The Brief

Insane hours, the toxic work environments, low pay and stringent standards — plenty of ink and film have been spent lately rehashing the stressors that come with working in the culinary industry.

Yet, for the most part, the culture has dictated that workers suffer silently, placing their well-being — and their mental health especially — on the backburner.

But after the back-to-back deaths of two prominent figures in the local L.A food scene, a couple of seasoned food pros have decided that this status-quo doesn’t cut it. They’re determined to get food-and-beverage workers into the therapy chair.

For Alyssa Noui, 38, a leading L.A. food stylist, and Kristel Arabian, 41, a food and beverage recruiter and former chef at a Michelin Star restaurant, the last straw came in February. First it was Jonathan Whitener, the celebrated chef and partner at Here’s Looking at You and All Day Baby restaurants. Whitener died at home from a drug overdose.

A couple of weeks later, Jered Standing, the popular butcher and founder of animal-conscious Standing’s Butchery, killed himself.

Noui and Arabian both had known Whitener and Standing. Their deaths, at 36 and 44, respectively, hit hard with “my elder millennial generation of people in the food space,” said Noui, a veteran of shows like Master Chef, Guy’s Grocery Games, etc.

Whitener was a “big loss to the food world,” she noted, adding how his menu items altered the foodscape. “Like, we're seeing things on that page, which were familiar but were never put together, like the chicken-fried rabbit,” a favorite from his days at another restaurant, Animal.

Meanwhile Standing’s Butchery was a once-a-week stop for Arabian, either to pick up something to cook for dinner or for a Sunday social burger. Noui called him a “dear friend.” By all accounts, Standing, a former vegetarian, was changing how chefs and insiders went about animal sourcing. He was readying a second location in Venice.

Noui said it was one of those friendships where 10 years later you laugh trying to place how you knew each other. Was it Lindy and Grundy or Salt's Cure?

“He checked all the boxes you’re supposed to, to be successful,” Noui said, adding “he was a good-looking dude with great people around him.”

“But if you're not right in your mind, you’re not right in your spirit—what do you really have?”

Channeling grief into gathering

When news broke about Standing’s death, weeks after Whitener’s, “It’s almost, you know, when someone tells a bad joke or something and the room gets quiet, and you're like, ‘Oh my God, who's going to say the next thing?’”

Arabian had met Noui through the Santa Monica farmers’ market network some years back. She remembers speaking to Noui about how their grieving community needed support.

She made a passive comment about 'everyone needing a hug', Arabian said. "'I'm like, yeah, how do we do that?"

The two organized an event which they’ve since dubbed the “F+B Community Check-In” and took over the back patio at Tabula Rasa, the Hollywood wine bar and industry hangout whose name translates to a “blank slate.”

Rather than just creating another customary eulogic Instagram post, “I channeled my grief into gathering,” Noui said. Tabula Rasa, which has a “dark, grown and sexy feeling,” is responsible for putting a lot of first-rate L.A. pop-ups on the map, including Burgers by Standing and Broad Street Oyster, according to Noui.

It was a nice place to bring out “our people” who spend most of their time in the back of those type of places, she said.

The next event was held at the quaint and cozy Now Serving, the Chinatown cookbook store run by Ken Concepcion, a former Wolfgang Puck chef at Cut. The store, which “gives cottage vibes with a sick library,” is also a haven for public discussions and meeting places for local makers and creatives.

Alyssa Noui and Kristel Arabian

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Sam Gezari

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LAist

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For that first event, Arabian created a flier in Canva and went through her contacts looking for sponsors willing to donate food. But they didn’t want it to be just a grieving party, so Noui and Arabian sought another angle.

They found the Southern Smoke Foundation, a Houston-based nonprofit offering free “Behind You” therapy sessions specifically for food and beverage workers. Currently operating their mental health program in ten states, the foundation's sessions are administered locally by grad students at California Lutheran University, seeking to fulfill their curriculum hours. The non-profit also offers emergency relief grants for industry workers. The only conditions are that they work a minimum of 30 hours a week — across multiple jobs, if necessary — and that they’ve worked in the industry for at least six months.

After Noui and Arabian went through the Southern Smoke Foundation offerings at the first meeting, a fishbowl was put out where attendees could share anonymously anything they felt compelled to bare, Arabian said. One person wrote, "I know that the food matters, but when will I start mattering?"

"It f—ing crushed me," Arabian recalled. Others used the opportunity to bounce around career concerns: questions related to pricing, tipping, and other ways they could come together to improve the industry or support one another.

Noui doesn’t need the Southern Smoke offerings herself. She has motion picture insurance as part of a local craftsperson union and has just a $5 copay for counseling. She couldn’t afford it otherwise, she said. Now the question is, “how do I hold the door open for more people to have access to it?”

Cutting through the stigma

Southern Smoke founder, the Houston-based, James Beard Award-winning chef Chris Shepherd, 51, says if you talk to any cook they’ll tell you the same thing: “I still hear the ticket machine in my head at night. You know, you can hear that, geeegeee, geeegeee sound. It doesn't stop.”

The foundation was originally conceived through a Houston festival intended to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis. Shepherd was trying to help a sommelier friend battling the disease. The participating chefs and organizers started speaking about opening up the mental health dimension before the 2018 festival, right after the suicide of superstar TV chef Anthony Bourdain.

Within a few days of the celebrity chef’s death, a friend of one of the festival chefs also had taken his own life. So, “with twenty-something of the best chefs in the country coming in,” Shepherd said, there was a special opportunity to have that conversation.

The profession will always be a high-pressure one, but that doesn’t mean we can’t mitigate harm where possible, he said. Beyond the obvious barriers of accessibility and affordability, there’s also the built-in cultural stigma around asking for help. Since the Southern Smoke therapy sessions are conducted via telehealth, “nobody needs to know,” he said.

Kait Leonard, 28, a freelance chef, producer and co-owner of BOH Creative, a marketing agency that works with restaurants and their staffs, decided to attend the second Check-In event at Now Serving, although she wasn’t sure if she was in the right headspace beforehand.

In 2023, a couple of months after cofounding her company, Leonard fell into a deep depression and admitted herself to the ER with suicidal ideation. She wasn’t sure if she was up for attending the meetup, but decided her presence could help someone else.

“Like 'I went to the ER for, you know, I really didn't want to be here. And that's okay'.” Ultimately, her hope most importantly was that these meetups would be a positive outlet and tool for her clients, to help create a healthier workplace. “I wish something like this existed when I was first starting to work in kitchens,” she said.

Brandon Gray, 38, chef and founder of Brandoni Pepperoni, the Los Angeles inspired pizza pop-up, has attended multiple Check-In events thus far. “A lot of trauma bonding,” took place at said events, he said, adding “everyone there has their own story, there’s a lot of overlap”.

“It’s about just figuring out how to be better,” he said. “Because it needs to be better—the people who have been cooking as long as I have, it's not fun anymore.”

Checking in about mental health

The “hospitality industry is excessive,” says Noui. But it’s important to remember that those who are drawn to it, either back-of-house or front, are those who naturally, or are conditioned to, put themselves second. It’s those inherent “masochistic qualities that everyone has,” the same ones we see “romanticized in shows like the Bear” that come “out of service — out of wanting to serve."

At Kitchen Culture Recruiting, the company she started, Arabian says she makes it a point to check in with potential hospitality candidates about their mental health, “but it’s not something you can hit chefs over the head with,” she said. “It takes trust,” from someone who’s been through it. But there are limits, she says. “I’m not a psychologist.”

Arabian remembers her first time working in the kitchen as a cook, after feeling pushed by her family to become a pharmacist. For the first time, it felt like she was doing what she was supposed to be doing. She’d go on to work back-of-house for approximately ten years reaching the level of executive chef. In her last chef role she was working as executive sous chef at a bakery and pizzeria. But after working in front of a wood-burning stove for as much as 110 hours a week, 14-16 hours a day, seven days a week, she developed a chronic illness and had to leave. The safety net just wasn’t there.

While any job can be anxiety-producing, “cooking is one job that has so much “machismo and bravado” around it that physically, “when you become ill, it is life-changing,” she said. Rather than seek out another chef job, she became a front-of-house and back-of-house recruiter. She remembers saying, “Until I find a really great job for myself, in the meanwhile, I'm going to make sure that chefs are taken care of.” Fourteen years later, she says, "I’m still trying.”

Noui has been workshopping her own community resource tool. She bought a phone number that she’s calling the “My Chef” line, 855-My-Chef-8, which she also had printed on pens. This hotline can be used for everything from finding someone to fill a job, like a chef, stylist, or dishwasher or for accountability checks.

Ultimately, Shepherd says it's important for people to know there is help. He's not a fan of all the emerging depictions of extreme kitchen conditions put out there today. “There's these new TV shows that glorify this [toxic workplace elements] when an industry is trying to get away from it…I think it’s wrong. Unless at the end of it you say, ‘hey, you know what? Therapy is available.’”

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Koreatown-raised entertainer Dumbfoundead tells it straight: “I don’t think I’m just Korean or Korean American. I’m more Koreatown than both of those labels.”

The Korean American rapper, born Jonathan Park, moved to Koreatown at 3 and has lived there ever since. He’s often called the “mayor of Koreatown,” a title he proudly embraces.

The neighborhood sits at the center of his memoir, SPIT: A Life in Battles, which he promoted at a book launch in early April hosted by the Los Angeles Korean Festival Foundation.

Set to be released Tuesday from Third State Books and co-written with Donnie Kwak, SPIT traces Park’s childhood through his late 20s. He chronicles coming up in the music scene while dealing with racist stereotypes, problems at home and addiction.

“This is the culture I grew up in, in the neighborhood, and that’s what made me who I am. If I didn’t grow up in a neighborhood that proudly had Korean letters on menus and signs and I could be unapologetically Korean, I would not be able to battle rap in confidence and be able to have thick skin to fight opponents verbally,” he said.

Rapper and actor Dumbfoundead (Jonathan Park) at Love Hour in Koreatown on March 26.

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Brian Feinzimer

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The LA Local

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Park, 40, was born in Argentina to Korean parents. He and his younger sister later crossed the U.S.-Mexico border with their mother, eventually landing in Koreatown. The neighborhood didn’t have much of a hip-hop scene but provided the young Park a space to find his voice.

Enter the hip-hop scene of nearby Leimert Park. Old, grainy YouTube videos show him performing at Project Blowed, where rappers gathered for open mic sessions that could run late into the night. He would skateboard there as a teenager, then head back home late. With his immigrant parents working long hours to support the family, the lax supervision allowed him to roam the city freely and build his street cred.

Seth Eklund, executive director of the Koreatown community and resource center Bresee Foundation, remembers the teenage Park from those early years.

“I do consider him like a son, one of my many sons from over the years,” Eklund said. “I started at Bresee in 1996, he started coming in 1998 when we were still up on the third floor of the church.”

In his memoir, Park describes the Bresee Foundation as transformative for his childhood. He started going there when the center served mostly Black and Latino youth. Park, his sister Natalie and their Korean friends Andy and Mimi “stuck out like sore thumbs,” Eklund said, but they quickly became regulars, spending most afternoons at the center.

Eklund remembers Park getting into music and media production. He even went to Leimert Park to watch Park freestyle.

“You had guys out there that were gangsters from all over L.A.,” Eklund said. “It was a really cool cultural scene. And there were really angry battle rappers, gangster rappers, all sorts of people, and he was always the funniest of everyone that would pick you apart with laughter as opposed to angst.”

Sociology professor Oliver Wang from Cal State Long Beach has researched Asian Americans in hip-hop and said the kinds of community spaces Park was part of were critical to him being able to “take off.”

Wang also points to how closely Park has tied himself to Koreatown. He said hip-hop, from its earliest days, has always been rooted in a sense of place, but especially with someone like Park, grounding himself in Koreatown helps listeners understand he is coming from a particular place and, therefore, a particular perspective.

“I think for Asian American listeners, the fact that he comes out of Koreatown, an Asian American ethnic enclave, that completely matters,” Wang said, “because it’s tied into a larger sense of Asian American-hood when you’re naming your Asian American hood, no pun intended.”

Even after growing up and leaving the Bresee Center, Park stayed connected to them, something Eklund says he really appreciates. Park returned to the center for a few summers to run workshops for younger kids, teaching writing and music production. He would also bring his artist friends to teach DJing and graffiti art.

“For a couple summers, our center was just flooded with not just kids from this neighborhood but kids from all over L.A. to learn from him and participate,” Eklund said.

“SPIT: A Life in Battles”

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Courtesy Third State Books

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“He’s a multicultural artist. He’s an L.A. artist. This is what L.A. is, it’s a melting pot of people of different traditions coming together, and that’s why I think people resonate with him,” he added.

Paul Kim, Park’s longtime friend and founder of Kollaboration, a nonprofit that helps grow Asian American talent, remembers seeing Park performing as a teenager.

“You could tell he was just different,” Kim said. “So witty, so funny.”

Kim notes that Park always stayed true to his roots.

“He’s performed at almost every Koreatown nonprofit gala, he’s supported so many different organizations, he’s performed at all the student associations, the cultural performances,” he said. “He was always rapping about real-life situations. He’s just very raw and authentic.”

That authenticity is what drew 23-year-old Johnny Nguyen, originally from the Bay Area, to become a fan of Dumbfoundead.

“I was 13 and I was looking for Asian American rappers because I wanted to support the community and stories that weren’t represented,” he said.

“He is a regular guy living in Koreatown trying to live life like everyone else in the neighborhood,” Nguyen added. “He’s not living in a mansion far away.”

Park agrees that’s all part of his approach to making art.

“I think hip-hop is just authenticity,” Park said. “When I was growing up, I had a lot of songs that were super nerdy. … The other Asian rappers were pretty gangster, and then they saw this dude named Dumbfoundead. He looks scraggly, he skateboards, and he’s rapping about not getting girls while everyone else is rapping about getting girls. Hip-hop is about being unique and standing out.”

Park says his book is about “capturing Koreatown’s legacy, Asian American history and entertainment, all just told through my lens.”

Touring made him more aware of how specific his experience was — and how lucky he was for it. In other parts of the country, he said, he would meet Korean American fans who did not grow up around a large Korean community.

After one show in Wisconsin, he said a young Korean fan came up to him and begged him: take me with you.

“To us it doesn’t mean anything because we can get great Korean food and we just gotta choose between 10 options,” he said about growing up in Los Angeles. “I think we take it for granted a little bit that this is a place where you can have confidence and be unapologetically Korean.”

Park has never left much doubt about how he feels about Koreatown.

“I really do thank the neighborhood in that way,” he said. “I think that that played a big part.”

Park is scheduled to appear in conversation with chef Roy Choi at Barnes & Noble at The Grove on April 16 and at the LA Times Festival of Books on April 19.

A new and returning slate of TV shows and straight-to-streaming movies are heading your way this spring, with a good number of them set here in Los Angeles (and one in Orange County).

From (yet another!) comedy about the entertainment industry — this one starring Keanu Reeves, Cameron Diaz and Jonah Hill — to one set (and filmed in) Fullerton — starring Elle Fanning and Michelle Pfeiffer, and based on the popular novel of the same name.

Outcome (April 10, Apple TV)

Keanu Reeves and Martin Scorsese in "Outcome," premiering April 10, 2026 on Apple TV.

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Apple TV

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This dark comedy was co-written and directed by Jonah Hill, who also plays Hollywood mega star Reef Hawk’s (Keanu Reeves) crisis lawyer in the film. After Hawk finds himself blackmailed with the release of a video that could destroy his career, he sets off on an apology tour in the hopes of stopping the extortion plot.

Matt Bomer and Cameron Diaz play Hawk’s friends, alongside a star-studded cast including Susan Lucci, Martin Scorsese, Drew Barrymore, Laverne Cox and comedians Roy Wood Jr., Atsuko Okatsuka and David Spade.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles (April 15, Apple TV)

Nicole Kidman in "Margo's Got Money Troubles."

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Apple TV

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Based on the hit 2024 novel of the same name, Margo’s Got Money Troubles is about a 19-year-old aspiring writer and single mom (Elle Fanning) who lives in Fullerton and turns to OnlyFans to make ends meet.

Margo’s mom, an ex-Hooters waitress, is played by Michelle Pfeiffer, and her dad, a former pro wrestler, is played by Nick Offerman (with Nicole Kidman playing an old wrestling buddy of his).

The show was filmed in Los Angeles, downtown Fullerton and on the Fullerton College campus, with over $50,000 of the proceeds reportedly going to a scholarship fund.

Funny AF (April 20, Netflix)

Kevin Hart in Funny AF.

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Kevin Kwan/NETFLIX © 2026

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The reality competition show Funny AF is only partially filmed/set in Los Angeles (with auditions also in New York and Chicago), but we’re including it on this list because the finale is set to take place in Los Angeles at the Netflix is a Joke Festival.

Comedian Kevin Hart hosts this search for “the next stand-up superstar,” with help from guest judges including Kumail Nanjiani, Chelsea Handler and Keegan-Michael Key.

The winner, ultimately chosen from a list of finalists by audience votes, will get their own Netflix stand-up special.

Jerry West: The Logo (April 16, Prime Video)

Head coach Jerry West of the Los Angeles Lakers looks on from the bench during an NBA basketball game circa 1977 at The Forum in Inglewood, California. West coached the Lakers from 1976-79.

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Focus On Sport/Getty Images

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Getty Images North America

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Another slight outlier, we’re calling this documentary L.A.-based because of the Lakers connection. Jerry West: The Logo is about the All-Star Los Angeles Lakers player and executive whose silhouette was the basis for the NBA logo.

Directed by Kenya Barris (black-ish, BlackAF), the film features the final interviews West participated in before his passing in 2024. Other interviewees include Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, Shaquille O’Neill, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant.

Returning shows, also with SoCal locations

Hacks (April 9, HBO Max)

The fifth and final season of Hacks (HBO Max) premieres this week. The season was partially filmed in L.A., along with Las Vegas, New York and Paris. A side note on the show’s L.A. filming locations: the Altadena home that was featured as the “side mansion” of lead character Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) burned down in the 2025 Eaton Fire.

Euphoria (April 12, HBO Max)

The show, returning for a third season (which may be its last) is set in the fictional city of East Highland but is largely shot in and around Los Angeles. Zendaya returns to her Emmy-winning role of Rue, along with supporting cast members Sydney Sweeney and Jacob Elordi.

Beef (April 16, Netflix)

Much of the first season of the Netflix series, starring Ali Wong and Steven Yeun as strangers who meet through a road rage incident, filmed on location in the San Fernando Valley and Koreatown. Season 2 involves an entirely new story and cast, including Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac, and was filmed at least partially in downtown Ojai.

Running Point (April 23, Netflix)

The series where Kate Hudson plays a woman who’s unexpectedly put in charge of her family’s professional basketball team (inspired in part by the real-life Los Angeles Lakers owner Jeanie Buss) films in L.A. and is also set here.

The Comeback (March 22, HBO Max)

The Comeback has already come back (in this latest iteration — its third and final season — last month), but new episodes of the Hollywood satire starring Lisa Kudrow are still coming out on Sundays.

Los Angeles leaders could soon make changes to the city’s embattled “mansion tax.” But some housing advocates, who blame the tax for a slowdown in apartment development, say the new attempts at reform don’t go far enough.

The city’s Housing Department released a report last week recommending the City Council make four changes to voter-approved Measure ULA, a tax on real estate sales of $5.3 million or more.

The changes, described by the Housing Department as “narrowly focused,” mainly deal with the financing and regulation of affordable housing projects funded by Measure ULA. The department recommended the City Council approve those changes by early fall so loans for new affordable housing projects can close later this year.

Mott Smith, an adjunct professor of real estate at USC and a critic of the tax, said the reforms proposed in the report could fix overly restrictive spending rules. But he said they don’t address the tax’s broader impact on housing development across the city.

“This is really a form of admission that ULA is not working as designed,” Smith said. “It's frankly about time that the city admits this because we're never going to fix it if they can't admit there's a problem.”

The report’s conclusions were reviewed and endorsed by the citizen oversight committee tasked with monitoring Measure ULA’s outcomes. Joe Donlin, director of the United to House L.A. coalition, said supporters are in favor of the proposed changes.

“ULA was written with flexibility to make these exact kinds of amendments,” Donlin said. “We always knew that there would need to be adjustments along the way, and we continue to support efforts to optimize Measure ULA in any way possible.”

How the tax has worked so far

Since taking effect, Measure ULA has raised more than $1 billion for tenant aid programs and affordable housing construction. Before voters approved the tax in 2022, proponents said it could produce 26,000 homes in its first decade. So far, the tax has funded the construction of about 800 homes, according to supporters.

Tax proponents say thousands of new homes are entering the development pipeline. Last year, the city began taking applications for $387 million in funds for housing development and preservation. But according to the Housing Department report, affordable housing lenders have told the city that Measure ULA requirements can discourage them from funding projects.

Based on those concerns, the report recommends changes that would:

• Exempt projects built by affordable housing developers from paying the tax
• Ensure terms for other sources of public funding don’t conflict with terms for Measure ULA funding 
• Allow foreclosed projects to be sold to other developers
• Let building owners increase rents if they lose rental subsidies

Azeen Khanmalek, executive director of Abundant Housing L.A., said those changes would help unlock Measure ULA funding but wouldn’t do much to convince market-rate developers to return to L.A.

“The biggest thing that we don't see in this report is around addressing the impact measure ULA is having on multi-family housing production across the income spectrum,” Khanmalek said.

Several economic studies have concluded that because the so-called “mansion tax” applies to new apartment buildings — not just mansions — development has slowed in L.A. more than in nearby cities.

Tax supporters dispute those findings, blaming high interest rates and other macroeconomic factors for slower building in L.A.

‘Mansion tax’ fight headed for the ballot

The proposed changes come at a time when Measure ULA has come under fire, with multiple efforts to reform the tax — or invalidate it — likely to appear on the November ballot.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association has turned in signatures for a ballot measure to overturn such taxes statewide.

Meanwhile, the L.A. City Council has set up a committee to develop potential reforms for the November ballot that would alter but not eliminate the tax. The new report from the housing department has been referred to that committee, but it has not yet been scheduled for a vote.

Miguel Santana, president of the California Community Foundation, said he and other business leaders, academics and affordable housing developers recently formed a new coalition — called Mend It, Don’t End It — to support proposals such as a 15-year tax exemption for new apartment buildings.

“ULA has created circumstances where investors are deciding not to invest in Los Angeles and are investing in surrounding communities,” Santana said. “We know that at the crux of the affordable housing crisis is supply and to be able to respond to that issue.”

A federal judge ordered the Department of Homeland Security to stop using “coercive” and threatening language to convince unaccompanied immigrant children to agree to deportation, court documents show.

The judge said earlier this week that by using threats of prosecution and coercive language, the U.S. government violated a 40-year-old court order that bans immigration agents from attempting to coerce unaccompanied children to voluntarily leave the country after being detained.

In a separate order, the court also denied government lawyers’ request to end those same longstanding protections.

The two decisions were issued Monday by Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald, who wrote in the orders that the government’s threat of prolonged detention for immigrant children who choose not to self-deport “disturbingly mirrors the testimony” of Jose Antonio Perez-Funez, whose trial in 1985 led the court to first order the protections for children the following year. Perez-Funez and others in that class action case testified that they were not informed of their rights to apply for bail or asylum, leading them to involuntarily waive their rights while they were detained by immigration agents as children.

Mark Rosenbaum, a lawyer for the nonprofit law firm Public Counsel has been representing immigrant children who were detained by the government for decades and helped win the 1986 court order in the Perez-Funez case.

He said the case has now shown new evidence that the Trump administration has no intention of respecting the rule of law.

The administration’s goal, as Rosenbaum sees it, “is to amp up [deportation] statistics of children who represent no threat to the national interest, who are among the least culpable individuals on the planet.”

LAist reached out to DHS for comment but has not heard back.

The language that has been banned

Last October, LAist reported that DHS had begun targeting unaccompanied children with a “voluntary option” to return them to their countries of origin. Through court documents in the current case, more has been confirmed about how this so-called “voluntary option” was actually presented to children.

Unaccompanied children who are detained for suspected immigration violations are first held by DHS, before generally being turned over to Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. At ORR, children are required by federal law to be provided a confidential legal consultation within 10 days, along with other support.

Court documents show DHS was presenting children with the option to self-deport, along with threats of prosecution and prolonged detainment if they refused, before they were transferred to ORR and guaranteed the chance to speak with an attorney.

Fitzgerald wrote that presenting this ultimatum to children violated the 1986 court order.

“It is difficult to imagine a scenario more coercive than the one faced by [unaccompanied immigrant children] in the 72 hours before they are transferred into ORR custody,” Fitzgerald wrote in court documents, “particularly for noncitizen children who likely do not know whether they possess any rights at all.”

According to evidence presented in court, children were told that if they did not accept voluntary deportation, they would be detained “for a prolonged period of time” and if they turned 18 years old while in custody they would “be turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for removal.”

They were also told they may be “barred from legally applying for a visa” and that their sponsor in the U.S. “may be subject to criminal prosecution” if they didn’t agree to voluntary deportation.

This information was read to children or presented to them in a document DHS called the “UAC Pathway Processing Advisal”, but Rosenbaum told LAist he sees even the document’s name as misleading.

 ”It wasn't an advisal, it was a coercive document,” Rosenbaum said. The government has admitted it used the document since September 2025, according to the court order that now bans its use.

How did it come to this?

Rosenbaum said that after the 1986 court order, which also requires unaccompanied children to be allowed telephone access to relatives or legal support, organizations like Public Counsel and  the National Immigration Law Center monitored the government’s compliance with the order.

Other than a few exceptions, he said, the injunction had been followed until recent years.

“  When the Trump administration began its immigration activities in the second term of the president,  that all changed,” Rosenbaum said, “and it changed in a hurry.”

Court records show that DHS notified the court last November that they would be asking for the 1986 court ordered protections for children in the department’s custody to be ended. When organizations monitoring compliance with the order saw this, Rosenbaum said they investigated and found that in nearly all circumstances, children were no longer allowed to talk to lawyers and were being coerced to take voluntary departures from the country.

Despite the court order, Rosenbaum said, children were “separated from family, separated from their communities and separated from their constitutional rights.”

Peter McGraw, deputy legal director at the National Immigration Law Center, told LAist that the court order was issued to specifically protect children’s Fifth Amendment rights to due process.

He said that when unaccompanied children arrive in the U.S., they don’t have an adult there with them to help them understand their decisions about whether to pursue a number of protections that may keep them from being deported.

“ What due process requires is that the government provide children with notice of their ability to apply for asylum or for other protections — withholding from removal or protection from removal under the convention against torture — to ensure that they are not sent back to countries where they would be in danger,” McGraw said.