The Brief

This story is part of ICE vs. LA, a collaborative reporting project by LA Public Press, Caló News, Capital & Main, Capital B, LA Taco, and Q Voice.

Four months after nearly 5,000 federal troops descended onto Los Angeles, Marsha Mitchell, a Black organizer in South Central, explained what made it impossible for her not to act: her neighbors.

At the peak of the federal immigration raids this summer — when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was arresting an average of 540 people per week in the city — her neighbor, Erica, and her husband and friend were taken by federal agents while eating breakfast in their home.

All three were placed in a van and driven toward downtown Los Angeles.

But Erica knew she had to get back to her small children, recalled Mitchell, a lifelong South Central resident, from a conversation she had with her neighbor.

“As a mother, her whole thing was, I got to get to my babies,” Mitchell said.

When the agents opened the van doors in downtown L.A., Erica broke free — still tied up, still terrified — and ran. While Erica managed to escape, her husband was placed in the detention center, where he said conditions were unbearable. According to Mitchell, he self-deported rather than endure them, choosing to escape the system that had trapped him.

Erica was the family’s breadwinner through her tamale stand, but with her husband gone, she is too afraid to leave her home. The family has collapsed financially under the weight of a single raid, Mitchell said.

“Not only has she lost her business, but also her husband and the ability to give her family what they need to survive,” said Mitchell, an organizer with Community Coalition, the long-standing anti-violence and drug addiction group founded by now-Mayor Karen Bass in 1990.

In South L.A., where Los Angeles City Council Districts 8, 9, and 10 have transformed from predominantly Black to predominantly Latino, and where the highest percentages of undocumented residents in the city now live, Erica’s story is part of the new normal.

For some South Central residents, the raids have triggered economic and social catastrophes. During the first weeks of concentrated immigration enforcement, 465,000 fewer workers reported for work. One local business owner told the economic justice group Strategic Actions for a Just Economy that he’d lost 80% of his business in the first month of the ICE crackdown. Other shops across South Central and downtown lost business for weeks.

The raids are posing a new hurdle for Black and Latino families to pay rent in one of America’s most expensive cities. But they’ve also catalyzed Black neighbors to act.

“[Erica] is a member of our community, and she is afraid to come outside,” Mitchell said. “She is not alone, and that is why we’re helping with mutual aid.”

Immediately, that looked like bringing her family groceries and referring them to resources for free mental health care.

Community Coalition, known as CoCo, is training dozens of block captains to canvass their communities and coordinate food drop-offs, safety check-ins, and care referrals in real time. They’re organizing their neighbors around the threats facing everyone, regardless of their race or residency status.

The immediacy of this care network — 18 block captains now, with hopes to reach 28 — emerged after Erica’s abduction by ICE, according to Mitchell, who works for CoCo.

L.A. County’s Black residents — 20% of whom are immigrants or children of immigrants — are standing in solidarity with their Latino neighbors, saying they are part of a shared fight against over-policing and racialized violence. Nine out of 10 ICE arrests have been of Latinos.

“Seeing families torn apart is so reminiscent of the white supremacist playbook that we’ve seen historically in communities of color, and that starts with our Indigenous siblings to slavery and through these latest ICE raids,” Mitchell said.

Neighbors moved to action

Pamela Riley envisions her South Central neighborhood with all the resources it needs to thrive, but that starts at the block level, she said.

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On a quiet stretch of 92nd Street, Pamela Riley propped open her front gate around 8 a.m. For one Saturday in October, her front yard — one of the typical South Central flair caged in by a sagging iron gate — became the heartbeat of a block fighting back against abandonment.

Within minutes, her neighbors began to gather. Grandmothers sipped coffee, young mothers munched on donuts, and teenagers organized flyers printed in Spanish and English.

Just steps from the 110 freeway and the ghostly remains of shuttered shops and clinics, her community is forging new lines of solidarity amid chronic neglect and a deep need for connection. This is the new frontline in South Los Angeles, where a coalition of Black and Latino residents is launching a network of “Neighborhood Action Hubs” along the Vermont and Broadway corridors to keep mutual aid alive as official support shrinks.

The goal: to weave a grassroots shield against ICE crackdowns and social services cuts and offer a model for how neighbors, not institutions, can bridge fear and isolation.

“That blueprint of success is there. The road is paved, we just need to walk it together,” said Riley, a 64-year-old lifelong South Central resident.

Later that morning, as the sun tried to fight through the gloomy sky, a group of three of the women who showed up at Riley’s event — two Black, one Latina — passed the same mural-painted utility boxes and chain-link fences that mark so many South L.A. blocks. Old-school Chevys, some missing hubcaps, were parked next to pickups and battered minivans, while the sound of cumbia drifted from a doorway where a woman watered her agave under the music’s sway.

As they moved from house to house, the group stopped at gates and asked neighbors about the specific issues facing their blocks and individual households. At one, a longtime Latino immigrant, gray-haired and smiling, shared how she planned to vote in the now-passed November election.

Riley’s block has become a lot more quiet and less frequented since ICE raids began.

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Deeper onto the block, the canvassers encountered two undocumented migrants — one a young father, the other a middle-aged woman. The father spoke to tangible issues in the neighborhood: “People have started stealing car tires at night and cutting wires from light poles for quick money,” he said.

The mother spoke quietly about work drying up and more neighbors “laying low” as rumors of ICE sightings swept through the area. The Latina canvasser asked directly about food access and whether anyone still sold homemade snacks. The woman hesitated, then explained in Spanish that she stopped selling crepes out of fear.

The canvassers turned to the others and suggested a solution: organizing a block-wide food vendor party, so people could sell their products safely.

Walking farther, they found themselves cautiously welcomed by a Black city worker who had lived on the block for decades. She described losing sleep as the city’s racial demographics shifted and her worry about Black and Latino votes being split or erased.

At each stop, the canvassers handed out cards with voting information and explained how to register, where to find drop boxes, and how to access rapid response teams if ICE was spotted or the lights went out again.

“Solidarity is literally in L.A.’s DNA,” Mitchell said. “We know that when communities come together, we weather all kinds of storms — governmental, financial, whatever comes our way.”

L.A.’s long-history of racial coalitions

Neighborhood canvassers speak to a women. This specific Saturday, these two canvassers knocked on dozens of doors for over 2 hours.

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Riley said her memories are filled with better days: bustling shops, a hospital on 94th, neighbors who’d send their kids to college together. She has watched her neighborhood swing from prosperity to depression and now, uncertainty.

Today, Riley’s yard and days are devoted to strategizing — she and other block captains count names, rehearse response plans and dream of new “welcome to South Central L.A.” signs at every corner. During meetings, they talk about how, in other parts of the city, neighbors stand by each other in crisis; here, too, unity could mean survival. The terror of recent abductions — a beloved tamalera torn from her routine and dayworkers swiped off the streets — still haunts these blocks, sharpening every knock at the door.

“I grew up in a civil rights era of the ’60s, and I’m starting to realize this is the new era of civil rights,” Riley said, explaining that the attack on civil rights today has extended far beyond immigration raids. “It is requiring more from all of us.”

Having lived through what she considers broken promises following the devastation of the 1992 L.A. Riots, Riley said she understands that revival cannot rely on state intervention alone, and it bridges racial divides. Instead, she insists, “what’s going on in Washington DC is showing us we need to join together and support each other.”

It also reminds her of the power of community. During the 1992 protests against police brutality, Latinos constituted the largest portion of arrests despite making up a smaller percentage of the overall population at the time.

Dozens of volunteers began their Saturday at 9 a.m. to door knock.

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The roots of Black and Latino collaboration go back to the founding of L.A. itself, where 26 of the city’s 44 original settlers in 1781 were Black/Afro-Latino with Spanish surnames — establishing a tradition of mixed neighborhoods and joint political action. This foundation was later strengthened during the Great Migration and again throughout the 20th century, when Black and Latino residents forged working alliances in the face of shared exclusion from citywide power.

In recent decades, the demographic mix in South Central has shifted further. Where once the community was predominantly Black, Latino residents now form the majority. The change created new opportunities for solidarity, as well as challenges, especially after Latino L.A. City Council members were caught on tape using racist anti-Black language while discussing concerns about the political power of Black residents. The tapes reopened wounds over neighborhood displacement.

Today, the skepticism remains real for a lot of Black people in L.A. In June, a viral moment spread across the internet after Latino protesters hurled racial insults at a Black L.A. police officer.

“A significant number of Black folks don’t see this as their fight,” author and commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson said after the protest in June. “They’ve seen anti-Blackness in Latino communities. They’ve felt left out when it came to our issues. That breeds skepticism.”

But “if anything, the debate over whether Blacks should link hands with Latino activists in the immigration battle seems age old,” Hutchinson wrote on his daily blog.

Hector Sanchez, CoCo’s Deputy Political Director, agreed.“It takes a lot of work. I’m not going to say it’s very easy … but it’s people that are willing to have those difficult conversations at times to ensure that we have each other’s back.”

Just a day after the city council tapes leaked, more than 400 people came together in Boyle Heights “to talk about the importance of multi-racial solidarity,” he said. Despite the tensions, neighbors continue fighting side by side for justice and belonging.

When canvassers could not get in contact with residents, they left behind these door hangers with a list of resources.

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In the years since, organizers have responded by promoting cross-cultural events, joint canvassing efforts, and language exchange programs. Language exchange workshops and “know your rights” sessions — alongside mutual aid deliveries — have become linchpins of the hub approach.

“We are not just helping Black folks, not just one population. It’s for all of us,” explained Sequarier McCoy, a 49-year-old lifelong L.A. resident.

“I grew up in a Black and Brown community,” she added. “I smelled Black-eyed peas, but I also smelled tortillas. I like corn on the cob and Esquites.”

McCoy is also acutely aware that the issues of migration, detention and deportation are far from just Latino issues. “It’s also for Dominican folks. It’s also for Belizean folks. It’s also for Caribbean folks,” she said. She said her partner, a Belizean migrant, is living in fear too.

Black undocumented migrants are deported at a rate four times more often than their numbers would suggest, according to an analysis of federal data by the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.

It is why this practical solidarity spans crises, organizers said. When SNAP benefits run dry, when an ICE van is spotted, or when a neighbor’s lights go out, the same phone trees and rapid response plans kick in.

“This work is an honor as a human being, not just as an activist,” McCoy said.

L.A., you have a big choice to make this year. Mayor Karen Bass is running for a second term in office, and there's a long list of others — including City Councilmember Nithya Raman, former reality star Spencer Pratt, community organizer Rae Huang and tech entrepreneur Adam Miller — lined up to run against her.

The election is June 2. If any one candidate for mayor gets more than 50% of the vote, they'll win the election outright. If nobody meets that threshold, the top two vote-getters will compete in a runoff Nov. 3.

LAist and The LA Local are preparing to ask the candidates questions that will shape our voter guides closer to the June election. We want to make sure we're asking the right ones.

So tell us: What are the issues and questions you want the mayoral candidates to address?

Share your thoughts in the survey below.

The Los Angeles Unified School District is officially on the hook for providing high-dosage tutoring to students after a judge approved a settlement reached last fall.

After being accused of denying students their right to equitable education during pandemic shutdowns, the district must now provide 100,000 students — more than a quarter of the district’s TK-12 students — with three years of high-dosage tutoring under a court-approved settlement, amounting to more than 10 million hours. District staff and outside vendors will provide students with a mix of virtual and in-person sessions.

“The District is conducting a program evaluation of the tutoring program, which will explore variation in the implementation, take-up, and impact on student outcomes across a range of tutoring models and vendors,” LAUSD said in a statement to EdSource.

The tutoring mandate stems from a court-approved settlement reached in October and finalized last month in Shaw et al. v. LAUSD et al., a lawsuit filed during the Covid-19 pandemic that alleged that only 60% of the district’s students participated in virtual instruction during the spring 2020 semester, denying them “basic educational equality guaranteed to them by the California Constitution.”

LAUSD would continue to use its already existing high-dose tutoring eligibility criteria to determine which students receive the support. The district did not specify how it would measure the program’s success.

The settlement

The high-dosage tutoring that Los Angeles Unified maintains it has been providing relies on money from the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (ELOP). The lawsuit, which includes other supports outlined in the settlement, gained final approval on Feb. 18 and is intended to help close learning gaps and improve academic performance.

The method specifically caters to students’ individual needs and provides either small group or one-on-one support that complements what they learn in the classroom, according to the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University.

“Evidence does suggest that that kind of effort would boost student outcomes,” said Morgan Polikoff, a USC professor of education.

“But I think it’s not likely to fully solve the problem, both because it’s missing a portion of the student population — a pretty sizable one — and also because I don’t know if that’s enough hours to solve the problem,” he said, referring to the fact that only a quarter of the student population will receive these services.

Ned Hillenbrand, a partner with Kirkland & Ellis LLP and one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, emphasized the importance of accountability moving forward.

“Our families understood that these issues affected students across the district. They admirably pursued remedial programs for those students as well as their own children,” Hillenbrand said in the statement.

“Now that the court has approved the settlement, our goal is to hold LAUSD accountable and to maximize the benefits students receive during the three-year enforcement period.”

Challenges with access

After the pandemic hit, Judith Larson, a plaintiff in the case, said she waited six months for a school computer to arrive, navigated connectivity challenges and even paid out of pocket for tutoring for her daughter. And one of the mentors struggled to help because she learned math in an entirely different way.

Aida Vega found it difficult to access LAUSD’s tutoring services for her daughter, who struggled academically during the pandemic but eventually graduated. But Vega had to take on an extra job to pay for the support.

“I did have the opportunity as a mom to be able to help my student that year because it was just her at that moment. I paid for her,” she said in Spanish. “But other parents had three, four children in schools and didn’t have that opportunity to pay. And now those students aren’t studying.”

LAUSD’s tutoring webpage says schools will contact families whose students qualify, and that parents can contact their local school sites for more information.

But Walt Gersón Rodríguez, the vice president of Innovate Public Schools, which supported parents in the suit, emphasized the importance of improving access, so parents and students don’t have to embark on a “scavenger hunt” to find them.

“My concern would be that this information doesn’t reach the parents; their children don’t get the service and support,” Rodríguez said. “And then, we have another generation of students that either graduate or don’t graduate and don’t go on to college and get a job or career in a competitive economy that we have today.”

Despite LAUSD’s gains in standardized test scores, which showed students are performing better than they did prepandemic, Polikoff noted that students are still “behind where they would have been had Covid not happened.”

Rodríguez added that some graduates have struggled to meet A-G requirements, courses necessary for students to be eligible to attend University of California or California State University campuses, and are having a hard time getting into college or entering the workforce.

If it weren’t for the setbacks, Larson said her daughter would have loved to attend UCLA. But she still considers herself one of the fortunate ones.

“Many moms and dads that I know, that one [dream] we share is we need to do better and change for our children,” Larson said. “But here we are taking steps, one at a time.”

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday agreed to pay $4.9 million to settle four lawsuits by people who were injured in collisions with Sheriff’s Department patrol cars.

The payouts come amid increased scrutiny of crashes by law enforcement officers. It has emerged as a major national issue, with cities across the country paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements and verdicts because of vehicle collisions involving officers, deputies or agents.

In the latest L.A. County payouts, tied to collisions that happened between 2018 and 2020, all plaintiffs said deputies were negligent when they crashed into their cars.

County supervisors settled the lawsuits during an open-session vote Tuesday. The county admitted no wrongdoing.

A collision in Paramount

Freddy Ontiveros and Antonio De La Cruz Zamora were hit from behind in 2018 in the city of Paramount, according to their lawsuit filed in Superior Court. They alleged in the suit that a sheriff’s deputy “rear ended the vehicle which was stopped behind plaintiff's vehicle, pushing the vehicle into plaintiff's vehicle causing plaintiff personal injuries and property damage.”

The deputy was responding to a call of a robbery in progress and had activated the lights and sirens on the vehicle.

A review of the Crash Data Retrieval system found the deputy was traveling south on Paramount Boulevard at 75 mph and slowed to 35 mph at the time of the collision, according to a corrective action plan presented to the board Tuesday.

“The collision investigation concluded that the deputy sheriff caused the collision as he was driving at an unsafe speed for traffic conditions,” the plan stated.

The case settled for $1.75 million.

Later, the Lakewood Sheriff’s Station — which covers Paramount — conducted a review of all traffic collisions for the calendar year 2020 through the end of 2024. The audit revealed there were 196 total collisions for this five-year period, 129 of which were classified as preventable and 67 classified as non-preventable.

“To improve employee safety and reduce the Department's liability and exposure, Lakewood supervisors continue to conduct bi-weekly briefings which focus on the importance of safe driving as well as abiding by all the rules of the road when operating county vehicles,” the plan stated.

Other collisions

In a separate incident, Shannon Story had a green light at Palmdale intersection on Oct. 27, 2019. According to her complaint, a deputy ran a red light and crashed into Story’s vehicle as she entered the intersection. The impact of the collision caused Story’s vehicle to crash into the corner wall of a 7-Eleven convenience store.

“Plaintiff sustained significant injuries as a result of the collision,” her complaint read. She settled the case for $1.2 million.

In another case filed by Jose Gaitan, he says a sheriff’s deputy in a department vehicle rear-ended his car. LAist was not immediately able to get further details on the crash. He settled for $450,000.

The summary corrective action plan for a fourth collision describes how a deputy was backing up to make contact with a suspect when he ran into a car driven by Alejandra Gonzalez. The deputy “reversed approximately two to three feet and collided into the Plaintiff’s vehicle at approximately 5-10 mph.”

Gonzalez settled for $1.5 million.

With only 100 days to go before the FIFA World Cup, what should have been a period of celebration is turning instead into one of turmoil.

The U.S. and Israel attacks on Iran have raised major questions about whether the Persian country will withdraw from the 48-squad tournament — a step no other country has taken after qualifying since 1950 when Scotland, as well as others such as India and Turkey, decided not to participate in part tied to travel costs to the games in Brazil.

But Iran's participation is not the only uncertainty. Violence in Mexico following the killing of a cartel boss sparked questions about the country's ability to attract fans, while concerns about funding for U.S. host cities have also flared up in recent weeks.

And then there is the outrage over the ticket prices, and controversy surrounding President Donald Trump and his administration's policies, including military actions and immigration enforcement.

Angst in the runup to World Cup tournaments is nothing new. Concerns about violence preceded the 2010 and 2014 World Cup tournaments in South Africa and Brazil, while the selection of Russia and Qatar as hosts for the last previous two tournaments also sparked controversies of their own.

But no World Cup men's tournament has been this big before, with 48 teams set to play 104 matches across the U.S., Canada and Mexico. And no recent World Cup has been staged amidst so much global geopolitical uncertainty.

Here are the top areas of concern ahead of the 2026 World Cup.

Will Iran withdraw?

It was the top question surrounding the FIFA World Cup as the U.S. and Israel went to war with Iran this weekend. So far there's no indication that Iran plans to withdraw, whether to boycott it or for other reasons.

Iran is one of the stronger squads in Asia and is set to play its seventh World Cup this year.

Iran Football Federation President Mehdi Taj acknowledged the uncertainty on Iranian TV, according to Reuters and other media.

"What we can say now is that due to this attack and its viciousness, it is far from our expectations that we can look at the World Cup with hope," Taj said according to the wire agency.

Iran is set to play two games against New Zealand and Belgium in Los Angeles, home to a large Iranian diaspora community. The country will also play Egypt in Seattle.

FIFA has not directly weighed in. Its general secretary, Mattias Grafstrom, said on Sunday the organization would continue to "monitor the developments around all issues around the world."

"We had the final draw in Washington, where all teams participated. Our focus is to have a safe Word Cup with everyone participating," Grafstrom said.

Whether Iran participates at the World Cup may be in doubt, but at least one thing is certain: its fans will find it difficult to travel to the U.S. given that Iran is one of a handful of countries that faces a travel ban, though it doesn't affect the team and its coaches.

Iran's players pose for a team picture ahead of a FIFA World Cup 2026 qualifying game against North Korea at the Azadi Sports Complex in Tehran on June 10, 2025.

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Will Mexico be safe for visitors?

The flare-up of violence by armed groups across the country after Mexico killed cartel boss Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes last month has sparked concerns about safety and security at one of the co-hosts of the tournament.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has asserted there will be no risks when the country stages the World Cup, while FIFA President Gianni Infantino has expressed his "total confidence" in Mexico.

Mexico is set to host 13 games for the World Cup, including four in Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco where Oseguera Cervante's group is primarily based and where much of the violence took place.

Concerns about violence are not new. Questions about safety also were raised ahead of the South Africa 2010 World Cup as well as Brazil in 2014 — and both countries ended up successfully hosting their respective tournaments.

Will American host cities get funding?

Concerns about finances are a perennial concern ahead of major sports events — and the U.S. is proving no different.

The 11 American host cities still have not received $625 million in federal funding for security costs that are critical to staging the tournament, including in Foxborough, Mass. The funding was supposed to be provided by the Department of Homeland Security through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA.

A FEMA spokesperson directed NPR to a recent posting on X from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem noting that "FEMA was in the final stages of reviewing applications to ensure proper oversight" but that the partial shutdown affecting the agency — for which she blamed Democrats — had put "significant portions of the FEMA staff on administrative leave."

For some host cities, the matter is becoming urgent. The White House FIFA World Cup Task Force has not yet responded to NPR's queries.

"Without receiving this money, it could be catastrophic for our planning and coordination," Ray Martinez, the chief operating officer for the Miami Host Committee, told a congressional hearing according to Politico.

Will fans be priced out of the tournament?

Perhaps no issue more directly affects fans than the staggering high costs they are facing to attend the World Cup.

FIFA has set the highest ticket prices ever for a World Cup, making tickets to the tournament unaffordable for many fans. Its use of dynamic pricing has also sparked controversy; the most expensive tickets to the final in New Jersey initially sold at over $6,300 only to jump to nearly $8,700 in later sales.

The MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., is set to host eight games in the 2026 World Cup, including the final set for July 19, 2026.

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Not only are ticket prices high — the cost of travel and lodging has surged. Yet despite all the challenges, FIFA claimed it had received over 500 million ticket requests in its last sales window.

That said, FIFA has provided little additional information to back up its claims, making it difficult to determine whether the demand is concentrated just in high profile games such as Colombia against Portugal in Miami or mainly focused in high-profile teams such as Argentina.

Will President Trump and his policies deter fans?

Perhaps the biggest unknown is the effect that Trump and his administration's policies will have on attending the World Cup.

The administration's travel restrictions not only affects Iranian fans, they also hit fans of three other countries that have already qualified for the tournament: Senegal, Ivory Coast and Haiti.

President Trump and his policies remain controversial both at home and abroad. Earlier this year, when Trump threatened to invade Greenland, some European officials raised the prospect of a boycott though the moves never prospered. Even former FIFA President Sepp Blatter encouraged fans to "stay away" from the U.S.

And the latest U.S. and Israel attacks against Iran — which follow the U.S. capture of Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro — have brought renewed attention to FIFA's controversial awarding of its peace prize at the tournament's draw ceremony in Washington, D.C., in December.

The U.S. has already seen a sharp decrease in visitors for a number of reasons, including increased scrutiny at the border (such as a requirement to potentially share social media posts), as well as unease about violence because of high-profile killings involving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Oxford Economics projects a rise in visitors tied to the World Cup, so the number of visitors could at least partially recover this year, though other research points to a reduced number of visitors from Europe to the U.S. this year.

It's yet another sign of uncertainty in what is set to be the biggest-ever tournament with only 100 days to go.
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