The Brief

Growing up in a family of post-Soviet Jewish immigrants in Los Angeles meant fusing together our food with American food. This often meant making do with what we had. My Eggo waffles were topped with blackcurrant jam from Odessa Grocery. Trader Joe’s Chinese-inspired chicken gyoza potstickers were boiled, sprinkled with dill, and dipped in sour cream to stand in for traditional pelmeni.

The beloved Croatian seasoning, Vegeta, was generously added to everything, including buttered noodles and boxed mac and cheese. Whether intentional or not, we were dipping into the world of fusion cooking.

The history of fusion cooking is the history of the American kitchen. From the infamous Thanksgiving feast that fused together traditional English stuffed fowl with Native harvested beans and corn pudding, to the ‘80s and ‘90s fusion restaurant boom with Wolfgang Puck combining French cooking with Asian influences, resulting in the popularization of Madame Wu’s Chinese Chicken Salad.

By the time we arrived at pan-Asian corporate restaurants like P.F. Changs dishing out Chinese kung pao chicken, Japanese sushi, and Thai lettuce cups all on one glossy menu, however, fusion had become an icky word.

In a 2022 Los Angeles Times article, restaurant critic Bill Addison asked his readers, “Can we let go of the term ‘fusion cooking’ once and for all?”

Chicken and Mole made with Mary's chicken confit, orange gastrique, and sesame seeds, served with steamed bok choy and topped with seasonal citrus that's served with a 21 ingredients white mole and a handmade piadina (flour tortilla).

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WONHO LEE

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Courtesy of Amiga Amore

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His gripe with the word fusion was that it’s “a hydra slur” or “shorthand for 'Asian fusion,' which is insultingly reductive; Asian, Asian American and Pacific Island cultures are not monoliths.”

Addison continued: “It also carries a bad taste that suggests one is doing something silly or slapdash or nonsensical. No wonder chefs who are cooking to their personal narrative say in interviews, 'Don’t call what I’m doing ‘fusion.’”

Yet despite the body blow to the word itself, the idea of merging foods from distinct cuisines is still attracting chefs today, inspired by the limitless creativity it presents.

Here are four new-ish restaurants attempting to reinvent the concept — while tip-toeing around the unnecessary negative connotations of the word itself.

Pijja Palace puts an American spin on Indian classics, with chicken tenders, wings, and garlic bread

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These restaurants serve flavor combinations as unique as the people of Los Angeles, with a more playful and authentic take on the American immigrant and third culture experience. As cringe as the word can be, fusion — telling the food stories of multicultural Angelenos — is not going anywhere.

Pijja Palace

Malai rigatoni, Pijja Palace

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Named one of Bon Appetit’s 24 Best Restaurants of 2023, Avish Naran’s Pijja Palace is having a good year. The casual Indian-American sports bar-meets-restaurant tucked into the former plaza of Silver Lake’s infamous Happy Sad Foot sign, Pijja Palace is bursting with unique flavors.

A traditional caesar salad is given a facelift with mango pickle, dried tomatoes, and a dusting of panko. Hardy lamb pasta is tossed with sumac, fennel, and creamy yogurt and feels like it was assembled by a sweet Indian-Italian grandma. Chicken wings are doused in a mixture of jalapeño, cilantro, mint, chives, and served with a cool yogurt sauce. But the star of the show is the classic chutney pizza.

A stoner invention with a thin crust pie, perfectly melty cheese, sweet tomato sauce, and a generous glaze of green chutney inspired by chef Miles Shorey’s Puerto Rican grandma’s sofrito and Lavineta’s Pizza that would offer under-the-table chutney to the growing Indian community in Lakewood.

Build your own pizza at Pijja Palace

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Pijja Palace translates to Pizza Palace, a play on the Indian accent. Naran grew up in Los Angeles as part of a third culture, “eating everything” along with his Indian auntie’s chicken curry served with not naan, but tortillas.

Naran is most inspired by LA legend and father of the beloved Kogi truck, Roy Choi.

“One of the cool things about Roy is that [his food] never felt like fusion. He was a Korean guy who grew up in Koreatown, around a lot of Hispanic culture, so the whole thing was super organic,” Naran said.

Pijja Palace feels super organic, too. A reflection of the second generation’s melding of familiar flavors: American pub food and Indian delicacies.

Amiga Amore 

Carbonara ravioli with duck egg and requeson, pancetta and micro cilantro

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Courtesy of Amiga Amore

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Amiga Amore is co-owned by husband and wife duo Alessandro Zecca and Chef Danielle Duran Zecca. The cozy Italian-Mexican fusion restaurant was a natural combination of flavors as Duran Zecca grew up in a Mexican-American family near Frogtown, while her husband grew up in a small town near Verona, Italy.

After a traditional French culinary education and 10 years of cooking in Michelin star restaurants in New York City, Duran Zecca “felt stagnant” and moved back to Los Angeles to open her own restaurant.

“The real influence [for Amiga Amore] was my husband, because he didn't like Mexican food. I didn't really realize that until we moved to L.A.…So, I started to put Mexican ingredients into pasta and other dishes and I kept creating, and I kept noticing so many similarities between Mexico and Italy,” Duran Zecca said.

The combination of flavors from both their childhoods worked, and led to a successful pop-up and the opening of Amiga Amore in Highland Park, with mouth watering dishes like Chorizo y Clams, a mixture of clams, brothy cannellini and pinto beans, Meyer lemon, and jalapeño butter served with homemade bread, and Elote Agnolotti, "street corn" filled pasta with crumbly cotija cheese, zesty finger limes, and house made tajin.

Like other chefs working in the realm of fusion, before opening Amiga Amore, Duran Zecca asked herself, “Is it going to be gimmicky?” It was hard not to associate fusion with the ramen burger and the sushi burrito. But buoyed by success, Duran Zecca is leaning into fusion with a new brunch option that includes an eggs and bacon breakfast sandwich on a housemade basil concha, a breakfast burrito with eggs, tater tots, pico de gallo and Italian cannellini beans, and a classic Italian panzerotti stuffed pizza with potato, chorizo and tomatillo salsa.

Chefs these days are cooking their own personal narratives, which are surprisingly relatable. What has surprised the Zeccas most after opening Amiga Amore is how many of their customers relate to the Italian-Mexican experience. “There are so many people that come in, and say, 'We're just like you … your restaurant is like our story and we love to eat here because you feed us both.'"

Taco/Social

Tacos at Taco Social

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Steve Stroud

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Courtesy of Taco Social

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Of all the restaurants we’ve featured, , Taco/Social is one of the newest on the list (it opened on Oct. 10) and the most corporate. The website copy defines the food as “inventive, freeform tacos [that] break all the rules. Inspired by flavors from around the world, we use fresh ingredients to serve up tacos that are as unique as they are delicious.”

The beach-themed Eagle Rock restaurant with big open-air windows and extra loud music feels like you’ve stepped into a Hollister or Abercrombie and Fitch. A full bar serves up margaritas or whatever you want, and there are two big-screen TVs for the sports fans.

Embracing Wolfgang Puck and P.F. Chang’s approach to fusion, it takes it to the next level by including a wide range of cuisines beyond French, American, and pan-Asian cooking, reflecting the people of Los Angeles who speak at least 185 different languages.

There’s a long list of those flour tortilla “freeform tacos” — post-fusion in overdrive — ranging from Vietnamese Banh Mi tacos, to Mexican barbacoa, to American cheeseburger, Indian tikka masala, and even a take on the Greek chicken pita.

Tacos from around the world include crispy cauliflower taco and K-BBQ taco made with braised beef

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Luciano Picazo

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Courtesy of Taco Social

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“We’ve taken signature dishes from cultures across the world and altered them to rest inside a tortilla,” says executive Chef Jonathan Paiz. “What other taco spot can take you on a culinary journey that spans from New Orleans to Vietnam? Los Angeles is a melting pot of people from all across the world and we wanted to embody that aspect into distinct, delicious tacos.”

Sadly though, the flavors are muted. The Greek Life taco, inspired by Paiz’s Greek ancestry, is filled with juicy chicken, tzatziki, pico de gallo, pickled red onion and surprisingly crispy french fries, but lacks a sufficient amount of spice, perhaps not surprising from a restaurant that is trying to cover too many cuisines at once.

Taco/Social is the ultimate fusion family restaurant. Sure it’s gimmicky, but it has something for everybody, including the opportunity for a tired parent to enjoy a cocktail with dinner.

Saucy Chick Goat Mafia

After rave reviews and a loyal following at the beloved Smorgasburg food fest in DTLA, pop-ups Saucy Chick and Goat Mafia have joined forces, soft opening a new restaurant deep in Pasadena this week called, what else, but Saucy Chick Goat Mafia.

Juan Garcia of Goat Mafia and Saucy Chick owner’s Rhea Patel Michel and husband Marcel Rene Michel — who opened their pop-up after being furloughed from their jobs during the pandemic — did not hesitate when the opportunity arrived to combine Indian-Mexican rotisserie chicken with traditional Mexican goat birria to create something new.

Mom’s Beans, Smoked Chicken Wings with featured flavors Jeera, Pibil, Ambli, Charred Haldi Cauliflower, Jeera Rice, Fenugreek Esquites, Birria Taco, Pibil Rotisserie Taco, Saucy Chick Goat Mafia

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Courtesy of Saucy Chick Goat Mafia

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The casual flavor-packed restaurant serves unique dishes like the birria de chivo bowl with Garcia’s signature century-old family goat birria recipe and Saucy Chick’s Indian jeera rice, hearty mayocoba beans, and hand-pressed corn tortillas.

The hand-brined 24-hour marinated rotisserie chicken is served with a selection of sauces like the Mexican-leaning creamy pibil with achiote, garlic, citrus, and oregano or the pungent jeera sauce made from caramelized onions, garlic, ginger, and packed with cumin. There are also plenty of sides to choose from, such as a truly unique “kachumber salad” combining cucumber, mustard seed, coconut, peanuts, lime, and mint, as well as an array of refreshing agua frescas with an Indian twist, like the ginger jamaica.

Rotisserie chicken, taco and burritos galore at newest location of Saucy Chick Goat Mafia

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Courtesy of Saucy Chick Goat Mafia

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The chefs come from immigrant families and encountered fusion early on in their lives. “Growing up, we would eat grilled cheese with a garlic chutney paste and masala egg omelets,” said Patel Michel. Garcia’s first mind-blowing encounter with fusion was Pizza Loca’s asada pizza — a rare treat as his Mexican-American immigrant family rarely ordered take-out.

Fusion is the future and a no-brainer for the owners of Saucy Chick Goat Mafia. “There is creativity and strength in diversity. As cultures converge and weave into intricate tapestries, food serves as a medium for storytellers and an opportunity for marginalized voices to have a platform,” said Patel Michel.

Other new-ish fusion spots to consider

• Asian-fusion restaurant Poltergeist tucked inside Silver Lake’s Button Mash
• DTLA’s Korean influenced Yangban
• Inglewood’s Afro-Latin fusion Two Hommés
• Mexico City inspired ramen-birria at pop-up Birriera El Viejon.

It won't be as hot as last week, but we're in for another warm week here in SoCal where temperatures are going to be more than 10 degrees above normal.

Low clouds and even patchy fog are in store this morning for the coasts, downtown L.A. into the San Gabriel Valley. Otherwise, expect a mostly sunny afternoon.

High temperatures along the beaches will be in the mid to upper 70s. For the valleys, we're looking at highs between 83 to 91, and up to 93 degrees in the Inland Empire.

Meanwhile, in Coachella Valley temperatures there will be hotter with highs from 93 to 98 degrees.

On a recent morning, traffic sped by the Annenberg Community Beach House in Santa Monica where San Vicente and Ocean boulevards meet. A few hundred yards away, the waves crashed on the shore.

But 100 years ago, when Hollywood starlet Marion Davies lived in this once-rural spot of coast, standing this close to the house would put you knee deep in water at high tide.

“That low white concrete wall was the sea wall to protect the pool, to protect the backyard of that home,” said Tom Ford, CEO of the Santa Monica Bay Foundation, gesturing toward the house.

A century ago this wide flat beach was far narrower. Many beaches in the Santa Monica Bay were artificially widened from the 1930s through the 1960s.

The sand came from an ancient system of coastal dunes that extended from LAX all the way to the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The endangered El Segundo blue butterfly is found only in the dunes’ restored, fragmented remains.

Expanding dune restoration

Now, change is coming again to this iconic stretch of beach. For a decade, The Bay Foundation has been figuring out how to bring back pieces of those ancient dunes. So far, the nonprofit has restored small patches of dunes on beaches from Point Dume to Manhattan Beach.

Their latest, and largest dune restoration effort so far, will extend about 30 acres south of Santa Monica pier to the border with Venice. Announced last month, it’s possible thanks to a partnership with the city and a $2 million state grant.

The nonprofit first installed dunes in Santa Monica in 2016 — “installed” meaning they put in a simple rope and little wood fence around about 3 acres, then scattered a bunch of native dune plant seeds. Nature did the rest.

The historic extent of sand dunes in the southern Santa Monica Bay.

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Courtesy Kyle Emery

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UC Santa Barbara

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Now across about 8 acres of this beach, dunes up to 5 feet tall are crowned with low-lying plants: blossoming yellow beach evening primrose flowers, light green beach bur, saltbush — a foundational plant for growing dunes, Ford said.

“These are super tough characters. They can handle the salt water, they can handle the salt air," Ford said. “Their big roots are extending down into the beach.”

The native dune plants will provide more habitat to shorebirds, including snowy plovers, a threatened species.

Snowy plovers are a threatened species.

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Photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Southeast

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Licensed under CC BY 2.0

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Ropes and signs surround the dunes to discourage people from trampling them.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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Within a few months of the dunes installation in 2016, a snowy plover nest appeared on Santa Monica Beach for the first time in some 70 years. Now, they can be spotted scurrying about the driftwood and dune plants.

Birds migrating thousands of miles along the Pacific Flyway will be able to rest and forage here too.

Not only that, the dunes can lessen the amount of sand that blows onto the bike path, parking lots and roads, a regular nuisance for city maintenance crews.

Dunes and sea level rise

Long term, the dunes can help combat rising sea levels.

“Between the sea level rising and getting taller, more frequent, more violent storms hitting our coastline, we're likely to lose the beach,” Ford said.

Scientists estimate that our warming planet is likely to raise ocean levels at least 3 feet. At that level, as many as 75% of California's beaches could be gone by 2100 without intervention.

But dunes “start to build a beach that grows in height, and that helps us keep up with sea level rise,” Ford said.

Tom Ford, CEO of the Santa Monica Bay Foundation.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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Ford picks up trash next to a plant blossoming on a dune.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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Sand dunes can withstand only so much water, but the Santa Monica dunes have been shown to reduce erosion and flooding.

Native dune plants hold onto sand, while allowing the dunes to remain dynamic, reducing erosion. That’s opposed to introduced species like iceplant, which have squeezed out many native dune plants and are akin to concrete to wildlife.

When not carpeted by iceplant, the dunes themselves can absorb waves’ energy, displacing less sand and redistributing it in a way that allows the beach to recover. In contrast, sea walls trigger a scouring effect when the waves reverberate off of them, said UC Santa Barbara coastal ecologist Kyle Emery, who is part of a team that has surveyed more than 120 dune restoration sites across the state, including the Santa Monica dunes.

His research found that those dunes also reduced flooding on the beach during significant storms in the winter of 2023.

“That restored dune site was able to prevent about 14 meters or 50 feet of water runup on the beach,” Emery said.

A batch of younger dunes forming on Santa Monica beach.

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LAist

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There are only so many ways to adapt to rising sea levels. We may have to abandon some areas. Nourishing beaches with sand is one expensive tool.There’s hard infrastructure like sea walls, but that’s costly and worsens erosion. You can build sand berms like the ones that go up in the winter in Orange County — those can protect infrastructure, but don’t have much benefit for wildlife (or ocean views).

As for dunes?

“We've demonstrated that this nature-based solution can protect against sea level rise and storm-driven wave erosion,” Emery said.

Still, Emery emphasized, dunes are no silver bullet. Dunes won’t work everywhere, and some places are likely to simply be too inundated with water. More long-term research is needed, Emery said, but so far the research on dunes shows promise.
A 2023 state law requires all coastal areas to plan for sea level rise — dunes are mentioned as a nature-based strategy. And Proposition 4, passed by voters in 2024, provides dedicated funding for such coastal resilience efforts.

The wide, flat, groomed beach we're all used to in Santa Monica.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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Restored dunes stretch along the shore in the other direction.

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LAist

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Bolsa Chica State Beach, for example, is likely to seek such funding for its own burgeoning dune restoration effort (mostly to help with sand that piles up in parking lots and on Pacific Coast Highway), as are parts of south Orange County, where beach erosion has been a major problem for infrastructure, such as the Pacific Surfliner tracks, said Riley Pratt, a senior environmental scientist for State Parks Orange Coast District.

“ I think the writing is on the wall, and we're now looking at it differently, that we really need to get ahead of this,” Pratt said.

In Santa Monica, the dunes are something of a test. We’ve become used to volleyball and sunbathing on wide, groomed stretches of sand, but maybe it’s time to make room for dunes, too. They may be cluttered with some trash, but there’s also a patchwork of plants and small birds foraging. There’s also driftwood and kelp — once the foundations of developing dunes before we came accustomed to scraping the beach clean.

It’s a more complicated version of beach, but likely a more sustainable one.

Beach evening primrose is a native dune plant that helps stabilize sandy soils and provides habitat for coastal wildlife.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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The Trump administration's unprecedented expansion of migrant detention facilities is igniting fierce opposition in communities across the political and geographic spectrum, as the administration moves to scale up its detention footprint to fuel its campaign to arrest, detain and deport the largest number of immigrants in modern U.S. history.

Flush with new cash — $85 billion in new funding, with around $45 billion specifically to expand immigration detention over four years — Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is moving fast to lease and acquire warehouses and buildings across the United States with the aim of retrofitting them into detention spaces. ICE is also expanding contracts with local jails and private prison facilities as it builds out its sprawling detention footprint. ICE is now the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the nation.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement worker stands outside a warehouse in Williamsport, Md., that's being converted into an immigration detention center with plans to hold 1,500 people, on March 9.

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for NPR

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Wesley Lapointe for NPR

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ICE detainees have been held at more than 220 detention sites around the country, according to government data provided by ICE in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by NPR. These sites range from dedicated ICE facilities and private prisons to county jails, military bases and newly converted warehouses. Detainees are also being held temporarily in staging areas, hospitals and holding sites. The number of sites continues to grow.

ICE's biggest detention operations are largely clustered in the southern United States. Just five states — Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Arizona and Georgia — account for just over 60% of the nation's more than 750,000 ICE detention book-ins. (In the Deportation Data Project's dataset, these book-ins are referred to as "stints." Most individuals have only one book-in per stay in detention, but some are transferred between multiple detention centers.) Texas had more than 200,000 book-ins across 115 facilities between President Trump taking office in January 2025 and mid-October 2025, the most book-ins of any state in the country.

A year ago, around 37,000 people were being held in immigration detention across the nation, according to ICE data. That number had jumped to more than 72,000 by the end of January 2026. The administration's goal is to keep expanding detention space to keep up with arrests. Ultimately, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) aims to build bed space for 100,000 immigrants alleged to be in the country illegally. On average, detention facilities daily now hold nearly 70,000 immigrants, a scale of mass detention not seen since the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans and nationals during World War II.

And most detained noncitizens are clustered at a handful of centers. Of the more than 60,000 book-ins across Arizona, nearly half were at the Florence Staging Facility. Forty-five percent of the 93,105 book-ins across Louisiana were at the Alexandria Staging Facility.

DHS documents reveal ambitious growth plans scaled up around a "Hub and Spoke Model" in which eight large detention centers holding between 7,500 and 10,000 people each are fed by 16 smaller regional processing centers holding 500 to 1,500 immigrants each. The proposed facility in Social Circle, Ga., for example, is one of the eight proposed "mega centers" positioned strategically across the nation. The new center would effectively double the town's population of roughly 5,000.

Growing frustration, local backlash

But there's growing grassroots opposition — across political and geographic lines — to ICE's detention expansion. And communities are winning. From Georgia to Texas to Arizona and in scores of towns across the U.S., residents are pushing back, citing costs and infrastructure worries, as well as zoning, political and even moral concerns.

"They're getting the wrong people," says Donnie Dagenhart, who lives not far from a proposed ICE detention center near Williamsport, Md. Dagenhart, who owns a local construction company, says he supported Trump for years but has now soured on the president largely over how immigration is being enforced. "Let's get the bad ones out. That's what we should be doing, but we're not. I just think we're living in a police state and it's getting worse," he says. "Did you see the building?" he asks of the new detention site. "It's huge."

Motorcyclists ride through Williamsport, Md., on March 9.

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Polling shows that the public has largely turned against Trump's aggressive mass deportation agenda. Sixty-five percent of Americans said ICE has "gone too far" in enforcing immigration laws, according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. That's an 11-point increase since last summer.

In New Hampshire, a "purple"' swing state that holds the nation's first presidential primary, community uproar recently forced the halt of a planned ICE detention facility in the town of Merrimack.

New Hampshire state Rep. Bill Boyd, a Republican from Merrimack who had previously reached out to DHS voicing his opposition to the facility, called it a big win.

"This community has fought giants and has come out victorious," he told NPR member station NHPR. "And it's just a testament to my neighbors and local leadership and the state leaders for taking a stand.

Backlash erupted, too, in Oklahoma City in deep-red Oklahoma when local residents learned of plans to convert a vacant warehouse into a facility to process and temporarily house immigrants. Faced with strong opposition, DHS and ICE backed away from that proposed detention site too.

Mississippi's senior U.S. senator, Roger Wicker, a Republican, has strongly opposed a proposed immigration detention center near Byhalia, Miss. "I am all for immigration enforcement, but this site was meant for economic development and job creation. We cannot suddenly flood Byhalia with an influx of up to 10,000 detainees," Wicker wrote on X last month.

Public outcry also stopped a planned detention facility in conservative Texas. The federal government planned to buy a 1 million-square-foot warehouse from Majestic Realty in Hutchins, Texas, and turn it into a holding center. But following weeks of pushback from community members and city leaders, the company decided not to sell or lease the facility to DHS.

"We're grateful for the long-term relationship we have with Mayor Mario Vasquez and the City of Hutchins and look forward to continuing our work to find a buyer or lease tenant that will help drive economic growth," a Majestic Realty spokesperson told Texas Public Radio in a statement.

The largest detention facilities in the country are run by two for-profit, private companies, Geo Group and CoreCivic. Both companies reported more than $2 billion in revenue in 2025, an 8% and 18% increase, respectively, in growth year over year. A handful of other companies also have big DHS and ICE contracts to help guard, run and support ICE detention operations, including Akima Global Services and its sister company Akima Infrastructure Protection. The Project on Government Oversight reports that CoreCivic's ICE awards have increased 45% since Trump took office for his second term.

"A majority of these locations wouldn't pass for any other venue"

In Surprise, Ariz., where DHS recently purchased a 400,000-square-foot warehouse for $70 million, NPR member station KJZZ reported that the move sparked frequent protests and community pushback. Hundreds of people swarmed Surprise's City Council meetings demanding that the city pass a resolution to make DHS and ICE publicly disclose operational plans.

These concerns are heightened as reports of overcrowding and lack of food in detention centers across the nation have proliferated. ICE is investigating numerous detainee deaths. Since October, 26 people have died in ICE custody, putting immigration detention on track for its deadliest fiscal year since the agency was founded.

Protesters gather with signs condemning Immigration and Customs Enforcement's purchase of a warehouse in Roxbury, N.J., for use as an immigrant processing facility, on March 10.

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José A. Alvarado Jr. for NPR

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Advocates say reduced oversight and record numbers of detainees are a recipe for more sickness and death in custody. "The abhorrent and worsening conditions in detention centers, gross negligence and a complete lack of oversight have contributed to yet another grim record for deaths in ICE custody," said Jennifer Ibañez Whitlock, senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center, an immigrant rights defense organization.

While there have been few to no oversight moves on the federal level, local leaders are taking action. The U.S. Conference of Mayors, a nonpartisan organization representing the more than 1,400 mayors of cities with populations over 30,000, recently passed two emergency resolutions calling for the administration to rein in ICE tactics, expand transparency and put guardrails on detention expansion.

"A majority of these locations wouldn't pass for any other venue, even possibly for a homeless shelter," the Republican mayor of Columbia, S.C., Daniel Rickenmann, told NPR. The conference called for federal immigration agencies to "assure all those detained have access to legal assistance required by law; require all buildings where people are detained to meet local health and safety standards; [and] obtain appropriate local zoning and building permit approvals to convert warehouses and other buildings to detention or deportation facilities."

Rickenmann says he and fellow mayors have grave concerns about the rapidly expanding ICE detention system: "Are they sanitary? Do they have the beds? Do they have the facilities for restrooms? Do they have places that they can provide meals that are to standards that we would require anybody, including jails, to keep up with?"

In a statement to NPR, ICE said new facilities would bring jobs, additional tax revenue and security to communities. On recently purchased warehouses in Roxbury, N.J., and Hagerstown, Md., the agency wrote: "These will not be warehouses — they will be very well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards. These sites have undergone community impact studies and a rigorous due diligence process to make sure there is no hardship on local utilities or infrastructure prior to purchase."

Local officials NPR spoke with dispute the existence of any rigorous community impact studies for new ICE facilities.

An industrial warehouse recently purchased by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for use as a detention center is seen on February 10, 2026 in Social Circle, Georgia. Local officials have expressed frustration over the planned ICE detention facility.

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Elijah Nouvelage

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Getty Images

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DHS secrecy leaves local officials in the dark

A through-line complaint across communities is lack of transparency. Representatives at all levels of government, from city councils to the U.S. Congress, complain they have been largely kept in the dark about DHS' plans. Local representatives in Oakwood, Ga., Baytown, Texas, and Highland Park, Mich., told NPR that they received no response from DHS when they inquired about facilities slated to be built in their communities.

In Social Circle, Ga., local frustrations rose so high that city leaders barred water use by ICE's planned facility until the agency provides more clarity on its plans.

"There is a lock on the meter," Eric Taylor, the city manager for Social Circle, said in a statement to NPR member station Georgia Public Broadcasting. "The lock is there until ICE indicates how water and sewer will be served without exceeding our limited infrastructure capacity."

In Merrillville, Ind., reports that ICE intended to convert a vacant 275,000-square-foot warehouse into a detention facility caught local officials completely off guard. The town quickly passed a forceful resolution opposing the conversion and publicly criticized ICE for failing to inform local officials of the move.

"We want to be clear that we've received no communication from any federal agency regarding the use of this property as a processing or detention facility, and the town has not approved or authorized any such use," Merrillville Town Council President Rick Bella said in an emailed statement to NPR.

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said that the lack of communication from ICE, as well as from the private-sector companies, is especially concerning when coupled with reports of mistreatment and abuse.

"Here in San Diego, our members of Congress are not permitted to access these facilities," Gloria said. "Our local public health officials have also been turned away. And so when you look at what's happening in public with these detention efforts, they often become extremely chaotic. It makes you wonder what's happening behind closed doors and without, you know, transparency and accountability."

In Oakwood, Ga., the mayor and City Council posted that while they support ICE's mission, they were concerned that the local government was not involved in the process of green-lighting the detention center or selecting its location. The sale was recently finalized, and Georgia Public Broadcasting reported that ICE paid $68 million for the space, which had an assessed value of around $7.2 million.

Oakwood City Manager B.R. White strongly criticized the detention center's placement next to two residential areas, an established subdivision and a building under construction, and warned that taxpayers would likely have to foot the bill, including an estimated $2.6 million in added sewer expenses alone.

"I would have liked to see [ICE representatives] come in, sit down, tell us what their plans are and discuss with us how to resolve the issues and the tax losses to the community," White told NPR.

He says the city has not received any communication from the federal government, so the city is left to deal with these issues on their own. "It was an egregious overstep by the federal government," White said. "'Get the ox and the cart out of the ditch service' is what we're having to do right now."

Some places that aren't slated to have a facility have preemptively taken action. After reports that DHS was scoping out locations for new facilities in Missouri, the Jackson County Legislature approved a plan to ban immigration detention facilities. Legislator Manny Abarca told NPR member station KCUR that it puts the county on the record as being against "the caging of people" even if the county doesn't legally have the authority to stop DHS.

A handful of communities have embraced new facilities, however warily, with an eye on the economic boost and local jobs that these detention centers bring.

In Georgia, Charlton County Administrator Glenn Hull says the county will make about $230,000 this year from the detention center contract between GEO Group and the federal government — enough to pay the salaries of 20% of the county's employees.

Hull says GEO Group has been a "great partner," providing about a dozen college scholarships and funding for holiday festivals and events, even as he acknowledges the ethical and moral costs of profiting from people being forcefully separated from their loved ones, locked away and deported.

"I hate to say it, but if not here, then somewhere else," Hull admits. "So you take advantage of what you have on your table. I hate to simplify it like that 'cause these are lives and families, but that's the reality of it."

To determine where people detained by ICE were held, NPR analyzed data provided by ICE in response to a FOIA request by the Deportation Data Project. In the Deportation Data Project's original dataset, a book-in is referred to as a "stint." Most noncitizens have only one book-in per stay in detention, but some are transferred between multiple facilities. Each transfer to a new facility counts as a separate book-in, as does a return to a facility where the person had previously been booked. Facilities range from dedicated ICE centers to local jails and hospitals.

Sergio Martinez-Beltran, Jasmine Garsd, Ximena Bustillo, Alyson Hurt, and Preeti Aroon contributed to this story.
Copyright 2026 NPR

L.A.’s main homeless services agency is at risk of blowing a federal deadline to turn in a required audit of its financial records after executives were far behind schedule in providing necessary documents, according to the lead outside auditor.

The federally-required review — known as a single audit — is one of the most important oversight checks of the L.A. Homeless Services Authority. Every year, LAHSA must hire an outside firm to determine whether the agency is accurately tracking and reporting what happens with taxpayer funds it manages. Turning it in late, or having significant negative findings, can jeopardize an organization’s federal funding.

The audit of LAHSA’s last fiscal year is due March 31, nine months after the fiscal year ended.

While government clients on that fiscal calendar would typically turn over their records to auditors by last December, LAHSA staff had failed to do so until March, lead auditor Justin Measley told LAHSA’s audit committee last Wednesday.

He said the timeline for reviewing the documents was now unusually compressed, and that the firm was doing everything it can to try to meet the deadline.

“It is possible that [LAHSA’s audit] will not meet the March 31st deadline,” Measley told the audit committee. “ It's been a few years of this sort of delay with LAHSA."

On Friday, however, LAHSA executives said the audit is on track to meet the March 31 deadline.

“We have submitted all required documentation” to the auditors and “the field work has been completed,” Janine Lim, LAHSA’s deputy CFO, told the commission’s finance committee. “At this time, we do not anticipate any issues with meeting that timeline or allowing sufficient time for review."

Lim has been stepping into her boss’ role as the top finance official for the last several weeks, while CFO Janine Trejo has been on an extended leave. The reasons for her leave have not been made public, nor has the timing of how long she’s been out.

Even after Lim’s presentation, LAHSA Commissioner Amy Perkins said she doubts the audit will be done by the deadline.

“Based on everything I know and have seen, this is very unlikely,” she said in a statement Friday.

In response to a request to LAHSA CEO Gita O’Neill for comment, LAHSA spokesperson provided a statement Thursday that the audit is “on track” to meet the deadline.

“LAHSA has provided financial and organizational documentation to our external auditors, despite a key mid-level leadership transition that required adjustments to the document-gathering timeline,” the statement provided by spokesperson Paul Rubenstein said. “As the audit nears completion, LAHSA remains committed to being a responsible steward of public funds, and we expect the audit to be completed on time.”

Auditor raised concerns in January, February and March

Measley, LAHSA’s lead contracted auditor, told the auditing committee on Wednesday that LAHSA executives had agreed in October to provide the documents by Jan. 15. LAHSA staff then confirmed multiple times in December and January that they were on track to do so, he said.

But LAHSA blew that deadline, Measley said, adding that auditors gave multiple extensions.

Measley said the records were still not provided as of March 3, even after he raised concerns about the timing with O’Neill and LAHSA’s governing commission chair, Amber Sheikh, during a meeting in early February.

On March 3, the audit firm contacted LAHSA’s governing commission about the overdue documents, Measley said.

“I felt like I exhausted my ability to work solely within management, and I needed to alert governance of the delays, which is when I sent the letter of the potential for LAHSA to not meet its regulatory deadline,” Measley told the audit committee.

In a statement, Sheikh said she met with the auditor in early February “as part of the standard annual single audit process.”

“They shared that some steps were slightly behind schedule, but they did not express concern about delivering the audit on time,” Sheikh said.

Juistin Szlasa, LAHSA’s audit committee chair, said he was not informed of any problems with the audit until March 3, despite them being flagged nearly a month earlier to O’Neill and Sheikh.

Szlasa expressed concern about the remaining timeline, saying the agency’s governing commission would still need time to review the draft audit once it’s ready and ask questions before it’s finalized. He said the draft audit should be circulated at least a week before it’s finalized.

“I don’t see how this is going to happen in a way that makes sense,” he said during Wednesday’s meeting. “I’m very disappointed,” Szlasa said. He did not fault the auditors, who he said were handling the review “with integrity and care.”

The mayor’s take

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is the only elected official on LAHSA’s governing commission, and was one of the three members of its audit committee from Aug. 22 until Jan. 23, which overlapped with the first few months of the audit. She did not attend any of the committee's four meetings during that time, according to official records.

Bass did not respond to an interview request through a spokesperson.

“Mayor Bass has been a champion for reforming L.A.’s broken homelessness system, and wants this audit done,” a statement provided by Ilana Morales, the mayor’s spokesperson, said. “She is tasking the City’s appointed LAHSA commissioners to work closely with the agency’s leadership to get this moving. After years of increases before she took office, Mayor Bass brought homelessness down, and she will not let bureaucratic failures stand in her way.”