The Brief

What is Lunar New Year?

Saturday, Feb. 10, marks the Lunar New Year, welcoming the Chinese zodiac Year of the Dragon. This celebration is observed by millions worldwide, including China, Vietnam, Korea, and, of course, connected communities in Los Angeles.

Each community celebrates the festival differently, with different food traditions. We’ve pulled together some culinary offerings around L.A. this year.

Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year activities typically start with some thorough house cleaning before the new year itself. Homes are decorated in red for good luck. The foods traditionally eaten for Chinese New Year are symbolic of longevity and prosperity in some way, usually because of the shape or because the names of the dishes are homophones for related words.

Here are some of the foods typically eaten on Chinese New Year:

Whole fish

The word for fish in Mandarin, yú, is a homophone for another word that means “abundance” or “surplus” — hence, eating fish on Chinese New Year is considered lucky and will bring abundance in the new year. The fish is usually served whole and reflects completion from the beginning to the end, but this is not always the case, especially for smaller households.

Bistro Na's in Temple City provides an array of dishes to help you ring in the Lunar New Year in style.

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Bistro Na's

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Some of the fish specials you can find around town this year include:

• Bistro Na’s is offering different Lunar New Year sets that serve 6-10 people, and all of them include at least one fish dish.
• Crustacean Beverly Hills is offering a $188 eight-course (because eight is an auspicious number) dinner extravaganza with crispy dover sole, black truffle turnip cakes, and more. The dining room will be decked out in Lunar New Year decorations and there will be live entertainers throughout the night. 
• Paradise Dynasty is offering some special dishes like Singapore-style black pepper lobster. There will also be a steamed Chilean sea bass and eight treasure sticky rice for dessert, another popular Lunar New Year treat. The special dishes are available now through March 31, 2024. 
• Steep will have a collaboration dinner with Chef Anthony Wang on Feb. 9-10. There will be an eight-course menu featuring steamed rockfish, radish cake with XO sauce, braised pork belly with abalone, and more.

Poon choi

Poon choi from Collette in Pasadena, a traditional Cantonese festival dish featuring layers of different ingredients and is consumed communally.

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Collette

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This traditional Cantonese meal translates to “basin vegetables” and is served in a large basin. It’s not all vegetables, though — the Lunar New Year poon choi usually also contains several luxurious ingredients like abalone, sea cucumber, BBQ and more.

Poon choi has become a popular Lunar New Year dish in Los Angeles over the past couple of years, with many restaurants offering it at this time of year.

Order the dish from Hop Woo BBQ & Seafood Restaurant, Capital Seafood, Ho Kee Cafe, Sea Harbour, and many others. Colette in Pasadena will also offer poon choi by pre-order this year, and there are two sizes available: one that feeds six and a larger one for ten people.

Tray of togetherness

The tray of togetherness is a tray filled with sweets with symbolic meanings that are served to guests. The tray usually has six or eight compartments with various sweets including candied lotus roots, which symbolize abundance, candied coconut, which symbolizes togetherness, and candied lotus seeds for fertility.

Different versions of the tray can be found at Asian grocery stores such as 99 Ranch Market and 168 Market.

Nián gāo

This dense, glutinous rice cake is another traditional symbolic food. The name, nián gāo, sounds similar to words that mean “getting higher every year” and thus symbolizes growth and progress. While there is both a sweet and savory version, the sweet version is more popular, made with glutinous rice flour and sweetened with brown sugar (some versions may also use chestnuts or red beans). In L.A., you can get them at:

• Kee Wah Bakery. In addition to the rice cake, the bakery also has an assortment of gift sets in Chinese New Year packaging.  
• Woon, which is serving Chinese New Year specials from Feb. 7-11, including savory, stir-fried nián gāo. Woon will also turn up the festivities with red envelope roulette with prizes like t-shirts and free noodles. 

Jiaozi

Jiaozi is the crescent-shaped dumplings that you may know as potstickers. Although dumplings in general are commonly found at celebrations, jiaozi is typically eaten during Chinese New Year as an auspicious food, since the shape of the dumplings resemble the gold ingots or sycee used as currency in imperial China.

Dumplings galore including jiaozi, the crescent-shaped dumpling, at Din Tai Fung for Lunar New Year.

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Din Tai Fung

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You can find jiaozi or potstickers at many restaurants around L.A., including:

• Din Tai Fung, which also serves crescent shaped dumplings in addition to their famous xiao long bao. From Feb. 8-12, Din Tai Fung will be giving guests a red envelope containing a certificate for a free soy noodle appetizer (to be used for a future visit). One lucky guest will get a Golden Ticket, allowing access to the restaurant’s VIP reservation service, which pretty much guarantees you can always get a reservation. 

Lo hei or yusheng

Yee Sang from Sam Tan's Kitchen, a Cantonese-style raw fish salad, consisting of strips of raw fish, mixed with shredded vegetables and a variety of sauces and condiments.

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Even within Chinese New Year celebrations, there are quite a few regional variations. For example, the Cantonese lo hei — also called yusheng, or “prosperity toss” — is a raw fish salad that is “tossed” on Chinese New Year and symbolizes abundance. Yusheng is popular among the Chinese communities in Singapore and Malaysia.

Here in L.A., you can pre-order it at:

• Malaysianfoodloversla, which sells them via Instagram for pickup in Arcadia. They’re offering three different seafood toppings: fried shrimp, cocktail shrimp or arctic surf clam. 
• Ms. Chi Cafe, in Culver City, will be offering a special six-course Lunar New Year menu that includes a yusheng salad, followed by golden chicken jiaozi symbolizing wealth, longevity noodles with spicy garlic prawns, Chilean sea bass and more. The $69 menu will be served at dinner from Feb. 9-25.
• Home chef Sam Tan’s Kitchen will have lo hei available for pick up from Feb. 3-24.

Seollal

In Korean, Lunar New Year is called seollal and it’s typically celebrated over three days. Some traditions are similar to those of Chinese New Year, where people travel to their family homes, perform an ancestral ritual, and young ones bow to the elders to show respect and receive money in a red (or white) packet.

Tteokguk

The main dish eaten for seollal is tteokguk, a rice cake soup traditionally made with beef bone broth. The dish is believed to grant good luck and it’s said that people don’t gain another year of age until they’ve had their bowl of tteokguk. The white of the rice cakes also symbolize purity and a bright new beginning.

• Find tteokguk at Hangari Kalguksu, Ma Dang Gook Soo, Sun Nong Dan and other places in Koreatown. 
• Baekjeong KBBQ and Ahgassi Gopchang will both be serving a complimentary bowl of tteokguk for all guests during lunch and dinner service on February 10. 
• Instead of tteokguk, Yangban Society will be gungjung tteokbokki, or “royal rice cake”. In this royal court version, the rice cakes will be served with braised oxtail, hobak squash, shiitake and preserved black truffles. The gungjung tteokbokki will be available Feb. 9-11.

Jeon

The savory pancakes, jeon, aren’t necessarily a seollal-specific dish, but they make an appearance at all celebrations in Korea, including seollal. Jeon can be made from various vegetables and sometimes also incorporate meat or seafood.

• HanEuem in Koreatown serves a platter of different varieties of jeon.
• Baroo is serving a special seven-course dinner on Feb. 10 which will include a seafood jeon with shrimp and sea cucumber as well as maesaengi tteokguk (rice cake soup with seaweed oyster broth). Book it here.

Tết Nguyên Đán

The Lunar New Year celebration in Vietnam is called Tết Nguyên Đán, or Tết for short, and it means “feast for the first morning” — so you know this new year celebration is all about the food.

Bánh tét or bánh chưng

A must-have for a Vietnamese Lunar New Year celebration is bánh tét or bánh chưng. They are glutinous rice cakes wrapped in a banana leaf and typically filled with mung beans and marinated pork. While bánh tét is cylindrical in shape and popular in South Vietnam, bánh chưng is square in shape and eaten more in the northern parts of Vietnam.

The dish is time-consuming to make, and that’s part of its importance, as families spend time together and bond while making it. Around Lunar New Year every year, Bánh Chưng Collective holds a bánh chưng making class. This year’s class will be on Feb. 17, 2024 and attendees will get enough ingredients to make four bánh chưng and everyone will enjoy lunch together (the bánh chưng are taken home to be cooked later).

If you want to enjoy it without making it yourself, though, there are quite a few places to get them in the L.A. area, since bánh tét / bánh chưng are actually eaten year-round. You can find them at various Vietnamese bakeries and delis. Around Tết you can also get some at Sau Can Tho or order them from Kien Gang Bakery while supplies last.

Mut tet

Similar to the Chinese New Year tradition of the tray of togetherness, Vietnamese New Year also has a tray of sweets called mut tet that is used to serve guests during Lunar New Year. Some of the components are also the same, like candied coconut or lotus seeds, but you’d also typically find candied tamarind. You can buy these trays at Vietnamese grocery stores around San Gabriel Valley or Little Saigon.

Splurge-worthy meals

All the auspicious foods listed above are important traditions for many, but really, the most important thing is sharing good food with your loved ones. For many it’s also the time of year to splurge on a dinner too expensive for the day-to-day. There are a number of special dinners happening around town that aren’t about the specific food items, but that are worth looking into:

• Michelin-starred Kato will have their third Lunar New Year dinner series on Feb. 7-9, serving a special menu in collaboration with chefs Daisy Ryan (Bell’s) and Matthew Lightner (okta). The menu hasn’t been finalized yet but reservations can be made here. 
• The high end yakiniku restaurant Niku X will offer a special Lunar New Year tasting menu from Feb. 9-11. The menu costs $250 per person and includes wagyu oxtail potstickers, dry aged sashimi, caviar, and of course, plenty of A5 wagyu for the grill. 
• Merois at The Pendry West Hollywood is also offering a special four-course menu on Feb. 10. The menu costs $165 per person and includes Peking duck, king crab bao and more. There will also be live entertainment throughout the night.
  

Celebrations in Los Angeles

Aside from the food specials we mentioned above, there are also a number of larger community celebrations of Lunar New Year around the Los Angeles area. At these celebrations you’ll find dance performances, cultural showcases, and of course — more food.

Golden Dragon Lunar New Year Parade

The Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles is hosting the 125th annual Golden Dragon Parade on Saturday, Feb. 17. The parade is one of the oldest cultural celebrations in Los Angeles, and certainly one of the oldest Lunar New Year celebrations in the city as well. There will be dance performances and marching bands. The parade will start at the corner of Hill and Ord streets in Chinatown.

UVSA Tết Festival

The UVSA Tết Festival is the largest Vietnamese Lunar New Year Festival in the country and this year it will be held at the OC Fair & Event Center from Feb. 9-11. It's hosted by the Southern California chapter of UVSA, or Union of Vietnamese Student Associations. During the three-day festival, there will be cultural activities, food vendors, firecracker shows and more. There will also be a replica of a traditional Vietnamese village complete with cultural exhibits and galleries for those who want to learn more about Vietnamese culture.

Lunar New Year at Pacific Asia Museum

The USC Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena will be throwing a Lunar New Year celebration on Saturday, Feb, 10. There will be a traditional Chinese lion dance performance as well as a Korean dance performance, taiko drumming, calligraphy and more. Those attending the celebration will also get free admission to the museum.

Lunar New Year at South Coast Botanic Garden

South Coast Botanic Garden will be celebrating Lunar New Year every weekend in February. On Saturdays and Sundays there will be two daily live performances of lion dancers, martial arts and more. There will also be various activity stations from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., including lantern making, calligraphy and mahjong.

Chinese New Year Festival at The Huntington

On Feb. 10-11 The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens will have a Chinese New Year Celebration. Not only will there be lion dancers and martial arts performances among other entertainment, the various dining venues here will have special menus, serving steamed buns, Chinese mushroom and tofu soup, black bean catfish, Peking duck and more. Reservations are required and can be made here.

MAUM Market

Lunar New Year seems like the perfect time to shop AAPI-owned businesses, and MAUM Market which is LA’s original Asian makers’ market will be holding a market on Saturday, Feb. 10 at ROW DTLA. There will be over 100 Asian-American makers showcasing everything from pottery to cute stationery to food. The market will be held from 12-4 p.m. and entry is free (there’s a free 2-hour parking at ROW DTLA).

A bill that would make it easier for Californians to sue immigration agents and other federal officials for civil rights violations sailed through the state Senate on Tuesday.

Senate Bill 747, dubbed the No Kings Act, would create a first-in-the-nation legal pathway for residents to seek financial damages in state court for excessive force, false arrest and other violations of constitutional rights committed by federal officers.

The bill was written by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco. If state or local law enforcement officers had shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two people recently killed by federal agents in Minneapolis, they could be held financially liable, he said.

“But under current law, it’s almost impossible to file that same lawsuit against a federal agent who does the same thing,” Wiener said. “If the federal government won’t hold these agents accountable for violating the Constitution, we will.”

The measure passed the state Senate on a 30-10 party-line vote, with Republicans arguing the bill could expose local police to more lawsuits.

Tuesday’s vote is the latest move by Democrats in the state Legislature to create a bulwark against the Trump administration’s deportation crackdown.

Last year, lawmakers set aside $25 million for legal nonprofits to defend residents facing detention or deportation. They also approved a bill, written by Wiener, to prohibit local and federal law enforcement officers from wearing masks on duty — which is currently facing a legal challenge from the Trump administration.

SB 747’s supporters said it would give Californians a chance to hold federal officials accountable in a way that can be difficult under current law.

Border patrol agents march to the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building on Aug. 14, 2025, in Los Angeles, California. California prosecutors are pushing back on claims from the federal government that ICE agents have immunity from prosecution, vowing to investigate federal agents who break the law.

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“Today we are deliberating an issue to try to solve and also remedy the fear that folks are living with,” said Senate President pro Tem Monique Limón, D-Santa Barbara. “In combination with the fact that we have not seen due process.”

Wiener argued that existing law makes it difficult for victims to receive damages in federal court. For example, the Federal Tort Claims Act protects the government from liability arising from decisions made by individual officers and requires plaintiffs to first file an administrative claim.

Supporters of SB 747 include the Prosecutors Alliance, a coalition of progressive district attorneys, and Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, which advocates for immigrants in California’s Inland Empire.

The bill is opposed by organizations representing California police officers, sheriffs and Highway Patrol officers.

They argued the change will undercut an existing state law, known as the Bane Act, which requires Californians who sue law enforcement officials to show that a civil rights violation was accomplished through “threats, intimidation, or coercion.”

“The question before you is not whether accountability should exist, but what creating a second, overlapping state system actually adds — other than more litigation and more risk for those on the front lines,” said Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares, R-Santa Clarita.

During debate on the Senate floor, Wiener said local police officers and sheriffs can already be sued under federal law for violating constitutional rights.

“The liability that local and state police officers face will be the same after this is signed into law as before,” Wiener said. “It doesn’t change that.”

Senate Bill 747 now heads to the state Assembly.

In an analysis of SB 747, staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote, “the bill is very likely to be challenged by the federal government if signed into law.”

Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter on Monday backed a proposed fan boycott of World Cup matches in the United States because of the conduct of President Donald Trump and his administration at home and abroad.

Blatter was the latest international soccer figure to call into question the suitability of the United States as a host country. He called for the boycott in a post on X that supported Mark Pieth's comments in an interview last week with the Swiss newspaper Der Bund.

Pieth, a Swiss attorney specializing in white-collar crime and an anti-corruption expert, chaired the Independent Governance Committee's oversight of FIFA reform a decade ago. Blatter was president of the world's governing body for soccer from 1998-2015; he resigned amid an investigation into corruption.

In his interview with Der Bund, Pieth said, "If we consider everything we've discussed, there's only one piece of advice for fans: Stay away from the USA! You'll see it better on TV anyway. And upon arrival, fans should expect that if they don't please the officials, they'll be put straight on the next flight home. If they're lucky."

In his X post, Blatter quoted Pieth and added, "I think Mark Pieth is right to question this World Cup."

The United States is co-hosting the World Cup with Canada and Mexico from June 11-July 19.

The international soccer community's concerns about the United States stem from Trump's expansionist posture on Greenland, and travel bans and aggressive tactics in dealing with migrants and immigration enforcement protesters in American cities, particularly Minneapolis.

Oke Göttlich, one of the vice presidents of the German soccer federation, told the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper in an interview on Friday that the time had come to seriously consider boycotting the World Cup.

Travel plans for fans from two of the top soccer countries in Africa were thrown into disarray in December, when the Trump administration announced an expanded ban that would effectively bar people from Senegal and Ivory Coast following their teams unless they already have visas. Trump cited "screening and vetting deficiencies" as the main reason for the suspensions.

Fans from Iran and Haiti, two other countries that have qualified for the World Cup, will be barred from entering the United States as well; they were included in the first iteration of the travel ban announced by the Trump administration.
Copyright 2026 NPR

The Central Library in downtown Los Angeles hits a big milestone this year: It’s turning 100 years old.

The century-old landmark has been through a lot of changes since opening, but how we got this iconic library in the first place is a saga in its own right.

A scrappy start

To understand what it took to get here, we’ll go back to 1872. Back then, the city of L.A. only had about 6,000 residents. Dirt roads were everywhere and agriculture was king.

The region was still fresh off the transition to American rule, and local leaders were just starting to dream up what the city could look like, especially in the downtown area.

There was no “LAPL” during this time — a group called the Los Angeles Library Association attended to local reading needs. John Szabo, current L.A. city librarian, says that early system was pretty bare bones.

“ It was a very small one room library with a handful of books,” he told host Larry Mantle on LAist 89.3’s AirTalk.

That was in the Downey Block building at Temple and Main streets, which is where the Federal Courthouse stands today. There were newspaper racks and shelves with about 750 books, while another space had checkers and chess — because what more do you need to fuel young minds?

The Downey Block building circa 1897.

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The city needed a lot more because of rapid growth, but money was an issue. To help meet the demand, the association became an official city department in 1878. That allowed local officials to fund their new “Los Angeles Public Library.”

Over the years, LAPL would open satellite “reading rooms” and branch libraries. However, the main collection was expanding quickly. The books were essentially couch-surfing for years. They moved four times into different rented spaces, including into City Hall in 1889.

This was a temporary home that lasted for a couple of decades. Then, the effort to build a central library picked up steam. One of those was with a plan to put it in Pershing Square, but the project went awry. So the collection moved again — this time into a department store building (while it was still running), between women’s clothes and furniture, where it stayed for six years.

A new, innovative library

When Everett Perry, an energetic city librarian, took the helm in 1911, he lobbied for years for a central library to be created.

Finally, a decade later, voters passed a measure for a $2 million bond to pay for a new dedicated building. That would become the Central Library we have today. L.A. was a little late among large U.S. cities for getting a central library, but it finally opened in July 1926.

The Central Library's rotunda and ornate ceiling, which is designed to mirror the mosaic pyramid on the exterior roof.

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The building was designed by New York architect Bertram Goodhue with art deco and Egyptian influence, common motifs of the time.

It’s elaborately decorated with murals, mosaics and sculptures. For example, black marble sphinxes sit inside and a mosaic tile pyramid  with a handheld torch makes up the roof. Szabo says it was well received by Angelenos.

“ Of course I’m biased, but I think it’s the most beautiful library in the world,” Szabo said. “ [It was] a great sense of pride in a growing city, sort of putting L.A. on the map.”

Sithy Yi fled genocide in Cambodia and came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1981. She was detained earlier this month at a regular immigration check-in in Santa Ana, and her lawyer, Kim Luu-Ng, says Yi is being held unlawfully at the Adelanto detention center.

Luu-Ng said Yi was ordered by an immigration court to be removed from the country in 2016, but her removal was withheld out of concerns she would be tortured if she returned to Cambodia.

After 10 years complying with ICE instructions and initiating a still-pending visa application, Luu-Ng claims that federal immigration officials detained Yi two weeks ago as a form of punishment and to instill fear in immigrant communities.

Yi is one of potentially hundreds of people with pending visa applications meant to protect victims of crime or human trafficking whose status has been abruptly put at risk by immigration policy changes ordered by the Trump administration, Luu-Ng and other immigration attorneys told LAist.

Yi cannot be deported back to Cambodia, her attorney said. Luu-Ng said immigration officials have not told her where Yi might be deported to and says her detention is unconstitutional and inhumane without a plan of where to send her. Luu-Ng has filed a petition in federal court arguing for Yi to be released from detention.  Federal officials have not yet responded in court.

”I think this case asks a very simple question,” Luu-Ng said. “Can the government jail someone when it has no real plan to deport them?

“The Constitution says no."

ICE has not responded to LAist’s request for comment on this story.

Escaping violence

Sithea San, Yi’s sister, remembers the day her family was forced to leave their home.

According to her recollection, the Khmer Rouge approached them at gunpoint April 17, 1975, saying they had to leave before American forces were expected to bomb their city, Phnom Penh.

The Khmer Rouge was a Communist regime that brutally tortured, murdered and starved more than a million Cambodians in the 1970s. A United Nations-assisted tribunal began investigations in 2007 and found surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The family left that day thinking they would be gone for only three days. Their horrific experience would last years, until they arrived in the U.S. as refugees in 1981.

Sithea San recounted how Yi, the eldest sister who was just 9 years old when they left their home, used to steal food to keep her family alive in Cambodia.

After getting caught stealing by the Khmer Rouge several times, San said her sister was given a final warning: If she got caught again they would kill her entire family. They led Yi to a place where they said she, her mother and two sisters would all be buried.

Yi was subjected to forced labor and torture at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, which she later described to Luu-Ng in 2016 as she fought in immigration court to be allowed to stay in the U.S.

Yi still carries scars from where guards would burn her with cigarettes, Luu-Ng told LAist. She said Yi has other scars that lie deeper.

Safe from the Khmer Rouge, troubles continue in the US

San said her family came to the U.S. in 1981, sponsored by her uncle. They arrived in California with just $10.

Yi’s mother and sisters had all become U.S. citizens by 1990, San told LAist, but Yi’s path to legal residency was more complicated.

San said their family did not understand it at the time, but Yi suffered from PTSD. She began to have seizures after they escaped Cambodia, which often prevented her from going to school once they arrived in the U.S.

Yi was also bullied at school, leading her to drop out, her sister said.

Far from Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge, she again became a victim of abuse. Yi fell into a cycle of domestic violence, Luu-Ng told LAist, and she was severely abused by multiple partners over the years.

In 2011, Yi was convicted on drug charges and sentenced to probation. The abuse she faced at home continued and after being so severely beaten by her partner that she could not walk, Luu-Ng said, Yi missed one of her probation appointments.

She said that probation violation led to about a year in state prison, and from there Yi was transferred to ICE custody for removal proceedings.

Protections for victims of torture

Luu-Ng began working under a United Nations grant to help survivors of torture in immigration proceedings in 2009, and first met Yi in 2013.

She had talked with survivors of torture camps in Germany, Poland, Afghanistan and many other countries, but the story of what Yi and her family went through still left her shocked.

“ I've spoken to a lot of survivors of torture,” Luu-Ng told LAist. “Sithy’s story impacted me very, very deeply.”

Luu-Ng took on her case and argued in immigration court that Yi fell under protections granted by the United Nations Convention Against Torture — commonly known as CAT — banning anyone from being deported to countries where they will most likely be tortured.

The judge presiding over a 2016 hearing agreed.

“ We literally walked out of court within 30 minutes,” Luu-Ng said, “even the government counsel acknowledged the grave humanitarian concerns with this case.”

LAist reached out to ICE and an attorney who represented the agency, but they did not comment on the case.

Luu-Ng said Yi is not eligible for asylum status because of her conviction, but she has never heard of anyone being deported after receiving CAT protection.

“ Individuals who receive CAT withholding typically are allowed to live out the rest of their lives in the United States with a work permit,” she told LAist.

Even so, Luu-Ng said Yi also applied for a U visa in 2022 to further protect her from being deported. U visas are intended to give temporary immigration status to crime victims who have cooperated with law enforcement. Luu-Ng said Yi did cooperate with law enforcement in a case against one of her abusers and should qualify for a U visa, but she said they can take eight to ten years to be granted in some cases. She is still waiting for a decision on whether Yi’s visa will be approved.

Jennifer Diep, San Croucher, Sithy Yi and Sithea San attend the book release for "Exiled: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to California and Back," by Katya Cengel. The family was featured in the book.

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A policy change puts Yi’s future at risk

The Immigration Center for Women and Children (ICWC) and other immigrant rights organizations sued the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, in October of last year over new immigration enforcement policies on how immigration agents treat victims of abuse or human trafficking.

The group claims in court documents that the new policy “has allowed, for the first time in decades, the detention and removal of survivors of these violent crimes as a routine matter, without regard for the many protections Congress put in place for them.”

Erika Cervantes, a staff attorney for The Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, is part of the legal team representing ICWC in the case. She told LAist that until early 2025 there was a presumption that victims who came forward to help law enforcement would be protected.

She said that U visas and T visas — another type of visa for victims of human trafficking — have strengthened law enforcement by allowing victims to be comfortable coming forward and telling police about their abuse without risk of being deported.

Then, in January, President Trump issued an executive order calling for the “total and efficient” enforcement of immigration laws. ICE shortly followed with a memo that removed previous requirements for agents to identify whether their targets are victims of crimes that might qualify them for protections against deportation.

Cervantes said the memo also cuts protections that had been in place for victims who are waiting for their U and T visas to be approved. Attorneys for ICE previously had been instructed to not seek deportation of U and T visa applicants unless there were “exceptional or exigent circumstances,” according to the new ICE memo, but Cervantes said the new memo removes the presumption that victims would be protected.

“ [The memo] essentially green lights targeting this vulnerable community who went out of their way to share their story, go through this visa process,” Cervantes said. “There’s an about face, and now they’re being put behind bars.”

Cervantes said the ICE memo has affected hundreds of people, and ICWC is asking a federal judge to set aside the policy changes.

“ We're trying to challenge the administration's attempt to criminalize victims,” she told LAist.

Detained by ICE

Yi’s detention on Jan. 8 came as a complete surprise.

According to her sister, Sithea San, she had helped the government when she came forward as a victim and always went to her monthly check-ins with ICE.

“ She complied with every single thing that the government asked her to do,” San told LAist.

In November, two months before her detention, Luu-Ng and San went with Yi for her check-in with ICE. Luu-Ng said they were concerned at that time that Yi could be detained because they saw reports of other people being taken from their families during check-ins.

After discussing Yi’s case with Luu-Ng, the immigration officials at the Santa Ana facility said she would need to start wearing an ankle monitor, but she was free to go home. Luu-Ng recalled one official telling her that as long as Yi didn’t tamper with the ankle monitor or violate any conditions of her electronic monitoring, ICE would not detain her.

“We went out and everyone was in tears, relieved,” Luu-Ng said.

Yi continued to check in, and Luu-Ng thought she would be fine because she was following ICE’s instructions. The next two months Yi went to her check-ins without a lawyer, but her sister still came along.

At her January check-in, San said they saw people crying in the waiting area. She said Yi approached them and tried to comfort them.

Then after waiting about an hour, ICE called Yi into a back room, alone.

Yi can’t read in English, San said, and sometimes she struggles to understand when people talk to her. San wanted to accompany her sister to be sure she understood any questions she might be asked.

Instead, she was stopped at the door.

“ And then I heard the sound . . . the handcuffs,” San said. “And that moment I feel like, am I dreaming? Is this real?”

San said she told the ICE agents that her sister had CAT protections and a pending U visa application, which she showed them. She said they told her it didn’t matter.

When San was later able to visit her sister in detention, she said Yi told her the ICE agents tried to coerce her to sign legal documents she couldn’t understand and threatened that things would get worse for her if she refused.

She said Yi didn’t sign the documents.

“So unfair”

Yi would not be in this situation under any other administration, said Mariko Khan, who is on the board of the nonprofit organization Cambodia Town, where she met Yi about 15 years ago.

“ Things would've been taken care of years ago and she certainly would not have had to be corralled at her check-in,” Khan said. “I mean, that's so unfair.”

Khan said Yi has been a consistent volunteer with Cambodia Town, which serves the largest Cambodian community outside Cambodia itself.

Khan had heard about some of Yi’s background over the years, and she learned that Yi had first found counseling when she was in prison. Having a background as a mental health professional, Khan said she was amazed to see Yi’s improvement.

“ I think it shows a lot of character and integrity that she could, given all that she had suffered, actually get better,” Khan said.

Yi has also been a mainstay with the Cambodia Town Parade. Khan said Yi had led a group of up to 30 women in the parade’s “Stop the Hate” event for the past three years.

Sithea San said Yi planned on coming to her house on Jan. 8 to work on the choreography for this year’s parade after they went to check in with ICE.

Fear in local communities

Manju Kulkarni is the executive director of AAPI Equity Alliance, and she says people being detained by masked agents in the streets and others being held at their immigration appointments reminds some in Southeast Asian communities of the governments their families once fled.

Federal agents have repeatedly detained people at scheduled immigration check-ins over recent months, including Eaton Fire survivor Masuma Khan, 60-year San Diego resident Kazem Majd and dozens of others across California.

“ Communities that are made up often of refugees who escaped an American war in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam . . . are faced with the familiar terror,” Kulkarni told LAist. “Terror from which they thought they had escaped.”

Kulkarni and Luu-Ng told LAist they are deeply concerned that if Yi is deported to a third-country, she will then be sent by that country back to Cambodia despite an immigration judge already acknowledging she would most likely be tortured.

Reuters found that 22 people who were deported to Ghana as a third-country were then sent to their country of origin last year, despite court orders in the U.S meant to prevent that from happening.

For now, Luu-Ng is focused on getting Yi out of detention.

When San visited her sister at the Adelanto detention center on Jan. 18, Yi said she’d just had a nightmare, with scenes from her time under the oppression of the Khmer Rouge.

She told San being detained reminds her of those times, and she tries to keep her mind on other things.

“Remember during the Khmer Rouge,” San told Yi. “You know what we do. We need to have hope.”

Yi told her sister she had been trying to fill her time by teaching the other detainees how to do traditional Cambodian dances.

“How do you do it? How do you get the music?” San recalled asking Yi.

“She said she just sings.”