The Brief

With school out for the summer, some students may no longer have access to crucial support and services available during the academic school year, as fear and anxiety rise in their communities from ongoing immigration raids.

California schools are still safe havens for students attending summer school, meaning federal immigration officers are prohibited from entering them and child care facilities without proper legal authorization. But fears remain unabated for both children of immigrants and their friends, as federal immigration agents in California continue to detain, arrest and deport residents, in what community members say has become an indefinite fixture of the Trump administration.

Research shows that students are six times more likely to access mental health care during the school year than in the summer months, and that the absence of school-based services often leads to worsening mental health for students during the summer.

School social workers are unable to offer routine check-ins and on-campus counseling for students during the summer break, but families can take steps to support their child’s mental health and prepare for what experts are calling a child welfare and human rights crisis.

Talk through your child’s feelings

During the summer, children are much more likely to internalize traumatic events like raids on social media or outside of school, often in isolation and lacking the safe environment of a classroom to talk through their feelings about the day’s news.

To help them feel safe, school counselors and child psychologists recommend that families have truthful, open conversations about sweeps, rather than trying to shield them. Ahmanise Sanati, a school social worker in Los Angeles who works with children from immigrant communities as well as those unhoused, said families should start by asking children: “What have you heard?” and “How are you feeling?” They should then validate their child’s feelings of confusion, anxiety, grief or concern in developmentally appropriate ways, she said.

Both young and older children should understand their family’s risk profile — whether a family member could realistically be detained or deported by ICE, or whether they can be exposed to ICE agents in public spaces, for example. Families should spare younger children graphic or unnecessary details and limit or schedule older children’s social media use, Sanati said. Parents can assure their children that they’ll be OK, but not by telling them, “don’t be afraid” — because fear is a natural reaction.

Sanati says parents should center a child’s feelings, regardless of age, and that when feelings are repressed or minimized, witnessing raids, detentions and deportations, especially in childhood, can exacerbate risks of long-term mental illness.

“Children are already seeing masked individuals with weapons coming into the communities, tackling people and taking them away and putting them into vehicles,” Sanati said. “We have to acknowledge that some very scary things are happening in all of our communities — by lying about the magnitude of this, we may be risking our trust with our children in the future.”

Prepare for emergencies 

If a loved one is at risk of being detained or deported, families should prepare and rehearse a step-by-step emergency plan with their child.

Students age 12 and over can role-play scenarios in which they might have to call for legal assistance or help build their legal defense, such as by taking pictures and recording names, badge numbers and descriptions of encounters with immigration agents, if possible. If a family member is detained by ICE, they should ensure other family members, including children, and emergency contacts have a copy of their A-Number, which is assigned to an undocumented person by the Department of Homeland Security, if they have one. Older children and family members should also know how to use the ICE detainee locator to find someone in custody.

“One way to validate a child who is afraid is by letting them know that their family will be ready for a worst-case scenario,” said Marta Melendez, a social worker with LAUSD. “If you don’t feel safe picking up groceries, for example, we have volunteers doing that for families. It’s OK for parents to feel afraid — that should not keep them from seeking support.”

Create a child care plan

Since children are spending more time at home and less time on protected school grounds during the summer, families should also create a child care plan in case a child is left unsupervised due to detention or deportation.

They can arrange for their child to be under the care of another trusted adult, such as a relative, family friend or neighbor, through a verbal agreement. Since this option is an informal arrangement, families should note that the chosen caregiver will not have legal authority to make medical or school-related decisions for their child.

Alternatively, families can have a trusted caregiver complete a Caregiver’s Authorization Affidavit, which would give them legal authority to make medical and school-related decisions on their child’s behalf. The CAA can only be used in California. It does not affect existing custody or parental rights.

Families can also have a state court appoint a guardian for their child, which, unlike a CAA, would grant the new guardian full legal and physical custody of the child. While guardianship does not terminate parental rights, it temporarily suspends them while the guardianship is in place. Families should seek legal counsel before considering this route.

If a child is a U.S. citizen, they should have their passports with them. They should also have important medical documents on file, including a list of medical conditions and medications, when applicable. Importantly, families should walk children through their child care plan and assure them that they will be cared for.

If families are unable to create a child care plan in case of an emergency, or if they become unhoused, they can go to any school that is open during the summer and ask to speak with their Pupil Services and Attendance counselor. Even if a child is not enrolled in summer school or programming, they have a right to stay on campus if there is no other safe location for them to go. PSA counselors can help families find long-term care for their child if necessary.

Families can follow Informed Immigrant steps, which provide guidance on protecting children and how to explain an emergency plan to them.

Find remote mental health support for your child 

Families with undocumented or legal status have become increasingly afraid of stepping out — even for doctor’s appointments.

With the risks of seeking in-person care, combined with a lack of on-campus counseling during the summer, students can utilize various remote mental health services and asynchronous resources available for free.

BrightLife Kids, a part of California’s CalHOPE program, provides online behavioral health support through one-on-one coaching with licensed wellness coaches, educational and self-help tools and peer communities. Children age 0 to 12, parents and caregivers can use the program’s remote services to help kids manage worries, express feelings like sadness, anger and frustration, and learn resilience, problem-solving and communication. Coaching services are offered in both English and Spanish. Kids, parents or caregivers do not need to be U.S. citizens, nor do they have to have health insurance. Families can sign up on the BrightLife Kids website here.

Soluna, which is also a part of the CalHOPE program, offers free, confidential mental health support for people 13–25 years old in California. The app allows young Californians to select coaches based on 30 areas of focus, including anxiety, loneliness, substance misuse and demographic preferences such as ethnicity and gender. Users can also join peer support groups in carefully moderated, confidential environments. The app download is available on the Soluna website here.

School-based wellness centers often have year-round mental health intervention and support services available for students. Many offer psychiatric social workers who provide services like trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy and programs for children and families who have experienced adverse events or traumatic stress. A full list of wellness centers in California is available here.

Los Angeles Unified students and families can call 213-241-3840 on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. to get access to mental health services. Families can also directly refer their children to in-person or telehealth counseling through a referral form for the School Mental Health Clinics and Wellness Centers.

Practice healthy coping skills as a family 

According to Melendez, families can prepare for scenarios like an ICE raid, detention or deportation by preemptively building their and their child’s mental health tool kit, similar to an emergency plan. Research shows that even basic mindfulness interventions can mitigate the short- and long-term negative effects of stress and trauma, and these techniques, when taught bilingually, are especially effective for populations such as the Latino community.

To start, Melendez recommends learning mindfulness practices such as box breathing, butterfly hug, guided meditation and positive affirmation, which are common techniques known to help children regulate their nervous system, cope with symptoms of anxiety or depression and perform better in school. Parents and caregivers should practice these techniques with their child to model calming rituals and build emotional resilience as a family unit, Melendez said.

“You should also prioritize something that is a positive outlet for the child,” Melendez said. “Whether they like to play sports, to write about their feelings, draw about their feelings, sing about their feelings, if they want to dance about their feelings — make sure that they have a way of processing all the emotions that they are experiencing.”

Data indicate a spike in both substance use and feelings of sadness among adolescents during the summer, which worsens in part due to unstructured routine, increased isolation and increased social media use.

To create a sense of normalcy for children, Melendez said families should do their best to maintain healthy routines and hobbies during the summer, especially those that promote social connection with their peers.

Los Angeles housing officials say they’ve averted a crisis that could have put thousands of families at risk of homelessness by the start of 2027.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of low-income Angelenos moved into apartments with the help of federally funded emergency housing vouchers. More than 4,300 households in the city and county still rely on those vouchers to subsidize their rents.

But L.A. officials have warned that federal funding to support this program will dry up at the end of December 2026, potentially leading to evictions and homelessness for tenants unable to pay the full rent on their units.

On Thursday, city and county housing authorities announced that increased federal funding and improved local budgets will now allow all emergency housing voucher holders to transition out of the temporary pandemic program and into the traditional Housing Choice Voucher program, widely known as Section 8.

“This is housing for the long term for these families,” said Marcie Vega, director of assisted housing programs for the Housing Authority of the City of L.A.

How many families are affected?

The city’s housing authority oversees leases for more than 2,700 emergency housing vouchers. The county’s housing authority oversees another 1,600.

Officials say as long as participants still qualify for federal housing aid, they will be able to stay in their current homes without having to complete an onerous amount of paperwork.

“The housing authority is doing the administrative work to transition these families over,” Vega said, noting that the plan is to complete the transition by September.

Tenant advocates who work with renters on the temporary program say the news will ease a lot of anxiety.

“Folks we've been hearing from are in desperate panic,” said Manuel Villagomez, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. “It's a huge relief.”

How voucher programs work

Participants use these vouchers to find apartments on the private rental market, which can be a challenge given how many L.A. landlords are reluctant to accept them.

Tenants typically pay about 30% of their income toward their rent, with vouchers covering the rest.

The number of renters with incomes low enough to qualify for a voucher is far larger than the amount of vouchers L.A. housing authorities can offer.

Cities rarely open their waitlists, and they often pick applicants by lottery for a spot on the list. Once tenants are on the list, they can wait for years before getting a voucher.

It’s hot out there, and it’s only going to get hotter.

National Weather Service forecasters issued a slew of alerts this week as a heat wave settles into Southern California with even hotter weather right around the corner.

A heat advisory is in effect until Tuesday for much of the region, with triple-digit temperatures expected in some places. Then, from Tuesday through Thursday, July 16, L.A. County and its neighbors to the north are under a more severe extreme heat watch.

An extreme weather warning is already in place for the Coachella Valley, where highs are expected to approach 115 degrees on Friday.

Southern Californians are no strangers to hot weather in the summer, but heat waves are getting hotter, longer and more frequent as the climate changes.

And the words forecasters use to describe these weather events has changed too. The NWS rolled out new heat alert language last year after the previous summer broke records for the hottest in U.S. history.

So, what exactly triggers these heat alerts? And what should you do about them? Here’s a guide:

Heat Advisory: Advisories are issued when temperatures are expected to be hot enough to cause discomfort and potentially lead to heat-related illnesses, especially for more vulnerable populations like young children and the elderly. During a heat advisory, consider staying in a cool place and limiting outside activity, especially during the day. For those who spend time outside, be sure to drink plenty of water and take breaks in the shade.

Extreme Heat Watch: Watches are essentially forecasts for upcoming periods of extreme heat. Forecasters say heat watches often cover wide areas and will be revised into more focused warnings and advisories as conditions become clearer over time. Watches are a good time to prepare for extreme heat by, for example, locating a nearby cooling centers if you don’t have access to air conditioning.

Extreme Heat Warning: Warnings are issued when heat levels are or will likely become extremely dangerous. Under extreme heat warnings, it's a good idea to avoid strenuous outdoor activity, stay hydrated and help loved ones and pets stay cool.

Not one-size-fits-all

Forecasters say it is important to keep Southern California’s diverse geography in mind when thinking about what these alerts mean.

L.A. County, for example, covers beaches, valleys, mountains and deserts. Some areas have tree cover, while others are mostly concrete and asphalt. Temperatures can vary a lot between those landscapes. It might be 80 degrees near the coast when it’s 100 degrees in the desert.

Not everywhere under a heat advisory, watch or warning will necessarily see the highest temperatures in the forecast either. But it is likely that some places within the alert area will.

Heat is also experienced differently from community to community. For someone accustomed to living in the desert, 100-degree heat may feel different than it would for someone who lives near the beach.

National Weather Service forecasters often consult with local emergency management, fire and public health authorities about the needs of their particular residents when deciding where and when to issue alerts.

When I was 16, my family moved to Madrid, where I got a crash course in Spanish culture — including a legal drinking age that happened to match my own. Lucky me. (For those wondering, it’s now 18).

In Spain, there’s a whole rhythm to drinking; it’s less about getting drunk and more about the intentionality of what you reach for and when. A vermouth before lunch to open the appetite. And after dinner, a gin tonic, (yes, that's gin tonic, the Spanish way — not gin and tonic) nursed slowly over a long conversation. And if things get loose, a kalimotxo: red wine and Coke, the drink Spanish teenagers have been mixing in plazas since before they were legally allowed to.

Over the last few years, a wave of Spanish drinking culture has been quietly making its way into L.A. Even José Andrés — the chef behind downtown's San Laurel, and probably the city’s most famous Spaniard — devotes a chapter of his new book, Spain, My Way, to how his countrymen drink, arguing it's inseparable from how they eat. It's a good match for L.A. too: like Spain, we have a Mediterranean climate — hot, dry summers made for chilled, low-ABV drinking.

You can now experience those rituals I first saw in Madrid — enjoying vermouth, kalimotxo, gin tonic — at spots around town. So why not get a taste of Spain… without booking a flight?

La hora del vermut

LAIE, a cava-based Spanish vermouth, served over ice with orange and an olive.

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Brook Olsen

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Courtesy LAIE

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Most of us will know vermouth as the splash in a good martini. But it can be so much more than that, if you know what to drink. "It's not just a mixer… it's something you can enjoy by itself," says Alex Cardona, co-founder of a Barcelona-based vermouth company, LAIE (pronounced El-ay-yeah) with California restaurateur Raj Nallapothola.

The traditional way to drink vermouth — or vermut — in Spain is the ritual known as la hora del vermut — the vermouth hour, a midday get-together to share the drink over a few snacks.

There are many different kinds of vermouth, from pale, dry blanco to sweet, dark rojo. LAIE is a rojo, light in color but finishing sweet, made by a longtime family producer just outside Barcelona. It drinks like a lighter-bodied wine, blended with more than twenty botanicals. If you've ever enjoyed an Italian amaro, you're almost there.

Serve it before lunch, over ice with an orange slice and an olive — and if you want to kick things up, a splash of gin.

Kalimotxo

Wine and Cola's five styles launched exclusively in L.A. this summer.

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Courtesy Wine and Cola

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In 1999, when I was a teenager in Madrid, I’d see young people in the evening filling the plazas in droves, corner-store box wine and two-liters of Coke in hand — and the municipal workers who'd hose it all down by morning, only for the scene to repeat the next weekend.

Yes, wine and Coke, known in Spanish as kalimotxo, apparently go very well together, and dates to the ‘70s Basque Country, where festival-goers mixed spoiled wine with Coke to save it. While my taste for wine wasn’t really developed at the time, I appreciated the ingenuity of the drink for what it was.

Now, a ready-to-drink, canned version is arriving in L.A., the straightforwardly named Wine and Cola. The brand is modernizing the kalimotxo for the U.S. market, according to CEO Dale Laflam, who works with beverage brands for a living and saw canned cocktails booming while wine sat flat. Putting a kalimotxo in a can, ready to grab from a cooler, was the obvious move.

It's a deliberate 50-50 wine-and-cola blend, built cola-forward so it lands even if you're not a wine drinker. The cola leads, with a dry wine hum underneath. It comes in five styles — Original, Diet, Cherry, Rosé, and a citrusy one that drinks like white wine and Sprite.

Most lean sweet, thanks to that cola-forward base; I'd have taken more cherry in the Cherry, but that's me. I found the citrus the most balanced.

If you need more convincing, the drink's got famous fans. Lady Gaga has said her go-to is red wine and Diet Coke — a kalimotxo by any other name — and soccer's GOAT, Lionel Messi, recently copped to loving red wine with Sprite, the lighter cousin behind the citrus can.

As Laflam puts it, the whole thing "sounds wrong, tastes right."

Gin tonic — and the art of the sobremesa

Bar manager Gerard Belmonte builds Telefèric's gin tonics, including the color-changing Ibiza.

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Gab Chabrán

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LAist

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After a lovely Spanish dinner — a paella, maybe, or a chuletón with patatas and piquillo peppers — the meal doesn't really end. It eases into sobremesa, the long stretch of table time after the plates are cleared, and that's when the gin tonic arrives.

Yes, that’s right. Spain loves their gin tonics. It isn't Spanish by birth (it was actually started by British officers in India drinking quinine-laden tonic to beat malaria), but Spain adopted it and made it a national obsession, where the drink is poured over ice in big balloon glasses and loaded with botanicals.

At the Telefèric Barcelona resturant in Long Beach, at 2nd & PCH, with locations in California and Arizona, drinking gin tonics is a nightly ritual. It's owned by the Padrosa family, and the lineage traces back to their original location in Barcelona.

"We always do a gin tonic after dinner," bar manager Gerard Belmonte told me. "We keep it on the table for three, four hours, talk with people. It's a good digestive, too — that's in our culture."

Belmonte walked me through three of the house pours, each of which pays homage to a different corner of Spain. The Catalan is the driest — mostly gin and tonic, garnished with juniper, rosemary, grapefruit, and a touch of lemon for a clean, refreshing finish. The Galicia gets a blue stripe of Bombay Sapphire's edible paint brushed inside the glass, then builds on Nordés, a Galician gin with Atlantic notes, with cardamom and bay leaf. And the Ibiza — named, Belmonte says, for the island's party-and-good-vibes energy — starts with Bombay Premier Cru infused with butterfly pea tea and a touch of edible silver dust. As it's built, the drink shifts from blue to purple, shimmering like a magic potion out of Harry Potter.

The private immigration detention company GEO Group has settled a landmark case over conditions in one of its Central Valley detention facilities. It has agreed to pay more than $100,000 over allegations the company failed to keep detained immigrants safe when they worked inside the facility.

The settlement, signed in May and announced Tuesday, is a victory for immigrants’ rights groups that have pushed California lawmakers to attempt to regulate conditions inside the federal government’s privately-operated detention facilities.

Eight such facilities now operate across the state and the number of detained immigrants has spiked during the second Trump presidency.

During the pandemic, lawmakers passed a measure allowing state inspectors into the facilities. In 2022, after receiving complaints from advocates and detained immigrants at the Golden State Annex facility in McFarland, state workplace safety inspectors from Cal/OSHA opened a case at the center and cited the GEO Group with workplace violations, alleging the company failed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among detainees who work there, and ensure other safety measures.

It was the first known time the state has treated immigrant detainees as workers and their detention facility operators as employers subject to state labor laws.

Immigrants held in ICE custody are detained on civil violations, not imprisoned for crimes. But in detention, where they can participate in a “voluntary work program” cleaning the facility, preparing food or cutting other detainees’ hair, they are only paid $1 a day. Detainees often participate in order to afford food at the centers’ commissaries or calls to their families.

As part of the settlement between GEO Group and Cal/OSHA, the company has agreed to improve its disease control plans for detainees and stopped fighting a ruling by state regulators last year that said the company was subject to state labor laws. GEO Group did not respond to a request for comment.

“Individuals who perform work in these facilities are entitled to workplace safety protections, and this settlement reinforces Cal/OSHA’s commitment to enforcing those protections and safeguarding vulnerable workers,” agency spokesperson Denisse Gomez wrote in a statement.

Detention facility operators and federal immigration officials have continued to clash with state and local regulators over conditions. Last month, a federal judge sided with San Diego County health officials and ordered the Department of Homeland Security and its contractor CoreCivic to allow a county inspector into the 1,400-bed Otay Mesa Detention Center near the Mexico border. That company last week sold the facility and another one in Kern County to the federal government, CalMatters reported.

And amid several federal lawsuits challenging the practice of paying just $1 a day for detainee work, GEO Group succeeded last month in getting ICE to update its standards for detention contractors, the Washington Post reported. The new standards state detainees “are not entitled to wages or benefits under applicable wage laws or labor regulations.”