The Brief

They speak Farsi, Cantonese, Spanish and at least two dozen other languages. Some earned master's degrees in their home countries, while others never finished middle school. At California's community colleges, more than 290,000 students take free, non-credit English as a Second Language classes.

As immigrants, many of these students enroll in the classes to integrate into American life, advance in their jobs, support their children or build community. The classes have grown in popularity in recent years — an enrollment bright spot for the state’s community college system, which has struggled to fully rebound to pre-pandemic student counts.

But as news of international student visa revocations and reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids during President Donald Trump’s second term spread across the state, many community colleges have seen some of these students switch to online learning, or stop showing up to class altogether.

So far there’s no statewide data on 2025 enrollment in non-credit ESL courses at California’s community colleges. But several anecdotes from professors and enrollment numbers from individual community colleges paint a similar picture: A heightened fear of ICE is driving students away. In the San Fernando Valley, one professor has lost about 15% of her enrollment this semester. In San Marcos, several classrooms abruptly transitioned from mostly in-person instruction to walls of Zoom squares.

As the semester goes on, ESL professors are offering “Know Your Rights” cards to students and informing their classes of the community college system’s pledge to not participate in federal immigration enforcement efforts. They’re also continuing to connect their students with campus resources such as food pantries and tutoring centers.

ESL classes have expanded post-pandemic

Los Angeles Pierce College began offering non-credit ESL in 2021, and last year the college hired a full-time professor to boost the program. Enrollment in the classes skyrocketed from about 50 in 2021 to more than 350 in 2024. Dennis Solares, the adult education coordinator at Los Angeles Pierce College, said that students seeking to improve their job opportunities drove the recent ESL enrollment growth.

“We offer an opportunity that can help them communicate more, get acclimated with the community and get better jobs,” Solares said.

The classes attract a diverse swath of students. Azucena Hernandez, 42, enrolled in ESL at Palomar College in San Marcos so that she could better support her three kids with day-to-day tasks. She started as a monolingual Spanish speaker, but after several semesters she can comfortably have conversations in English.

Hernandez now volunteers in the beginner levels of ESL as a peer instructor. She said her most important takeaway from these courses is “the family made at school.”

“Every day we are learning something new, and there is companionship,” Hernandez said. “We are united to learn.”

Students in one of Professor Rachel Cerdenio’s non-credit English as a Second Language classes at Los Angeles Pierce College in Woodland Hills on May 8, 2025. Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMatters

Hernandez’s professor, Sheri Cully, has taught ESL for more than 40 years. She prioritizes civic engagement and real-world learning in her classes. One long-term project that her students work on is maintaining a community garden and advocating for its affordability and accessibility at local government meetings. Cully said she admires her students’ work ethic and resilience.

There were 30,000 more students enrolled in non-credit ESL courses across California’s community colleges during the 2023-24 academic year compared to the 2018-19 academic year, according to state data. The growth has been driven by several factors, including heightened demand for workforce training as the state’s economy expands and the college system's push to expand ESL after the pandemic, according to a written statement to CalMatters from the California community college system’s chancellor’s office.

ESL courses bring state funding to community colleges based partially on enrollment, so several colleges have been working to continue this expansion after enrollment dropped during the pandemic. But student fears about immigration enforcement may thwart those efforts.

Fears of ICE entering schools

An estimated 100,000 college students live in California without permanent legal status, and 3.3 million Californians live in mixed-status households, according to data from Equity Research Institute, a USC research group. Some of these students question whether coming to class is worth the risk of entering a public campus where ICE has access, and they have opted to take courses virtually. But not all students have access to a computer or Wi-Fi at home, and some older students may not be comfortable with the technology required for college courses.

Jessica Buchsbaum, the ESL department chair at City College of San Francisco, oversees a program serving about 6,000 students, ranging from teenagers to octogenarians. She said the non-credit ESL enrollment was “growing intensely in the fall semester, but it has now softened.”

“We’ve definitely heard that students may be afraid to come to school,” Buchsbaum said. “In an environment when there’s so much hate directed at immigrants, we are here to serve this population. These are people who bring incredible energy and hope to our communities.”

On campus at Pierce College. (Photo courtesy of Pierce College/Facebook)

In January, the Trump administration threw out policies implemented in 2011 that limited the ability of ICE agents to arrest people at churches, schools and other areas designated as “sensitive locations.” A statement from the Department of Homeland Security said the change was necessary so “criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest.”

California’s community colleges are public campuses, meaning they are limited by federal laws from attempting to prevent ICE agents from coming onto or near spaces that are generally considered open.

Over the years, the California community college system has supported immigrant students, such as offering Dream Resource Centers and connecting students with nonprofit legal services. The system has pointed college administrators to a 2017 state law that prohibits campus police departments from “generally providing personal information… about an individual for immigration enforcement purposes, including, but not limited to, the individual’s home address or work address, unless that information is available to the public.”

The chancellor’s office refused an interview request from CalMatters for this story. In a written statement, the office said, “The mission of the California Community Colleges is to educate and provide social and economic mobility to all Californians seeking to improve their workforce and workplace skills as well as improve their English language literacy.”

ESL professors provide support and students keep learning

Rachel Cerdenio is an ESL professor at Los Angeles Pierce College and the daughter of immigrants from the Philippines. She said the years she spent watching her parents struggle to navigate life in the United States without strong English skills spurred her to teach ESL.

Professor Rachel Cerdenio teaches a non-credit English as a Second Language class at Los Angeles Pierce College in Woodland Hills on May 8, 2025.

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Jules Hotz

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CalMatters

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For Cerdenio’s intermediate courses, she created a curriculum focused on connection to the college and student success. She recently assigned students to visit a campus resource like the student health center or the library, ask questions about it and share the information with their classmates.

“I wish my parents had the experiences that I am giving my students now,” Cerdenio said. “I want them to succeed, and I want them to be part of the campus and know about the resources that are here.”

Solares has given presentations in adult education courses, including Cerdenio’s classes, about immigrant students’ rights and the resources available to students, regardless of their immigration status.

“We had a huge influx of students, but with the change in politics students are naturally scared, and so there's students who choose not to come to classes anymore,” Solares said. “The vibe is more tense. It’s more scary. But we support the students, and we equip the professors to support their students.”

Delilah Brumer is a fellow with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

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

The traditional way of voting in Huntington Beach could be upended after a judge’s ruling this week in a case accusing the city of diluting the electoral power of its Latino residents.

What happened?

The judge ordered Surf City to adopt ranked-choice voting for the November general election. Ranked-choice voting is where voters rank all candidates in order of preference, so if your first choice is eliminated, your vote transfers to your second-choice candidate.

It’s also the type of voting that helped Zohran Mamdani seize victory in the New York City mayoral race.

Why it matters

The ruling comes in a legal challenge to the city’s at-large elections, arguing Latino voters are unfairly disadvantaged and unable to elect a candidate of their choice. Orange County Superior Court Judge Craig Griffin agreed with the plaintiffs’ argument that “racially polarized voting has regularly occurred in Huntington Beach elections.”

The backstory

The case was brought to court more than two years ago by the nonprofit group Southwest Voter Registration Education Project and Victor Valladares, a Huntington Beach resident and local Democratic activist.

They argued that the city’s predominantly Latino neighborhood of Oak View had suffered decades of neglect, in part because residents there lacked the voting power to get representation in city government.

The bigger picture

Dozens of cities across Orange County and elsewhere in California have faced similar challenges to at-large elections over the past decade. Most have settled out of court by adopting district elections, whereby voters elect a candidate to represent their area, rather than citywide.

The change has coincided with an increase in Latino city council members in some Orange County cities.

Why ranked-choice voting?

Judge Griffin wrote that ordering the city to adopt ranked-choice voting was a “less drastic remedy” to bolster Latinos’ voting power than district elections. Currently in Huntington Beach, all residents vote citywide for city council seats, and the top vote-getters win.

With district elections, only people within a particular district can vote for a particular seat, which advocates say helps ensure districts see themselves represented in their local government bodies.

Among the advantages of a ranked-choice system, advocates say, is that it gives voters more freedom to vote for their favorite candidate, even if they think that person won’t ultimately win.

What does the ruling say, exactly?

The ruling orders Huntington Beach to implement ranked-choice voting for the November 2026 general election, if the Orange County Registrar of Voters can support the quick switch. The ruling also calls for the city to elect all seven councilmembers at once, rather than staggering the elections, as it currently does per the city’s charter.

Judge Griffin had delayed his ruling earlier this year to consider the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which ruled that race cannot play a role in the drawing of voting districts. Griffin ultimately determined that “nothing in Callais alters this Court’s decision” in the Huntington Beach case.

What’s next?

Both sides have two weeks to raise objections to the tentative ruling. Kevin Shenkman, the attorney representing the plaintiffs, said he would not be surprised if the city appeals. City Attorney Mike Vigliotta told LAist in an email that his office is “reviewing the decision with outside counsel that litigated the case and determining next steps.”

We reached out to the Orange County Registrar of Voters for comment, and did not hear back before publication. If and when that changes, we will update this story.

How to attend Huntington Beach City Council meetings

• Huntington Beach holds City Council meetings on the first and third Tuesday of each month at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 2000 Main St.
• You can also watch City Council meetings remotely on HBTV via Channel 3 or online, or via the city’s website. (You can also find videos of previous council meetings there.)
• The public comment period happens toward the beginning of meetings.
• The city generally posts agendas for City Council meetings on the previous Friday. You can find the agenda on the city’s calendar or sign up there to have agendas sent to your inbox.

LAist staff writer Sammy Marvin also contributed to this report.

A judge has ruled that a Metro bus project in a congested area of Los Angeles can go forward, for now, without incorporating bike lanes that street safety advocates argue are required by city law.

The $400 million project will add dedicated bus lanes along a more than 12-mile-long stretch of Vermont Avenue between 120th Street and Sunset Boulevard. The stretch of road has among the highest rates of pedestrian deaths and injuries in the city.

The ruling from June 15 is a preliminary decision on an injunction request that’s part of a lawsuit brought by Joe Linton, who argues that L.A.’s role in the design and permitting process of the project triggers Measure HLA street safety improvements. The L.A. City Attorney and Metro have rejected that interpretation of the law.

Linton filed the lawsuit in April 2025. He is the editor of the transportation publication Streetsblog LA. Linton is filing the suit as a resident of L.A., not in his capacity as an editor for Streetsblog.

What is Measure HLA?

In 2015, the L.A. City Council adopted Mobility Plan 2035, which identified networks of streets to improve with protected bike lanes, pedestrian signal improvements, bus lanes and other enhancements.

Seven years later, frustrated with a lack of progress on the plan, the local nonprofit Streets for All began campaigning for Measure HLA. The ballot measure, which was passed by voters in 2024, legally requires the city to implement Mobility Plan upgrades when it repaves at least one-eighth of a mile of a street located in one of the networks.

What are the key issues at stake in the lawsuit? 

There’s been a longstanding disagreement over whether Measure HLA applies to Metro’s work in city projects. Metro and the city of L.A. say the ordinance only applies to projects the city leads. Streets for All and Linton say the question of who leads a project is a technicality and that the city is obligated to follow Measure HLA because it’s responsible for approving certain elements of the project’s designs and permits.

The Mobility Plan calls for bike lanes along the same stretch of Vermont Avenue that Metro is working on.

Linton’s lawsuit says the city didn’t implement the bike lanes in accordance with Measure HLA when it resurfaced Vermont Avenue service roads in the past and that it should implement the improvements as part of the Vermont Transit Corridor project.

What are the details of the injunction? 

As the lawsuit plays out in court, Linton requested an injunction that sought to prevent the city from approving final design plans for the project without the bike lanes that Measure HLA calls for.

L.A. County Superior Court Judge Kristin Escalante denied the request on June 15. Escalante wrote in her decision that the city neither initiated the project nor selected Vermont Avenue for resurfacing and won’t be constructing the project itself.

“Metro’s coordination with the city does not transform the project into one made by or undertaken by the city,” Escalante wrote in her decision.

In April and June, Escalante denied Linton’s requests for pre-trial judgement on two other issues in his lawsuit, including deciding if resurfacing work on Vermont Avenue service roads triggered HLA-mandated upgrades and determining whether the city’s HLA ordinance represents an “impermissible amendment” of the ordinance.

What happens next?

The ruling is a preliminary decision. Linton said his legal team is preparing for the case to go to trial.

 “We didn’t lose at the end of the day,” Linton told LAist. “It’s a setback, but it’s a skirmish and not the outcome of the battle.”

Metro said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

LAist reached out to the L.A. City Attorney and did not hear back.

Are other legal battles taking place? 

Yes, there are two additional ongoing lawsuits that are related.

Linton filed a second lawsuit saying L.A. is using loopholes, like “large asphalt repairs,” to skirt Measure HLA requirements.

Separate from Measure HLA, Metro is working on another bus rapid transit project to connect North Hollywood and Pasadena with construction set to begin this summer. Metro filed a lawsuit in May saying Burbank is, without authority, refusing to grant the transit agency construction permits. On June 18, Metro filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to get the necessary permits so it can begin construction in July and ensure the bus project is ready for the 2028 Olympics.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

A series of Fourth of July events scheduled across Council District 14 have been postponed due to the ongoing impact of a massive warehouse fire in Boyle Heights that blanketed surrounding neighborhoods in smoke for days. 

The fire at the 500,000-square-foot Lineage cold storage facility was knocked down Wednesday evening, but many residents say they are still feeling the effects of the smoke and have questions about the short- and long-term impacts of exposure, as well as what exactly they have been breathing. 

Jurado announced Thursday that out of an abundance of caution, the four Fourth of July events that were scheduled to take place from Friday to Sunday at various parks across her district have been postponed to allow the community and her office to focus on “recovery, connecting residents with resources and getting people the answers they deserve.” The free events were set to include live entertainment, community resources booths and a drone show. 

The postponed events include:

• Friday at Eagle Rock Recreation Center
• Saturday at El Sereno Recreation Center
• Sunday at Hollenbeck Recreation Center
• Sunday at Lincoln Park Recreation Center

“While air quality regulators have not ordered the cancelation of outdoor events, the fire response remains active, residents are still seeking clear information and support, and many families in the impacted area continue to have concerns about smoke, ash, odors, and possible exposure,” Jurado said. 

In the wake of the fire, Jurado has been asking agencies and the companies responsible for transparency. On Monday, the councilmember introduced a motion calling for the public release of air quality and environmental testing information in a way residents can actually understand.

While no independent testing has been commissioned by her office, Jurado told Boyle Heights Beat that the motion, “is intended to bring that information into the open so residents can get clear answers instead of rumors, speculation, or incomplete information.”

According to CD14, the rescheduled event dates will be shared as soon as they are available.