The Brief

California legislators are attempting to regulate products containing an addictive, opioid-like plant — one that, until recently, several universities including the University of Southern California marketed in a beverage as a wellness tonic and distributed at no cost.

Feel Free is a psychoactive tonic drink that can be consumed like a shot of tequila or Nyquil. The small, two-ounce blue bottles are available in places from smoke shops to health food stores in California. It is made from plants, kava root and kratom leaf, the latter of which contains organic compounds called alkaloids that act like drugs in the human body. These alkaloids — 7-hydroxymitragynine and mitragynine — are not technically opioids, but they interact with the same brain receptors as opioids to produce pleasure and relieve pain.

The California Public Health Department announced a campaign to remove kratom from stores last October and has since seized $5 million in kratom products, justifying the enforcement using California’s Sherman Law. This law lays out rules for selling and manufacturing food, drugs, cosmetics and supplements, and grants Public Health the authority to seize those types of products if they are not federally or state approved.

State lawmakers have moved to formally add kratom and the compound 7-OH to the Sherman Law, which they said would unlock additional resources for the health department’s crackdown and protect their ability to conduct that enforcement if kratom’s federal legality is unclear. One such bill will be heard by a state Senate committee later this year. The priority, according to the bill’s author, Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, a Bakersfield Democrat and a physician, is to keep kratom out of the hands of children.

Kratom gives a 'floaty,' 'soft feeling'

Feel Free is earthy and aromatic, but customers don’t drink it for the taste, according to the drink’s manufacturer Botanic Tonics.

“It just made me feel a little bit floaty,” said a 2024 University of Texas at Austin alumnus who requested anonymity in this story due to her public job. Botanic Tonics sponsored her university from 2022 to 2025. “It gives everything like a soft feeling.”

Shortly after its founding, Botanic Tonics partnered with universities through athletic department sponsorships that required marketing Feel Free as medicinal. This included Florida State University, University of Texas at Austin, and USC. Botanic Tonics did not respond to multiple inquiries from CalMatters on whether they sought a college student consumer base.

Kratom leaves, which are plucked from coffee trees in Southeast Asia, are used and branded as alternatives to alcohol and to lessen symptoms of withdrawal from other substances like opioids. A small amount of kratom typically makes people feel alert and energetic. But high doses can produce opioid-like effects like nausea, itching, dry mouth, drowsiness, insomnia, or even psychosis, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

It can also lead to serious adverse effects like liver toxicity, seizures and addiction, according to the Food and Drug Administration, which has not approved the plant as a lawful dietary supplement or drug. The 7-OH compound, whose effects can be reversed with Narcan, is less prevalent than mitragynine in kratom, but binds much more strongly to opioid receptors and can cause fatal overdoses.

Thousands of Reddit users on the subreddits r/Quittingfeelfree and r/Quittingkratom report physical and emotional effects, as well as severe withdrawal symptoms from the product itself. Botanic Tonics states on its website that people with histories of substance abuse should not drink Feel Free, adding it can be “habit-forming and harmful” if used improperly.

California’s Alcoholic Beverage Control department said in January it will enforce the health department’s prohibition, ordering stores with liquor licenses to remove kratom from their shelves. Cities have enacted their own bans and limitations, including Anaheim, Oceanside, Jurupa Valley, Newport Beach and San Diego, along with the counties of Los Angeles and Riverside. Botanic Tonics still lists on its website locations throughout California where the products can be purchased.

A screenshot from a Feel Free webpage that shows a store locator map with multiple pins marking locations around Sacramento where the product is available.

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Kava root, which can ease anxiety and insomnia, does not contain opioid-like alkaloids and is regulated by the FDA; some people have reported liver toxicity and skin ailments after consuming it.

Feel Free was founded in 2020 with headquarters in Santa Monica and in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Within a few years, the Texas student said, the product was part of the college atmosphere, especially at parties, where she would see students chug multiple servings at once, leaving waves of empty blue bottles rolling around the floor.

The 2-ounce tonics, about $10 each, could be bought in any gas station, bodega or convenience store in Texas, and she saw many students drinking them on and off campus. “It would mess people up. People would use it to pregame,” she said. “Whenever people used it, they would shoot the entire thing.”

“We were introduced to them as… a potential partner at the university,” the Texas student said. “So I trusted it. That’s the thing. I never thought twice about it.”

Trojans try new product

The USC Trojans had a turbulent relationship with Botanic Tonics, according to Jose Eskenazi, former associate athletic director who was laid off due to budget cuts in August 2025 after 22 years on the job. He said that around the time of Feel Free’s founding, PlayFly Sports, USC’s sports marketing partner, approached him with a sponsorship contract. Eskenazi remembered the advertising materials he reviewed seemed innocuous, and that the product was described as “calming.” So he signed a three-year contract.

“It was just a different category of business that we had never been involved in,” he said. “It all seemed legitimate.” The product was already being sold in the area at the time, at health food stores and USC Village, the nearby shopping mall where students hang out, he added.

“In retrospect, I mean, could we have dug a little deeper? Maybe,” Eskenazi said. “But from what I recall, the research that was done, there was nothing negative that came up at the time.

“I think they probably could have done a better job explaining what their product is,” he said.

To fulfill their role in the partnership, the Trojans agreed to display digital rotating signage in sports stadiums, promote Feel Free on social media, and advertise the product on football game radio broadcasts.

A promotional Facebook post from 2022 advertises a giveaway for two USC basketball game tickets alongside a bottle of Feel Free tonic. The product is described as the “Official tonic of USC Athletics.”

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Another requisite, Eskenazi said, was giving out free samples of the product. The Trojans’ corporate partners would set up booths at the annual Fan Fest, including Botanic Tonics, which gave out samples, he said.

Things went south a few years into the partnership, Eskenazi said. USC officials would not comment on why the partnership ended, but Eskenazi said people complained to the university that though the drink was marketed to addicts in sobriety, people were using it to get high.

In response, the college administration asked the athletic department to end the sponsorship, so the department terminated the contract after about 1.5 years, Eskenazi said.

“We’ve never really had a situation like that before, where we cancelled the sponsorship based on some feedback that we had gotten,” Eskenazi said. “It wasn’t the right brand to align with our brand, based on the complaints that occurred.”

David Wright, the vice president of USC Administration since 2019, deferred CalMatters inquiries about the sponsorship to the USC media relations director, who deferred the inquiries to Cody Worsham, USC athletics media relations director. Worsham told CalMatters that they reached out to “previous” USC and athletics leaders and received no response.

CalMatters attempted to contact USC athletes from 2021 and 2022, who did not respond to questions about the Feel Free sponsorship.

USC, a private university, is not beholden to California public record laws. The Florida and Texas universities, both public, released their sponsorship contracts with Botanic Tonics through public record requests.

The contracts required the universities to make Feel Free their “official tonic,” and refuse any other partnerships with medicinal tonics “taken to give a feeling of vigor or well-being.”

Florida State and the University of Texas at Austin agreed to market Feel Free through social media campaigns, arena-level LED signage, intercom announcements and “on-court promotion.” Florida’s agreement required the university to distribute samples of the drink to students, including at games and at the block parties held beforehand, and the company gained the right to use the college’s name and logo in their advertising. Texas gave Botanic Tonics the right to distribute free samples at college games and events.

The Texas contract expired in June 2025. Florida State terminated the contract in early 2024, the university’s deputy athletics director, Douglas Walker, told CalMatters, without stating why.

Kratom is legal for those ages 18 and up in Texas and 21 and older in Florida. Laws passed in 2023 in both states require kratom product labels to have use directions and serving sizes; Florida also banned selling kratom products that claim to be medicinal. In 2025, Texas and Florida legislators proposed bills to set higher standards for kratom product testing and further regulate its distribution, but the bills have not progressed.

Wellness emphasis

The Texas student worked at a health food store near campus while she attended college. The store sought to appeal to health-conscious people like university athletes and students, and specialized in products that were clean and natural. Her managers told her to market Feel Free to customers as an energizing alcohol alternative that could help with mental clarity and studying.

Since she was paid on commission, the student said, she recommended the drink to hundreds of customers. The drink was natural, healthy and would offer five hours of pure energy, without cops ever having a reason to pull you over, she would say.

“‘Makes you feel good. Go on for it. Just take it,’” she said. “Oh yeah, they sold. They sold fast.” She began to notice repeat customers.

Bottles of the energy drink Feel Free in Clovis on March 6, 2026.

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Larry Valenzuela

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The student, her manager, and a couple of coworkers decided to try it themselves one day. She said the drink made her feel detached and she didn’t like it. But her coworker, in his 20s, took to it immediately. “The effect was quick,” she said. “He went from doing one maybe every other day to… buying three to four, four to five bottles at a time. And these are expensive little bottles.”

Eventually, she said, the coworker developed a tolerance. Feel Free bottles contain two servings, but he would drink three bottles and say they had no effect. He turned to kratom supplement pills, which he would buy and consume in bulk. Witnessing the effect of the substance, she said, was like watching someone smoke too much weed. “It had altered his mood and it had altered his mental state and his behavior,” she said.

In October 2025, a U.S. District Court judge in Northern California approved a settlement for over 40,000 plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against Botanic Tonics, which alleged the product was sold without disclosing the health risks of kratom. According to the plaintiffs’ complaint, the company directly targeted college students because they were “vulnerable” and could recommend it to family and friends. The suit also alleged that Feel Free served free samples to students on the USC campus, including a study center, during finals week, telling students it would fix their stress.

The Texas student said she searched the product online one day, read about the side effects, and immediately stopped recommending the product after that. “It was marketed as a healthy thing, it was like a study thing. I had no idea,” she said. “It’s frustrating whenever you take a substance and you put it in your body and you have no idea the side effects that it could cause.”

California legislators concerned for children

In February 2024, San Francisco Democratic Assemblymember Matt Haney proposed a law to add kratom products to the Sherman Law, ban the sale of products containing kratom that is synthetic, inhalable or appealing to young people, and prohibit selling kratom to people under age 21, a restriction that Botanic Tonics adopted in May 2024. Since it was estimated to cost over $50,000 annually to uphold, the Senate Appropriations Committee assigned the bill to the suspense file, where it never left and ultimately failed.

Bains, the lawmaker from Bakersfield, introduced a bill in February 2025 with similar kratom regulations that the Senate health committee will consider later this year. A spokesperson for Bains told CalMatters that while kratom and 7-OH are currently not legal to sell as food or drugs under California’s Sherman Law, the goal of her new law is to keep it that way. Bains said she is particularly concerned about the impact of kratom on young brains, adding that kratom marketing uses bright colors and mimics candy packaging in order to appeal to young people.

“The neuroscience is unambiguous. The human brain continues developing into the early 20s,” Bains said at a committee hearing. “Exposure to substances with central nervous system effects during this critical period can interfere with proper development and increase the risk of substance use disorders later in life.”

A California State University, San Bernardino researcher found in a 2025 study on online kratom beverage marketing that most kratom drinks are described as either all-natural or good for well-being — and that a person would be better off consuming them, researcher and assistant economics professor Dr. Teresa Perry said. In another 2025 study, Perry analyzed online posts about kratom and found that kratom drinkers often don’t know about the side effects, because product labels don’t mention them.

“There’s a lot of people who were taking kratom without realizing what kratom was, and who became dependent on it, who then had to figure out how to quit it on their own,” Perry said.

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

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

Have you ever had trouble getting or updating a government ID … like a driver's license or state ID card? Or was it super simple? LAist wants to hear from you.

Proposition 39 is on the ballot this fall, which would require voters to show a government-issued ID when casting a ballot. For mail-in ballots, voters would have to include the last four digits of that ID on the envelope. 

This would be a big change from how voting currently works in California. So we want to know: What will that mean for eligible voters? Tell us, and your answers could help shape our coverage.

Wait, voters don't currently have to show ID?

Currently, California law asks voters to prove their identity when they register to vote, but not when they actually cast a ballot. And the state accepts a wide variety of documents as proof of voter eligibility, including a student ID or bank statement. That would also change under Prop. 39.

What we want to know

How easy, or hard, is it to get a government-issued ID? Have you faced barriers to getting an official ID? What were they?

Go deeper

• A voter ID measure will be on California's November ballot: Here's what you need to know
• A guide to Proposition 39: Take our quiz to weigh the pros and cons
• Voter ID: Initiative gathers enough signatures for the ballot

When Californians voted to reduce drug penalties in 2014, it likely had the unintended consequence of also increasing homelessness in the state, according to a new report.

The report, released Thursday by the Public Policy Institute of California, set out to measure the long-term effects of Proposition 47 — a 2014 ballot measure that lowered some drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. It found that while the measure succeeded in reducing prison overcrowding as intended, it also appears to have contributed to an increase in people living on the street, a rise in overdoses and a drop in the number of people getting drug treatment.

The PPIC researchers determined Prop. 47 likely led to an estimated increase in street homelessness of about 10% between 2015 and 2019. The study suggests the measure increased drug use (as measured by overdose deaths and hospitalizations) by between 7% and 8%. The researchers also found evidence that Prop. 47 led to a 20% reduction in the number of Californians receiving drug treatment, because the courts referred fewer people into treatment programs.

The results come at a time when many Californians are disillusioned with the state’s past efforts to reduce incarceration. Voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 36 in 2024, which partially undid the 2014 reform by increasing penalties for certain drug and theft crimes. Supporters argued the 2024 measure would reduce drug use and homelessness, though it came with no funding for treatment or housing.

“Ever since Prop. 47 was passed in 2014, there’s been a lot of critics of that particular reform,” said Magnus Lofstrom, the PPIC report’s lead author. “It’s important to have a sense of what are those potential impacts.”

This appears to be the first study to show a direct link between Prop. 47 and homelessness. The findings are sure to add fuel to an already raging debate over the causes and best ways to fight homelessness.

Proponents of a tough-on-crime approach on one side argue that addiction is a primary driver of homelessness and that police should crack down on drug use and encampments. Homeless advocates on the other side argue that the state’s sky-high cost of living is to blame and building more housing is the answer.

The report was met with skepticism by some experts in the field. Ron Hochbaum, a law professor at the University of the Pacific and director of the Buccola Family Homeless Advocacy Clinic, said while the researchers may have found a correlation between Prop. 47 and an increase in homelessness, saying the two were directly linked appears to be a stretch.

“I think it is more likely that two phenomena happened at the same time,” he said.

The study also failed to consider the adverse effects being charged with a drug felony can have on someone’s ability to get out of homelessness, Hochbaum said. That criminal charge could prevent someone from getting a job or being eligible for subsidized housing.

California counties that reduced their homeless counts this year told CalMatters that increased funding for temporary and permanent housing placements was the reason.

That was echoed in the PPIC study: Places with larger increases in permanent housing beds also saw larger decreases in homelessness after the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that the money California poured into homeless housing after the pandemic is working.

Studies have shown the “housing first” model, which prioritizes placing people into housing as quickly as possible without requiring them to first become sober or get mental health treatment, to be an effective way to solve homelessness.

A 2023 report by the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative found that while more than a third of homeless respondents reported regularly using drugs, that was not the driving factor of most people’s homelessness. Instead, a loss of income was the most common reason people reported for losing their last housing.

“We know that what drives rates of homelessness in communities are housing costs, but more specifically, the availability of housing for the lowest-income communities,” said Dr. Margot Kushel, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative and the lead author of the UCSF study.

That study, which was the largest survey of unhoused Californians since the 1990s, is widely cited by policy makers, activists and homeless service providers. It found that 20% of people who regularly used drugs or drank heavily wanted treatment but couldn’t get it.

The state needs to create more treatment resources, not put more people in jail, Kushel said. Voluntary treatment is proven to work better than court-mandated treatment, she said, noting that the PPIC researchers didn’t look into how many of the people who received treatment under Prop. 47 actually stopped or reduced their substance use.

The PPIC researchers stopped far short of blaming the state’s entire homelessness crisis on prison reform.

Prop. 47 likely resulted in an additional 7,000 Californians experiencing “unsheltered” homelessness (sleeping in parks, tent encampments, vehicles, abandoned buildings or other places not meant for habitation) between 2015 and 2019, the researchers estimated. That’s about 20% of the state’s overall increase in unsheltered homelessness during that time, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

It’s unclear how much of that increase in homelessness is tied to increased drug use, and how much instead is because unhoused people who would have been sleeping in jail before Prop. 47 now are sleeping on the street instead. But Lofstrom suspects it’s a bit of both.

“Jails and prisons, they do serve as a source of shelter for people who are experiencing or are at risk of experiencing homelessness,” he said.

Kushel called that “horrifying.”

“I think we can all agree that criminal legal systems were not designed to be places for people to live,” she said. “That’s not their role. That’s not what they’re meant for.”

The PPIC researchers got their results by comparing California to other states that had very similar homelessness trends before Prop. 47 passed, and analyzing how California diverged from its peers after Prop. 47. The researchers also examined whether California counties that had large decreases in drug arrests and big drops in their jail and prison populations after Prop. 47 were more likely to experience larger increases in homelessness and overdoses — and found that they were.

The researchers acknowledged several factors that could have thrown off their calculations. In 2015, California, as did the rest of the country, tried to improve the accuracy of its homeless point-in-time counts — which may have resulted in more people being counted and contributed to a perceived increase in homelessness.

In addition, rent prices increased much more in California between 2014 and 2019 than in other states. The researchers attempted to account for that difference in their calculations, but acknowledged that the outsized increase could have had more of an effect than their models show.

Though the researchers focused on the effect of Prop. 47 on homelessness, they found several other factors that played major roles. For example, in the areas they studied, the researchers found declines in the number of people receiving Social Security benefits correlated to increases in local homelessness.

While the PPIC report found that counties with higher rents and lower vacancies had higher rates of homelessness, changes in an area’s rents or vacancy rates did not lead to changes in their homelessness rates.

The researchers also noted that while prison populations decreased substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic, those decreases did not lead to an increase in homelessness and drug use. That’s likely because the state and federal government poured money into homelessness programs during that time period, which helped get people off the streets, Kushel said.

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

Rest easy, Southern California, there’s an end in sight to this week’s record-breaking heatwave.

Downtown Los Angeles broke its daily record Monday at 98 degrees, and tied it two other times in the last week.

Woodland Hills hit 111 degrees on Wednesday, breaking its daily record of 109 degrees. Lancaster hit 107 degrees, breaking its record of 106.

Humidity was also unprecedented. The dewpoint, essentially a baseline of how much moisture can be held in the air, reached nearly 73 degrees in downtown L.A. on Thursday. Dewpoints over 70 degrees typically feel uncomfortably humid.

Parts of Southern California farther inland, near the Salton Sea, had some of the highest dewpoints in the country.

Extreme heat warnings from the National Weather Service were scheduled to remain in place for most of the region through Friday evening.

Officials say the conditions pose a high risk of heat-related illness for most people. Sensitive groups are especially susceptible, including people over 65, young children, people without access to air conditioning or those who work outdoors.

Fire danger is also elevated. Red flag warnings are in effect until Friday at 3 p.m. for the inland mountains and foothills of L.A., Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, although there is fire risk across the region.

The good news is forecasters predict a cooldown Saturday.

“We'll drop our high temperatures fairly noticeably each day through the weekend and early next week,” said NWS meteorologist  Rose Schoenfeld. “Early next week we'll end up closer to normal, maybe even a little bit below normal.”

Humidity vs. fire danger

Abnormally high humidity in the region continues to make this week’s heatwave feel even more uncomfortable.

The moisture also brought cloud cover, and in places, even a chance of light showers and thunderstorms.

But there isn’t enough moisture in the air to put a damper on fire conditions. Without significant rain, thunderstorms can create dry lighting, which can spark wildfires.

“Fire and thunderstorms can be linked together, but mostly it's because it's very hot and the atmosphere is primed for plume-dominated fire development,” Schoenfeld said.

More concerning to forecasters is the combination of high temperatures and gusty winds, especially inland and at higher elevations. If a fire does start under those conditions, it can spread quickly.

A 'confluence' of factors

The temperature of the ocean has a lot to do with the heat and humidity.

Normally, the Pacific Ocean acts as air conditioning for Southern California by cooling the air that moves inland.

But waters off the coast of California and Mexico have been experiencing a long-term marine heatwave for more than a year, and warm surface temperatures have reduced the natural cooling effect.

Ocean temperatures are also driving up the humidity. Seawater evaporates faster when it’s warmer, adding moisture to the air.

At the same time, farther away in the Pacific, warming waters closer to the equator are leading to tropical storms and cyclones. As the storms dissipate, they send moisture all the way here.

Scientists say warming in the equatorial Pacific is one of the early impacts of this year’s El Niño.

"It's the confluence of this somewhat unusual weather pattern with these very unusual temperatures off the coast of Baja and Southern California, layered onto a warmer world,” said Alex Hall, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UCLA. “That's what's making this such an extreme event.”

Hall said climate change is making heat waves worse by elevating baseline temperatures, which drives longer stretches of uncomfortably or even dangerously hot days, and warmer nights that provide less relief from the heat.

Clownfish clamber around a watery enclosure, a couple of brownbanded bamboo sharks weave between rocks and lines of coral sit in tanks basking under artificial grow lights — all creatures seized from illegal wildlife trafficking and placed at the Aquarium of the Pacific for care and a home.

The Long Beach aquarium took in nearly 1,000 trafficked marine animals over the course of two operations this summer, in which wildlife officials each time intercepted a box truck carrying thousands of confiscated creatures.

Nate Jaros, vice president of animal care at the aquarium, said this is one of the largest hauls the aquarium has handled in years.

The first operation, in June, led authorities to a box truck carrying some 2,000 animals, a mix of reptiles, fish and invertebrates that were being smuggled for sale on the black market.

Aquarium officials received some 500 marine animals from that operation on June 19, taking in an array of fish, sharks, clams, shrimp, prawns and tiny snails. The facility being understaffed that day, employees worked through the night to move the creatures into specialized quarantine areas where they tested their shipping water for pH, dissolved oxy

gen and ammonia levels — the byproducts of the animals’ waste — before slowly acclimating them to their new tanks.

About a quarter of the animals died either upon arrival or within days after, Jaros said.

“It’s just a very careful acclimation process,” Jaros said, adding it can take hours to get the chemistry just right. “We were working till about 1 a.m. There were four of us here, and we could have easily used three more people just kind of streamlining. … It’s a very stressful process.”

Another operation near the end of July brought another 300 marine animals to the aquarium after a brief stay at a federal wildlife center in Torrance.

The seizure was coordinated through the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Wildlife Confiscations Network, of which the Aquarium of the Pacific is a founding member. Since joining, the aquarium has taken in more than 3,300 trafficked animals, including axolotls, corals, reptiles and fish. Earlier this year, it received grant funding to expand and upgrade its holding systems in anticipation of future confiscations.

The network, launched in 2023 as a partnership between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, has sought to streamline the placement of animals seized in illegal trafficking so they can be sent to accredited facilities to rehabilitate and rehome the critters.

Southern California, considered an epicenter for trafficked wildlife, sees much of it moving through the region’s ports of entry from Asian countries. Monkeys, tigers, exotic birds destined for the pet trade or as trophies, reptiles and sea cucumbers prized for food and medicine all pass through the region’s airports and border crossings, according to officials with the network.

Without food or a change of water, animals often arrive in a weakened state, ripped from reefs in places like Indonesia, Fiji, Tonga, Australia or the Caribbean — before being packed by the hundreds into small bags of seawater for shipping, they often carry heavy parasite loads that worsen under the stress of captivity.

“These animals are likely from the reef, and that means that all animals that live in nature have some level of parasites,” Jaros said. “And when you bring them into a stressful environment, those parasite loads can start to increase. So they’re kind of vulnerable in that regard. A lot of times, those fish are going to need medical treatment as well, to ensure that we can rid them of parasites that are also compromising their health.”

Among the species rescued were brownbanded bamboo sharks, listed as near threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature; Banggai cardinalfish, which are endangered; and ocellaris clownfish, one of the most heavily traded species in the pet industry.

Coral made up a significant share of the intake, and identifying it can be painstaking. “There’s thousands of species. They’re difficult to identify. Some of the cases need a microscope to identify them,” Jaros said, noting the aquarium takes in hundreds of confiscated corals every year arriving via air freight through Los Angeles International Airport.

Given the nature of how these federal anti-trafficking operations are conducted, aquarium officials say they know very little about how these animals got here or where they were headed.

Past a large gate and down a path lined by corrugated metal pipes, many of the fish explore their new home inside two 2,500-gallon tanks covered with a tied-down tarp. More than 40 species swim about in the water. There were yellow longnose butterflyfish, domino damselfish, lemonpeel angelfish, clownfish and powder blue tang.

Between a school of banghai cardinalfish, a single juvenile emperor angelfish cut through — its deep blue scales segmented by white, vein-looking striations. Jaros said this one is still young, and that by the time it’s an adult it’ll be an entirely different-looking fish, yellow and blue striped. That adulthood, unfortunately, must be spent inside a tank like this one.

Experts say these animals cannot return to the wild. Introducing a fish foreign to the region could bring diseases into the water. The fish, having been medicated by this point, would have weakened immune systems unable to protect them against parasites.

Most are instead forced to live inside aquariums or rehabilitation centers for the rest of their lives. Some must also be housed and cared for as evidence — either until charges against a defendant are dismissed or the animals are permanently seized by the government.

Jaros said the aquarium has already found homes for a large share of the animals and expects to send them to other accredited facilities within about two weeks; others will be acclimated into Long Beach’s own exhibits. Which animals stay and which go depends on each species’ size and lifespan, and whether they can coexist with — or might prey on — other fish in the exhibits.

There are at least six Association of Zoos and Aquariums-accredited aquariums in California that can take part in that placement network.

“Wildlife trafficking disrupts national and global ecosystems and puts animals on the path to extinction,” said Jeff Flocken, the aquarium’s president and chief executive. “We are proud to answer the call to help trafficked wildlife.”