The Brief

Since last summer, the Trump administration has been arresting undocumented immigrants as they try to claim their children from federal custody, stranding the kids in government shelters and foster care. The practice violates the government’s legal obligation to release children quickly, according to an informal network of immigration attorneys across the country, who suspected for months that the arrests were the result of a formal policy.

Now, a document unearthed in a federal district court case in Texas appears to confirm that suspicion. “Operation Guardian Trace,” as it’s called in the document, requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement to conduct in-person interviews with the relatives of undocumented children in federal custody, and detain and deport those adults who are “illegally present in the United States.”

Immigration attorneys say the policy represents a dramatic reversal in how the government handles the release of unaccompanied minors and treats their undocumented relatives, who were previously allowed to get their children back regardless of their immigration status.

“This confirms what we’ve known for months,” said Mishan Wroe, directing attorney for immigration at the National Center for Youth Law in Oakland. “The government is explicitly and deliberately using children as bait to achieve their political goals.”

A copy of a U.S. Department of Homeland Security Form I-213, found in a federal district court case file. In the document, a federal agent references Operation Guardian Trace, which requires ICE to conduct in-person interviews with the relatives of undocumented children in federal custody, and detain and deport those adults who are in the country illegally.

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Image courtesy of the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project.

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The children, who entered the U.S. alone and without authorization and have usually come to join family, are in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. They’ve often fled violence or persecution in their home countries, Wroe said, and most apply for asylum or other legal status. They’re detained until the government can vet their relatives, or sponsors, to make sure the adults can “provide for the physical and mental well-being of children.”

When a sponsor is detained, their application to claim the child is invalidated. If no other potential sponsors come forward, the child remains in ORR custody until they can be placed in foster care or they turn 18. Largely due to stricter sponsor vetting requirements put in place by the current Trump administration, the average number of days that children remained in ORR custody increased to 117 in 2025 from 30 the year before, according to the agency’s website. The data does not make clear how sponsor arrests have impacted that increase.

Nationwide, more than 100 sponsors have been arrested while trying to get their kids out of detention since the government began requiring them to present themselves at ICE offices in July, 2025, according to internal government data obtained by The California Newsroom. That means roughly one in four sponsors who came in for interviews or I.D. checks were arrested. It’s unclear how many have been deported, or were later released and allowed to sponsor their kids.

Marion “Mickey” Donovan-Kaloust, legal services director at Immigration Defenders Law Center in Los Angeles, said her organization alone represents 12 children detained in Southern California whose parents were arrested shortly after coming forward to begin the process of getting their kids back. She said dozens more of her clients have relatives who are afraid to try to claim them because they fear deportation.

“It's part and parcel of the chaos and cruelty that's marking this administration's approach to immigration policy,” said Donovan-Kaloust. “We've actually had children ask their parents to stop the reunification process because they're worried that they'll get detained.”

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not confirm the existence of Operation Guardian Trace or respond to questions about how it’s being carried out.

Here’s what else we know:

How does Operation Guardian Trace work?

Attorneys and advocates who spoke with The California Newsroom say it’s a classic bait and switch.

Laura Diamond, an attorney with the Immigrant Center for Women and Children in Los Angeles, said that in September, an ICE agent asked one of her clients to come to the agency’s downtown L.A. field office with her passport and her teenage son’s birth certificate as part of the sponsor vetting process. The woman had already submitted to a DNA test to prove she was his mother, and had been fingerprinted for a background check, which showed no criminal history. She was fearful because she knew ICE was arresting immigrants, but she went to the office anyway.

“Wanting to do what she was told she needed to do to get her child,” Diamond said, “she showed up, and they arrested her.” The woman, who Diamond declined to name because her deportation case is ongoing, is still in an ICE detention facility. Her sponsorship application was canceled, and her son is now in foster care.

A DHS form documenting her arrest, reviewed by The California Newsroom, says the woman was detained “pursuant to a targeted enforcement operation.”

Three months later and eight hundred miles away in Texas, a similar form buried in a similar case also mentioned an operation, this time by name: “Operation Guardian Trace.”

In that case, a Venezuelan man with no criminal history was arrested while applying to sponsor his two teenage children, who were in ORR custody, according to his attorney, Chiqui Sanchez Kennedy of the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project. “He got a call on a Friday, ‘Come to the ICE office on Monday,’” she said. “He was specifically told, ‘This could help you get your kids out.’” Instead, the man was arrested and detained for three months in an ICE facility in El Paso. He was released under a judicial order last week, but his kids are still in federal custody.

Through her petition to get her client released, Sanchez Kennedy obtained a record of the arrest. The document is not public, but she provided The California Newsroom with a copy, which she redacted to protect the family’s’ privacy.

An immigrant child is overcome with emotion after she crossed the Rio Grande with her family from Mexico into the United States on Sept. 28, 2023, in Eagle Pass, Texas. Many migrant children cross the border alone to join family in the U.S., and end up in federal custody. Under Operation Guardian Trace, some parents trying to get their kids back are summoned to ICE offices, only to be arrested or deported, according to a federal document.

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“As part of Operation Guardian Trace,” the form reads, “Special Agents are required to interview and investigate sponsors and or guardians/parents. During the process, if the sponsor/guardian/parent is determined to be illegally present in the United States, [authorities] will arrest and initiate administrative removal proceedings for possible reunification.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about the meaning of the terms “possible reunification” and "administrative removal proceedings.” The latter can refer to a process ICE uses to bypass immigration courts and quickly deport migrants who have been convicted of aggravated felonies.

While the document offers limited details about Operation Guardian Trace, Sanchez Kennedy said it’s clear that DHS is systematically using the sponsor vetting process to facilitate immigration arrests. “I thought it was pretty incredible how explicit it is,” she said.

Is the policy legal?

The Department of Homeland Security can, generally speaking, arrest someone who is in the country without authorization. But Wroe, of the National Center for Youth Law, said Operation Guardian Trace likely interferes with the government’s obligations to reunify kids with qualified sponsors. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, she said, “has a legal obligation to try and effectuate releases in a timely manner. Collaborating with DHS in this way arguably interferes with their ability to meet those statutory requirements.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees ORR, did not respond to questions about that allegation or about Operation Guardian Trace.

Until recently, ORR regulations stated that the agency “shall not disqualify potential sponsors based solely on their immigration status and shall not collect information on immigration status of potential sponsors for law enforcement or immigration enforcement related purposes.” However, the Trump administration repealed that part of the regulation last March. The change is being challenged in federal court.

The federal unaccompanied children program was intentionally separated from the government’s immigration enforcement agencies through the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which placed the program under the purview of the Department of Health and Human Services. The goal was to focus on child welfare rather than detention.

Donovan-Kaloust said that by cooperating with DHS, the Office of Refugee Resettlement is turning itself into “a quasi immigration enforcement agency, which is contrary to its mandate.”

What’s happening to the kids who are affected?

Many of the detained children Donovan-Kaloust’s team represents in Southern California broke down in tears when they learned their parents had been arrested, she said.

“They feel like it's their fault that their parent is in this situation, because their parent was trying to reunify with them,” she said. “Those are the things that the children are expressing to us. Sadness, hopelessness, tearfulness and guilt.”

According to Ryan Matlow, a child clinical psychologist who contributed to a report last year by the National Center for Youth Law about changes in ORR policy, prolonged detention breaks down children’s natural resilience. “As children come to see that they have no opportunity for release or family reunification,” he wrote, “they are likely to become increasingly despondent, desperate, hopeless, and depressed or agitated.”

Donovan-Kaloust said that in some cases, after her clients’ parents have been deported, the children decide to return to their home country. One boy didn’t want to go, she said, “but it was his only way to be with his dad.”

Like all of the immigration attorneys and immigrant rights advocates we spoke with, Donovan-Kaloust believes self-deportations are part of the point of Operation Guardian Trace.

“The administration wants the immigrant community to give up and go home,” she said. “And this is one way to do it.”

Clarification: This story was updated to reflect the fact that the Trump administration repealed its rules preventing the disqualification of potential sponsors based solely on their immigration status, and collecting information on immigration status of potential sponsors for law enforcement- or immigration enforcement-related purposes.

Mark Betancourt is a freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C.

This story was produced with The California Newsroom, a collaborative of public media outlets around the state that includes LAist.

Spectators in L.A. this summer for the World Cup could pay up to $209,000 for a private suite for just one match, but union workers at SoFi Stadium are worried they'll miss out on the action.

Bartenders, cooks, dishwashers and servers represented by Unite Here Local 11 have staffed the events held at the stadium since it opened, from the 2022 Super Bowl and NFL games every fall to Taylor Swift and Beyoncé concerts. That includes positions in suites, where fans can pay top dollar for private rooms, food and drink.

But FIFA has brought in another entity entirely to run its luxury program for World Cup fans. The company, called On Location, is FIFA's official "hospitality partner," offering those that can afford it exclusive seating, special gifts and meals. Their packages can cost tens of thousands of dollars or more.

Luxury suites for fans attending the World Cup at SoFi Stadium cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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Workers at SoFi say they're worried that FIFA's relationship with On Location means jobs that would typically go to union workers — and the wages and tips that go with them — will instead go to subcontractors without union protections. It's one reason they're threatening to strike when the World Cup comes to town.

 "We have so many wonderful workers who've been here season after season," said Kay Blake, a bartender from Inglewood who works at SoFi Stadium. "I don't see why they would partner with someone else to bring an experience that we can bring ourselves."

Workers also want to be paid a higher rate that reflects the sky-high ticket prices for the eight World Cup matches at SoFi Stadium. They're asking for double pay for major events including the tournament — an arrangement that the food service workers at Dodger Stadium have for the World Series, according to Unite Here.

"We're trying to ensure that there is no disparity between the profits of the company as opposed to our labor," Blake said. "We don't want to be exploited."

How does the World Cup affect labor negotiations?

Unite Here Local 11 represents around 2,000 workers at SoFi, and they're currently negotiating a new contract with Legends Global, the company that runs the stadium's bars and food services. Their old contract expired last year.

The union is leveraging its role in the coming World Cup to push for higher wages, especially at mega-events. Its workers also want protections from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, after the agency's head said that ICE will play a key role in security for the tournament. Unite Here filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board, saying ICE's planned presence at the World Cup threatened the union's ability to collectively bargain.

But the battle over subcontracting could also lead workers to the picket line. The union says the use of subcontractors will determine who will benefit from the riches that FIFA brings to Inglewood.

"Subcontracting is supposed to be rare," Unite Here Local 11 co-president Kurt Petersen told LAist. "So in this contract, we're saying no more. It needs to end and especially needs to end at the World Cup because we want those jobs to be good jobs."

How common is subcontracting?

Petersen said the World Cup isn't the only event where jobs have been threatened. He said that union members lost out on more than 100,000 hours of work in 2025 that was instead given to subcontracted workers.

Kay Blake, the bartender, offered LAist an example: an external company paying to operate a suite or two for an event at SoFi.

"If you bring in a subcontractor, they're going to want to bring in their people," she said. "Let's say that this subcontractor usually buys one to two suites… We have a group of people called suite attendants, and so now there's one to two suites less from their workload."

Blake said that she and her co-workers are scheduled by seniority, and fewer suites could mean people work fewer hours. She also said more short-term workers at the stadium for the World Cup could dilute tips for the workers who are at SoFi year-round.

A spokesperson for Legends Global declined to comment on ongoing negotiations with Unite Here Local 11. A representative for Hollywood Park, the site of SoFi Stadium owned by Stanley Kroenke, deferred to Legends Global. FIFA also did not respond to emails requesting comment on the ongoing negotiations.

Luxury packages are the new normal

The dispute between SoFi workers and their employer comes as high ticket prices for the World Cup and 2028 Olympic Games face scrutiny and mega-event organizers emphasize luxury experiences for the very wealthy.

On Location is also the hospitality partner for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. The company supplied the same service in Paris in 2024 — the first time the Olympics had such an official luxury service, according to the New York Times.

"The higher end can run well into the tens of thousands of euros: bespoke multiday all-inclusive packages that might include stays in five-star hotels, meals cooked by Michelin-starred chefs, seamless car service between venues and the best seats at the most in-demand events," a Times reporter described in the summer of 2024.

LAist reached out to On Location via email, requesting an interview on the services they provide and their workforce. The company didn't respond.

Isaac Martinez, a cook at SoFi Stadium who lives in Inglewood, said he's still waiting to learn what his schedule will be for the World Cup and he's worried about his hours.

Martinez told LAist that since World Cup prices are so high, he and his co-workers should get a slice of the pie.

"The people that are able to afford those tickets and those suites, they're not people like us," Martinez said through an interpreter. "They're not the people that are gonna make the food or make the experience."

The World Cup kicks off in Los Angeles on June 12 with the first U.S. men's match against Paraguay. If there's no resolution to negotiations, attendees could arrive to a picket line.

State regulators voted Thursday to stop Southern California Gas Co. from charging customers to help pay for planning miles of pipelines that would bring hydrogen gas to the L.A. Basin.

The company says the project would reduce the region’s reliance on methane gas.

Southern California Gas estimates it would cost about $266 million to study and plan the project — called Angeles Link — and asked the state Public Utilities Commission to allow it to recover those costs through customer rates. The company had proposed a monthly increase of $0.35 on the average residential customer bill over the course of three years.

The commission unanimously rejected the request, saying the company had not proved any direct benefit to customers. The decision effectively halts the project for now, and comes amid a stall in federal funding for hydrogen projects under the Trump administration.

Local environmental groups involved in the community advisory process had also grown frustrated by negotiations that they said, in a letter to state regulators, “does not prioritize genuine community engagement.”

As global pollution levels continue to climb, the commission’s decision also highlights the growing challenge of transitioning to a cleaner energy supply amid rising utility bills and open questions about the safety and true environmental cost of largely untested technology.

Why hydrogen?

Hydrogen is a colorless gas that is considered "clean" because it doesn’t involve carbon, which — when burned to create energy — becomes carbon dioxide, a major planet-heating gas.

But it takes energy to produce hydrogen, and most hydrogen these days is created by burning fossil fuels. “Green” hydrogen is created by using clean energy sources like solar and wind to split water into oxygen and hydrogen.

SoCal Gas said the Angeles Link project would prioritize green hydrogen.

Most experts see green hydrogen as an important clean-burning fuel for hard-to-electrify industries, such as long-haul trucking and gas-fired power generation. The city of Los Angeles, for example, wants to retrofit its Scattergood Power Plant near El Segundo to burn hydrogen instead of methane gas to generate electricity.

There are many open questions about how safe the highly-combustible gas is for proposed uses and how much water it will require to make. At the same time, extracting and burning fossil fuels for electricity and fuel also takes water — a growing problem as climate change drives longer and hotter droughts.

Experts say, if done right, hydrogen can reduce that water intake and not have a major impact on water supplies.

Also, burning hydrogen could actually worsen local, lung-damaging nitrogen-oxide air pollution, at least with the technology as it currently stands, according to energy researchers.

Reactions to the decision

SoCal Gas will now have to turn to shareholders or other sources of funding if the company wants to proceed. The company did not directly answer LAist’s questions about whether it would.

“We continue to believe that hydrogen—including clean renewable hydrogen—can help advance California’s energy and climate goals while supporting the long‑term affordability, security and reliability of energy service for customers,” SoCal Gas spokesperson Brian Haas wrote in an email to LAist.

Environmental groups celebrated the vote, while emphasizing they see green hydrogen playing a role in the state’s future.

“Residential customers should not subsidize speculative infrastructure for large industrial users,” said Michael Colvin, director of the California Energy Program at Environmental Defense Fund, in a statement.

“We look forward to working with regulators, utilities and large customers to build a credible, cost-effective strategy to cut climate pollution from sectors that are hardest to electrify,” the statement read.

Global events like the World Cup and the 2028 Olympics are sure to draw thousands of new visitors wanting to get to know Los Angeles.

L.A. has a lot to offer, including its vast and varied portfolio of public art. It’s even been referred to as the mural capital of the world. So if you want to explore some of the city’s art, here are a few murals you won’t want to miss.

Sports 

“LA Rising” at the Miyako Hotel in Little Tokyo celebrates the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani, depicting him in his two roles — hitter and pitcher.
- Where to find it: 328 First St., Los Angeles

“Blue Heaven on Earth” is a love letter to the Dodgers, depicting both Shohei Ohtani and the late Fernando Venezuela.
- Where to find it: 1647 Blake Ave., Los Angeles

A mural honoring Winter Olympics Gold Medalist Alysa Liu in Gardena.

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California native and Olympian Alysa Liu captured the world’s attention with her figure skating in the Winter Olympics. This mural in Gardena celebrates her win.
- Where to find it: 15532 Crenshaw Blvd., Gardena

A mural of L.A. Lakers legend Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna can be found outside Hardcore Fitness L.A.

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Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag

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“City of Angels!” pays tribute to Lakers legend Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gigi.
- Where to find it: 400 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles

Music

Whitney Houston, Rihanna, Aaliyah, Amy Winehouse and Selena are memorialized on this Hollywood mural.
- Where to find it: 7677 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles 

“Jazz on the field” is an ode to Wrigley Field and the Dunbar Hotel in South L.A. and depicts jazz icons Louis Armstrong and Etta James, as well as Martin Luther King Jr.
- Where to find it: 43rd St. and Grand Ave., Los Angeles

When Kendrick Lamar featured Tam’s Burgers in his “Not Like Us” music video, the burger spot in Compton commissioned a mural highlighting the rapper’s unforgettable single.
- Where to find it: 1201 Rosecrans Ave, Compton

Historic to LA

A section of the Great Wall of Los Angeles mural, designed by muralist Judy Baca, that showcases pivotal moments in Los Angeles History.

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“The Great Wall of Los Angeles” is one of the largest murals in the world, and it’s supposed to get bigger. The half-mile art piece depicts California’s rich history.
- Where to find it: Along the L.A. River in the San Fernando Valley, on Coldwater Canyon Avenue between Burbank Boulevard and Oxnard Street. 

“The Blessing of the Animals” at La Placita Olvera depicts the Catholic tradition of blessing one’s animals.
- Where to find it: 115 Paseo De La Plaza, Los Angeles

“El Grito” depicts a scene that sparked Mexican independence from Spanish rule.
- Where to find it: Placita de Dolores at 831 N. Alameda St., Los Angeles

When you take a bite of the lomo saltado burrito from Merka Saltao, a fast-casual Peruvian restaurant in Culver City, one of the first things you'll notice is the sauce.

The wok-fried chunks of steak, dressed in a soy-and-oyster sauce reduction spiked with vinegar, saturate the rice inside the tortilla, highlighting the sweet heat of ají amarillo mixed with the velvety texture of pinto beans.

It's a beautiful confluence of flavors. It is also, depending on who you ask, either a creative act of evolution or a betrayal of Peruvian culinary heritage.

Standing on business

The lomo saltado burrito at Merka Saltao wasn't exactly a calculated move. Lifelong friends Alonso Franco and Ignacio Barrios — who met in high school in Lima — came to Los Angeles to bring Peruvian food to the masses, first through a ghost kitchen concept they ran from 2021 to 2023. The burrito happened almost by accident: a member of their kitchen team brought in a tortilla one day, someone suggested wrapping the lomo saltado in it, they ate it, and within three days, it was on the menu.

Merka Saltao co-founders Ignacio Barrios, left, and Alonso Franco, right, inside their Culver City restaurant. The two lifelong friends from Lima opened the fast-casual brick-and-mortar location for their Peruvian concept in August 2025.

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The data from the ghost kitchen made the case for keeping it there. Franco and Barrios had launched with around 140 dishes — lomo saltado, ceviche, chicken dishes, the works. But the numbers kept pointing to the same thing: wherever lomo saltado appeared on the menu, in whatever form, burrito, bowl, salad, it was the winner.

(Ceviche, for all its cultural cachet, is raw fish with raw onion — a harder sell for a weekday lunch. Lomo saltado, Franco noted, is steak and fries — basically a hamburger.)

The backlash

The two friends made the leap to brick-and-mortar in August 2025, opening Merka Saltao in downtown Culver City. It's one of the more competitive dining corridors in L.A., the kind of block that can support a $16 wellness bowl and a craft beer bar in the same stretch, populated by Amazon employees on lunch breaks, families on weekend outings, and food-literate regulars who will absolutely have opinions about what goes in a burrito.

Those opinions arrived faster than Franco expected. Within the first week of opening, an influencer came in and posted about the restaurant — but instead of showing the full menu, the bowls, the chicha morada, the flexibility of the concept, they showed the burrito. Just the burrito.

Franco working the wok at Merka Saltao. The high-heat wok technique at the heart of lomo saltado traces its roots to Chinese immigrants in Peru

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The comments turned quickly. "No! Peruvians don't eat burritos. ¿Qué car—o es eso?" — roughly, "what the hell is this?" — wrote one commenter. Another said "Burritos? We don't eat burritos in 🇵🇪”. Franco describes sitting at his computer reading the pile-on, feeling something between anger and devastation. "There was a moment where I probably even cried," he said, "thinking, I've made a mistake." But then he looked at the numbers. 30,000 had seen the post…. And half the comments were in his defense.

He took the conversation to Reddit, posting to r/FoodLosAngeles asking the community directly: am I wrong for this? The response was overwhelming — hundreds of comments, almost entirely in his favor, and a surge of new customers walking through the door shortly after.

Fusion by default

This is Los Angeles, where many of the dishes that define the Southern California diet were born precisely from cultures colliding. Roy Choi built an empire on Korean tacos. Al pastor traces its technique to Lebanese immigrants who brought the vertical spit. The California roll, invented by Japanese chefs in Los Angeles in the 1960s, introduced an entire country to sushi. None of these dishes destroyed the traditions they borrowed from. If anything, they expanded their audience. And the lomo saltado burrito isn't exactly a novel concept in Southern California to begin with — everyone from Pablitos Tacos in North Hollywood to Le Hut in Santa Ana, run by 2025 James Beard Award-nominated chef Daniel Castillo, has featured their own version. Even Disney's California Adventure got in on it, serving a lomo saltado burrito out of the Studio Catering Co. food truck as recently as last year.

The lomo saltado bowl and burrito at Merka Saltao in Culver City — two versions of the same dish that sparked an unlikely online debate about Peruvian culinary identity.

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Franco would also point out that lomo saltado itself — the dish the purists are so eager to protect — is a product of Chinese immigrants bringing the wok and soy sauce to Peru roughly 300 years ago. "Peruvian is by default fusion," he told me. "So we have all the right to wrap it up in a burrito." What the online critics were really doing, whether they knew it or not, was defending a dish that was itself once considered inauthentic — and doing so in the name of authenticity.

Where things stand

Since the backlash, Franco says business has been mostly steady — breaking even, which for a concept that requires high volume at a low price point, he considers a good sign. The controversy changed things in ways he didn't expect: people started coming in specifically because of the story, not just the food. He began putting himself front and center in the brand, regularly making videos on social media about what it's like to run the business, occasionally poking fun at himself and the whole debate. When we visited during the weekday lunch rush, there was a steady line of people waiting to order, many stopping to talk with Franco directly.

In a way, he's answered the authenticity question not with an argument but with a presence — showing up, telling the story, letting the food speak. "Honoring my food, if that requires pairing lomo saltado with a salad or wrapping it in a tortilla, I have no problem," he said. "I'm not being less authentic. We are evolving in Peru anytime. I have to be authentic on the individual flavor and then be flexible to reach more people to discover our flavors."

The burrito, it turns out, was never the point. It was just the door.