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.

Topline:

Key topics: The candidates each had about 45 minutes to individually answer questions from Erin Stone, an LAist senior reporter focused on climate and environment.

Here are some of the topics they covered:

• Extreme heat
• Emergency preparedness and recovery
• Protecting communities from pollution
• Water
• Public transit

About the organizers: The event is organized by a coalition of local environmental and environmental justice groups including: Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters, SCOPE-LA, Sierra Club, Clean and Healthy California, Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance and Communities for a Better Environment

LAist will have more coverage and analysis of the conversations Friday morning.

The Trump administration is taking steps to advance a mysterious and unprecedented project to compile state-by-state lists of people it has decided are eligible citizens over the age of 18 who can vote in the upcoming midterm election. But it will no longer meet its own deadline to publish that information on a portal on Friday, which is 60 days before Election Day.

Department of Justice attorneys told opposing counsel in two separate lawsuits that instead of meeting the Sept. 4 deadline, they would give 48-hours notice to plaintiffs' counsel before the state citizenship portal was launched, according to recent court filings.

The U.S. has never attempted to create a comprehensive list of American citizens before this administration. Maintaining voter lists is the responsibility of states, not the federal government, as the Constitution dictates that states control elections. But President Trump has repeatedly taken steps to try to exert executive control over elections.

The basis for the federal government creating state citizenship lists is an executive order Trump signed on March 31. A lower court had blocked implementation of key parts of that executive order in 23 states and Washington, D.C., but the Supreme Court stayed that injunction late last month, opening the door for the plan to be implemented after all.

The March 31 executive order directs U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Social Security Administration to create "State Citizenship Lists" of individuals the agencies believe are citizens in each state, and send those lists to state officials "no fewer than 60 days before each regularly scheduled Federal election."

The next section of the executive order says the U.S. attorney general will prioritize investigating and prosecuting state and local officials who issue federal ballots to anyone not eligible to vote.

"States here have a strong incentive to actually use these lists to try to avoid federal investigation," said Jules Torti, counsel at the nonprofit Protect Democracy, in an interview with NPR. "But we know that these lists are going to be based on really inaccurate data. So the risk of disenfranchisement here is really, really palpable."

The privacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center, along with individual voters, filed a motion Thursday asking a federal judge in Maryland to block the administration from creating the citizenship lists and publishing them on a portal. Specifically, they seek to block a June 8 implementation memo authored by USCIS director Joseph Edlow that outlines the plan.

The motion, which was brought by Protect Democracy, along with another nonprofit legal group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, argues the administration's plans to share Americans' personal data between agencies and then disseminate the data to states violates multiple federal laws, including the Privacy Act, the Social Security Act and the Administrative Procedures Act. Under the Privacy Act, federal agencies must give the public 30 days notice and the opportunity to comment before they collect and disseminate Americans' personal data for a new purpose.

The EPIC lawsuit also argues the government does not have access to accurate, up-to-date information on American citizens, especially those who move frequently, have changed their names, or are foreign-born. For example, Social Security's citizenship data often isn't updated when people naturalize, and the SAVE data system, operated by USCIS, frequently doesn't include records for people who became citizens as minors when their parents naturalized.

Torti said it is "deeply concerning" that the administration is still planning to go ahead with the creation of citizenship lists but is no longer going to meet the deadline, since that means the lists will be completed even closer to Election Day.

"It means additional chaos, additional confusion for the state election officials and just for voters," Torti said. "And I think that's the point. The point here is to create chaos in advance of the election."

Neither the Department of Justice, nor the Department of Homeland Security, which is tasked with compiling the citizenship lists, responded to NPR's request for comment.

The June 8 implementation memo stated that the portal for state election officials would be available around June 30 and a second portal where citizens could check their information would be available at a later date – but that deadline passed without further updates.

The federal government has secured a domain for the state citizenship lists portal. While the portal is not currently online, it was briefly live in recent days with a landing page that said "Coming Soon," according to court filings.

Lawyers representing Democratic party groups that had challenged the March 31 executive order in a separate lawsuit filed in April, accused the administration in a recent filing of failing to notify the court or the parties about its plans to move forward with the state citizenship portal. They asked the judge to require the federal government to give immediate updates about their plans to implement the executive order.

This latest legal battle over the administration's plans to compile state citizenship lists comes as the Department of Homeland Security is ramping up its efforts to analyze state voter rolls with the goal of identifying potential noncitizens who are registered to vote. Previous audits have found instances of noncitizens casting ballots to be incredibly rare. 

Additionally, last week, ICE published a request for information on a federal procurement site seeking vendors who can compile public voter rolls and voter history files from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories, "to support Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) fraud detection and data segmentation activities."

NPR's Hansi Lo Wang contributed reporting to this story. 
Copyright 2026 NPR

A group of California lawmakers called on federal officials to halt and reject a proposed land exchange in Yosemite National Park that would allow a private developer to take control of a strip of land in the park for an access road to the park’s main attractions.

The letter to Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Wednesday was signed by a bipartisan group of 61 state legislators led by Assemblymember Greg Wallis, a Republican who represents Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

“Republicans and Democrats from both houses of the Legislature are standing together because some things are bigger than politics,” Wallis said in a statement. “Yosemite is not a subdivision. It is not a bargaining chip. And it is not for sale. Secretary Burgum and the administration should put an end to this proposal.”

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum (center) visited the Tunnel Tops in San Francisco in 2025 after he and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi toured Alcatraz ahead of their announcement to reopen the former federal prison.

(

Katie DeBenedetti

/

KQED

)

The group argued that the proposed land exchange is counter to the mission of the National Park Service and the founding of Yosemite in 1864, which set aside the start of the park for public use and protection for the first time in the history of the federal government.

“What is being proposed now runs directly against that founding principle, more than a century and a half later,” the letter states.

It continues later: “Our national parks belong equally to every American. They are not the Department’s to trade away, and they are not for sale.”

The proposal was first reported by news outlet NOTUS, which published a story last week alleging that members of the Trump administration were meeting with representatives of Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a private equity group that owns an 83-acre parcel next to the park. In an email to KQED, Kingsbarn’s lawyer Lanny J. Davis confirmed the group is pursuing the land exchange to build a new access road from its property to the park.

Previous owners have pushed for the same deal since the early 2000s and failed in court.

State Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park), who signed on to the letter, called the proposal “indefensible,” and said he’s looking at state laws to ensure a similar proposal could never slip through.

“If the Trump administration can’t defend this publicly in broad daylight, then they shouldn’t be doing it,” he said.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Marin) told KQED’s Forum on Wednesday that he’s worried there isn’t enough opposition among his Republican colleagues in Congress to stop the Trump administration’s efforts.

“I have not seen a single Republican colleague willing to stand up to Donald Trump when he decides that he’s just going to do something,” Huffman said. “So that is my concern, that he just plows ahead with this — even if it has dubious legal authority, or even if it’s an open violation of the law. He’s doing stuff like that anyway. And in this Congress, there’s no one here to stop him.”

In a statement to KQED, state Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil (R-Modesto), whose district includes parts of Yosemite, said she will “keep pressing the Department [of the Interior] for a clear answer that this exchange will not proceed.”

Since the news of the deal broke late last week, it has sparked condemnation from a number of Democratic state leaders, including Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, as well as Attorney General Rob Bonta and Bonta’s predecessor, Xavier Becerra, who leads the race for California governor.

“The secretive backroom land-exchange scheme has gotten everyone’s attention,” said Neal Desai, senior Pacific regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association. “I can’t recall another issue — and I’ve been working in the conservation space for over a couple of decades — where the response has been this sharp and so one-sided that this is a terrible idea that should not happen.”

The backlash comes at a turbulent time for National Park Service employees, who have faced layoffs, staffing cuts and fear of retaliation for speaking up against Trump administration policies since the start of the second Trump administration.

Some former employees have also raised concerns about a potential reorganization of the National Park Service, according to a separate letter sent to Burgum’s office Wednesday. According to an email seen by KQED, park superintendents have been asked to attend in-person regional meetings in September — with no clear agenda beyond discussing “agency priorities, our FY 2026 outlook, and other matters important to the work ahead.”

The letter to Burgam, signed by 20 retired parks superintendents warns: “An ill-advised and hastily planned reorganization could dismantle that structure, putting our parks — and those who visit them — at great risk.”

Emily Thompson, executive director of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, which organized the letter, said the email about regional meetings “raises some alarm bells.”

“The Park Service is already operating from a difficult place, from a place of crisis,” she said. “And any additional cuts, any movements or actions that would further jeopardize the capacity of the folks that are left, that’s concerning. It’s worrying, and it’ll have a devastating impact on the Park Service.”

Among the letter’s signatories is Don Neubacher, retired Yosemite superintendent, who has been a vocal advocate for parks amid the Trump administration’s changes.

Thompson said she’s worried parks leaders will be stretched even further than they already are, and local decision-making over parks could be in jeopardy.

“Morale is low,” Thompson said. “It’s a hard time to be a federal employee. Anything that … contributes to this culture of fear, it’s just not acceptable.”

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

Long Beach is offering up to $1,500 for local business owners and landlords to equip their storefronts with safety measures like cameras, floodlights, alarms and point-of-sale systems.

The grant program is accepting online applications now. You can apply here.

Businesses with storefronts of 1,500 square feet or less may receive grants of up to $750, while businesses between 1,500 and 5,000 square feet are eligible for up to $1,500.

Nonprofit organizations are eligible as well, and landlords can apply on behalf of commercial storefronts that are vacant or occupied. Franchises can also receive the grant.

To qualify, a business must:

• Have an active business license for a storefront within the city
• Be independently owned and operated (franchises are eligible)
• Be currently open and active for business
• Earn no more than $5 million in annual gross revenue
• Hold “active” status with the California Secretary of State for corporations, limited liability companies and limited partnerships

The funds will be provided as a reimbursement after eligible security improvements are installed. Grants will be given out until funds are exhausted.

It’s a great idea, according to Edwin Jara, who manages a pet store in Belmont Heights and was on the receiving end of a break-in earlier this year.

His store had security measures already in place — two cameras and an alarm system — but even that wasn’t enough to deter a masked burglar who grabbed $1,000 cash and a handful of dog treats.

Despite having footage of the burglar, Jara said police haven’t been able to catch the person and that a detective never responded after he filed a police report.

The grant program is being paid for with $350,000 from the city’s Redvelopment Agency along with $50,000 from Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn’s office.

“Our local small businesses are part of the fabric of our neighborhoods, and when business owners feel unsafe, the whole community feels it,” Hahn said in a statement.

In a statement, Mayor Rex Richardson said the program is a “direct investment in the hardworking business owners who make our commercial corridors vibrant and welcoming.”

Jara said he would consider applying for a grant if the city could send someone to help him and the store’s owner fill out the application.

He was offered a separate grant to replace a glass door the burglar smashed, but the store’s owner opted not to fill out the application.

“There was a lot of stuff that we needed to do, and I don’t have a lot of that information,” Jara said.