The Brief

It was Friday, June 6, and the rent was due. As soon as she finished an errand, Imelda Carreto planned on joining her family as they gathered scrap metal to earn a little extra cash. Her fiancé, Julio Matias, and 15-year-old nephew, Carlos, had set out early, hitching a trailer to the back of their beat-up gray truck.

Shortly after 8 a.m., Carreto’s phone rang. It was Carlos, telling her an officer with the Florida Highway Patrol had pulled over the truck on Interstate 4 near Tampa. The stated reason: cracks in their windshield. But Carreto was worried. She knew Florida police were collaborating with federal immigration authorities. Her fiancé was undocumented. She says she rushed to the scene and made it there just before the immigration officers.

As she feared, Matias had been detained. But to her surprise, so had Carlos. He was just a kid. (ProPublica is only identifying Carlos by his first name because he is a minor.) Carlos was in high school. He’d been living in the United States for over two years and was working toward applying for legal status to stay long term. The government had given her, a legal resident, custody of him. Now he was in handcuffs. Why would they take him too?

Carreto didn’t carry any proof that she had custody of the boy. She had left it in another car in her rush. She recalls officers saying her nephew would likely be released to her in a few days once she presented the proper documents. Before they drove him away, Carlos started to tear up. Carreto told him, “Don’t cry. I don’t know how, but I’ll get you back. Understand?”

A cracked windshield, a waiting officer, a forgotten document: The new family separations often start in the most mundane ways.

Seven years ago, during the first administration of President Donald Trump, children were taken from their families the moment they crossed the border into the United States. Under a policy of zero tolerance for illegal crossing, Customs and Border Protection officers detained adults while children were sent into the federal shelter system. The aim: to deter other families from following. But after widespread public outcry and a lawsuit, the administration ended it.

Today, family separations are back, only now they are happening all across the country. The lawsuit against the zero tolerance policy resulted in a 2023 settlement that limits separations at the border, but it does not address those that occur inside the country after encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Advocates fear the administration is conducting the new separations for the same reasons as before: to deter new immigrants from coming and to terrify those who are here into leaving.

Since the start of this year, some 600 immigrant children have been placed in government shelters by ICE, according to government data. That figure, which has not been previously reported, is already higher than the tally for the previous four years combined. And it is the highest number since recordkeeping began a decade ago.

ProPublica pieced together additional information for around 400 children sent to shelters by examining state and federal records and conducting dozens of interviews with current and former government officials, advocates, attorneys and immigrant families.

Around 160 of the cases that we learned about involved child welfare concerns, which current and former officials say is typical of the children ICE has sent to shelters in the past. These cases include instances of kids who were encountered alone inside the country or were considered potential victims of domestic abuse or trafficking, or instances where minors or the adults they were with had been accused of committing a crime.

But in a majority of the cases we examined, kids ended up in shelters in ways government officials say they never would have in the past: after routine immigration court hearings or appointments, or because they were at a home or a business when immigration authorities showed up to arrest someone else.

In South Carolina, a Colombian family of five went to a government office for a fingerprinting appointment, only to have the parents detained while the children — ages 5, 11 and 15 — were sent into the shelter system for four months. In South Florida, a 17-year-old from Guatemala was taken into custody because officers couldn’t make contact with his dad after a traffic stop; his dad is deaf. In Maryland, a 17-year-old from Mexico ended up in a shelter after making a wrong turn onto military property.

In around 150 cases, children were taken into federal custody after traffic stops. The trend is especially noticeable in states like Florida, where thousands of state and local police, including highway patrol, have been deputized to enforce immigration laws.

“What’s happening to kids now is like many small zero tolerances,” said Marion “Mickey” Donovan-Kaloust, director of legal services at the Los Angeles-based Immigrant Defenders Law Center. This and other changes affecting immigrant children are “adding up to a huge trauma.”

Most of the cases we found involve teenagers, and many of them had been in the United States for years. In those cases, being sent to a shelter can mean separation not only from their families but from schools, friends, churches, doctors and daily routines.

Once children are in shelters, the government is making it harder and harder for relatives or other adults who act as sponsors to get them back. The average length of stay has grown to nearly six months, up from one month during the presidency of Joe Biden, public data shows.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a written statement that the Biden administration released immigrant kids to sponsors too quickly and without proper vetting, sometimes into unsafe situations. “The Trump Administration is ensuring that unaccompanied minors do not fall victim to the same dangerous conditions,” Jackson said.

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, speaking for ICE, said the agency “does not separate families” and instead offers parents the choice to have their children deported with them or to leave the children in the care of another safe adult, consistent with past practices.

Asked about Carlos’ detention in Florida, McLaughlin said that traffic stops by officers trained to partner with ICE have prevented abuse of immigrant children and “resulted in arrests of human traffickers, abusers, and other criminals.”

ProPublica found no evidence of Carreto or Matias, her fiancé, being accused or convicted of serious crimes. Carreto had been found guilty of driving without a license at least twice and had gotten a speeding ticket. Matias pleaded guilty to a 2011 taillight infraction. He now has an ongoing case for driving without a license from the traffic stop with Carlos, and he has been returned to Guatemala.

Shelter network turned on its head

What is happening now is not what the system was set up for.

The nation’s network of roughly 170 federal shelters for “unaccompanied” immigrant children is run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. The office is tasked with temporarily housing vulnerable children who cross the border alone, holding them in the least restrictive setting possible until they can be released to a sponsor in the United States. Typically that means placing kids with a parent or other family member. The office finds and vets the sponsors and is required to release children to them without delay. Once kids are out, they can apply to remain here permanently.

Under Biden, when border crossings surged to record highs, around 470,000 children were released to sponsors after going through the shelter system. Republicans said the releases incentivized smugglers to endanger kids on the long journey north and encouraged parents to send their children across the border alone.

The White House called the previous administration’s sponsor-vetting process “abysmal,” and said that many records pertaining to minors released under Biden “were either fraudulent or never existed to begin with.”

Biden officials deny these claims. But some kids have indeed ended up working in dangerous jobs.

The Trump administration has placed former ICE officials in charge of the refugee resettlement office and has made it a priority to locate children who were released from custody in previous years. To facilitate the effort, ICE plans to open a national, 24-hour call center meant to help state and local officials find them. The government says it says it has already checked on more than 24,400 children in person, and it cited more than a dozen examples of sponsors and immigrant minors arrested for crimes ranging from murder to drug trafficking, rape and assault. One of the cases the White House highlighted was of a 15-year-old Guatemalan girl the government says was released in 2023 to a man who falsely claimed to be her brother and allegedly went on to sexually abuse her.

Under Trump, the government has introduced new vetting requirements, including expanded DNA checks, fingerprinting for everyone in the sponsor’s household and heightened scrutiny of family finances.

In response to questions from ProPublica, the refugee resettlement office said it was legally required to care for all unaccompanied kids who came through its doors and defended the new vetting process. “The enhanced sponsorship requirements of this administration help keep unaccompanied alien children safe from traffickers and other bad, dangerous people,” a spokesperson said.

Because so many children are now being sent into shelters in ways they hadn’t been before, though, lawyers and advocates worry the administration’s efforts have another motive: to more broadly target and deport immigrant kids and their families. They also say the new requirements are creating so much fear that some undocumented family members are hesitant to come forward as sponsors.

Around half of the kids that ICE sent into the shelter system this year have been there before. When they arrived years ago, after crossing the border alone, they were released as soon as possible. This time, back in the system, they’re languishing.

“I think that they’re using a clearly vulnerable, clearly sympathetic population in a way that sends a powerful message to literally every other population,” said Jen Smyers, who was an official at the Office of Refugee Resettlement during the Biden administration. “If they’re going to go after these kids who have protections and say we care about them, and then treat them like this, that shows everyone that no one is safe.”

This month, attorneys suing the government over its treatment of children in the shelter system recovered a government document being provided to unaccompanied minors who cross the border. It warns them that if they do not choose to leave the country within 72 hours they will “be detained in the custody of the United States Government, for a prolonged period of time.” The document also warned that if the person who sought to sponsor the minors was undocumented, they would be “subject to arrest and removal” or to criminal penalties for “aiding your illegal entry.”

Customs and Border Protection told ProPublica that the document is used to ensure immigrant children “understand their rights and options.”

There have already been cases of prospective sponsors who have shown up at government offices for in-person interviews and been detained for being in the country illegally, said Marie Silver, a managing attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago.

“They are using the kids as bait, and then the kids are stuck,” Silver said. “They are creating unaccompanied children this way.”

Separation in the Sunshine State

In Florida, we found two dozen kids arrested in traffic stops who went on to spend weeks or months in federal shelters. Some are still there.

Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s Republican majority have spent years crafting policies that allow local police officers to seamlessly operate as federal immigration enforcers. They aim to be a model for how states can help the Trump administration “reclaim America’s sovereignty.”

Across Florida, almost 5,000 officers — even those from its Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission — are empowered to detain people over their immigration status and to call in federal authorities to come pick them up. ProPublica obtained state data revealing that Florida police have arrested at least 47 children on federal immigration charges since late April, with the Florida Highway Patrol leading the tally.

In cases like that of Carlos, children were sent to a federal shelter despite having a parent or legal custodian caring for them. Five current and former federal officials said this could be a violation of ICE’s own policy. The policy dictates that officers should let primary caregivers like Carreto take them home or find a safe place to send them. (It does not clearly require caregivers to show any documentation.) If they can’t find a safe place, or if there are signs the child is in danger, officers are supposed to alert local law enforcement or child-welfare officials and wait for them to arrive.

Florida has its own laws governing how state and local officers should interact with children. If a kid is found alone or in danger, state police must call a hotline run by Florida’s Department of Children and Families. The call is supposed to trigger a process in which state judges review any decision to place a child in the care of someone other than their family within 24 hours.

It’s not clear if Florida officers are calling the state hotline when encountering immigrant children. But it is clear that this year they have often called ICE.

State police contacted immigration officials directly about Carlos, Florida records show. Carlos went into federal custody without a state shelter hearing, according to his attorney, who said the same thing has happened to three other clients following traffic stops.

State Rep. Lawrence McClure, the Republican who introduced legislation this January that supercharged Florida’s cooperation with ICE, promised during debate on the bill that nothing would change about how the state treated immigrant children. McClure did not respond directly to questions from ProPublica about the transfers to ICE.

Boundaries between state and federal policy “are being blurred” in an “unprecedented way,” said Bernard Perlmutter, co-director of the University of Miami’s Children and Youth Law Clinic.

The collaboration with local police in Florida and elsewhere comes as ICE has worked increasingly with other federal agencies that may have their own policies for handling encounters with kids.

In response to detailed questions from ProPublica, DeSantis’ press secretary emailed a list of more than a dozen links from the video platform Rumble in which the governor speaks about immigration enforcement, writing: “Governor DeSantis has made immigration enforcement a top priority to keep Florida communities safe.”

Other state officials, including from the Florida Highway Patrol and Department of Children and Families, either did not respond or declined our requests for comment on the state’s partnership with ICE and its impact on immigrant children.

It was Florida’s cooperation with federal authorities that landed Carlos in the federal shelter system this June — his second time there.

In December 2022, Carlos, then 13 years old, came to the United States from Guatemala, where his single mother made him work or beg for money, according to court records. He thought he would be better off in the U.S. with her sister, according to records provided by his attorney. He made the journey without his parents, the documents say.

After he crossed near Donna, Texas, he was picked up by border agents and spent three weeks in a federal shelter before being released to his aunt. Carreto said she had no idea Carlos was making the journey until she received a 2 a.m. phone call from immigration authorities. She welcomed the boy into her sprawling Guatemalan American family and insisted that he go to school.

Two and a half years into his stay with Carreto came the traffic stop.

Carlos was first taken across the state to the Broward Transitional Center, a for-profit detention facility operated by the GEO Group, an ICE contractor. He was transferred later in the day to an Office of Refugee Resettlement shelter in Tampa run by Urban Strategies, another government contractor, records show. The GEO Group declined to comment and referred ProPublica to ICE. Lisa Cummins, president of Urban Strategies, wrote in an email: “We remain deeply committed to the care and well-being of the children we serve.”

Carreto launched into weeks of confusing phone calls and paperwork to get her nephew back. She had to send in a 10-page application. She turned over information about her finances, her adult son’s finances, her lack of criminal history. She submitted samples of her DNA. She sent photos of the smoke alarms in her house.

Shortly after Carlos was detained, Carreto said, immigration officers paid an unannounced visit to her home. Her son Ereson, who is 18, says federal agents came onto the property without permission and asked if any immigrants were living there. The visit scared the family.

Carreto’s daughters eventually managed to pinpoint Carlos’ location by asking him over the phone to name landmarks he could see, then searching for them on Google. In video calls home, Carreto said, Carlos was visibly sad. She said he sometimes skipped meals. “Why are they keeping me here?” she recalled him asking, “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Carreto visited the offices of Homeland Security Investigations in Tampa with three of her children. She said agents asked how much she paid to have Carlos smuggled across the border and how much she was getting paid to try to get him out of detention. They threatened her with federal charges if she didn’t tell the truth, she said.

“I told them that nobody is paying me,” she said. “I’m doing this because he’s my nephew. He’s like a son to me.”

Carlos was released after two and a half months.

He was one of the lucky ones: His aunt was a legal resident who had custody of him, and the family had the resources and determination to fight for him.

The government this year has moved to slash legal services for children and offered cash to kids who give up their cases and go home. (The Office of Refugee Resettlement’s statement to ProPublica said it is fully complying with a court order requiring that minors be provided with legal representation.) Attorneys who represent children said they have seen a spike in cases of self-harm and behavioral problems as kids lose hope of being released.

Of the kids that ProPublica learned about, around 140 were still stuck in federal shelters as of last month. Close to 100 were ordered to be deported or had signed papers agreeing to leave the country.

The state of California is walking back protections meant to keep destructive golden mussels out of Lake Oroville, one of the largest and most important reservoirs in the state.

The move follows a new state-funded risk assessment that the invasive species poses a lower risk to the lake, which water managers say changes the state’s calculus on costly and difficult measures aimed at keeping the invaders at bay.

No state agencies or scientists have found mussels in Oroville yet. But invasive species experts say the revised policy of the Department of Water Resources increases the likelihood that golden mussels will invade Lake Oroville and hitch a ride on boats to other lakes. They disagree, though, about whether preventing such an incursion is even possible.

”California is under an epidemic of golden mussels,” said Anthony Ricciardi, a professor of biology and the director of the Bieler School of Environment at McGill University. “Like in any epidemic, you got to control the key hubs — or else the war is lost.”

Reopening Lake Oroville

California water managers first discovered golden mussels invading California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in October 2024 — marking their first detection in North America.

The voracious and rapidly spreading mussels can encrust surfaces so thoroughly that they choke off water supplies and damage dams and power plants.

They are now invading critical infrastructure in the Delta. And the very pumps, canals and aqueducts that keep water flowing to much of the state are funneling the larvae to irrigation districts and water suppliers downstream.

San Joaquin and Kern Counties have declared states of emergency, and state officials are updating key facilities along the state’s nature-defying water delivery system to reduce mussel damage.

With summer weather coming in hot, state water managers said that they are ending a program to prevent mussels and their larvae from stowing away on boats to invade Lake Oroville, one of California’s largest reservoirs.

The department now no longer requires inspections and decontamination for boats launching at Lake Oroville and nearby reservoirs — the Thermalito Forebay and the Thermalito Afterbay.

The Department of Water Resources says lakes and launches upstream in the Feather River watershed didn’t take similar precautions, raising the risk that golden mussel larvae would wash into the reservoir on river flows regardless of the boat inspections.

The cost of the inspection program for the lake was also around $7.5 million to start it up, and $6.5 million per year to continue it. Installing UV treatment to prevent mussels from settling in the pipes at powerplants downstream from Oroville, by contrast, would cost an estimated $1 million.

“We severely impacted recreation at that lake,” said Tanya Veldhuizen, special projects section manager in the California Department of Water Resources’ environmental assessment branch. “We also evaluated the risk to our infrastructure and what it would take to mitigate mussels — and that was much lower than expected.”

Cold water, fewer mussels? 

The decision reflects the findings from a new risk analysis the department commissioned for these reservoirs and related hydropower and fishery hatchery facilities, as well as for the Upper Feather River Lakes.

Conducted by a Canada-based consulting firm specializing in aquatic invasive species, the assessment reports that, while surface temperatures are warm enough for the mussels to survive in shallower water at Lake Oroville, they’re too cold lower down for the mussels to reproduce at depths greater than 60 feet below the surface.

Unlike the Delta, the waters at Lake Oroville are also low in nutrients, Veldhuizen said. Between the scarce food, cold temperatures, and water levels that drop enough to dry out mussels on the shoreline, Veldhuizen said she doesn’t expect the mussels to reach nuisance levels.

The department also expects cold water released from the reservoir will slow the growth of any larvae that reach the Feather River Fish Hatchery and the Oroville-Thermalito Complex powerplants downstream.

But Oroville’s shoreline, boats and docks remain at risk — and that’s what worries Ricciardi.

“That's where the action is. The boats will be moving them,” Ricciardi said — because boats and aquatic weeds clinging to vessels and their trailers can ferry mussels from one lake to another.

Fish and Game Warden Mark Rose and Allee, a Belgian Malinois, who was trained to sniff golden mussels at Thermalito Forebay, in Oroville in June 2025. The dog sniffs watercraft in an attempt at detecting the golden mussel and preventing its spread into California lakes.

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Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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CalMatters

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And adult mussels can actually survive even in very cold water, says Demetrio Boltovskoy, a retired researcher formerly at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council. One study in China found they can live for weeks at near-freezing temperatures.

Still, Boltovskoy said that while he isn’t specifically familiar with Lake Oroville, reducing precautions may be reasonable.

“No matter what precautionary measures you take, sooner or later it will spread,” he said. “I don't think that stopping their range expansion is actually feasible at all.”

But invasive species experts are sharply divided on the subject. That’s true especially in California.

Last year, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife told CalMatters that invasions delayed translated to money saved. This year, the wildlife department directed inquiries about the new Oroville strategy to the Department of Water Resources.

“There’s so much to protect yet,” Martha Volkoff, environmental program manager for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Invasive Species Program, said last summer. “Yes, it’s a lot of work, but the long-term savings — to the environment and to all the other ways that it costs us — is investment well spent, even if we just delay new introductions.”

Relying on boaters: Clean, drain, dry

The responsibility now rests more heavily with boaters to ensure their boats are clean, drained and dry — especially when leaving an infested body of water, like the Delta.

If state water managers detect mussels at Lake Oroville, she said, the department will begin inspecting boats as they leave the lake.

It's a strategy already in use at other infested lakes, including Castaic and Pyramid.

Managers of other Northern California lakes told CalMatters they will continue their inspection programs, including at lakes Folsom, Tahoe and Berryessa.

Drew Gantner, manager of water resources at Solano County Water Agency, which oversees the mussel program at Lake Berryessa, called the Oroville decision concerning.

“If Lake Oroville does surrender its program and becomes infested with golden mussels it creates an increased risk for all waterbodies,” Gantner said. “At that point, any watercraft travelling to Berryessa (or anywhere else) from Lake Oroville would essentially be no different than watercraft coming from the Delta.”  

Ricciardi agreed that the stakes extend well past Oroville’s dam and downstream facilities.

“There is another thing about invasions. They often surprise you,” Ricciardi said. “Sometimes invaders don't act the way they're supposed to act.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters — sign up for their newsletters — and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Some years ago, we were living in South Jersey, outside of Philadelphia. We had friends visiting, so we decided to take them to Independence Hall, where, as all Americans know, the Declaration of Independence was signed. As a Brit, I was excited to see the actual origins of American democracy.

We’d joined a tour, and I was admiring a particularly lovely wooden molding on the wall when I heard the guide say, “And that was when the British surrendered.”

I stopped in my tracks. Excuse me? You see, we, the British, do not surrender. You may have heard that, via our publicist Winston Churchill. We do not surrender on beaches. Or fields, or streets or hills, or any manner of geographic landmark.

I turned to my American husband. "What’s this place he’s talking about, Yorktown?" He stared at me in faint disbelief. “Um, you’ve heard of it, right? It’s where the British lost their final battle?” I shook my head. Nothing. Why did I not know this?

I mean, I had a pretty good British education. I remember learning that the American colonies had declared their Independence, but I thought that was because of the cost of tea or something — and not wanting to be judged for how posh your accent was. But the idea that Britain actually fought to keep those damn colonies — and LOST — well, that was a shock to my system.

From what I remember in the school text books, it was “America declared independence, never mind, we still ruled a lot of the world, let's move on.”

Yet as my American daughter went through school over here, U.S. history was a constant theme. The colonies, George Washington, the Civil War. What you choose to teach your children, that’s the way a country passes on its values.

What I learned in England was a lot about kings, like an Alfred who burnt the cakes, or a Henry who kept on marrying women.

Which makes me realize how much myth-making all countries do. And as an immigrant, to move from one mythology to another rattles all the marbles in your brain. How could this thing, that is so important to millions of your new co-patriots, be reduced to nothing in your childhood textbooks?

But the longer you live here, the more it shifts. And as you absorb more American history and go through Fourth of July holidays, the more you appreciate what was sacrificed to bring the nation into existence.

If I ever get to go back to Independence Hall, I hope I'll have a very different reaction. I’ll be much more aware of the import of what happened and the bravery and determination behind it.

And for that, as a comparatively new American, I am truly grateful.

Ask anyone in Los Angeles and they’ll swear that their favorite burrito spot is the best. While I can’t guarantee mine is the best, I can confidently say it’s unlike anything you’ve ever had. Enter: The chicken tikka burrito.

Four years ago, when I was accepted to USC, I immediately started looking online for food around the area. I bookmarked a tweet from 2018 that said if there was one place I had to eat at in my four years there it was 23rd Street Cafe — now Cafe 23.

The first time I had a bite, I knew I had to sing its praises to everyone I knew.

Cafe 23 is a perfect amalgamation of what makes University Park such a special place: how global it truly is. With USC — a school whose student body is roughly one-quarter international students — and the neighborhood’s many longtime residents, there’s something for everyone. 

And for those who don’t know it, South L.A. is a hotbed of food culture. With the historic 27th Street Bakery and the anticipated reopening of Chef Marilyn’s restaurant, there’s plenty to eat. For those hankering to try something new, however, these three restaurants offer a culinary twist on Mexican staples.   

So whether you’re in the area visiting the Los Angeles Public Library’s oldest brand, on your way to a biweekly knitting night in Inglewood, or need a quick bite before heading to the Koreatown Run Club, these cross-cultural Mexican fusion spots are well worth the visit.

Thai Corner Food Express

Thai Corner Food Express offers three Thai Taco varieties every Tuesday: from left, the spicy shrimp with mango and guacamole; chicken with coconut and mango; and beef with shredded coconut and mango.

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Erick Galindo

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Located in the back corner of Mercado La Paloma is Thai Corner Food Express, owned by Aritsa Elliot, who has served Thai food in the Figueroa corridor for nearly 20 years.

But, in April, the restaurant started offering the “Thai Taco.” Elliot said the idea came from a desire to satisfy her own curiosity. 

“I wanted to try Mexican masa with Thai spicy sauce or the herbs in a taco,” Elliot told The LA Local. 

Every Tuesday, Thai Corner offers choices such as a coconut beef taco, a spicy shrimp taco or a drunken noodle chicken taco served on homemade blue-corn tortillas made with masa from Komal, another popular Mercado La Paloma restaurant.

Developing the flavors was no easy feat and was the result of experimentation and collaboration. The owner of Komal suggested to Elliot that she should incorporate shaved coconut into the beef taco to really represent Thai flavors.

The blending of these two cuisines allows for flavors and spices that are typically muted by rice or noodles to be the main attractions.

As a side dish, you can order the Thai guacamole. It’s a creamy, sweet take on the classic dish, topped with diced mango. It doesn’t taste like any other guacamole I’ve tried, but it kind of works — especially with the tacos. Each taco is served with a dollop of it and sliced Thai chili peppers. 

3655 S Grand Ave. C-4, Los Angeles

Taqueria Vista Hermosa

The Al Pastor Cheeseburger from Taqueria Vista Hermosa is one of their best-selling items

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Erick Galindo

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Right next to Thai Corner is Taqueria Vista Hermosa. For 25 years, owner Raul Morales has been using his family’s al pastor adobo — which goes back three generations to his ancestral home in Vista Hermosa, Michoacán — to feed customers of Mercado La Paloma.

Now, he’s using that adobo to make a brand new al pastor cheeseburger. The taqueria began selling the burger two months ago because nowhere else in Mercado La Paloma offered one, and the restaurant wanted to fill that niche.

“At first, I was like that sounds weird. I’ve never heard of that,” Sarah Morales said. She’s the owner’s daughter and an employee of Taqueria Vista Hermosa. 

“We had all the employees here taste it,” Sarah added. “Everybody kept saying it’s the best burger they’ve ever had. It’s been one of our most popular selling items.”

The behemoth burger comes with a ground beef patty slathered in adobo, a giant pineapple ring, grilled red onions, oozing provolone cheese and a generous helping of their superb avocado aioli. Make it a combo and it will come with a bucket of fries perfect for dipping the house-made aioli. Just trust me. Dipping in that aioli is worth the extra carbs.

Raul said he prides himself on the fact that the burger doesn’t come with many typical burger staples. His inspiration: burgers from Michoacán. This choice has been met with some pushback from customers who expect a more traditional burger.

“People say ‘Oh I want a classic, you don’t have a classic? … You don’t have lettuce?’ No. I have it, but I don’t want [to add it],” Raul said. “This isn’t a burger place … I make my own unique burger.”

In the future, the taqueria may expand its cross-cultural menu to include a pizza or a flatbread, Sarah added. 

“When you have a bite, you remember the flavor,” Raul said. “I want that, I want a memory. I want a ‘Disneyland.’ When you go to Disneyland you have memories, same thing with food.”

3655 S Grand Ave. C-5, Los Angeles

Cafe 23

A paneer tikka quesadilla at Cafe 23 comes stuffed with spiced paneer and melted jack cheese, served on a metal tray alongside the restaurant’s signature red and green salsas.

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Nick Ducassi

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Just a mile away from Mercado La Paloma, at the end of a residential block on 23rd St. you will find a cafe that’s been serving Indian-influenced Mexican food for more than a decade. Cafe 23 proudly serves Indian street food and has given some classic menu items a Mexican twist. 

They have things like burritos and quesadillas but you can get them loaded with chicken tikka, lamb or paneer tikka.

The burritos come with whatever Indian protein you like, plus rice, beans and onions. The quesadillas come with jack cheese and  are served with the restaurant’s signature red salsa and green salsa.

For a little extra, you can turn your burrito into a breakfast burrito by adding eggs and hash browns. Their breakfast burritos have even gotten attention from Eater and, yes, LAist.

In an interview with LA Weekly,  the owner at the time Hari Singh, said that the restaurant opened in 2006 and originally had a completely different menu. Back then, they were serving things like burgers and pastrami sandwiches.

“There were a lot of Indians in this neighborhood — mainly students at USC — and they kept asking me, ‘Why don’t you make Indian food?’ So we started with a few Indian dishes,” Singh said. “Then we came up with this idea to start mixing Indian with Mexican. And people loved it.”

936 W 23rd St., Los Angeles

Thai tacos, paneer quesadillas and al pastor burgers: How the area around USC became a cross-cultural culinary hub appeared first on LA Local.

Angelenos are getting ready to celebrate the 250th Independence Day across the city. But did you know California didn’t join the U.S. until 74 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed?

This week, Steven Hackel, a history professor at U.C. Riverside who specializes in early America, joined LAist’s AirTalk with Larry Mantle to discuss what our state was like at that time.

He said in 1776, California was one of the most densely settled regions in the Western Hemisphere. The state was populated with over 100 different tribal nations speaking a wide range of languages, according to Hackel.

“Wherever there was land — and animals and plants — people were living,” he said.

A complex economy was already common in Indigenous communities. He characterized it as a two-tiered system: communities relied on resources in their immediate area for survival, and participated in a “tremendous” exchange of goods, including spices and obsidian.

Spanish colonial influence was still “fairly light … but changes were afoot,” according to Hackel.

Most Indigenous communities remained in their ancestral villages, although missions across the state were growing. For the Indigenous people forcibly brought to the missions, the rebellions were “almost immediate,” he said.

California also wasn’t entirely cut off from the rebellion on the East Coast. When Spain joined France to support the colonies against England, California missions paid a tax to fund the Spanish military’s efforts.

Though it wasn’t yet part of the union, Hackel said that with their in-state rebellions and financial support of the colonies, our state was “integrated into this larger age of revolutions.”

The ruins of Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, which was built from 1791 to 1805. The mission is often referred to as the "Godmother of the Pueblo of Los Angeles".

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Courtesy of The Los Angeles Public Library

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The state’s biodiversity has also evolved since 1776. Miguel Ordeñana, a community science manager at the L.A. County Natural History Museum, said our region had a “vibrant, lush, thriving landscape.”

It was home to grizzly bears and other types of migratory birds and steelhead trout, according to Ordeñana

Spanish colonizers were afraid of some of those animals, he said, and paid for bounties on animals like wolves, bears, coyotes and mountain lions.

But long before the Spanish arrival, Ordeñana noted that Indigenous communities had coexisted with those animals for centuries before.

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