The Brief

Tucked inside the Port of Los Angeles, an industrial island has become an unexpected flashpoint in the federal immigration crackdown.

Terminal Island is best known for housing shipyards, warehouses and the remnants of a Japanese American fishing village demolished during WWII.

But since the immigration sweeps began last month in L.A., the island has also become a hub for the agents staging at the federal facility there — and the locals keeping watch over them on behalf of their immigrant neighbors.

Soon after the sweeps began, Harbor Area Peace Patrols began sending volunteers to monitor the government vehicles streaming in and out of the sole access road to the gated facility, which holds a U.S. Coast Guard base and a low-security prison.

“We have people do shifts at Terminal Island throughout the day because it is such a strategic point,” said one of the volunteers, Victor Maldonado.

The Harbor Area patrollers say they’ve been able to tie about 60 of the government vehicles passing through Terminal Island to raids around the state, including a particularly chaotic operation at a cannabis farm in Camarillo.

Volunteers with Harbor Area Peace Patrols monitor Terminal Island for government vehicles.

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Josie Huang

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LAist

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ICE watch

Thousands of people have been arrested since the sweeps started June 6 in Los Angeles. During this period, local efforts to block raids have surged, with outraged residents patrolling their neighborhoods and sounding the alarm if they see agents.

The Harbor Area patrol formed within days of the first sweeps, with support from Union del Barrio.

Every morning, at 6:30 a.m., volunteers meet at local spot for their assignments before getting into their cars.

Aside Terminal Island, patrols also span Wilmington, San Pedro and Carson and involve scanning parking lots for agents and notifying undocumented workers of constitutional rights.

Some volunteers, including Maldonado, keep gravitating to Terminal Island because their information-gathering could have implications for people far beyond the port.

Almost daily, the Carson resident crosses the Vincent Thomas Bridge onto the island before he starts his day as an employee representative in labor disputes.

“Once you realize the importance of it, and that just simply being there you could prevent someone from being abducted, you feel like it's like a moral duty,” Maldonado said.

This past Wednesday, Maldonado was joined on the island by five other volunteers, armed with cellphones, cameras and binoculars. They photographed cars coming and going from the complex. Red flags for them are dark-tinted windows, mostly American makes and masked drivers. They've documented vehicles with missing license plates or plates being swapped between cars.

Harbor Area patrollers Victor Maldonado and Merci Macatrao walk past a memorial to a Japanese American fishing village that once stood on Terminal Island.

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Josie Huang

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LAist

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Maldonado is in charge of the Instagram page this day, and posts updates as he receives it from other volunteers, as well as sharing it with other community patrols.

Volunteer Gina Lumbruno says sometimes drivers flip them off, turn the camera phones on them or speed by dangerously close — the reason why the patrollers all now wear bright yellow safety vests.

“It’s so stupid,” Lumbruno said. “They give themselves away. They just profile their own selves by their actions.”

A dark chapter

The patrollers stand near a memorial to a vibrant fishing village for 3,000 islanders of Japanese descent who used to work on the harbor or in nearby tuna canneries. The bronze statue is of two fishermen facing opposite directions.

Lumbruno said before the raids, she used to visit the memorial regularly to clean off bird droppings and sweep away debris because of the deep meaning it held for her.

When she was growing up in San Pedro, Lumbruno’s tuna fisherman father told her what happened to the village. How it was demolished during World War II after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. How the Navy forced hundreds of residents into incarceration in Manzanar.

The only two buildings still standing housed a grocery and a dry goods store — structures that preservationists and locals like Lumbruno are trying to save from proposed demolition by port officials.

The A. Nakamura grocery store served the Japanese fishing community on Terminal Island.

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Tim Yuji Yamamoto

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National Trust for Historic Preservation

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“This was something that was done,” said Lumbruno, who works in healthcare. “These people had their civil rights, their human rights, stripped from them just because of some xenophobic B.S., you know?”

Lumbruno said she sees a painful irony in federal agents driving by the bronze fishermen on their way to immigration operations.

“It's just crazy to me,” she said. “The same thing that was done to them is what's happening now.”

Indefinite vigilance

Federal agencies did not respond to LAist’s requests for information about their Terminal Island operations.

But the office of U.S. Rep. Nanette Barragán, who represents Harbor Area communities, said it has confirmed through the Coast Guard that its base is serving as a staging area for Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other personnel with the Department of Homeland Security.

A former immigration detention and processing center is housed on the same federal complex, but that dilapidated structure is not being used (except for a small portion by Coast Guard staff), according to Barragán’s office.

The Trump administration has given no timeline for how long the L.A. sweeps will last. But volunteers with the Harbor Area group vow to continue their work even as their numbers ebb and flow.

With the start of school, they expect participation may dip because a disproportionate number of volunteers are teachers. Maldonado is optimistic that others will step up.

“We're going to keep putting the information out there,” he said. “Even if it helps just one person, we're perfectly OK with that. As long as this continues, so will we.”

Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said Thursday that he will run for Senate Majority Leader in the next Congress, setting up a challenge to Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer after the party swept to power in the midterm elections.

Van Hollen said in a statement that “the American people called for change” and that is why he is running.

“It’s now on us to meet this moment, and to do that we need new leadership,” Van Hollen said. “This is not about any one person — it’s about answering the call of the American people. That is why I’m running for Senate Majority Leader.”

Van Hollen’s challenge comes after he said he was considering a bid and after Schumer has said he has the necessary support to win. The closed-door, secret-ballot election will be held in early December.

The race will be the first contested election for Democratic leader in decades. The question of whether to reelect Schumer has already divided the caucus and many senators will not say publicly how they will vote. They have privately deliberated about what message to take from the election, and Schumer recruited many of the party’s winning candidates and raised money for them.

Schumer has been talking to Democratic senators since the election about forming an agenda for 2027.

“I’m going to win it,” Schumer told The Associated Press in an interview last week.

The Los Angeles Unified School District may lease spaces in its elementary, middle and high schools to use as childcare spaces for babies. 

The district is putting together a list of qualified providers and looking to identify spaces it could lease.

Ranae Amezquita, executive director of the district’s early childhood education division, said once the district has a list of spaces, it will start a request for proposal process that childcare providers can apply to during the 2027-2028 school year.

Why is LAUSD looking to expand childcare options now?

In April, LAUSD board members passed a resolution in an aim to expand childcare and early education slots in the district.

The district currently runs about 90 preschools, called early education centers, for children 2 to 4 years old, but it has only four centers that serve children under 2. “The problem with infant care — the reason we can't open them ourself at this time, is because of the cost,” said Amezquita at a board meeting Thursday.

The need for local infant and toddler childcare is high. In 2022, L.A. County assessed that the county only had enough licensed spaces to care for 4% of kids under 2. At the same time, the district has been facing declining enrollment amid lower birth rates. The resolution to expand early childhood care aims to, in part, strengthen the enrollment pipeline into the district.

Learn more about affordable childcare in LA

• For many California parents, paying for childcare means racking up credit card debt
• Why childcare in California may get harder to find

In an extraordinary turn of events, the state’s judicial watchdog has removed Judge Robert Draper, 84, from the Los Angeles County Superior Court after 14 years of service. He faced several counts of misconduct prior to losing reelection earlier this year.

The California Commission on Judicial Performance concluded Tuesday in an 87-page decision that Draper engaged in 17 instances of behavior that made him no longer fit for office. He hasn’t heard a case since 2023 because of the issues.

“Judge Draper persistently violated the standards governing judicial behavior and engaged in extensive and severe misconduct,” the commission said in a statement, adding that it was “aggravated by his refusal to accept responsibility for his misconduct, and his lack of insight or remorse for his misconduct and its effect on others.”

Draper previously admitted to some of the claims and denied others in interviews with LAist earlier this year. In a statement this week, he called the decision “deeply disappointing.”

“Any individual put under such intense and meticulous scrutiny likely would find themselves in a similar situation, albeit with slightly different facts,” he said.

Draper said the investigation came at a time when he raised concerns within the judiciary, and that it was used “presumably for purposes of dismissing his dissent by discrediting him.”

He plans to pursue “other avenues” to change the system, according to the statement. Draper's attorney declined to share what those would be.

 “It’s very rare for a judge to be removed from the bench,” said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School. “It’s the ultimate sanction against a judge.”

The commission has only removed 15 judges since it gained the authority to do so in 1995, according to its records, with the last for an L.A. County Superior Court judge happening in 2006.

The misconduct

The decision comes after a yearslong investigation and legal proceedings with independent evaluators. Prior to that, Draper had never been disciplined. According to the commission, his long list of misconduct includes:

• Making “offensive” and “insensitive” comments in court about race and gender.
• Sending “abusive” emails and unnecessary graphic pictures of his naked backside to colleagues.
• Acting with “deliberate defiance of his presiding judge’s orders” by continuing to access court systems and work on cases while on involuntary leave.

Some allegations the commission reviewed were dismissed for lack of evidence, including one that he inappropriately touched an attorney’s hair.

What happens next

While Draper lost reelection, his seat is now empty sooner than usual. Judge-elect Tal Khan Valbuena is on deck to replace him in January.

It’s possible Gov. Gavin Newsom may decide to appoint Khan Valbuena sooner. The court could also move another judge into his department.