for work.

“It was tough,” Román said. “I was getting home at 10, 10:30 at night, trying to read, trying to do essays, trying to be a father.”

“In moments of weakness,” he added, he contemplated quitting school. But, like his parents, Román wanted a better life for his son.

Román and his son in the 1990s, when the now-LACCD chancellor was an undergrad at UC Riverside.

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Courtesy Alberto Román

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Román graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1999. When he crossed the stage at his commencement ceremony, his child, his parents and his sister beamed from the audience.

Today, Román connects his lived experience to that of students at the district, 70% of whom study part-time. “That’s because they're working, because they have families,” he said.

Last spring, Román watched thousands of new graduates embrace their loved ones after receiving their diplomas at a commencement ceremony at the Greek Theatre.

“When I see my students on stage waving their degrees — despite all the challenges they face — that award is so much more meaningful,” he said. “I know what they went through.”

Wide-open land on L.A.’s Westside is rare. And where it does exist, it’s extremely expensive. But Santa Monica will soon get a chance to redevelop an amount of land unprecedented in the city’s recent history.

The Santa Monica Airport is set to close at the end of 2028. Residents have supported turning it into a park. Proponents of that approach say all 227 acres should be reserved for green space.

But with rents out of reach for many Westside workers, others are fighting to set aside some land for affordable housing.

“If we don’t do it here, I don't know where we’ll get it done in such big numbers,” said Ralph Mechur, a member of the pro-housing group Cloverfield Commons and a proponent of a measure now aiming to qualify for the November ballot.

The ballot initiative would ask Santa Monica voters to approve using 25% of the airport’s land for 3,000 units of low- and moderate-income housing. The other 75% would be kept as a park.

But park proponents don’t want to sacrifice any of the airport land.

“It's not to do with housing, per se,” said Frank Gruber with the Santa Monica Great Park Coalition. “Somebody could say to me, we need 20 acres to build a laboratory that will guarantee that we will cure cancer — we'd still be opposed to it.

“This land, every square foot, we think of as precious for the park,” he said.

Little affordable housing leads to long commutes

The competing visions for the future of the Santa Monica Airport highlight tensions over creating more affordable housing in wealthy communities where thousands of people work, but can’t afford to live.

One of those workers is Luis Martinez. He spends up to 90 minutes commuting from his home in Canoga Park to his job as a server and bartender at Santa Monica’s Fairmont Miramar Hotel.

Martinez recently worked eight days in a row, picking up shifts from co-workers. It was great for his paycheck, he said, but all those hours stuck in traffic were not great for his wife and 2-year-old son.

“He doesn't see me as much, because I'm always working,” Martinez said. “The time is what makes him miss me. It puts a strain on us.”

Luis Martinez spends hours behind the wheel each day he commutes from his home in Canoga Park to his job in Santa Monica.

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David Wagner/LAist

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Martinez’s family moved into their one-bedroom apartment three years ago with a monthly rent of $1,900. At the time, he said, they would have needed to spend at least $2,800 to rent a comparable apartment near the Fairmont.

“I cannot afford that,” he said. “I know it's a good place to raise a family. I would love to live there if I could afford it.

Who would live in proposed airport housing?

Martinez belongs to the union Unite Here Local 11, which is helping to collect signatures to qualify the measure for the November ballot.

The measure would ask voters to make half of the 3,000 apartments available to renters earning up to 80% of the area’s median income. The rest would be reserved for middle-income workers earning up to 120% of the area median. If the apartments were built today, L.A. County's current income limits would disqualify individuals earning more than $89,550 and families of four earning more than $127,900.

“It begins to provide housing for our kids, our grandkids, possibly your teachers, janitors, cooks and hotel workers who might be priced out of lower-income affordable housing,” said Mechur, who supports the ballot initiative.

A "for lease" sign hangs on the exterior of an apartment building in Santa Monica.

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David Wagner/LAist

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In 2014, more than 60% percent of Santa Monica voters supported Measure LC, which instructed the city to “prohibit new development on airport land, except for parks, public open spaces and public recreational facilities.”

But that measure left open the possibility to change plans through another public vote. In the current cycle of state-mandated housing goals, Santa Monica must plan to allow about 6,100 units of affordable housing by 2029.

“Here's an opportunity to build up to 3,000 units in one time period, to help reach numbers that will provide housing for people who need to be in Santa Monica,” Mechur said.

The airport’s history — and future

Planes have been taking off at the Santa Monica Airport site for more than a century. Pilots who flew in and out of the airport include Amelia Earhart and the first team to aerially circumnavigate the globe.

During World War II, the nearby Douglas Aircraft Company built military planes. To provide aerial camouflage during the war, the entire airport was covered with chicken wire, on which Hollywood set designers built lightweight structures made to look like rows of suburban homes.

But by the 1970s, nearby residents were lodging frequent complaints about noise and pollution. After decades of arguments, the Federal Aviation Administration agreed in 2017 to let Santa Monica close the airport after Dec. 31, 2028.

Frank Gruber stands on the observation deck of the Santa Monica Airport, overlooking land he envisions turning into a sprawling public park.

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David Wagner/LAist

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Frank Gruber, one of the park supporters, said the aviation industry tried to fight closure of the airport by telling residents it could end up being used for high-rise developments. He said changing plans now could reopen the question of keeping the airport.

Plus, Gruber argued, this land is not a great location now that the city has changed policies to encourage affordable housing elsewhere.

“There's no provision for putting schools there,” Gruber said. “There's no provision for supermarkets. They're basically creating isolated super blocks, to use that urbanism kind of expression, where people would be car dependent. It just doesn't make sense.”

‘We want to be part of that community, too’

The ballot measure would not include specific plans for funding new housing. It would only change land use to allow residential development. Proponents say because the city owns the land, housing revenue could help fund park facilities, which the city also needs to budget for.

While driving through slow-crawling traffic along the Sepulveda Pass, Luis Martinez — the Fairmont hotel worker — said his Westside roots run deep.

Martinez grew up in South L.A., but he would wake up early to attend Paul Revere Charter Middle School and Palisades Charter High School. Later, he studied at Santa Monica College.

“I grew up being in traffic,” Martinez said. “I grew up commuting.”

Luis Martinez stands in front of the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, where he has worked for eight years.

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David Wagner/LAist

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After eight years of working at the Fairmont Hotel, he said he feels even more connected to Santa Monica. And he believes workers like him deserve a chance to live there.

“It's such a good environment for kids to grow up, and I want my kid to be a part of that,” Martinez said. “Everyone's very involved in what happens in Santa Monica. They're very informed. They're very pro-Santa Monica. It's its own community. Just know that we want to be part of that community, too.”

Ballot initiative proponents need to turn in 7,038 valid signatures by mid-June to qualify for the November ballot.

A new analysis of alerts sent during the Eaton Fire found “no failure” by emergency officials to issue timely evacuation orders to areas west of Lake Avenue in Altadena.

The timing of alerts to neighborhoods west of Lake, where all but one of 19 deaths in that fire occurred, has been under scrutiny since the January 2025 fire.

The independent report by Citygate Associates was commissioned by the L.A. County Fire Department at the start of this year and was released Monday.

Its conclusions are similar to those of after-action reports from other firms — that officials did the best they could amid unprecedented fire conditions and strained resources.

“While the report provides an honest account of our operations, we recognize that no investigation can truly capture the horror and tragedy residents endured,” said L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone in a prepared statement. “My focus is to ensure that the lessons learned from the Eaton and Palisades fires are turned into lasting changes that will better protect our residents and neighborhoods into the future.”

Altadena resident Zaire Calvin — whose sister died in the fire and whose own home burned down — said the report feels like another “slap in the face.” He said he wanted to see details on any mistakes that may have been made. But reading the report, he felt blame was once again largely placed on unprecedented fire conditions.

“A  community that's already down, a community that's fighting for their lives, a community that's fighting all of the people trying to take property from them — at some point you just want accountability,” Calvin said.

L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents Altadena, said in a prepared statement that the “investigation should not be interpreted as dismissing the experiences of residents. Public trust requires both accountability and a willingness to learn from every aspect of a disaster response.”

Citygate Associates, which produced an after-action report on the 2018 Woolsey Fire, used interviews, operational records, dispatch records and internal communications to analyze decisionmaking between 9 p.m. on Jan. 7, 2025, and 6 a.m. the following day.

Some of the main findings include the following:

• With aircraft grounded by  high winds, “Incident Command was forced to fight a fire while blind to its movements.” 
• Evacuation decisions were not based on “race, age or socioeconomics.” 
• “Evacuation planners who created the evacuation zone areas well before the fire tried to use, where possible, major north/south and east/west streets. … Thus, Lake Avenue was a natural, very long street that could be utilized as an anchor for creating evacuation zones.” 
• Other fire timeline reviews cite reports of fire moving westward between 11 p.m. and just before midnight, but Citygate staffers write that strained resources were focused on the eastern front of the fire at that time, which was the direction the fire was initially spreading, and that “fire progression maps … do not show the the Eaton Fire directly impacting western neighborhoods at that time.” 
• The fire initially spread westward more slowly, and did not escalate significantly until early in the morning on Jan. 8.
• Reports of fires before 1 a.m. west of Lake Avenue were likely a result of downed power lines.
• By 2 a.m., radio reports indicated embers were being cast deeper into Altadena. 
• Discussions to expand evacuation orders west started at 2:18 a.m., with evacuation orders being sent to residents west of Lake by 3:25 a.m. 
• The main fire front crossed west of Lake Avenue by about 5:15 a.m. 

Find the full report here. 

Huntington Beach must pay $50,000 for each month it continues to fail to comply with the state’s mandate to zone for more housing, according to a recent court ruling. For several years now, the city has been waging a court battle against the state's order to make way for 40,000 new homes.

The judge ruled that the city should be penalized $10,000 per month going back to January 2025, and then fined $50,000 per month, starting next month, until the city gets a compliant housing element approved.

The backstory

State law requires California cities and counties to plan for enough housing to meet the expected demand over an eight-year time period, including for low-income housing. Huntington Beach, citing its independence as a charter city, has fought its most recent housing allocation all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to review the case last year.

Does the state require cities to actually build that many homes?

No. Cities are not required to actually build housing, but rather to make sure their zoning and land use codes accommodate the amount of housing assigned to them through what’s known as the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA).

What does the city say?

In a statement, Casey McKeon, the city’s mayor, said the city “strongly opposes these penalties and will continue fighting for the rights of our residents and for the principle of local control against ongoing efforts by the Attorney General to centralize land use authority in Sacramento.”

Is Huntington Beach an outlier?

Yes. Huntington Beach is an outlier in its aggressive fight against the state housing mandates. More than 90% of California’s 539 jurisdictions are in compliance with the state requirement to plan for the amount of housing assigned to them through the latest RHNA cycle.

What’s next?

The city recently posted draft revisions to its housing plan — for the first time since 2021. That’s significant because the city’s efforts to come into state compliance have been paused for years.

One complication with compliance: Huntington Beach residents voted to require any major changes to the city’s zoning, including its state-mandated housing plan, to be put up for a public vote. That could mean more delays in coming into state compliance, and consequently, more fines, at a time when the city is facing a budget crunch.

During a press conference following a shooting at the San Diego Islamic Center, San Diego Police Department Chief Scott Wahl confirmed three adult victims at the center and the two suspects are dead.

Police said the suspects were found dead in the vehicle nearby. They were 17 and 19 years old. The motivation behind the shooting is unknown at this time.

Wahl said in 28 years, this is the most dynamic and impressive response he's seen in policing with help coming from agencies all over the county.

Imam of the Islamic Center of San Diego Taha Hassane said the center stands in solidarity "with all of the families in our community here and all the mosques and places of worship" in San Diego.

"This is something that we never expected, and I would also like to thank all the people who contacted us from all over the country and overseas to offer their condolences."

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria was also present at the news conference.

"We will do anything it takes to make sure you feel safe in this city," Gloria said.

In a statement, the Council on American-Islamic Relations-San Diego Executive Director Tazheen Nizam said:

“We strongly condemn this horrifying act of violence at the Islamic Center of San Diego. Our thoughts are with everyone impacted by this attack. No one should ever fear for their safety while attending prayers or studying at an elementary school. We are working to learn more about this incident and we encourage everyone to keep this community in your prayers."

The active shooter situation was reported at 11:43 a.m. at ICSD in the 7000 block of Eckstrom Avenue in Clairemont, according to SDPD.

The department is asking people to avoid the area.

A reunification location for those impacted by the incident has been established at 4125 Hathaway Street.

According to our news partner ABC 10News, authorities shut down northbound and southbound Interstate 805 at Balboa Avenue due to the law enforcement activity.

The San Diego Unified School District confirmed several campuses were placed on lock down. SDUSD spokesperson James Canning said lockdowns are gradually being lifted but schools closest to the Islamic Center will be the last to have their lockdowns lifted.

The Islamic Center is the largest mosque in San Diego County. The center holds five daily prayers.