The Brief

When 44-year-old Montassar Dhaouadi decided to leave his home country of Tunisia to come to Los Angeles with his family three years ago, he started over completely.

“I spent 17 years in the army, then I resigned and came here,” Dhaouadi said. “Now, I drive Uber and I work as a delivery driver with OnTrac.”

But on one bright, scorching hot Tuesday in June, he was working on learning something new: cooking. Dhaouadi spent the day in an East Hollywood kitchen cutting up onions, garlic and shallots with three other people under the guidance of his teacher and chef Jamie Lauren, whom some may know from shows like Top Chef.

“I hope in the future, I will own my own restaurant,” Dhaouadi says.

Chefs in the making

Dhaouadi is one of five aspiring chefs who are a part of a new culinary training program offered by L.A. caterer and restaurant Flavors From Afar.

The eight-week course aims to help refugees and other displaced groups, like asylum seekers, immigrants and even local Indigenous communities develop skills in the kitchen that can help them get work or, one day, own a catering company or restaurant. The program is free with the exception of a food handler certificate, which costs $15.

The aspiring chefs meet twice a week to learn knife skills, pan frying, plating and how to cook cuisines from all over the world. Those dishes are then sold as part of the Flavors From Afar catering menu, with the student chefs making back 5% of what is sold. Every dish they cook is halal because most of the chefs are Muslim.

Montassar Dhaouadi cuts a cucumber while another aspiring chef in class looks at his technique.

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Aaricka Washington

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Moving to a new country can be a challenging experience for many refugees, who are often forced to leave their homes due to war, persecution or natural disasters. Some of them have multiple degrees and have left behind successful careers or businesses. Now, in the U.S. they have to start over in entry-level positions because their careers do not transfer.

For example, one of the participants was a bank manager in Ukraine. Now she’s an aspiring chef, says Julie Vautrot, the culinary training program coordinator for the restaurant’s nonprofit funding arm The Tiyya Foundation.

Vautrot serves as a liaison between aspiring chefs and potential employers at times, forging relationships with restaurants looking to hire and handing out her cards at job fairs to let them know about the cooks who have been trained by Flavors From Afar.

The end goal for many of those who go through the program is to eventually run their own businesses. The restaurant industry can seem like an easier segue into a quality life for these newcomers to L.A., Vautrot says, because the skills are universal and many of the participants grew up learning how to cook.

“It’s familiar. It's transferable,” Vautrot says “A knife's a knife. Water boils at the same temperature. It doesn't matter what country you're in.”

Why cooking school?

Flavors From Afar is an example of similar programs across the U.S. — and the world — that help support refugees and other migrants through culinary training. And with L.A. being a top destination for refugee arrivals in recent years, programs like Flavor From Afar’s provide a service.

“Finding employment is definitely a top need, and can sometimes be especially difficult for newcomers to the community — whether they’re facing language barriers or just having difficulty getting back into their careers,” says Carly Boos, the community relations manager for the resettlement agency International Rescue Committee in L.A., adding that programs like this can “remove those barriers to entry that normally face refugees and immigrants.”

From Oct. 1, 2023 through June 30 of this year, California received 4,692 of the 68,291 refugees who came to the U.S. In that same period, L.A.-based resettlement agencies have helped about 1,100 refugees here, according to Martin Zogg, executive director of the IRC in L.A..

Vautrot says when refugees and newly arrived immigrants are first looking for work in L.A. — or, really, in any new city — a kitchen job is usually the first thing that pops into most people’s heads. “It's like, ‘well, what can I do? What kind of job can I have?’ And cooking is something immediate,” adds Vautrot. “They’re sharing their culture, they're doing something that's from home. It's a way to share. It's an opportunity for them to highlight their cuisine.”

The Flavors From Afar program also teaches its students how to get permits and insurance, and find affordable kitchen space. Vautrot says that the last part is often the biggest barrier because you can’t get a permit unless you have a place to cook.

A social enterprise

This story — of the food and the training — begins with Meymuna Hussein-Cattan. She is a former refugee herself from East Africa, and moved to the U.S. in the 1980s with her mother, Owliya Dima. In 2010, she and her mother created the nonprofit organization The Tiyya Foundation (“tiyya” means “my dear” or “my love” in the Oromo language) to help others like her and her mom resettle in L.A. and Orange County. Over the years, she says the group has helped people find entry-level jobs and build up their English-language skills. Tiyaa has also hosted community events like playdates at the park for families that include parenting workshops and donations of diapers, toys and school supplies.

Meymuna Hussein-Cattan founded The Tiyya Foundation with her mother Owliya Dima in 2010. In 2018, she founded the social enterprise Flavors From Afar.

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Meymuna Hussein-Cattan

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Hussein-Cattan started Flavors From Afar as a catering company and social enterprise in 2018. In 2020, it opened as a brick-and-mortar restaurant, receiving a Michelin Bib Gourmand nod two years in a row, until it closed temporarily to move locations. About 40% of the eatery’s profit goes to support The Tiyya Foundation's programs.

The goal for Flavors From Afar’s cooking program was always to help refugees and asylum seekers gain skills, while also sharing global cuisines with L.A. foodies. But only until recently has it been able to bring groups of people through its culinary program (due to the stay-at-home orders early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, she could only work one-on-one with aspiring chefs in the beginning).

“I'm really passionate about the program because growing up in a refugee household, I realized that there are cuisines out there that are at restaurants but don't really represent the food that we eat at home,” Hussein-Cattan says. Through the catering company and opportunities to cook for special dinners hosted by Flavors From Afar, the chefs in training are able to share meals they’ve prepared with the eating public and be compensated for it. “The foodie community out here,” Hussein-Cattan says of L.A. “They love what we're doing, they trust us and they know it's authentic.”

Learning in the kitchen

When class starts, the aspiring chefs stand in their own sections around the kitchen listening to Chef Jamie Lauren explain the plan for the three-hour class.

Today, they are making braised chicken with preserved lemons and olives, Lebanese couscous in the style of tabbouleh, with cucumber, tomato, onion and parsley and braised romano beans.

Before they can get to the cooking part, they have to do “mise en place” which is the chef’s discipline of knowing your recipe, preparing your ingredients, arranging all of your items and preparing your workstation. Lauren first teaches the small group how to hold a chef’s knife and cut ingredients, like onions, that brighten the taste profile. Some of the aspiring chefs need more practice than others.

Then they break down whole halal chickens in 10 pieces — two breasts, two wings, two tenders, two thighs, two drumsticks.

Lauren turns on the large pots to toast spices and sautee the aromatics with the ingredients the group sliced and diced. They start to make the couscous, the beans, the chicken and the stock. The dish is North African inspired, which is where all of the aspiring chefs in this current class are from.

“When I teach you Indian food, it’s going to be similar, but with different spices,” says Lauren.

She has the class try preserved lemons, Moroccan olives and Moomtaz date syrup, before choosing to add them into the pot. Nearly three hours later, the class has prepared a full, savory meal.

Volunteer chef Jamie Lauren and the aspiring chefs made braised chicken with preserved lemons and olives, Lebanese couscous in the style of tabbouleh, with cucumber, tomato, onion and parsley and romano beans.

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Aaricka Washington

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In class, Algerian-born immigrant Nawel Hadj-Arab, 36, is scribbling down notes as fast as Lauren is saying them, making sure she gets every single detail.

“While she's talking, she's giving us a waterfall of information,” Hadj-Arab says. “You're learning multiple things about how to cook or even about utensils or anything, so I learned a lot.”

Volunteer professional chef Jamie Lauren teaches Montassar Dhaouadi, Nawel Hadj-Arab and other aspiring chefs how to cook braised chicken, couscous and romano beans.

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Aaricka Washington

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LAist

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Soon after prepping the meal, Hadj-Arab went to the main dining area to take some professional pictures for the chefs’ website.

Hadj-Arab moved to L.A. in 2019 with her now ex-husband and her children. She says she was a victim of domestic violence and is now attempting to start over as a single parent.

“I didn't get a choice to move here in L.A.,” Hadj-Arab says. “I came here with my abuser, my ex-husband. He was working with people here in L.A.”

She thought about returning home to Algeria but after she found herself alone with her two kids, she decided to stay.

“I knew I could succeed,” Hadj-Arab says. “So I'm trying again.”

Her dream is to learn how to cook and become a chef so that she can eventually own a “big restaurant” with various global cuisines — from French to Middle Eastern to American — and that being a part of the Flavors From Afar culinary program has helped her get closer to that.

Aspiring immigrant chef Nawel Hadj-Arab poses for a picture for the Flavors From Afar website.

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“Back in Africa, a woman is very limited in her choices in life, especially if you're divorced or if you're a single mom,” Hadj-Arab says. “There’s no way for you to go as far as you want. That’s why I’m here now because I know I can and I will. It’s helped me to gain confidence.”

Flavors From Afar

Flavors From Afar has now worked with more than 23 chefs from 21 countries, including Afghanistan, Algeria, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. This fall, Hussein-Cattan says she plans to open a full restaurant again, and says her goal is to hire the chefs-in-training to work there. “I’m looking forward to working with more chefs over time,” Hussein-Cattan says. “They need to put food on the table and this is a skill that they have and it's just a beautiful exchange for our chefs and foodies in Los Angeles.”

This summer, Flavors From Afar is hosting a Friday night Global Dinner Series, featuring different cuisines from different chefs each week, many of whom have gone through the training program. On the menu are dishes from Guatemala, Sudan, Congo, Ukraine, Zimbabwe and Lebanon. The dinners will be held through Aug. 30. Tickets for the Global Dinner Series are available on Eventbrite. Prices range from $25 for a tasting menu to $250.

The next culinary workshop starts Aug. 6. Find out more here.

A long-running court battle between California veterans and the Trump administration will continue, as federal officials consider asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s order to build more housing for unhoused L.A. veterans.

A federal appeals court on Thursday agreed to temporarily pause the order to construct more than 2,500 new housing units on the Veterans Affairs campus in West L.A.

Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Counsel representing the plaintiffs, told LAist the delay could spell life or death for unhoused veterans, especially as the region braces for strong El Niño-driven storms.

“These are veterans who risked their lives and suffered both the visible and invisible wounds of war,” Rosenbaum said. “What the government is saying to them is, you're supposed to stay on the street."

VA officials did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment.

Veterans' lawyers in a court filing called a possible appeal to the Supreme Court a “hopeless shot.”

“The government has lost every time they have taken this to court. No court has ruled for them on any of these matters,” Rosenbaum told LAist. “This is part of the administration’s war on its own veterans, and it’s time for that war to come to an end.”

Could long-running case end up at the Supreme Court?

The litigation was initiated in 2023 by L.A. veterans struggling with homelessness. The case has centered on the 400-acre V.A. campus, which U.S. District Judge David O. Carter has ruled should offer more housing to the approximately 2,250 veterans experiencing homelessness in L.A. County.

In 2024, Carter ordered officials to add thousands of temporary and permanent homes, and end leases with UCLA, a private K-12 school and an oil drilling company, which he said did not serve the needs of veterans.

An appeals court last month blocked the federal government’s efforts to halt the housing construction. But veteran advocates knew that federal officials could ask for further delays as the case winds through the courts.

VA officials now have until Dec. 10 to decide whether to appeal their fight to the Supreme Court. Judges with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals told lawyers for the federal government that if they do not decide to appeal by Dec. 10, “the stay will be lifted immediately.”

The Los Angeles Unified School District shortened the application window for specialized academic programs this year, and will no longer accept paper forms.

Applications for the district’s magnet, dual language and affiliated charter schools for the next academic year opened Oct. 1 and are due Nov. 6, 2026.

How does it work?

If you want your child to attend their neighborhood school, enrollment is fairly straightforward. There’s a separate process for the district’s specialized programs called Choices.

There are two windows to apply — on-time and late. The latter consists of all the spaces left after families who applied on time accept their offers.

Here’s the timeline for the 2027-28 school year:

• Sept. 2026: School fairs start.
• Oct. 1, 2026: Choices application opens.
• Nov. 6, 2026:  Deadline to apply online.
• Dec. 1, 2026:  Late applications begin. 
• February 2027: On-time applicant results sent. 
• March 5, 2027: Deadline to accept or decline school offers for on-time applicants. School assignments for late applications follow the processing of on-time applications. Students may be offered a spot through the start of the spring semester. 
• Aug. 12, 2027: The school year begins.

LAUSD will no longer accept paper Choices applications. If families do not have a computer, they can use a smartphone to complete an application. LAUSD will also allow families to use computers at school parent centers.

How to prepare

Every child within LAUSD boundaries is assigned a school — find yours through the district’s “resident school identifier.”

But there are also hundreds of other programs available through the Choices process.

Those include:

• Magnets: Programs on a specific theme, such as science, math, language, advanced studies or art. These programs were originally established to integrate segregated schools and have a unique “points” system to prioritize applications. 
• Dual language or immersion: Students learn in English and in a second language such as Spanish, Mandarin, Korean or Armenian. 
• Affiliated charter schools: District-run schools with more freedom to try different types of teaching or other programs. 

No one type of school is inherently better than another, and no one metric defines a great school — there are many factors beyond test scores to consider, and we go over some of those here.

By far the most frequent piece of advice we’ve heard is to go on an in-person school tour if possible.

“The very best thing that people can do is go to the school and try to watch the way that educators interact with students, the way that students interact with each other, and the way that families are included or not in the life of a school,” said Jack Schneider, a University of Massachusetts, Amherst, education researcher and parent. “Once you do that, you really get a sense of what kind of place kids are going to school.”

Some schools post tour information online, but you may need to call for details.

LAUSD also hosts fairs, organized by geographic region, where multiple schools table and share information about their programs, through mid-October.

The Justice Department found Thursday that the law school at the University of California, Los Angeles, illegally considered race in admissions.

The announcement follows a similar finding against the university’s medical school and comes as President Donald Trump’s administration ramps up scrutiny of colleges’ processes for selecting students. The administration also has accused the UC Berkeley Law School and the medical school at the University of California, San Diego, of illegally discriminating against white and Asian applicants.

The UCLA School of Law said in a statement that it was committed to making admissions decisions in compliance with all applicable laws.

“Students are admitted through a comprehensive, merit-based review process that considers each applicant’s achievements and experiences,” the statement said. “We are confident in our process.”

Affirmative action in college admissions has been illegal since a 2023 Supreme Court ruling forbade it. The same ruling said colleges could continue to assess how applicants’ backgrounds might speak to broader characteristics, but Trump has accused colleges of using applicants’ personal statements and other proxies to consider race in admissions — which conservatives view as illegal discrimination.

The Justice Department’s investigation found UCLA’s law school discriminated against white and Asian American students by favoring Black and Hispanic applicants in its 2023, 2024 and 2025 incoming classes. Its analysis found the mean LSAT score was lower for admitted Black applicants than for admitted white applicants.

The department also said admissions staff at the law school instructed applicants during recruitment efforts, including one called the “Diversity Admissions Open House,” how to reveal their race in essays.

“Like many of its peer institutions, UCLA Law School runs a two-tiered admissions system whose academic bar for acceptance shifts up or down depending on the color of your skin,” said Harmeet Dhillon, head of the department’s Civil Rights Division, in a news release.

California voters ended affirmative action in college admissions in a 1997 ballot measure. In a brief filed in the Supreme Court case, the UC system said the change led to a precipitous drop in underrepresented minorities, especially at the system’s most selective campuses. The brief said UC went on to implement a range of race-neutral measures to increase diversity.

The Trump administration also has sued over the main UCLA campus’s response to allegations of antisemitic harassment. The administration’s latest finding sets the stage for a voluntary resolution to bring UCLA into compliance with the Justice Department’s legal interpretation or, if none can be reached, potential legal action.

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Artist Hedy Torres asked a 20-something student from Cal State Northridge to sit for a portrait nearly a decade ago. Using charcoal on paper, she drew the dark-haired young man in black and white — but she deliberately kept the portrait unfinished.

The idea was that she would complete the piece if her subject, a DACA recipient named Lino de Jesús Pérez Cuevas, ever attained lawful permanent residency.

And now he has.

DACA, which stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is a program that provides two-year work permits and deportation relief for people who were brought to the U.S. as children. The permits can be renewed, but the program does not grant a pathway to citizenship. 

In late September, Pérez Cuevas — who is now married, a father, a green card holder and an adjunct instructor at his alma mater — sat with Torres once again.

Torres’ project involves interviewing subjects as she sketches them. This year, she invited the public to watch her complete the portrait as she spoke to Pérez Cuevas about what it took for him to get a green card and what that means for his life.

About two dozen people gathered at a community center in West Hollywood’s Plummer Park to see her add details to the piece that speak to the passing of time.

“I just wanted to make people empathetic to what [immigrants] go through during this process,” she said. “You have to be very patient. There is a lot of uncertainty.”

Responding to the potential loss of relief

Pérez Cuevas, who was born in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, was brought to the U.S. by his parents when he was 2.

When Torres drew him in 2017, he was pursuing a master’s degree in kinesiology at Cal State Northridge. That year, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced intentions to rescind DACA, which had enabled him to set goals without the fear of being deported. A 2020 Supreme Court decision allowed the program to continue.

Torres was once undocumented herself, so she understood the 2017 announcement was earth-shattering for the approximately 800,000 people who were then in the program, she said.

The original, unfinished portrait of Lino de Jesús Pérez Cuevas.

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That year, Torres was also a student at CSUN, working toward a master’s in fine art.

She recalled recently that she wanted people to see DACA recipients as people, not numbers. And so, for her master's project, she proposed creating portraits of DACA beneficiaries.

The portraits would be rooted in interviews conducted as she drew her subjects. Leaving them unfinished, she said, would symbolize the precarity of the moment.

The pieces would have enough detail for viewers to see the subjects’ faces clearly, particularly their eyes and expressions. Other elements, including their bodies and clothing, would be more of an initial sketch.

The university greenlit her project and gave her a grant to pursue it. There was just one problem: Torres had to convince reticent DACA recipients to share their stories.

Building trust 

When Torres first messaged Pérez Cuevas about the project, he ignored her for two weeks, he said. But because they had a mutual friend, he eventually agreed to meet with her.

“I was trying to see whether this person was just an academic trying to complete a project for her own benefit, or whether she really cared about the community,” he told LAist.

They met at a coffee shop. Pérez Cuevas learned about the artist’s journey from the Mexican state of Colima and everything she’d lived through since.

Before 2015, for example, an undocumented person in California could not get a driver’s license. When she was undocumented, Torres was stopped by police and had her car impounded. She said she had to cobble together thousands of dollars to get her car back from a tow yard.

Pérez Cuevas could relate. He had experienced the same thing.

He decided to trust her.

After she drew him, Pérez Cuevas helped Torres connect with more DACA recipients at the university. She drew four other portraits, which were also left unfinished.

These works were acquired by the university, with the agreement that Torres would be able to borrow and complete them when — and if — her subjects attained lawful permanent residency.

Community members watch Artist Hedy Torres update the portrait at Plummer Park in West Hollywood.

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‘A sense of freedom’  

As she worked on the portrait, Torres added soft lines rendered in charcoal to the image of Pérez Cuevas’ face, along with a robust mustache. And she continued the interview.

“What did you imagine your life would be like when you were young?” Torres asked.

Thinking back to high school, Pérez Cuevas said he realized then that not having a social security number barred him from decent-paying work.

“I didn't really understand what I was doing with my life,” he said, adding that he used to not think higher education was for him even while he was at CSUN. “My state of mind was really dark back then.”

He credited a college counselor with helping him navigate school. He earned his degree in 2017.

Pérez Cuevas said he has intimate knowledge of what it’s like to live with constant uncertainty: not knowing how he would pay for college because he did not qualify for federal financial aid; not being able to travel outside the country; and waiting anxiously for federal officials to make decisions on immigration laws that could transform his life.

“I can't stress enough how difficult it is psychologically to wait because it's something that can revolutionize your life,” he said. “You're betting your whole life on this approval and just that suspense of waiting, waiting, waiting, living with that anxiety.”

Torres completed her portrait of Pérez Cuevas in September 2026. Four other portraits remain unfinished.

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U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services continues to process renewal requests for existing DACA recipients, but the agency is no longer approving first-time applications.

Under the second Trump administration, DACA recipients are also experiencing significant delays with renewals. Some have lost their jobs. Recipients have been deported. According to the agency, the median processing time for DACA renewals was one month in 2023. Currently, it’s taking seven months to process most cases.

Pérez Cuevas said he was able to adjust his immigration status after marrying a U.S. citizen and consulting with an attorney. His lawyer helped him secure a document that allowed noncitizens to travel abroad and seek legal re-entry.

“Did getting permanent residency give you a sense of freedom, a freedom you probably didn't have when you were under DACA?” Torres asked him.

“Absolutely,” Pérez Cuevas said. “The biggest freedom was psychological freedom. You have this weight that you've been carrying all these years that finally just gets thrown off your shoulders.”

One of the things he feared most was long-term separation from his parents, he said.

When his mother and father migrated to the U.S., they did not see their own parents — his grandparents — for 40 years, Pérez Cuevas added. After his parents moved back to Mexico during the pandemic, he feared they would also go decades without seeing each other.

But having a green card enables him to travel and see his family.

Pérez Cuevas told Torres that, paradoxically, the threat of losing DACA made him “weirdly ambitious."

He said he doubled down on his studies and took on every internship he could. He figured that if the U.S. decided to deport him, he’d still have his education and work experience.

“Even on the days where I didn't necessarily have the greatest energy or the greatest state of mind, I showed up for myself,” Pérez Cuevas said.