The Brief

Deadra Walicki has lived in the same spot for more than a decade: a cracked patch of asphalt in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley, squeezed between a boarded-up grocery store and Amtrak tracks so close that passing trains shake the ground beneath her tent.

The air carries the scent of diesel fumes from busy Van Nuys Boulevard below and rotten food from the dozens of garbage bags piled up near her mattress, baking in the summer sun.

She stays put so that friends, family members and case workers can always locate her. But that consistency has also made Walicki, 51, a target for the police officers who patrol the area.

The Los Angeles Police Department cited Walicki for violating the city’s camping ordinance at least 34 times between August 2023 and December 2024.

“They drove through today and I waved at them,” said Walicki, her smile revealing cracked porcelain veneers. “The cops come here Monday through Friday and give tickets for being in the zone of the shelter. It's whatever they want to do.”

Deadra Walicki near the tent encampment where she lives in San Fernando Valley on June 21, 2025.

(

Aaron Schrank

/

LAist/CalMatters

)

It’s been 12 months since a groundbreaking U.S. Supreme Court decision rewrote the playbook on homelessness, allowing cities in California and beyond to make homeless encampments illegal, even when no shelter is available.

Before the justices ruled in Grants Pass v. Johnson, Los Angeles and other cities generally had to offer someone a shelter bed before punishing them for sleeping on the street. But that went out the window when the justices upheld an ordinance by the Oregon city of Grants Pass that banned camping on all public property.

Since the ruling, camping-related citations and arrests have soared in cities throughout California — everywhere from Sacramento to Los Angeles to San Diego and beyond.

In each of those three cities, police are citing many of the same people again and again. And while some have managed to move indoors, many others are still camping in the same places, racking up citations that ultimately make it more difficult to find housing.

We tracked down a few of those people. Here are their stories:

Los Angeles: 10 citations in six months

Walicki motions across the train tracks to what looks like a giant rubber bubble. It’s a transitional homeless shelter that opened in 2020.

While L.A. does not have a blanket ban on public camping, the city’s main anti-camping law allows enforcement in select sensitive locations chosen by council members, including near schools, parks and homeless shelters.

L.A. Municipal Code 41.18 says people camping within 1,000 feet of a shelter can be cited. That’s what the majority of Walicki’s citations are for, but she claims the shelter is about 2,000 feet away, as the crow flies.

Hope the Mission, which operates the shelter, did not dispute her distance assessment when contacted for comment, but the citations keep coming.

City-led cleaning and enforcement at homeless encampments makes outreach work harder, according to the nonprofit. Outreach teams build rapport with participants only to lose track of them.

“When they do this cleanup, we go back the next day, that same day,” said Hope the Mission outreach worker Armando Covarrubias. “Where can we find 'em? We can't contact them because they have no phones.”

In recent years, L.A. city leaders have used the ordinance to designate more and more areas for anti-camping enforcement, creating a patchwork of hard-to-follow rules for unsheltered Angelenos like Walicki.

Last March, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Agency released a report showing L.A.’s anti-camping law has not been effective at getting people into housing or keeping encampments away: It found 94% of people targeted for removal under the ordinance wanted shelter, but only 17% were able to get it.

Los Angeles hasn’t changed its enforcement as a result of Grants Pass, according to the City Attorney’s Office. But LAPD data show the department made 68% more camping and homelessness-related arrests in the second half of 2024 than the first. Those include non-custodial arrests, where the violator is released at the scene.

Walicki received 10 camping citations in the latter half of 2024, according to LAPD records obtained by CalMatters. She was even cited for camping two mornings in a row that October, at the same intersection.

“ People are being targeted every day in the city through enforcement, through resolutions to get them to move,” said Shayla Myers, senior attorney with Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, a nonprofit providing free legal services for poor Angelenos. “That’s the very definition of criminalization.”

When patrol cars arrive — usually in the morning, Walicki says — officers give people about 10 minutes to pack up. Anything left behind disappears into the back of sanitation trucks. Over the months, she's lost bags of recycling she'd collected for cash, sleeping bags, clothes, even dental tools for her veneers.

Walicki lives in the encampment with her partner Steve Maroulis, a 57-year-old man with mental disabilities. The two of them want to go at the same time into two separate gender-segregated shelters, but haven't had any luck.

"It would just be nice, for safety reasons," she said. “And I don’t want either of us to be alone out here.”

Deadra Walicki near the tent encampment where she lives in San Fernando Valley on June 21, 2025.

(

Aaron Schrank

/

LAist/CalMatters

)

Police records capture the chaos of tracking someone arrested so frequently. Her name appears as Deadra, Dedra, and Debra. Her last name is spelled five different ways across case files.

Each citation adds to a growing pile of legal paperwork she largely ignores. She hasn't paid any fines because she doesn't have the money, she said. Court dates blur together. Walicki said she's tried to show up to court for some of her infractions, but she's never gone on the right day.

Others have dealt with more serious consequences for camping. David Cerritos, 46, has lived in Skid Row for five years, his tattered tent on a sidewalk flanked by wholesale smoke shops in the shadow of downtown L.A.’s skyline.

Cerritos was cited at least 12 times last year, including six times after the Supreme Court decision.

Unlike Walicki, with her repeated citations, Cerritos has been handcuffed and temporarily detained for violating the ordinance several times, he said.

“If you don't comply, you'll just be arrested," he said. “And then even if you get cited out, hours later or whatever, by the time you get back, you've lost everything.”

If someone resists, refuses to comply with or obstructs camping ban enforcement, LAPD can submit the case to be charged as a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail. Otherwise, LAPD will designate it an infraction punishable by a $250 fine, according to the department’s guidelines.

Several of Cerritos’ arrest records include mention of disorderly conduct. For him, these arrests usually mean spending 6 to 12 hours in jail while everything he owns disappears. Cerritos said he’s lost barbering clippers, tattoo equipment, bicycles, tools, laptops and more.

LAPD submits misdemeanor cases to the L.A. City Attorney’s office for prosecution consideration, and that office ultimately decides whether to file misdemeanor charges or knock them down to infractions.

The office said it filed charges in 87 camping violation cases in 2024 — 8% of the 1,034 enforcement actions LAPD made under the ordinance last year.

For Cerritos and Walicki, the citations and fines don’t mean all that much. For them, any interaction with police or city workers feels like enforcement, whether a charge is issued or not.

Cerritos feels like he’s getting harassed more than usual recently, but he’s not interested in moving. Like Walicki, he has a case manager but no phone.

 ”Now if they were forcing me to move away from here, and I went even just a block over, you might never find me,” Cerritos said.

After years of frequent arrests and citations for camping, neither Cerritos nor Walicki are any closer to leaving their spots, for permanent housing or anywhere else.

Sacramento: Go to jail, or go to a tiny home

Over the past three years, Jerry Carter could often be seen biking around Sacramento’s Midtown neighborhood, his brindle bull terrier, Zaddy, riding in style behind him on a homemade trailer he built special for the beloved pup.

Music followed him as he zipped past trendy bars and restaurants, playing R&B, jazz or reggae (never rap) from a small speaker. Sometimes he played his all-time favorite: Prince, who he saw perform at Arco Arena in 1997.

Local businesses and other homeless people who slept nearby knew him by sight, if not by name.

The police knew Carter, too.

Over the past year, they gave him at least seven citations for camping, storing his belongings on public property and blocking the sidewalk.

Jerry Carter at the Safe Stay tiny home community in Sacramento on June 13, 2025. Carter has been cited multiple times by law enforcement in Sacramento for street camping.

(

Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

/

CalMatters

)

Each encounter with police followed a similar playbook, Carter said. Officers showed up and told him he had 10 minutes to pack up all his belongings. Anything he couldn’t pack in time, he had to abandon.

Carter said he lost a lot of possessions that way: bicycles, clothes, tents and more. Losing bikes stung the most: Getting hit by a car a few years ago left Carter in constant pain, making it hard to walk. But biking is easier.

Sacramento bans camping or “using camping paraphernalia” on public property. Police can cite or arrest someone if they are using a sleeping bag, or even a piece of cardboard as a mattress and a tarp as a blanket — but not if they are sleeping on a bench with no camping materials, according to a police training bulletin.

Enforcement of that ban, as well as related ordinances, spiked after the Grants Pass decision. The number of arrests made and citations issued nearly tripled, from 96 in the first half of last year, to 283 in the second half. From January through May of this year, that number jumped to 844.

In most of those cases, the person was cited and released, not taken to jail. Violations led to an arrest 199 times in 2025.

Despite the frequent tickets and attempts to push him out of the bustling shopping and dining district, Carter never moved far from his preferred spot, around 21st and K streets. All of his citations over the past year were issued within about a two-and-a-half-block radius. He felt he had to stay central if he wanted to eat: That’s where his friends were, and where passersby would stop and give him money or food.

“I could survive there,” he said.

Carter became homeless about three years ago, after he says a property manager stole cash from his apartment while he was in the hospital. Carter moved out to avoid a physical confrontation. After that, Carter admits he “gave up a little bit.” He didn’t have the money to get a new apartment, and, focused every day on survival, he didn’t have the energy to start the process of getting back on his feet.

Initially, when the cops showed up wherever Carter was sleeping, an outreach worker would come too and put Carter on a waitlist for shelter. But nothing ever came of that, Carter said.

Then, at the very end of December, Sacramento County opened a new tiny home community for homeless residents. The Stockton Boulevard site, which was part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2023 promise to build tiny homes throughout California, has 155 small cabins with room for a bed (or two beds if it’s for a couple) and a few belongings. Residents share communal bathrooms with plumbing and showers. Case managers meet regularly with residents to try and help them find permanent housing.

As the tiny homes gradually filled, one police officer started urging Carter to move in. Carter said no multiple times. He’d spent a few days in a different tiny home site last year. He hated it, he said.

Finally, the officer gave Carter an ultimatum: Go to jail, or go to a tiny home. Carter knew getting locked up meant he might lose his dog. And he’d heard the new tiny homes were actually kind of nice. So he said OK.

“I guess he was actually a caring officer,” Carter said. “It didn't seem like he was a caring officer, because he kept on writing tickets and everything. But he kept on just pushing me.”

Carter moved into his tiny home about two months ago, where, when he finally got to shower for the first time, it felt like he stood under the hot water for hours. He no longer has to worry about police waking him up at 6:30 a.m. and demanding that he move, sometimes only minutes after he’d finally managed to fall asleep amidst the noise and chaos of the street.

“That’s wonderful,” Carter said. “I can actually sleep in. I can take naps.”

But the police actions that got him there also took a toll. Each time officers wrote Carter up, they gave him a piece of paper that said when he had to appear in court. But Carter invariably lost the papers. It would rain and they’d get wet and ruined. Or they’d get mixed in with the items the police tossed out the next time they told him to move.

He didn’t think it was a big deal. After all, camping is a misdemeanor. There’s no way the court would issue a warrant for such a small offense, Carter thought.

He was wrong. Now, at 53 years old, he has warrants out for his arrest for failing to appear at multiple court dates. It makes him worried that he could be biking down the street one day, minding his own business, and get arrested and taken to jail.

“I’m just too old to have any type of trouble like that,” he said.

Jerry Carter at the Safe Stay tiny home community in Sacramento on June 13, 2025. Carter has been cited multiple times by law enforcement in Sacramento for street camping.

(

Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

/

CalMatters

)

Carter’s hardly the only one in that position, said Terra Hennefer, the case manager supervisor for the tiny home site where Carter lives.

“We see a lot of people that end up with the tickets,” she said. “Then it makes more work for us trying to clear their warrants and stuff before we get them into housing.”

Landlords often conduct background checks and won’t take someone with a warrant, Hennefer said. The county also runs background checks on people applying for subsidized housing vouchers.

Hennefer’s team works with the probation office to help residents resolve outstanding warrants. The first step is to set a new court date, and make sure the resident doesn’t miss it.

Then a judge will decide on a penalty, which could be a fine. Her organization, a shelter and interim housing provider named First Step Communities, can help cover the cost. But it’s frustrating, she said, as that money could instead go toward helping more people get off the street. And it adds yet another hurdle to what for many is a seemingly endless list of tasks on the way to housing.

Carter has just started that process. His case manager, Matthew Burbridge, is working on getting his Social Security benefits restarted and finding him permanent housing through CalAIM, the state’s expanded Medi-Cal program.

The problem is, neither Burbridge, nor anyone else, knows how long that may take.

“They’re working on it,” he said. “It might be quick, it might be long. We don’t know. But we’ll be ready when the time comes.”

San Diego: Moving into a swamp 

Micah Huff for a time lost touch with a San Diego case manager who was trying to help him move to a city-backed homeless campsite as he sought to avoid police and encampment clean-ups.

Huff, 45, moved to a boggy area near Ocean Beach bordered by brush, mud and city streets because it’s harder for the authorities to find him there. He had to hike in and out and said he’s already moved his belongings across the wetland once. Earlier this month, he said he expected to move again soon, as he’s done every couple weeks since the city stepped up enforcement.

Since May 2024, records show police cited Huff seven times for offenses tied to his unsheltered status and arrested him twice.

Police data obtained by Voice of San Diego shows arrests and citations for violations tied to homelessness more than doubled in the six months after the Grants Pass ruling. Rather than the ruling, police attribute the increase to the new police chief assigning more officers to engage with community members and enforce crimes tied to homelessness.

A year before the Grants Pass decision, the San Diego City Council approved a camping ban that police began enforcing in summer 2023, while also continuing to enforce older ordinances, such as those that prohibit encroaching on the public right of way.

Micah Huff, a client of PATH case manager Dawn Contreras, in Ocean Beach on June 17, 2025.

(

Ariana Drehsler

/

Voice of San Diego

)

The city’s street homeless population fell last year, and Mayor Todd Gloria credits that reduction to approaches such as the camping ban, continued enforcement of existing laws and increased shelter offerings and more outreach.

Arrests can be traumatic: One of Huff’s arrests, which police records suggest may have occurred last September, has made a lasting impression on him.

Huff was meeting a friend he hadn’t seen in a while at a dog beach in Ocean Beach. The two fell asleep near a public restroom, Huff said, and were startled awake by police. Police arrested Huff for encroachment and possession of drug paraphernalia, though Huff says the supplies weren’t his.

Huff said his heart raced during his encounter with police. He heard an officer talk about a backpack with drug supplies. Huff’s blood pressure surged, a reaction that Huff said put him at risk of a heart attack or stroke due to a blood pressure condition.

Then he passed out.

Huff said police took him to Scripps Mercy Hospital in Hillcrest. Huff estimates the officers waited six or seven hours before finally giving up on booking him and leaving.

He left the hospital with medications that were stolen within a few days of his return outdoors.

Superior Court records show that Huff has yet to be charged for these offenses or other alleged homelessness-related violations over the past couple years.

The outcome of the city crackdowns, according to Huff, has simply been that he’s been pushed “further and further away” into remote areas — currently a literal swamp — to avoid enforcement or clean-ups.

But increasing enforcement in recent weeks and months at nearby Ocean Beach hasn’t convinced 38-year-old Ryan Taylor to move elsewhere. Taylor, who has been cited nine times and arrested five times for offenses tied to homelessness, continues to set up an umbrella and blankets at the beach.

One recent arrest came on Memorial Day, when Taylor was picked up on a warrant for failing to appear in court to address homelessness-related charges. He was relieved to find most of his belongings still at the beach when he returned the next morning.

More recently, Taylor’s case manager has been helping him work on addressing his criminal cases in court. He is set to appear at a July 24 hearing to start the process.

Taylor hasn’t left the Ocean Beach area he’s settled in for most of the four years he’s been homeless in San Diego despite the repeated arrests and citations, he said, because he’s “just accepted that’s the way that it is.”

Taylor also said he’s repeatedly accepted offers of shelter when police show up next to him at the beach, but said shelter has never been available when he agreed to it.

“To me, it seems like the people that need help or whatever don't have money, giving them more tickets doesn't help them, propel them to get them financially out of the hole or help them,” Taylor said.

Micah Huff, a client of PATH case manager Dawn Contreras, in Ocean Beach on June 17, 2025.

(

Ariana Drehsler

/

Voice of San Diego

)

Empty bottles in a shopping cart in Ocean Beach on June 17, 2025.

(

Ariana Drehsler

/

Voice of San Diego

)

San Diego police Capt. Steve Shebloski, who oversees the division focused on homelessness-related enforcement, and Denny Knox, executive director of business group OB MainStreet Association, argue that increased enforcement is having a positive effect, though both also said there’s more work to do.

Shebloski noted recent homeless census results showing a 4% drop in unsheltered homelessness in the city and less visible homelessness in communities including San Diego’s downtown.

But Dawn Contreras, a case manager for nonprofit PATH working with both Huff and Taylor, said the increased enforcement only makes homeless service workers’ jobs more difficult.

One day this spring, Contreras said she was picking up an unsheltered client for a required webinar to obtain housing when a beat officer — not assigned to the Neighborhood Policing Division that Shebloski oversees — ordered her client to clear his camp. Contreras said she implored the officer to allow the man to clean the camp later so he could head to his meeting.

“You’re not willing to bend for just one hour?” Contreras said.

The officer refused. With Contreras’ help, the unsheltered man later signed onto his meeting a few minutes late. Rescheduling it would have added another logistical hurdle for both Contreras and her client as they prepared to move him off the street.

Note: Aaron Schrank reported this story for LAist in collaboration with CalMatters' reporter Marisa Kendall and Voice of San Diego's Lisa Halverstadt.

The immigration detention center closest to Los Angeles has placed dozens of people in solitary confinement each month since June, according to the most recent data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In May 2025, the Adelanto ICE Processing Center had 14 people in isolation. When the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort revved up in June 2025, the number of detainees in solitary confinement there more than tripled. By July, it was 73; by August, 105.

The most recent data available shows that number went down slightly in January, to 74 people.

Ranked by percentage of the detainee population in “segregation,” as it is called at immigrant detention centers, Adelanto is among the U.S.’s top 10 facilities as of January, according to an LAist analysis of the most recent ICE data.

The data shows that of 229 ICE facilities that reported holding people since October 2024, between 50 and 60 usually reported putting at least one person in segregation in a given month. Out of the facilities that did place people in solitary confinement, Adelanto tended to do so less often than others until June 2025. (The facility held just a few people from October 2024 into January 2025.) When ICE’s presence increased in L.A. in June, the number of people sent to isolation in the facility also shot up — three to five times as many people have been isolated in Adelanto compared to the average facility that used any solitary confinement.

Since June, only two facilities have sent people to solitary confinement more times than Adelanto: one southwest of San Antonio, the other in central Pennsylvania.

Both of those facilities held twice the number of detainees as Adelanto on average from October 2024 through September 2025; but the number of people held in Adelanto since then has tripled, growing larger than either of the other facilities to hold an average of 1,800 people a day since October.

More on solitary confinement  

According to ICE, detainees may be placed in segregation for “disciplinary reasons,” or because of:

• “Serious mental or medical illness.”
• Conducting a hunger strike.
• Suicide watch.

The agency also says it might place detainees “who may be susceptible to harm [if left among the] general population due in part to how others interpret or assume their sexual orientation, or sexual presentation or expression.”

Not only is ICE holding more people in solitary confinement, but the agency's data also shows that detainees across the country are being isolated for longer periods of time. Detainees ICE considers part of the "vulnerable & special population" spent an average of about two weeks in solitary confinement each time they were isolated in 2022, when ICE first made the data available. By the end of 2025, the average stay in isolation had risen to more than seven weeks straight.

The GEO Group Inc., a private company that operates the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, has not responded to requests for comment.

How isolation can affect immigrant detainees  

UN human rights experts consider solitary confinement placements that last 15 days or more to be torture, though the U.S. Supreme Court has held that isolation doesn’t violate the Constitution.

The UN also maintains that solitary confinement should be prohibited for people “with mental or physical disabilities when their conditions would be exacerbated by such measures.”

In January, a coalition of immigrant rights groups filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of current detainees, calling for conditions at Adelanto to be improved. In addition to an unsanitary environment and a lack of healthy food and clean drinking water, detainees say solitary confinement is frequently used to punish those who speak out about conditions at the facility.

People held in immigrant detention centers are technically in “civil detention,” meaning that they are being detained to ensure their presence at hearings and compliance with immigration orders — not to serve criminal sentences.

According to the immigrant rights groups’ complaint, one detainee was placed in solitary confinement after complaining about the showers being broken. Another detainee said that, after asking a guard to “use more respectful language toward him, he was ridiculed, written up and given the middle finger by a guard who shouted, ‘Who the f--- do you think you are?’” Then, the detainee was placed in solitary confinement for 25 days.

Alvaro Huerta, the director of litigation and advocacy at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center who is representing detainees at Adelanto, told LAist that when people are placed in isolation at the facility, they’re typically in the same cell for 23 hours per day, unable to receive visits from their families.

For clients who are experiencing mental health challenges — especially those with suicidal thoughts — being placed in solitary confinement “can really exacerbate their condition,” he added.

In multiple statements to the media, ICE has said that the agency “is committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments.” The agency has also said that detainees receive “comprehensive medical care” and that all detainees “receive medical, dental, and mental health intake screenings within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility.”

Huerta called that “laughable.”

“We have countless examples of people who have said that this is not true, that they're not getting the medication that they're requesting, that they're not being seen for chronic conditions and emergency conditions,” he added. “And we know it's not true because 14 people have died in ICE custody this year alone.”

Lori Rovner of Manhattan Beach is a big sports fan, so there was no question that when tickets for the Olympic Games went on sale, she'd be signing up.

She scored a slot in the first ticket drop, which launched Thursday, and logged on right at 10 a.m., hoping to score tickets to the Opening Ceremonies and some finals too. After battling her computer to get through "access denied" screens and a lost shopping cart due to a 30-minute time limit, she bought 16 tickets.

It was only when she was about to purchase that she noticed the service fees, which were around 24% of each ticket. One $2,100 ticket had a $505 service fee, bringing the total cost to $2,604.63.

"It's insane," she said of the fee. "I don't understand what the service is."

As the locals-only sale kicks off and Southern Californians have their first chance to buy tickets to the Olympic Games, some fans are wide-eyed at the high fees on all tickets and the prices in general, which start at $28 but go up to more than $5,500 a pop. Opening Ceremony tickets start at $328.68

The service fees aren't a surprise add-on. The price fans see when browsing the site is the total cost, including the fee. Still, some who bought in the first phase of sales were surprised when they saw the fees add up.

One user on Reddit of shared their cart of 10 tickets, which added up to $11,264. That included $1,038 in fees alone. Commenters responded in shock and awe.

Service fees are standard in ticket sales, but the percentage they charge can vary widely. High fees have been a source of ire for music and sports fans for years. A 2018 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the average fees on a primary ticket market were 27%.

LA28 did not respond to LAist's requests for details on the service fee, like what it pays for or why it's a percentage rather than a flat rate.

Not everyone seemed bothered by the prices. Some people LAist spoke with opted for only $28 or similarly priced tickets, even if it meant missing some of the biggest Olympic events. One user on Reddit said they purchased 18 tickets for around $550.

"I went with all $28 tickets," they wrote in the online forum about the Olympics. "I got women’s soccer, gymnastics, beach and regular volleyball, track and field, baseball and a few others."

For some, the ticket process, the prices and the dense web of events to choose from made it too hard to pull the trigger.

Jeff Bartow of Sierra Madre made a spreadsheet with some competitions he was interested in seeing before he logged on to buy tickets Friday.

"So many times, so many schedules, so many events," Bartow said. "I think I initially thought I was going to go to a bunch, but thinking about how crazy it's going to be … I might be a little more limited."

This is just the first ticket drop. There will be more opportunities to buy tickets in the months to come — and on a resale market that launches in 2027.

Some ticket-buyers told LAist they already were contemplating which tickets they'd keep and which ones they'd re-sell, just minutes after buying them.

In the more than two months since the Department of Justice released its latest batch of files on the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, prosecutors have not brought any new charges based on the documents, despite federal lawmakers on both sides of the aisle continuing to demand accountability.

The more than 3 million pages of documents include accusations by alleged victims of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's abuse and thousands of emails and photos showing Epstein associated with prominent figures. The files indicate that many of these people maintained contact with the disgraced financier long after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to sex crimes that involved minors. Appearing in the files is not necessarily an indication of criminal wrongdoing.

The release of the Epstein files came after Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which forced the Justice Department to make public all documents it held related to Epstein.

Epstein died in prison about a month after a 2019 arrest on sex-trafficking charges. Maxwell was convicted on sex-trafficking charges in 2021 and is serving a 20-year sentence. Since the release of the files in 2025 and 2026, there have been no related arrests in the U.S. However, the disclosures have led to some resignations and other reputational repercussions for some high-ranking Americans.

The lack of arrests in the U.S. contrasts to the fallout in the U.K., where investigators have pursued charges related to corruption, not sexual abuse, in their dealings with Epstein. Two former government officials — former Prince Andrew and ex-ambassador Peter Mandelson — were arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as he is now known, has denied wrongdoing and has not been formally charged. Mandelson has also not been charged, and lawyers for Mandelson have said that the arrest was prompted by a "baseless suggestion."

In the U.S., top Justice Department officials have said that they found no evidence compelling enough to pursue further charges related to Epstein, and that the public can make their own assessments based on the disclosed documents.

In a statement to NPR, Justice Department spokesperson Katie Kenlein said that "there have not been additional prosecutions beyond Epstein and Maxwell because there has not been credible evidence that their activities extended to Epstein's network. However, if prosecutable evidence comes forward, the Department of Justice will of course act on it as we do every day in sexual trafficking and assault cases across the count[r]y."

On Thursday, President Trump announced that Attorney General Pam Bondi is out of the top job at the Justice Department, following bipartisan criticism over her handling of the Epstein files.

NPR asked four former prosecutors and one former law enforcement officer why there may not have been enough evidence to levy additional charges. Here's what they said.

Prosecutors must prove guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt"

Prosecutors must prove to a jury that a person committed a crime "beyond a reasonable doubt," according to Barbara McQuade, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.

"One of the biggest misconceptions people have is how difficult it is to charge and convict somebody for a criminal case," said McQuade, who served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.

A prosecutor's ethical responsibility is to charge cases only if they believe there is enough evidence for a conviction, McQuade said. Documents, including emails, jokes, and even plane itineraries, can be a place to start, but, alone, they are not enough to prove guilt, McQuade said.

"What you would need [is] rock solid evidence," McQuade said. "You can't charge someone for a crime without sufficient evidence, and I have yet to see evidence of a crime involving an Epstein associate that has gone uncharged."

Based on his understanding of the case, Paul Butler, a professor at Georgetown Law, said he agreed that prosecutors who investigated Epstein's alleged associates "may have believed that they couldn't persuade a jury beyond a reasonable doubt." He said problems with witness credibility or certain forensic evidence can prevent a case from moving forward.

The U.K. cases are focused on corruption 

In the U.K., the two people arrested are being investigated on suspicion of "misconduct in public office." McQuade said the U.S. does not have a single equivalent federal law. Instead, the U.S. prosecutes public corruption through statutes that focus specifically on crimes such as bribery and extortion.

After the release of the latest files, British police began investigating Andrew's correspondence with Epstein when Andrew was a U.K. trade envoy. At that time, Andrew allegedly shared government itineraries, investment plans and notes from official foreign trips with Epstein. The information may have been covered by the United Kingdom's Official Secrets Act.

Similarly, Mandelson has been accused of passing confidential government information to the late sex offender when Mandelson was a U.K. Cabinet minister.

Meeting the burden of proof is especially challenging for sex crime cases

Victim statements are essential for establishing basic elements, such as the timeframe of events, required to build sexual assault cases, said Diane Goldstein, a retired police lieutenant from California and the executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership. But a victim may be reluctant to come forward because of a fear of retaliation, not believing the police can help, believing it is a personal matter, or not wanting to get the perpetrator in trouble.

McQuade noted that in some sex trafficking cases, especially those in which a perpetrator is in a position of power, victims may experience intimidation or threats that prevent them from speaking out.

Victims also may be hesitant to move forward with allegations because they fear having to testify at trials where defense attorneys may attempt to poke holes in their allegations, McQuade said.

Goldstein said that for sex crime cases to advance, investigators need to follow certain policies and procedures. "If you don't have a legitimate police investigation to start, you're not going to get any type of criminal filing," Goldstein said.

Other potential charges are also a difficult path

Prosecutors may have considered pursuing charges of criminal conspiracy related to sex trafficking against people associated with Epstein, said Jessica Roth, a professor at Cardozo School of Law. FBI documents in the files relating to its investigation into Epstein's crimes identify certain people as "co-conspirators."

But Ankush Khardori, a senior writer and columnist at Politico magazine who worked as a federal prosecutor on financial fraud cases, told NPR those identifiers are not "formal accusation[s]" and are simply part of "interim documents."

"The FBI does not determine who is a co-conspirator," Khardori said. "That is a legal judgment that prosecutors make."

But for those conspiracy cases, "criminal intent," in particular, is difficult to establish, said Roth, who worked as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York for seven years. Criminal conspiracy charges "would require knowledge and intent on the part of each individual who was charged," Roth said. If a person who communicated with Epstein had some suspicion that he was engaged in illegal activity, that alone would not be sufficient evidence to press charges, she said.

Investigators may have considered charges related to criminal tax violations, McQuade said. But the statute of limitations has likely ended on those cases, she said, meaning that prosecutors can no longer bring charges.

The current evidence lacks context

Legal experts say the haphazard way the documents were released and redacted makes it difficult for the public to understand why no additional charges have been filed.

Roth, the Cardozo law professor, said the information is in "isolation," without the appropriate context. "We'll see an individual photograph that looks perhaps incriminating. We'll see an email that looks incriminating, but we don't necessarily have everything that was said before and after that email and that exchange," Roth said.

One document that could explain why no charges were pursued, according to Butler, is a heavily redacted DOJ memo naming "potential co-conspirators" of Epstein. "The parts that should indicate why the department declined prosecution on any alleged co-conspirators other than Ghislaine Maxwell [are] redacted," said Butler, the Georgetown law professor and a former federal prosecutor.

Butler said those redactions are "unusual" because they do not appear to follow the permissible reasons for redactions in the Epstein documents. Those reasons include confidentiality for Epstein's alleged victims, or anything that would compromise an ongoing investigation, Butler said.

"When the Justice Department grudgingly releases information when pressed by politics or forced by Congress, it also creates the impression that they have something to hide," Butler said. "That there is some cover-up going on."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Nearly 30% more students in Los Angeles County experienced homelessness from 2022-23 to 2023-24, making it the county’s highest rate in the past five years and far outpacing the rate of homelessness across the state in the same timeframe, as the resources to identify and support this student population have decreased.

The UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools published two reports on Wednesday on the state of student homelessness in the county: “Rising Numbers, Fading Resources: Students Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County” and “Hidden in Plain Sight: Fear, Underidentification, and Funding Gaps for Housing-Insecure Students in Los Angeles County.”

Researchers found that Norwalk-La Mirada Elementary Unified School District had the highest rate of student homelessness in the county — 1 in 3 students, meaning that over 4,700 students were identified as experiencing homelessness during the 2023-24 school year out of a total cumulative enrollment of about 15,600.

The city of Norwalk, where the district is located in the eastern region of the county, was sued by the state in 2024 for banning emergency shelters and other support services for people experiencing homelessness. Last year, the state reached a settlement with the city, which was forced to overturn the ban and put $250,000 toward building affordable housing.

Student homelessness is defined differently under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, a federal law that requires every public school to count the number of students who are living on the street, in shelters, in motels, in cars, doubled up with other families, or moving between friends’ and relatives’ homes.

As a result of this expanded definition, McKinney-Vento includes doubled-up students in the count of homelessness. Doubled-up is a term used to describe children and youth ages 21 and under living in shared housing, such as with another family or friends, due to various crises.

There were a few other patterns seen in the L.A. County data analyzed by the UCLA researchers:

• Latino students were disproportionately more likely to experience homelessness: they represent 65% of the county’s student population, but 75.5% of student homelessness
• A third of homeless students were in high school
• Many districts with the highest rates of homelessness had higher school instability but lower dropout rates

While McKinney-Vento has an expanded definition that includes more types of homelessness than several other definitions, identifying students remains difficult.

The second report from the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools focuses on the lack of dedicated funding for school staff to identify and support homeless students. Students and families facing homelessness do not always self-identify, whether due to fear, shame or being unaware that their housing situation is considered homelessness under McKinney-Vento.

“A lot of these young people are dealing with a lot of trauma, so they don’t want to be identified. They don’t want to be pointed out; sometimes it’s scary for them, because they think we’re going to report them to the Department of Children and Family Services,” said L.A. County Office of Education staff interviewed for this report.

School staff, known as homeless liaisons, who work with homeless students received a historic influx of federal funds during the Covid-19 pandemic — $98.76 million for California, out of $800 million nationwide, from the American Rescue Plan-Homeless Children and Youth.

That funding has since ended, and there is no other dedicated, ongoing state funding set aside solely for the rising number of homeless students. This has led districts in California to “heavily depend on highly competitive and unstable federal streams,” the UCLA researchers wrote. Those federal streams have become increasingly precarious as the federal administration last year sought policy changes that would shift how they are structured.