The Brief

Officials with Hope the Mission, a nonprofit that operates a homeless shelter in North Hollywood, said people they believed to be federal immigration agents visited the facility Thursday, but did not take anyone into custody.

Rowan Vansleve, president of the organization, said staff members saw SUVs with tinted windows and U.S. government license plates circling the Saticoy Tiny Homes Village in the afternoon.

He said he was told at least one vehicle had Department of Homeland Security markings.

LAist reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement — which falls under the authority of Homeland Security — to ask questions about the alleged incident. An ICE spokesperson told LAist Friday that ICE does not confirm the existence or status of operations and publicly announces the results of operations "when appropriate."

A post on X on Thursday said the agency had not gone to any local homeless shelters. In a statement to LAist Friday, a Department of Homeland Security official called claims of ICE agents in homeless shelters, ERs or schools "blatantly false."

What staff at the shelter say happened

According to Hope the Mission staff, the men believed to be federal agents demanded to enter and tour the facility. When shelter security asked them to show identification or a warrant, the men did not provide either, they said.

“We had some gentlemen, plain-clothes, but kind of military-style tattoos on their arms coming out, taking photos, and walking the perimeter fence,” Vansleve said.

When shelter staff told one of the visitors he couldn’t enter the facility, the person walked away. The man quipped, “I’ll be back,” according to Vansleve.

He said it seemed as though federal agents were "scouting" sites.

The information seemed to align with a comment Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass made during a Thursday news conference, where she talked about the ICE raids and the protests that followed.

“Last Thursday, ICE entered our city and provoked the city by chasing people through Home Depots and car washes, and showing up at schools, and today showing up at emergency rooms and homeless shelters,” Bass said. (The first widely reported ICE raid last week happened last Friday.)

ICE denied the mayor’s accusations on social media.

“ICE and its federal partners were NOT in homeless shelters, ERs and schools,” the agency wrote in a post on X, featuring a photograph of Bass. “Your lies are fueling the violent riots in your city. Shameful.”

LA councilmember visits the shelter

More than 100 unhoused Angelenos reside at the tiny home village in North Hollywood, a narrow strip of land between the 170 Freeway and industrial sites lined with shed-sized temporary dwellings.

L.A. City Councilmember Adrin Nazarian visited the site Thursday after learning that staffers there had an encounter with people they believed were federal agents.

“We got reports that some ICE agents were around the area,” Nazarian said on Instagram. “We wanted to come by and see if there was any assistance we could provide.”

Nazarian did not see any federal authorities at the shelter, but the councilmember said he believes agents had been present outside the homeless shelter and left before he arrived.

“This calls into question what they’re searching for and who they’re searching for, or if they’re just trying to gain entry somehow,” the council member said.

Vansleve said the presence of federal agents allegedly at or near the facility further traumatizes a struggling population.

“You know, these are disproportionately people who are victims of trauma and abuse,” he said. “These are people who are in the middle of a crisis, and this is just inhumane.

Puerto Rican superstar, Bad Bunny, made history at the 2026 Grammy Awards when he became the first artist to win album of the year for a Spanish-language project, with him winning for his album Debí Tirar Más Fotos. In addition to the top prize, Bad Bunny, whose given name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, took home the award for the best música urbana album and best global music performance for his song "EoO".

In his acceptance remarks, and not unlike other moments throughout his career, the artist used the spotlight to express his political views.

"Before I say thanks to God, I'm going to say ICE out," Bad Bunny said during his acceptance speech for best música urbana album. "We're not savages, we're not animals, we're not aliens — we're humans and we are Americans," he added in response to the ongoing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids across the country.

The crowd in Los Angeles, largely met his statements with applause and ovation.

But this Sunday, Bad Bunny will meet a larger and potentially more politically divided audience at the Super Bowl, where he is set to headline this year's halftime show. Since late September when the NFL, Apple Music and Roc Nation announced their invitation to Bad Bunny, many took to social media to voice their indignation at the choice to platform an artist who has only released music in Spanish.

To learn more about Bad Bunny's political history and what we might expect at the Super Bowl, Morning Edition host A Martinez spoke with Petra R. Rivera-Rideau, who chairs the American Studies Department at Wellesley College and the co-author, alongside Vanessa Díaz, of the new book, P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance. The two academics are also behind the Bad Bunny Syllabus, an online teaching resource based on Puerto Rican history and Bad Bunny's meteoric rise since 2016.

Below are three takeaways from the conversation.

Students come for Bad Bunny and stay for the history 

Rivera-Rideau teaches "Bad Bunny: Race, Gender, and Empire in Reggaetón" at Wellesley and said the course uses Bad Bunny's work as a hook to get students into the seminar.

"But we really actually spend most of our time talking about Puerto Rican history and Puerto Rican history is part of U.S. history," she said. "And Bad Bunny music has consistently made references to this history."

Rivera-Rideau pointed to an example from 2018 when Bad Bunny debuted on a U.S. mainstream English language television show, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The artist opened with a critique of the Trump administration's handling of Hurricane Maria, which had devastated his island in 2017.

"After one year of the hurricane, there's still people without electricity in their homes. More than 3,000 people died and Trump is still in denial," Martínez Ocasio said.

Latinos remain "perpetually foreign" to some

Puerto Ricans are born U.S. citizens — but this has not always protected them from being caught in recent ICE operations.

"I think part of that has to do with the kind of racialization of Spanish and the racialization of Latino communities of which Puerto Ricans are a part," she said. "And I think what it indicates is that, to me, Latinos in the United States, many of whom have been here for generations, are often understood to be perpetually foreign as a group of people that just does not belong."

The Party is the Protest 

Rivera-Rideau said if Apple Music's trailer for the Super Bowl halftime show — which features Bad Bunny dancing with a group representing a smattering of ages, faces and abilities — is any indication of what audiences can expect on Sunday's stage, the theme might be joy in the face of a difficult moment for immigrants and Latinos in the U.S.

"One of the things we talk about in our book is that Bad Bunny is part of resistance, he does engage in protests but it's often through joy," she said. "We have a chapter in our book called 'The Party is the Protest' and I actually feel like that's what I expect at the Superbowl, a party and a protest.

Copyright 2026 NPR

The Super Bowl, to someone who a) grew up in the UK, and b) doesn’t really get football, is a strange experience.

Of course, I’m talking American football, not English football, by the way. If England gets into the World Cup quarter final you might find me at 7 a.m. in a pub in Santa Monica drinking a nice cup of tea and cheering the TV.

The Super Bowl is a national cultural event, and there’s so much excitement running up to it, yet when it happens, the thing that everyone is fixated on is the thing you’re least interested in. As in, the football — the men with padded shoulders who pile into a heap. I mean, I get the ones in the middle are doing something, but the ones at the edges are just for show, right?

All the running and the throwing and the tackling … well that just gets in the way of all the entertainment.

OK, OK, I’m kidding. I do get excited when a halfback grabs the ball and starts up the field, elbowing people out of the way, but even that can get a bit wearing when it happens over and over again. Just let the guy get to where he wants to go already!

And that’s where the Super Bowl is ideal. It comes with ready prepared breaks in the action, so there’s no chance to get bored. There’s the commercials. Over the years, some of them have been so great, like that one with the kid and the Force, and that Eminem Detroit one.

Some, not so much. That’s where I do my armchair critiquing. “Well I hoped they paid him a whole boatload of money for that one, his credibility’s down the toilet,” or, “Oh come on, ad agency, for a million dollars per millisecond, that’s all you can come up with?”

But it’s the hope, the desire, that this moment you’ll be blown out of your chair. Wait, that sounds a lot like watching football. Hmm.

Then there’s the half time show, which I always watch. “Call me when it starts!” I yell at my family as I walk out to do some very important laundry folding. As the music begins, I rush back in. Lady Gaga, Beyonce and now … Bad Bunny. As I watch pure perfection, I keep telling myself, they’re doing it live, in front of a billion people. They are not missing a damn note. Or step. Except that left shark. Hell, even the Weeknd won me over eventually.

And then there’s the last quarter. I make sure I watch that. It’s the psychodrama of it all. The looks on the coach’s faces as they chew their gum, serious, determined. The fans, holding their breath. The commentators asking Tom Brady what it was like when he was doing it. And then.. the whistle blows. And one half of the stadium is ecstatic, giddy with delight, while the other half stares into the abyss. It's a Shakespearean tragedy come to life. For all the commercials and the music, this really is the can’t miss part, which brings me back year after year. Go Patriots! Go Seahawks! Let the game begin.

Superbowl halftime shows are always a big deal. But to many in Los Angeles and beyond, Bad Bunny's performance marks a particularly important cultural — and political — moment. They are gathering at bars and house parties to pay witness at so-called Benito Bowls viewing parties all across the Southland.

"We're going through a lot of heaviness here in our community with ICE [and] people disappearing. It's sad, we're angry," said Bianca Ramirez, LAist's director of operations and a longtime fan of the Puerto Rican superstar.

In the face of continual crackdown, she said, resistance shall take the form of pride and joy on Sunday. It'd be the first time the halftime show will be performed entirely in Spanish by a headliner.

 " This is definitely unprecedented," Ramirez said.

Just a week before taking the Superbowl stage, Bad Bunny notched another first, winning album of the year at the Grammy's for the Spanish-language DeBí Tirar Más Fotos.

LAist's Bianca Ramirez with her Bad Bunny plushie.

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Bianca Ramirez

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"[It]  was such a proud moment for our Latino community, not here in Los Angeles, but around the world," Ramirez said, characterizing the album as one of the artist's most political to date. "He dives into gentrification and making sure that we protect Puerto Rico and its roots. He does criticize the Trump administration a lot in that album."

DeBí Tirar Más Fotos also won Best Música Urban album.

"Before I say thanks to God, I'm going to say ICE out," the artist, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, said as he accepted that award.

Later today, Ramirez is heading to a Benito Bowl — one of many gatherings held by Bad Bunny fans across the Southland. In her case, it's a backyard hang with childhood friends to celebrate a history-making concert "where these two other football teams so happen to be playing at the same time."

Ramirez has her fingers crossed that the performance includes the song that first got her hooked.

"Hopefully he surprises us with Cardi B [and] he plays I like it," she said. "Bring it full circle for me as a fan."

No matter what, it's an iconic day.

"It's just gonna be a moment for us to hang out and celebrate Latinidad and just [the] proudness that Bad Bunny brings to our communities and beyond," she said.

Benito Bowls happening on Sunday

• Boyle Heights

  Brooklyn Ave Pizza Co.
  2706 E. Cesar E. Chavez Ave, Los Angeles
  

• Costa Mesa

  Sevilla Nightclub

  1870 Harbor Blvd., Costa Mesa

  Doors open at 2 p.m.

• Downtown L.A. historic core

  Hide Tide
  605 E. 4th St., Los Angeles
  Doors open at 2 p.m.

• Long Beach

  The Q
  5321 Long Beach Blvd, Long Beach
  Doors open at 3:30 p.m.

• Mid City

  Sueños Social Club
  5259 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles
  Doors open at 4 p.m.
  

The 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics kicked off in Milan on Friday evening, local time. Athletes representing over 90 countries march into the San Siro stadium filled with thousands of spectators during the opening ceremony in Milan.

The performance paid homage to Italian music, art and culture with tributes to composers, visual artists and films in a colorful spectacle. Performers included Italian actress Matilda De Angelis, American singer Mariah Carey, Italian singer Andrea Bocelli, Italian rapper Ghali and Italian ballet dancers Antonella Albano and Claudio Coviello, among dozens of other dancers.

Here is a selection of images from the opening ceremony:

Italian ballet dancers Antonella Albano and Claudio Coviello perform during the opening ceremony.

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Wang Zhao

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Colorful dancers perform under large tubes of paint suspended above them during the opening ceremony.

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Gabriel Bouys

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Italian actress Matilda De Angelis (center) performs with dancers dressed as the three great masters of Italian opera: Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini and Gioachino Rossini.

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Piero Cruciatti

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Mariah Carey sings during the opening ceremony.

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Wang Zhao

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Performers dressed in the colors of the Italian flag line up during the opening ceremony.

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Piero Cruciatti

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Members of The Corazzieri, the Italian Corps of Cuirassiers, raise the Italian flag during the opening ceremony.

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Wang Zhao

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Two performers are suspended between two large rings.

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Piero Cruciatti

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The Olympic Rings are revealed above dancers during the opening ceremony.

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Piero Cruciatti

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An aerial view of the athletes parading into the San Siro stadium.

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Antonin Thuillier

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Stoats Milo and Tina, the Paralympics and Olympics mascots, dance before the Olympic opening ceremony.

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Ben Curtis

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