The Brief

The Trump administration is making it easier to deport immigrants protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.

A new precedent decision published Friday by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) says being a DACA recipient is not enough reason to provide relief from deportation.

A three-judge panel of appellate immigration judges sided with Department of Homeland Security lawyers who appealed a decision from immigration judge Michael Pleters terminating removal proceedings for Catalina "Xóchitl" Santiago, citing Santiago's active DACA status. They sent the case back to a different immigration judge for review.

Although the decision does not mean Santiago will be immediately deported, it potentially weakens DACA protections for hundreds of thousands of others.

Santiago's case gained national attention after she was detained by Customs and Border Protection officers while boarding a domestic flight at the El Paso airport in August. She was placed in immigration detention until a federal judge granted her release last October. She has been fighting the threat of deportation in the immigration court system since.

The BIA is an administrative court within the Justice Department. After a case is heard by an immigration judge, both the immigrant and DHS have the right to appeal that decision to the BIA. BIA's public decisions set the precedent and tone for how immigration judges nationwide should make decisions and how the general public should interpret immigration law and policy. Friday's order is the latest step by the Trump administration to strip away protections from DACA recipients.

"For over a decade, DACA has endured relentless, politically motivated attacks," said Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, deputy director of Advocacy and Campaigns at United We Dream, an organization fighting for the rights of immigrants.

"This decision is yet another step in dismantling the program without the government taking responsibility for ending it outright. ... This is a quiet rollback of protections, and our communities are paying the price in real time."

The BIA order, which is technically known as an interim decision, notes that DHS argued Pleters, the immigration judge, should be recused from the case because he is married to Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas, who has been outspoken about DACA issues on Capitol Hill, this case specifically and whose district includes El Paso. Neither the judge nor Escobar is identified by name in the interim order.

The BIA did not sustain DHS' appeal based on that argument, however, instead saying that "the Immigration Judge erred" by basing his decision to terminate removal proceedings solely on Santiago's DACA status.

DACA, created in 2012 to protect children who arrived in the country illegally prior to 2007 from deportation, now covers around a half-million people. Starting last year, DHS officials began urging DACA recipients to self-deport, arguing that the program itself does not equate to automatically providing legal status.

The DACA program is meant to offer temporary protection from deportation but is not an immediate path to citizenship or a green card. Participants have to renew their protection every two years.

This second Trump administration has tried to strip 505,000 DACA recipients, also known as Dreamers, of benefits, though no regulatory changes have been made to end the program. Last year, the Department of Health and Human Services said it would make DACA recipients ineligible for the federal health care marketplace and the Education Department said it was looking into five universities that offer financial help for DACA recipients.

In a letter to senators earlier this year, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that between January and November of last year, 261 DACA recipients were arrested and 86 were removed from the country.

In the letter, Noem reiterated that DACA is temporary.

"It comes with no right or entitlement to remain in the United States indefinitely," she wrote.

DHS did not respond to an immediate request for comment on whether active DACA recipients are at risk of removal.

Board of Immigration Appeals underscores Trump's policies

Over the last year, attorneys with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who represent DHS in immigration court, have increasingly appealed more decisions to the BIA.

According to a recent NPR analysis, BIA decisions backed government lawyers in 97% of publicly posted cases last year; that's at least 30 percentage points higher than the average over the past 16 years.

The board's decisions have made it harder for immigration courts to offer immigrants bond in lieu of detention. It's eased the way to deport migrants to countries other than their own. And a new proposed regulation would make it harder for people to appeal their immigration decisions at all.

All these actions over the last year came as the board pumped out 70 published decisions, a record number of precedent-setting cases.

Immigration courts are housed within the Executive Office for Immigration Review, or EOIR, at the Justice Department. They are not a part of the judiciary.

Southern California was built on radio.

"I can still hear the jingle KFWB News 98,” wrote  Taline in Los Feliz, during a recent conversation on LAist's daily news show, AirTalk, which airs on 89.3 FM. “I grew up hearing that in my dad's minivan on the way to and from school. It has a special place in my heart.”

Back in April, broadcast company Audacy announced KNX News — one of the last-remaining all-news FM stations — was leaving the FM dial where it had simulcast on 97.1 FM since 2021. The station, which is also one of the oldest in L.A., is not budging from 1070 AM where it has been on the air for more than 100 years. The move away from FM officially happened in May to make way for a new sports talk station, which Audacy officials called an area of growth for advertisers in today’s media landscape.

The move is one in a long line of changes for radio and a reminder that before podcasts, playlists and algorithms, many Southern Californians built their days around radio broadcasts.

Radio, a daily ritual

The construction of KNX

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Herman J. Schultheis

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Los Angeles Public Library

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Michael Jackson, a well-known KNX, personality

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Los Angeles Public Library

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Larry Mantle, now in his 41st year hosting AirTalk, remembers being a kid and dreaming of what it might be like to be behind the mic at one of these radio stations.

“ I grew up with KNX," he said. “My dream job as a kid was to be an anchor on KNX or KFWB, the two local all-news radio stations, 'cause there was nothing like hosting AirTalk that even existed at that point.”

Mantle opened up the phone lines on a recent show to hear from his fellow SoCal radio lovers about the shows they miss and the memories they have. Here's what they had to say:

A love for radio, then and now  

A pilot of KMPC's traffic alert helicopter pictured with his daughter and grandson.

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Los Angeles Public Library

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A 1963 picture of Valley State College (now Los Angeles Valley College) preparing to launch KVCM

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Larry Leach

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Los Angeles Public Library

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“When you'd walk down Hollywood Boulevard where the station was, you could hear it playing as you went down the street,” said  Olivia in Glendale about KLAC 570 with Al Jarvis.

 Larry in Yorba Linda shouted out KBCA Jazz for its 24-hour jazz, saying “When I first moved out here in '68 from Phoenix, which had like an hour a week, it was a real wonder.”

 Mark in Glassell Park emailed that he loves KCRW’s Henry Rollins, writing, “I used to bristle at his unique DJ persona, but over time, I came to love him and his crazy eclectic playlists. I find his knowledge in history and punk rock fascinating. He's a gem and a legend."

"I'd like to give a shout-out to all the DJs working at KXLU, the college station at Loyola Marymount University, said  Jeremy in Culver City in an email. “That station's been on the air for nearly 60 years. I believe it's one of the best examples of what's possible with radio."

"KFWB and KRLA back in the day when they were rock music stations —  Dr. Demento, one of my favorite on-air personalities, also had eclectic music taste," said  Carrie in Desert Edge.

“ Dr. Demento was must listening when I was a kid in junior high school at Le Conte Junior High in Hollywood,” Mantle added. “Every Sunday night on KMET, we would make sure we were listening to Dr. Demento and his funny records.”

The question remains…

An 11-year-old winning a car in a KMPC contest in 1963.

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Los Angeles Public Library

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Listener support is vital to any radio station, and it’s clear KNX has many lifelong fans. AirTalk listeners highlighted their support for household KNX names over the decades like Bill Keene, Melinda Lee, Mike Roy and Jackie Olden.

As KNX makes changes, many are watching closely and thinking about the future of radio.

Listeners like Tommy in La Quinta are left wondering if the radio dial will be the same…

“I’m a hardcore listener, but I don't know about casual listeners [and] if they'll tune to AM,” he said.

After months of hand-wringing, Los Angeles and LA28 have come to a tentative agreement on how Olympics organizers will reimburse the city for its expenses for the 2028 Summer Games.

According to the deal, the private Olympic organizing committee will pay upfront for the estimated cost of services that are not eligible for federal reimbursement, like trash pick-up and traffic control. Under another proposal, the city would also be able to tap an LA28 contingency fund if it isn't fully repaid by the federal government for policing costs at Olympic venues.

The agreement is nearly nine months overdue and still needs approval by Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council.

The 2028 Olympics are intended to be privately financed, and an existing city agreement with LA28 states that the Olympics organizers, not L.A., will pay for extra costs for public services in support of the Games. But L.A. is the financial back-stop for the Olympics, meaning if LA28 goes in the red, taxpayers will pick up the bill.

Beyond that, the city services agreement presents another area where L.A. could incur additional unexpected expenses for hosting the Games. L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez warned LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover earlier this year that a bad deal could "bankrupt" the city.

Jacie Prieto Lopez, an LA28 spokesperson, and Paul Krekorian, who leads the city's office of major events, said in statements that the freshly inked agreement would help deliver a fiscally responsible Games.

"Mayor Bass’ priority is that the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games be fiscally responsible, protect taxpayers, and benefit Angelenos for decades to come. This agreement helps deliver that commitment," Krekorian said.

But the contract between the two parties doesn't fully resolve one of the biggest areas of financial risk for the city: the enormous cost of security for an event as extensive and high-profile as the summer Olympics and Paralympics.

Organizers are counting on the federal government to pay for public safety at Olympic venues that are considered part of a "national special security event." That includes costs for LAPD staffing. LA28 has not included security costs in its $7.1 billion budget — a fact that City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto criticized earlier this year.

The federal government has so far allocated $1 billion for security costs for the Olympics. Exactly where those federal funds will go has not yet been determined, and there's no guarantee they will cover all of L.A.'s policing costs.

To address this, city officials have also proposed an amendment to a 2021 agreement between the city and LA28. That amendment would establish that if L.A. is not reimbursed by the federal government for all its eligible expenses, it could dip into LA28's contingency fund of $270 million before the private organizing committee could use those funds for any legacy projects.

But that bucket of money will first be used for any costs that Olympics organizers still owe if they run out of revenue — meaning if the Olympics don't turn a profit, the city's access to that money will depend on how much is left for the taking.

Civil rights attorney Connie Rice, who has been tracking the city's negotiations with LA28, told LAist the agreement was a "PR document" not a deal. She pointed out that if the federal government does not pay up for security spending as expected, L.A. could be in trouble.

" It leaves the taxpayers with a GoFundMe strategy," she said.

The city services agreement lays the groundwork for more negotiations between LA28 and the city. Each venue will require its own agreement, to be negotiated by July 1, 2027. Venues in the city of L.A. include Dodger Stadium, the L.A. Convention Center, L.A. Memorial Coliseum and the Venice Beach Boardwalk.

The City Council's ad-hoc committee on the 2028 Games will meet Tuesday afternoon to vote on the agreement.