The Brief

Jets are blazing across the sky in and around Huntington Beach on the first day of the Pacific Airshow that starts Friday and continues over this weekend.

In recent years, more than half a million visitors have come out to watch eye-and-ear popping aerial demonstrations from the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds and other renowned daredevils.

The event has also become a political lightning rod in the increasingly fractious beach city.

Why opinions are divided

Some say the airshow promoter got a suspiciously sweet deal in a recent legal settlement with the city. Others say Huntington Beach should support the airshow, and its hometown promoter, in any way it can.

At issue are questions of political quid pro quo, transparency and how cities determine whether and how much to support special events put on by private companies.

The backstory

Fans watch the 2021 Pacific Airshow in Huntington Beach.

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Michael Heiman

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Here’s a guide to what happened, why this matters for residents and what’s to come.

First the shorthand timeline:

• In October 2021, the city canceled the final day of the three-day airshow after oil began gushing from an underwater pipeline and moving toward the Huntington Beach shoreline. 

• A year later, in October 2022, airshow organizer Kevin Elliott sued the city, saying the previous year's cancellation amounted to a breach of contract. Elliott also supported the election of new city council members who promised to support the airshow. 

• Then, earlier this year, that new city council majority approved a minimum $5.4 million settlement with Elliott plus a potential additional $2 million if the city recoups money from the companies responsible for the oil spill. 

About Huntington Beach politics

The strong and distinct reactions to the deal from residents and officials in this city of 200,000 residents illustrate intensifying political divisions. While Huntington Beach is traditionally conservative, the electorate had been trending more purple in recent years. Then, in November, voters handed a solid victory to four ardently conservative candidates.

Huntington Beach Mayor Tony Strickland, a Republican former state legislator who ran Larry Elder's 2020 presidential campaign, said the settlement was good for the city.

"Anything that brings in $70 million to our local economy, that's worth it," Strickland said, referring to an economic impact report on the 2022 airshow.

On the other side, City Councilmember Dan Kalmick, one of three Democrats on the council, said Huntington Beach taxpayers got a "horrible deal." He and the other two Democrats on the council voted against the airshow settlement.

"The settlement, as publicized, goes well beyond any exposure the city had for cancellation of one day of an airshow, which it didn't even do," Kalmick said. He said multiple authorities — state, federal and local — agreed the airshow had to be canceled so that monitoring and clean-up crews could get to work.

Kevin Elliott, organizer of the Pacific Airshow and CEO of event company Code Four.

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What the airshow organizer says

Elliott, for his part, says he regrets that the airshow has gotten wrapped up in local politics. (We should note that after we published this story, it was announced that former President Donald Trump would do a flyover as part of Friday’s airshow lineup. Trump is on his way to the California Republican Party convention in Anaheim.)

Elliot told us that, at heart, he's a "plane brain" who's especially excited this year to watch the F-22 Raptor do "things that an airplane shouldn't do, including flying backwards and all kinds of really cool stuff."

"I just want to put on a great event and I want to go back to running my business and having a good time," he told LAist. "And staying out of the newspaper. That would be my goal."

The start of the problems: The oil spill

On Friday, Oct. 1, 2021 coastal authorities got a call reporting an oil sheen off the coast of Huntington Beach. Amplify Energy, ultimately responsible for the spill, later said it found out Saturday morning about the pipeline leak from one of its offshore oil platforms.

A worker with Patriot Environmental Services stands near bags of oil collected throughout Sunday morning near the mouth of the Santa Ana River and Talbert Marsh.

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That same Saturday, the Pacific Airshow went on, as planned as local officials tried to understand the extent of the oil spill and whether and when it might reach shore. By afternoon, boaters watching the airshow from the ocean began reporting oil in the water.

City and state parks authorities closed the water at many of the area beaches to swimming and surfing.

That evening, then-Huntington Beach Mayor Kim Carr appeared at a news conference with the city's marine safety chief, Eric McCoy, and several other officials. Carr said a decision about whether to cancel the third and final day of the airshow would be made the following morning.

At the time, the leak was estimated to be around 126,000 gallons of oil, which McCoy said was considered a major spill by the U.S. Coast Guard. Later estimates revised that down to a much smaller amount, around 25,000 gallons.

On Sunday morning, Oct. 3, 2021, the city announced that the airshow was canceled "in order to facilitate clean-up coordination efforts, and given the potential health impacts from the ongoing situation."

Beaches were closed and remediation workers were dispatched to mop up the oil that had already washed up on the shore and into several sensitive wetland areas. The coast reeked of petroleum.

A sign keeps beachgoers off the sand.

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Impact of the 2021 cancellation

The airshow cancellation was devastating for Elliott. "It was probably one of the worst days of my professional life," Elliott said. "What we had put together in 2021 was essentially the Super Bowl of air shows."

Plus, the previous year, 2020, the entire airshow had been canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Elliott, who also runs an event company called Code Four, said he lost "in the multi-millions" the day of the oil spill. "We put over $750,000 worth of catering in the trash," he said.

It was also upsetting for patrons, some of whom had spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on premium tickets for the last day of the show.

The airshow is free to watch from part of the city beach and nearby state beaches. But Elliott also sells tickets, for example, for seating on the Huntington Beach pier or for a private cabana on the beach. This year, prices range from $25 to more than $5,000 for a group.

Elliott said he eventually reimbursed everyone who had bought tickets "out of my own pocket."

The legal battle that followed

The following year, 2022, Elliott asked the city to give him a break on some of the fees and other expenses involved with putting on the airshow — as the city had in previous years. Specifically, the city had previously credited Elliott up to $110,000 in parking revenue generated over the airshow weekend toward his bill for permits, reserved parking, and extra public safety staff needed for the event.

Elliott's city bill for the 2022 airshow, according to a presentation at the time, was expected to be around $257,000.

This time, though, Elliott made a last-minute request that all of the city's parking revenue generated by the airshow be credited toward his bill, with no cap.

The city council at the time denied his request by a vote of 6 to 1 and decided to revoke the parking credit completely. City officials and staff at the time noted that Huntington Beach didn't grant this kind of credit to the organizers of any other big events in the city, including the U.S. Open of Surfing, which has drawn crowds similar in size to the airshow, although over a longer period of time.

Former Councilmember Mike Posey told LAist the parking "subsidy … was always supposed to be temporary" until Elliott could attract a corporate sponsor for the airshow. A smaller, previous iteration of the airshow, before Elliott took it over, was sponsored by Swiss watchmaker Breitling.

But Elliott saw the city's decision to revoke the parking subsidy as the latest in a series of efforts, starting with the 2021 post-oil spill cancellation, to shut the airshow down.

The following month, Elliott sued the city and then-Mayor Carr.

In his complaint, he alleged the 2021 cancellation amounted to a breach of contract and damaged the airshow's reputation. He also claimed that subsequent actions taken by Carr and the city, including removing the parking subsidy, were retaliation for Elliott raising concerns about the cancellation.

Elliott told LAist he felt slighted after investing heavily in the airshow to try and make it profitable and to bring tourism benefits to the city.

"I wish that the city had come forth and said, 'Hey, you've been a great partner to the city, you're a local kid … we understand that you've been damaged by this and we want to try to do the right thing.' But instead they basically told me to pound sand and left me with no choice but to protect my interests."

Initially, the city tried to get the lawsuit dismissed, claiming it had no factual basis. But then it seemed to do an abrupt about-face, settling with Elliott for at least $5.4 million, to be paid out incrementally through January 2029. What changed?

How the air show became a hot-button campaign issue

A seat on the Huntington Beach city council is generally considered a non-partisan position — a candidate's political party is not listed on the ballot. But Huntington Beach had traditionally had a conservative-leaning council. That changed after the 2020 election, but not the way you might think.

Tito Ortiz, a mixed martial arts fighter and staunch conservative, won a seat on the council in 2020 and then resigned six months later. In his place, the council appointed left-leaning attorney Rhonda Bolton, giving Huntington Beach's city government a majority Democrat block.

They passed pro-housing measures and voted to fly the Pride flag outside city hall every June — with the support of the council's moderate Republicans. A backlash ensued.

A group of residents attempted to recall six of the seven council members in 2021. But the effort failed to make it to the ballot. They set their sights on the 2022 general election.

The Lincoln Club and several other conservative political action committees coalesced around a slate of four conservative council candidates — Strickland, Casey McKeon, Pat Burns and Gracey Van Der Mark — dubbed by supporters the "Fab 4," plus city attorney Michael Gates, who was running for re-election. (Huntington Beach is one of the few cities in California where voters elect their city attorney.)

They paid for mailers and signs saying the candidates would "save" Huntington Beach — and "save" the airshow.

On Oct. 27, 2022, the candidates held a "victory rally" at the Huntington Beach pier. Elliott's company, Code Four, provided the sound and some of the signage for the rally, he said.

Elliott said the work was "pretty simple" and cost him less than the $1,089 that the four city council candidates claimed as in-kind contributions in campaign finance disclosures.

Elliott did not donate money directly to any of the four council candidates or city attorney Gates. (His company Code Four did give money, the maximum $4,900 allowed, to the 2022 winning campaigns of state Republican state legislators Diane Dixon and Janet Nguyen.)

"Franky, I supported them as much as I could without creating any kind of a conflict of interest for them," Elliott said of the council candidates. "Because, you know, they campaigned on saving the air show and I've invested millions and millions of dollars in saving this air show for the city, so our interests were pretty aligned in that regard."

But looking back — post-election and post-airshow settlement — some political opponents and civic watchdogs see the rally and Elliott's work on it as part of a suspicious pattern.

"I have substantial questions about the relationship between the four newly elected council members, the city attorney and Elliott," said Kalmick, one of the liberal council members.

Kalmick also pointed to several photos from the 2022 airshow posted to Facebook showing Elliott and his wife posing on the beach with the "Fab 4" candidates. (Elliott said he regularly invites candidates, council members and many others to the show, "Democrats, Republicans, my mom's friends, you know, my friends that were my teachers in the first grade.")

All four council candidates and city attorney Gates won their election in November.

The settlement and concerns about quid pro quo

In March 2023, Gates, the city attorney, filed a request in Orange County Superior Court to have Elliott's airshow cancellation lawsuit dismissed. Gates and deputy city attorney Lauren Rose argued that the city was "legally permitted to cancel the Airshow due to unforeseen circumstances rendering performance impossible due to health and safety reasons."

They also said this about Elliott's claim that revoking the parking subsidy was retaliation: "it is speculative and unsubstantiated how this was in any way connected to [Elliott's] negative comments regarding the City's reaction to the unexpected and disastrous oil spill."

But less than two months later, Gates, Elliott, Strickland and two of the other conservative council members held a news conference announcing a settlement. "Ladies and gentlemen, we saved the airshow," Strickland said to applause.

"The previous city council was not business-friendly and not airshow-friendly," he went on. "The Fab 4 …saved the airshow by putting the hard work and leadership required to solve this conflict."

In dollars, what they put in is $4,999,999 of city funds spread out over seven years, with the first payment of $1,999,000 due before July 31.

The city also agreed to:

• Forfeit $194,945 in fees still owed by Elliott for the 2021 airshow.
• Refund him $149,200 from the 2022 airshow, when the city council declined to give him the parking subsidy. 
• Reinstate the parking subsidy, starting at a minimum, rather than maximum, of $110,000. Plus, waive parking fees for up to 600 spaces for airshow setup and takedown.
• Pay Elliott up to an additional $2 million of any money the city recovers from the oil companies responsible for the 2021 spill. 

Those are the details in the settlement summary released to the public. Gates has declined to make the full settlement public, raising questions about what else the city may have agreed to.

A legal push for more transparency

Gina Clayton-Tarvin, a local school board member and former city council candidate, has sued Gates under state public records law in an effort to get the full settlement released.

Gates told LAist earlier this year that he hasn't released the full settlement agreement because there's still pending litigation in the airshow saga and doing so could compromise the city's position in that litigation. "But if a judge were to order the release of [the settlement], I'm happy to release it," Gates said.

Both sides of the settlement say it was a tough negotiation and neither side got everything they wanted. "We get a lot more as a city than we're giving out," Strickland said. "It's not even a close call."

Earlier this year, a former Huntington Beach mayor and a former planning commissioner tried to intervene to halt the settlement agreement. Thus far, they haven't been successful, although Lee Fink, a lawyer working with them, has said they haven't given up.

At the same time, Elliott hasn't dropped his lawsuit against former Mayor Carr for her role in canceling the 2021 airshow. In his complaint, he said Carr "unilaterally" canceled the airshow because of her personal feelings towards Elliott, and in order to garner media attention to “further her own political career.”

Carr told LAist earlier this year that the claim was bogus. "He's created a completely fantastic tale of somehow I unilaterally canceled the air show," she said. "As the mayor of Huntington Beach, you do not have the authority to issue permits, consequently, you don't have the authority to cancel permits."

She said she didn't understand why the city would offer millions to settle what she called "an easily dismissible lawsuit." Then she corrected herself.

"Well, I do understand why the new council majority would settle. I mean, [Elliott] is their friend, their ally," Carr said. "To me, it smacks of corruption, definitely feels like a pay to play."

What about the oil company responsible for the spill that caused the 2021 airshow to be canceled? Amplify Energy recently settled a $45 million class action lawsuit with impacted businesses and property owners.

Elliott's company was not part of that settlement, but he said he's been "in very intensive pre-litigation settlement discussions" with the company.

The city of Huntington Beach also plans to pursue money from Amplify. How much could come back to city coffers after the Pacific Airshow gets its $2 million cut is unknown.

Fink, the lawyer, said his clients would likely be enjoying the airshow this weekend. "No one’s against the Airshow," he wrote in an email. "The Airshow will go on regardless of the litigation. But people are against a $7 Million giveaway to a political supporter under the guise of a settlement agreement in a frivolous case."

At 5 a.m. California time, when it is still dark outside, a member of the state's Department of Public Health gets on a weekly call.

The topic? Health emergencies all over the world.

For years, the U.S. federal government participated in these calls, which are organized by the World Health Organization. Now, as the Trump administration says it has withdrawn from WHO over its handling of COVID, among other things, California is stepping in.

It is the first state to join WHO's Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network, also known as GOARN. Dr. Erica Pan, director of the California Department of Public Health, says she's been in touch with other states hoping to follow suit. Illinois, in a press release, said it's "making preparations" to join.

"The Trump administration's withdrawal from WHO is a reckless decision that will hurt all Californians and Americans," said California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a statement. "California will not bear witness to the chaos this decision will bring."

This move by states to take things into their own hands is part of a broader trend, according to Dr. Gavin Yamey, a professor of global health and public policy at Duke University.

"I think this is a very smart and savvy play," says Yamey. "The federal government has reneged on its public health protection responsibilities, and you're seeing states taking steps so they still are part of the international response to outbreaks and emerging threats."

Not quite a member but still a participant

That doesn't mean California, for example, could become a full-fledged WHO member. Many forums and meetings hosted by WHO are limited to member states — meaning national governments. But some parts of WHO, like GOARN, are open to a broader array of groups, including nonprofit and multinational organizations, academic centers and different levels of governments. Like American states. 

GOARN is made up of over 350 such groups that work together to detect and respond to infectious disease outbreaks and public health emergencies. The network was created in 2000 after leaders realized that a lack of coordination was hindering outbreak response. Since its creation, GOARN has helped organize, analyze and respond to emergencies like SARS, Ebola and mpox.

Members of GOARN participate in weekly calls, get regular outbreak updates and also get access to WHO Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources platform, which "is continuously scanning global open sources for signals of outbreaks and health events," says Pan. "We're just now getting training and onboarding."

Pan says participating in the network and platform brings better awareness of global health threats — and lets the state respond accordingly. "[It] helps us anticipate threats earlier," says Pan, noting a drop-off in federal health guidance, including the lack of a national flu vaccination campaign this flu season.

Indeed, the U.S. federal government has said it does not plan to continue participating in groups like GOARN. In a statement sent to NPR earlier this month, the U.S. State Department wrote: "The United States will not be participating in regular WHO-led or managed events."

"Charting its own course"

Instead, the U.S. is taking a different approach, pursuing health and aid agreements directly with individual countries. These agreements often include sharing disease outbreak information.

"The United States is charting its own course on global health engagement, grounded in accountability, transparency, and the expertise of America's public health institutions," said a statement from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to NPR. "States do not set U.S. foreign policy."

Not everyone agrees with this stance.

Some conservative voices have urged the U.S. to continue participating in certain WHO forums, particularly those that provide information, data and assessments for emerging infectious disease outbreaks. For example, Brett Schaefer — a senior fellow at the right-leaning thinktank the American Enterprise Institute — said, even as the U.S. withdraws from WHO, the U.S. should continue to participate in initiatives like the Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources platform "to make sure that you have full, robust access to the information."

This type of international platform would be "a very difficult thing for the U.S. to replicate or to try and build outside of the World Health Organization — also [it'd be] somewhat inefficient," says Schaefer.

However, he said over email that the jury is still out on California's decision to join GOARN. "It's interesting but unclear at this point," he wrote, noting that WHO has not clarified California's status. He added: "It also could just be a PR stunt by Newsom."

WHO did not respond to NPR's requests for comment on California's participation in GOARN or any other parts of WHO as well as on other states that have reached out to join.

This new model does have a potential downside — a split between states that join part of WHO and states that don't, says Yamey: "You could end up having this awful, tragic divide" where some state leaders have access to better, more up-to-date outbreak information for making public health decisions than leaders in other states, he says.

Pan says California is hoping to partner with other states that don't join GOARN. "Our intent is really to — acknowledging that we are the biggest state with the largest state health department — step up and provide some leadership."
Copyright 2026 NPR

A five-day fan festival will take over the L.A. Memorial Coliseum in June to welcome the World Cup to Los Angeles.

The festival will kick off the same day as the tournament, June 11, and run through June 15. It will include live broadcasts of the games, music and food, and provide a place for fans to celebrate as Team USA plays its first game against Paraguay at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on June 12.

"For the first five days of the World Cup, the fan festival will be the heart of the World Cup experience for many people in L.A.," said Kathryn Schloessman, the CEO of the L.A. World Cup 2026 Host Committee.

Angelenos will need to purchase tickets for the fan festival, but prices and details will be announced in March, according to Schloessman.

The Los Angeles host committee for the 2026 World Cup announced the details of programming for fans across the city on Wednesday. They include nine "fan zones" that will pop up across the L.A. area throughout the World Cup's 39 days of soccer matches.

Here are where the zones are located:

• The Original Farmers Market from June 18-21 
• City of Downey on June 20
• Union Station and the Plaza de Cultura y Artes from June 25-28
• Hansen Dam Lake from July 2-5
• Earvin "Magic" Johnson Park from July 4-5
• Whittier Narrows from July 9-11
• Venice Beach on July 11
• Fairplex from July 14-15 and July 18-19
• West Harbor from July 14-15 and July 18-19

LAist has a fan guide for the 2026 World Cup.

California Democratic senators advanced a measure Tuesday that would make it easier for people to sue federal agents over civil rights violations, a bill shaped by fears of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement practices.

The bill from Sens. Scott Wiener and Aisha Wahab, both Bay Area Democrats, took on additional significance after federal agents gunned down Alex Pretti, a U.S. citizen and ICU nurse, in Minnesota last weekend. Senators discussed the measure on the floor for more than 90 minutes before voting along party lines, 30 to 10, to send it to the Assembly.

“It’s a sad statement on where we are in this country that this has to be a partisan issue,” Wiener said just before the vote on his bill, which is also known as the “No Kings Act”. “Red, blue, everyone has constitutional rights. And everyone should have the ability to hold people accountable when they violate those rights.”

It’s among several bills lawmakers are moving forward in the new year to confront an escalation of aggressive immigration enforcement tactics and to protect immigrant communities. They include bills that would tax for-profit detention companies, prohibit law enforcement officers from moonlighting as federal agents and attempt to curb courthouse arrests.

Those efforts follow a slate of legislation signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year to resist the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign in California, including a first-in-the nation measure to prohibit officers from wearing masks and others that limit their access to schools and hospitals.

While some of those laws are facing legal challenges, the new batch of proposals offer “practical solutions that are squarely within the state’s control,” said Shiu-Ming Cheer, deputy director at California Immigrant Policy Center.

Here’s a look at some of the key bills lawmakers are considering:

No moonlighting as a federal agent

Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, a Democrat from Culver City, authored a bill that would prohibit law enforcement from taking a side job as a federal immigration agent.

At a press conference in San Francisco earlier this month, Bryan said the measure is especially timely as the federal administration ramps up its recruitment of California’s local law enforcement.

“We don’t collaborate in the kidnapping of our own community members, but there is a loophole in state law,” he said. “While you can’t collaborate with ICE while you are working in your police shift, you can take a second job with the Department of Homeland Security. And I don’t think that that is right.”

In an interview with CalMatters, he said the legislation is intended to bring transparency and accountability, and to close that loophole.

“The federal administration has created not just a secret police but a secret military at the expense of health care, social safety nets, and key benefits that the American people need and rely on to make it through the day,” said Bryan. “All of those resources have been rerouted to the unaccounted militarized force patrolling our streets and literally killing American citizens.”

Keep ICE awy from courthouses

Sen. Eloise Gómez Reyes, a Democrat from San Bernardino, introduced legislation to prevent federal immigration agents from making “unannounced and indiscriminate” arrests in courthouses.

“The issue is clear cut,” said Gómez Reyes in a statement. “One of the core responsibilities of government is to protect people — not to inflict terror on them. California is not going to let the federal government make political targets out of people trying to be good stewards of the law. Discouraging people from coming to court makes our community less safe.”

The legislation was introduced nearly two weeks after a federal judge ordered that the U.S. Justice Department halt civil arrests in immigration courts across Northern California, ruling that its deportation policies hadn’t addressed the “chilling effects, safety risks, and impacts on hearing attendance.”

Efforts to bolster protections in California courthouses have also been championed by Sen. Susan Rubio, a Democrat from West Covina, who introduced a bill that would allow remote courthouse appearances for the majority of civil or criminal state court hearings, trials or conferences until January 2029.

Taxing detention centers

Assemblymember Matt Haney, a Democrat from San Francisco, introduced a bill that would place a 50% tax on profits from immigration detention centers. Over 5,700 people are being held in seven immigration detention centers across California, three of which are located in Kern County.

Escalating 'resistance'

Cheer, of California Immigrant Policy Center, said the early introduction of the bills demonstrates more urgency from the state Legislature to tackle issues around immigration enforcement.

“My hope for this year is that the state can be as bold and innovative as possible seeing the crisis communities are facing from immigration enforcement,” she said.

That means ensuring funding for attorneys to represent people facing deportation, addressing existing gaps in state laws around information sharing with the federal government, and looking into companies that are directly profiting from the business of arresting and deporting people, Cheer said.

Republicans have criticized the measures, which they characterize as overstepping on federal priorities.

"No one likes to see what’s happening in Minnesota. No one wants to see that coming to California," said Sen. Tony Strickland, a Republican representing Huntington Beach. Instead, he argued, cities and states should jettison their so-called "sanctuary" policies that hamper coordination between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities.

He also criticized Democrats for taking precious Senate time to prepare for hypothetical scenarios rather than addressing existing problems in California.

“At the end of the day, we have a lot of serious issues here in California, and we need to start focusing on California-specific issues.”

Kevin Johnson, an immigration law professor and former dean of the UC Davis School of Law, said state and local governments are trying to figure out how far to go in resisting federal immigration enforcement given Trump’s threats to pull funding from sanctuary jurisdictions.

“While there’s concern and fear in immigrant communities, there’s some solace being given by the support expressed by state and local officials,” he said. “As the Trump administration escalates its aggressive deportation tactics across the nation, California has escalated its resistance.”

CalMatters reporter Wendy Fry contributed to this story.

Cayla Mihalovich is a California Local News fellow.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

President Donald Trump has reshuffled the leadership of his immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota in the face of wide-spread anger over two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens by federal agents. Operation commander Gregory Bovino is out, and Trump is sending Border Czar Tom Homan to take over.

But it's not clear changes at the top can solve a more basic problem: the immigration agents flooding the Twin Cities are generally less experienced in urban policing and crowd control than other police.

"The skills that these federal immigration agents are bringing to these cities are a complete mismatch for what we actually need," says Irene Vega, an associate professor of sociology at UC Irvine. "That's not what their job has been, historically, and I just think it's a very dangerous situation."

Vega studied the attitudes of Customs and Border Protection officers regarding use of force, a project that involved interviewing more than 90 officers. The CBP appears to make up the largest contingent of the roughly 3,000 agents deployed to Minnesota.

"They saw themselves as very different," she says. "They would tell me that they were trained to hike in the desert. They often told me about arresting 10, 15 people who were very compliant."

She says the isolation of the border region influenced the officers' calculus about use of force. She recalls one officer who explained that in the desert, he doesn't have the option to duck into an alley for cover.

"And so he said, 'I'm going to have to do what I have to do,'" Vega says.

Over the years, CBP has come under pressure to rein in its officers' use of deadly force along the border. Incidents of officers shooting at people for throwing rocks came under special scrutiny, and an external review in 2013.

"Too many cases do not appear to meet the test of objective reasonableness with regard to the use of deadly force," the report found. "[I]n some cases agents put themselves in harm's way by remaining in close proximity to the rock throwers when moving out of range was a reasonable option."

The report recommended equipping CBP officers with less-lethal weapons such as pepper spray, a requirement that was added to the agency's handbook in 2014.

Now, in Minneapolis, CBP has come to rely heavily on sprays and other chemical irritants to push back protesters and observers. In some cases, such as the moments leading up to the fatal shooting on Saturday of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, the use of pepper spray appeared to inflame confrontations.

"There's a duty of obligation that you have in policing, if you incapacitate someone," says Leon Taylor. He's a retired Baltimore police officer, who also served as a military peace keeper in the Balkans He and other former police have been discussing the scenes coming out of Minnesota.

"If [a pepper-sprayed person] stumbles out into traffic and gets run over and killed, that's on me. There's a duty of care."

He says the videos appear to show federal officers escalating conflicts, instead of defusing them.

"They live in a toxic environment of their own creation that has nothing to do with policing," Taylor says, and he blames the message from high-level officials – such as Vice President Vance – that they have "immunity."

"If they told these guys instead, before they turned them loose, that you have an absolute responsibility, instead of absolute immunity… it starts with the mindset about what you are doing," he says.

David "Kawika" Lau was a senior instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers, which trains CBP and other federal agents. He says in the years after the external report on CBP use of force there was an increased emphasis on teaching de-escalation techniques – training he helped to shape.

"We teach them emotional intelligence, self-regulation, self-awareness. Because you can't bring calm to any situation if you yourself are not calm," Lau says.

But he cautions that those techniques are meant to defuse one-on-one confrontations. He's not sure how well CBP is prepared for the raucous crowds in the Twin Cities.

"They may have some training and expertise in urban operations," Lau says. "But that is not what that position [CBP officer] was designed to do. Therefore, that's not what the training is designed to produce."

Federal immigration agencies say they're being forced into an unfamiliar role. CBP commissioner Rodney Scott told Fox News over the weekend, "The primary training was to go out and arrest suspects, which is already dangerous. This entire environment, where the community is encouraged by local leaders to come out and actually prevent you from making a felony arrest, it's a new dynamic. We're trying to evolve to it."

Minnesota leaders have largely encouraged protesters to be peaceful; they have not explicitly called for people to prevent immigration arrests.

But federal officials say that's still the effect, as protesters tail immigration agents and try to warn people at risk of arrest. And these officers may now be more inclined to respond to such protesters as law-breakers: A recent Attorney General memo on "domestic terrorism" lists potential charges, including "impeding" federal officers, and "seditious conspiracy to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States."

Minnesota officials say the feds' approach to urban law enforcement has distracted them from their immigration enforcement mission. On Sunday, Governor Tim Walz said federal agents had neglected to take into custody a non-citizen with a serious criminal record as he was released from a jail outside the metro area.

"They're too busy up here, doing what they did yesterday [the Pretti shooting] to go pick up someone who actually should be removed from this country," he said.

"It's their job to do immigration and customs enforcement. It's law enforcement's job to do law enforcement in Minnesota," Walz said. 

On Monday, as the political backlash against the federal presence in Minnesota grew, Walz had what he called a "productive call" with President Trump. He said the president told him he would consider reducing the number of federal officers in Minnesota.
Copyright 2026 NPR