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.

More than 20 locations in South L.A. will get speed cameras under a pilot program that gets rolling this fall. 

The plan, which was approved by the L.A. City Council last month, will cover a total 125 targeted zones in the city, according to L.A. Department of Transportation documents. The cameras could start snapping photos of speedsters as early as July, with a 60-day warning period  — where drivers wouldn’t be fined — running into September. 

LADOT says the cameras are aimed at reducing traffic fatalities while complying with a 2023 state law that requires LA and five other cities to establish automated speed enforcement programs before 2032.

L.A. saw 290 traffic fatalities in 2025, according to LA Police Department data, 6% less than 2024. Several of the city’s deadliest intersections are clustered in South L.A. along Western Avenue, Vermont Avenue and Figueroa Street, according to data analyzed by Crosstown.

Where will the speed cameras be installed in South LA?

Some intersections will have multiple camera clusters installed on the streets around them. The intersection of Gage Avenue and Figueroa Street, for example, will have cameras to the north, south and west. 

Cameras will be located on:

• Figueroa Street between Adams Boulevard and 23rd Street
• Figueroa Street between Gage Avenue and 62nd Street 
• Figueroa Street between 68th Street and Gage Avenue
• Figueroa Street between Manchester Avenue and 85th Street 
• Normandie Avenue between 62nd Street and 64th Street
• Western Avenue between 55th Street and 53rd Street 
• Western Avenue between 24th Street and Adams Boulevard 
• Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard between Hobart Boulevard and Saint Andrews Place 
• Florence Avenue between Van Ness Avenue and Haas Avenue 
• Florence Avenue between Vermont Avenue and Hoover Street 
• Vermont Avenue between Florence Avenue and 71st Street 
• Vermont Avenue between 58th Place and 57th Street 
• Vernon Avenue between Wadsworth Avenue and McKinley Avenue 
• Gage Avenue between Hoover Street and Figueroa Street 
• Gage Avenue between Halldale Avenue and Raymond Avenue
• Slauson Avenue between Brentwood Street and Inskeep Avenue 
• Slauson Avenue between Budlong Avenue and Menlo Avenue 
• Central Avenue between 92nd Avenue and 91st Street 
• Avalon Boulevard between 77th Street and 74th Street 
• Manchester Avenue between Wadsworth Avenue and Central Avenue
• La Brea Avenue between Veronica Street and Coliseum Street 
• La Cienega Boulevard between Coliseum Street and Bowesfield Street 
• Arlington Avenue between Adams Boulevard and 18th Street 
• Jefferson Boulevard between Crenshaw Boulevard and Bronson Avenue

More than 20 locations in South LA will get speed cameras under a pilot program that gets rolling this fall.

How much will tickets cost? 

Cameras will snap a photo of a speeding vehicle’s rear that includes its license plate as well as its make and model. 

The system will document the date, time and vehicle speed, then issue a citation to the vehicle’s registered owner, according to LADOT’s policy plan.  

Fines will ratchet higher based on how fast a vehicle is moving, starting with a $50 fine for vehicles going 11 to 15 mph above the limit. 

Vehicles moving 16 to 25 mph over the limit will get $100 fines, and vehicles going 26 mph or more over the limit will get $200 fines. 

The max fine will be $500 for vehicles that go 100 mph or more above the speed limit.

LADOT said camera images will not include rear windshields or faces, and that state law does not allow the cameras to use facial recognition technology.

How were speed camera locations selected?

Some Angelenos submitted comments to LADOT, worrying the speed camera program will disproportionately affect people of color, according to a March 20 department memo. 

LADOT said in the memo that it worked to minimize any inequity, in part, by distributing the cameras evenly across the city’s 15 council districts, with every district getting at least eight cameras, and no district getting more than nine.  

The transportation department said it based much of its location selection on speed-related collision data and proximity to places like senior centers and schools. 

State law requires that the city continue monitoring the program’s effectiveness and impact on civil rights and liberties, according to LADOT.

The post Speed cameras are coming to South LA — here’s where they’ll be installed appeared first on LA Local.

Top officials from the Department of Homeland Security talked to House lawmakers about what the agency needs for next fiscal year — even as it's in the midst of a record-breaking shutdown.

The acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the admiral of the U.S. Coast Guard and others testified about the impact of the current funding lapse on their workforce and programs. Several agency leaders requested money for more staff, while also raising concern that not all their workers were back in the office and had missed paychecks.

Some lawmakers called the hearing on Thursday an "absurdity," and the process "frustrating."

Lawmakers have been in a stalemate for over 60 days about funding the entire department, which includes agencies that oversee immigration enforcement, disaster relief, cybersecurity and the U.S. Coast Guard.

Democrats in the Senate refused to fund DHS as part of regular appropriations for the current fiscal year after immigration officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens in January. That meant the department ran out of money to operate on Feb. 14; it's now been without funding for more than 60 days. The previous longest shutdown, in November, lasted for 43 days — though it affected all government agencies.

But Democrats have failed to get Republicans on board with their demands for changes in how DHS's law enforcement operates. The White House and congressional Republicans have instead managed to find alternative sources of funding to continue immigration enforcement.

That includes the $75 billion congressional Republicans provided to ICE last summer as part of a partisan tax and spending package, which also included funds for Customs and Border Protection. ICE has tapped into that funding during the two most recent government shutdowns to continue paying its officers.

During the current shutdown, President Donald Trump signed a memo to pay Transportation Security Administration employees, and later extended it to all DHS employees, without detailing where exactly the money was coming from.

Here are some takeaways from the hearing:

1. Longest-ever shutdown dominates the testimony

In an opening statement, Rep. Rosa DeLauro said she noted "the absurdity of holding a hearing on funding for these agencies" for next year — while both parties are split on how to fund the agencies even for this year.

Republicans for their part are discussing whether they could fund the department for three years, or the rest of Trump's term, through a partisan process called reconciliation — the mechanism also used for immigration-focused funding passed last year.

All three of the DHS officials voiced support for the plan and urged Republicans to pass a reconciliation measure by June 1.

Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., the chairman of the Homeland Security appropriations subcommittee, expressed skepticism about the plan, saying it was "phenomenally interesting" that the agency officials were asking for a bill with no changes to immigration oversight.

"It's like saying, 'We're going to abolish Article 1 for three years,' no disrespect," he later said during closing comments, referring to the article in the U.S. Constitution that established Congress. "We want to give you your stuff in a consistent, predictable, sustainable way – that's our job. Just prefund me for three years. Really? How about you prepay me for three years. You'd be dumber than hell to do that."

2. Detention conditions, deaths, expansion plans probed

Texas Democrats questioned Todd Lyons, the acting ICE head, on the agency's plans to retrofit warehouses across the country as processing or detention facilities.

Reps. Henry Cuellar and Escobar asked about plans to bring warehouses to their state and argued the communities were rebuking the effort and lacked the infrastructure to support the projects.

Lyons said one facility in San Antonio is scheduled to be a processing center for 500 to 1,000 people and may include an immigration court. Other plans, such as a facility in McAllen, Texas, are under review.

"Secretary [Markwayne] Mullin is looking over the whole detention plan, and he's going to make an informed decision of where he wants to move forward and locations," Lyons said.

Rep. Lauren Underwood, D-Ill., asked Lyons about the record number of deaths under ICE custody. Lyons noted that the FBI was not investigating the death of a man at the Camp East Montana detention center in Texas, which a coroner determined was a homicide.

"Zero deaths is what we want. We don't want anyone to die in custody," Lyons said, adding that the agency spent "almost half a billion last fiscal year…to ensure that people have proper care."

But, when asked, he couldn't say how many people were still working in the Office of Detention Oversight, which would investigate such deaths and broader detention conditions and standards.

3. USCIS seeks funding for a law enforcement unit

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow said his agency wants to create a new law enforcement arm and hire and train 200 officers separate from those who work for ICE and CBP.

Under Trump, USCIS has increasingly turned to anti-immigration policing from its traditional focus on the ways people can lawfully migrate and stay in the U.S.

"What I am trying to create here is a very narrow criminal investigation branch that is going to focus specifically on immigration fraud and entitlement fraud," Edlow said, adding that each special agent would go through a nine-week training specific to USCIS.

Republicans and Democrats asked Edlow about growing waits for people to get an answer on their work permits or naturalization application.

"I agree processing times on certain applications have gone up over the last fiscal year," Edlow said. "I consider this to be short-term pain, which is going to really lead to long-term gain in the fair and proper processing of immigration."

USCIS is not directly impacted by the department-wide shutdown since they are funded by fees people pay when they submit their applications. Edlow said that last fiscal year the agency collected $7.5 billion in fee revenue, exceeding its goals.

4. Other DHS agencies including TSA and Coast Guard take the stand

Officials for the non-immigration agencies under DHS also testified about the need for funding.

Nick Andersen, acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said the shutdown has harmed his agency's work, with only about 40% of staff consistently working.

Karen Evans, the acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said the funding lapse is delaying reimbursements to local governments to handle disasters.

"We know the reimbursements are critical," Evans said, noting the agency and other parts of DHS are responding to several disasters right now, including a super-typhoon in the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam.

And U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Kevin Lunday said there were over 500 unpaid utility bills because of the shutdown, "threatening to cut off electricity and water to Coast Guard stations" and a backlog to process 18,000 merchant mariner credentials, a standard credential required to work on U.S. vessels.

5. Upcoming national events pose national security, personnel challenges

Sean Curran, director of the U.S. Secret Service, warned that the next few years through 2028 are poised to be a heavy lift for the agency. Curran noted that the current workforce is not big enough to handle the FIFA World Cup, 2028 Olympics and the 2028 presidential cycle.

His agency is asking for funding to hire 852 new positions and he noted the Secret Service is also helping to train local law enforcement for the events, which also requires funding.

"I found out that [Los Angeles Police Department], they're not ready for drone detection and mitigation so we are going to train them," Curran said.

Rodney Scott, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, also said the funding lapse put on hold training for personnel related to the World Cup games this summer.

The agency is also unable to pay for border maintenance, contractors, and certain planes and boats.

Ha Nguyen McNeill, the TSA acting administrator, said the agency is poised to lose more people as the shutdown drags on.

Shortages in TSA staffing prompted hours-long delays at airports nationwide last month, before Trump said the executive branch would pay them.

"We are less than two months away from the FIFA world cup and it takes us 4 to 6 months to train a new officer so with any spikes in attrition that is going to put us in a difficult position come this summer," Nguyen McNeill said.

Copyright 2026 NPR

A large flatbed truck pulled up outside a remote immigrant detention center north of Los Angeles last month. On the truck bed, converted into a mobile stage, a band played protest songs. Huge speakers projected them loud across the desert landscape. But were they loud enough, the musicians wondered, to penetrate the detention center's tall, thick, concrete walls?

Loyda Alvarado looked toward the barbed wire fence and began to sing to the immigrants jailed inside:

Asómate a la ventana, te traje una serenata

Look out the window. I've brought you a serenade.

Aunque estés encarcelado, mira, te canta quien te ama…

Though you're locked up, someone you love is here to sing to you.

In a crowd of protesters looking on, a young woman's phone rang. It was her dad calling. He was detained inside, fighting deportation. She climbed onto the truck and took a microphone.

"He can hear us!" she yelled. "They all can hear us!" The crowd erupted.

In March, the band brought a musical serenade to immigrants detained at a large desert detention center in Adelanto, Calif. They blared their songs through massive speakers in the hopes the music would penetrate the facility's walls.

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The concert was staged by Los Jornaleros del Norte. Since federal agents began aggressive immigration raids in LA last June, the band's 11 members have been crisscrossing Southern California on their mobile stage determined to lift the spirits of people affected by the crackdowns. The band also hopes to provide a jolt of musical energy at otherwise somber protests.

"Since day one, we as musicians started organizing to protest wherever there were raids," said Omar León, the band's director, accordionist and songwriter. The band has often rolled up to street corners days or even hours after immigration agents have whisked someone away there. Many of their songs are about undocumented workers trying to make a living while evading immigration agents. Most are protest songs played as upbeat Mexican cumbias or as corridos, a style of ballad that often narrates the experiences of working class people.

Band director Omar León is a community organizer and former day laborer, as are most of the band's members. He's also the band's songwriter and plays the accordion and keyboard.

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León said the band's goal at demonstrations is to redirect protesters' anger and sorrow.

"People are already ready to march and to chant," he said. "But when they hear the music, they get more excited. It also minimizes tension and confrontation between police, ICE agents and the people who are protesting."

Loyda Alvarado, a lead singer in the band, said that in the crackdown's early weeks and months, it was hard to bring lively cumbias to the very place where an immigrant worker had just been taken away from their family and community.

"It just felt so heavy," she said. But over time, watching people dance and sing to their music, "I was reminded that this is a way in which we resist as well. The joy, despite all the suffering, despite all the pain, is such an important part of what we do because it helps us to keep our culture and to connect with each other."

Dancing at an October memorial vigil for a day laborer who was hit by a car while trying to evade arrest by immigration agents.

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The concert and serenade outside the desert detention center was one way the band has tried to reach detained immigrants themselves.

"We are bringing music for the people we love," said Manuel Vicente, who plays congas. "And to show them that we're waiting for them outside. And that their community is doing everything we can to bring them back."

Though the band has turbocharged its performance schedule in the last year, it's been performing at immigrant and workers' rights protests for three decades. Pablo Alvarado and Lolo Cutumay were among a small group of workers who formed the band in the mid 1990s after one of them witnessed immigration agents raid a site where day laborers were lining up for free health services. Their first song told the story of that raid

Most of the members of Los Jornaleros del Norte at a recent rehearsal near Los Angeles.

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Their name, Los Jornaleros del Norte means The Day Laborers of the North. To this day, most of its musicians are current or former day laborers, and work closely with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, using music to help mobilize immigrant workers.

On a recent evening, the band's mobile stage pulled up to a Home Depot east of LA. Weeks earlier, masked immigration agents had chased down day laborers gathered in the parking lot in search of a day's work. One of them, Carlos Roberto Montoya Valdéz, ran across the nearby freeway in a desperate attempt to escape. He was hit and killed by a car. The Jornaleros had come to honor his life.

The band often performs at the sites of recent immigration raids, including Home Depot stores, where immigration agents have repeatedly targeted day laborers waiting in parking lots hoping for work.

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For more than an hour, they played sentimental ballads as a tribute, and later, fast-paced cumbias to liven the mood.

"The songs that we do are stories about hardworking immigrants, hardworking women and hardworking men," Omar León said after the performance, as he put his accordion away. "Tonight we chose songs that talk about life, that talk about struggle. We chose love songs to remember Carlos Roberto Montoya."
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LOS ANGELES — Singer D4vd has been arrested on suspicion of killing a 14-year-old girl whose decomposed body was found last year in his apparently abandoned Tesla that was towed from the Hollywood Hills, authorities said Thursday.

Los Angeles police said in a brief statement that the 21-year-old Houston-born alt-pop singer whose legal name is David Burke was being held without bail on suspicion of murder after his arrest in the investigation of the killing of Celeste Rivas Hernandez.

Police said investigators would present a case to prosecutors at the Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office on Monday. The office said in its own statement that it is aware of the arrest and its Major Crimes Division will review the case to determine whether there is enough evidence to file charges.

The singer had been under investigation by an L.A. County grand jury looking into the death of Rivas Hernandez. The probe was officially secret, but its existence — and the designation of D4vd as its target — was revealed on Feb. 25 when his mother, father and brother filed an objection in a Texas court to subpoenas demanding they testify.

Emails seeking comment from an attorney and a publicist who have previously worked with D4vd were not immediately returned. His representatives have not responded to multiple previous requests from The Associated Press for comment on the case.

The long-dead body of Celeste Rivas Hernandez was found in a Tesla on Sept. 8, a day after she would have turned 15. She was a 13-year-old seventh grader when her family reported her missing in 2024 from her hometown of Lake Elsinore, about 70 miles (112 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles. Authorities give her age as 14 when she was killed in court documents.

The 2023 Tesla Model Y was registered in the singer's name at the Texas address of his subpoenaed family members, according to court filings from prosecutors. It had been towed from an upscale neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills where it had been sitting, seemingly abandoned.

Police investigators searching the Tesla in a tow yard found a cadaver bag "covered with insects and a strong odor of decay," court documents said, and "detectives partially unzipped the bag and observed a decomposed head and torso."

Investigators from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's Office removed the bag and "discovered the arms and legs had been severed from the body," according to court documents. A second black bag was found under the first, and dismembered body parts were inside it. No cause of death has been publicly revealed.

Authorities had not publicly named D4vd — pronounced "David" — as a suspect prior to the arrest.

D4vd gained popularity among Generation Z fans for his blend of indie rock, R&B and lo-fi pop. He went viral on TikTok in 2022 with the hit "Romantic Homicide," which peaked at No. 4 on Billboard's Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. He then signed with Darkroom and Interscope Records and released his debut EP "Petals to Thorns" and a follow-up, "The Lost Petals," in 2023.

When the body was discovered, D4vd had been on tour in support of his first full-length album, "Withered." Later, the last two North American shows, in San Francisco and Los Angeles, along with a scheduled performance at LA's Grammy Museum, were canceled, as was the European tour that was to have begun in Norway.
Copyright 2026 NPR