The Brief

Doctors at Adventist Health White Memorial hospital in Boyle Heights told LAist that hospital administrators are allowing federal immigration agents to interfere in medical decisions and block doctors from properly treating detainees who need emergency care.

Administrators at White Memorial have told doctors not to call a detained patient’s family members, even to find out what type of medication they’re on or what conditions they have, doctors told LAist. Hospital leaders also have told doctors to allow immigration agents to remain by a detained patient’s side, even during consultations, inhibiting frank discussions between doctors and their patients and potentially violating patient privacy laws. Doctors say this is not typical protocol for any patients, including those brought in by local police or sheriff’s deputies.

These doctors are equally concerned about their inability to ensure follow-up care for patients released to the ICE processing facility known as B-18 in downtown L.A., where critics say some detainees have been held for days on end with no proper beds or medical care.

Why this matters

White Memorial is part of a network of private, nonprofit hospitals affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, with $7 billion in annual revenue. The hospital has been operating for more than 110 years. Its calling is to “help improve the lives of our friends and neighbors in East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights,” according to its website.

Five physicians at White Memorial shared the details with LAist about ICE’s presence at the hospital and hospital administrators’ response on the condition that they not be named for fear of retaliation from their employer or from immigration authorities. LAist reviewed internal emails supporting their claims.

“We have an ethical and moral duty to provide excellent medical care and to serve the patient’s interest,” one doctor at White Memorial told LAist. But the doctor said the frequent presence of masked, armed immigration agents in the hospital makes it “very difficult to do that.”

The physicians told LAist they believe the directives from their bosses conflict with the responsibilities all doctors have to their patients and with guidance from the California attorney general.

White Memorial did not respond to a request for an interview from LAist or to our emailed list of questions.

In a statement, a White Memorial spokesperson said the hospital’s staff “are passionately committed to providing the highest standard of medical care to all who come through our doors, regardless of their circumstances” and that the hospital has “protocols in place that are designed to help support the lawful respect of patient rights.”

“We are doing everything in our power to provide safe and compassionate care to our community during this time of unrest,” the statement reads. It also urged people not to "delay the medical care you need.”

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, did not respond to specific questions from LAist or agree to an interview.

In a statement, she wrote that “ICE is not denying any illegal alien access to proper medical care or medications.” McLaughlin said it was “longstanding practice to provide comprehensive medical care from the moment an alien enters ICE custody.”

She added that she hoped LAist “would consider NOT writing this garbage” in the wake of the recent shooting outside an ICE detention center in Texas, where one detainee was killed and two injured.

“These types of smears are contributing to our officers facing a 1000% increase in assaults against them,” she wrote.

An analysis of federal court filings for assault on a federal officer by Colorado Public Radio shows a sharp increase in charges in recent months. The data is far short of the scale suggested by officials.

The bigger picture

A version of the conflicts described at White Memorial is happening across the state and the country as hospitals are forced to contend with fallout from the Trump administration’s mass deportation program. Caught in the middle are doctors and other medical professionals who have a legal duty to provide medical care to patients and ethical concerns about policies they feel affect the traditional standards of care.

The five doctors who spoke with LAist say the conflicts are especially acute at White Memorial, a hospital whose patient and surrounding population is mostly Latino and where several doctors told LAist they’re seeing two to three detained patients per shift.

The situation also raises questions about medical privacy at a time when the federal government is seeking access to sensitive personal information, including medical information from both immigrants and U.S.-born citizens.

Lorenzo Antonio González is a physician who volunteers with Unión del Barrio, which patrols Boyle Heights and other neighborhoods to warn people about ICE raids. He does not work at White Memorial but is aware of the doctors’ concerns. He said he fears ICE’s frequent presence at the hospital will further the chilling effect already causing many Boyle Heights neighbors — where more than 80% of households speak Spanish and a quarter of residents are noncitizens — to forgo medical care and avoid leaving their homes. González called White Memorial’s alleged behavior “an  erosion of trust within this pillar of a community.”

Anti-ICE protestors march out of Mariachi Plaza during the 'Reclaim Our Streets" event in the Boyle Heights neighborhood on July 1, 2025.

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How we got here

As immigration raids ramped up in Los Angeles this year, some detainees have needed urgent medical care, either because they were injured while being detained, had a pre-existing illness, or because they became ill while being held at the downtown immigration facility.

Some of these incidents became headlines. In July, a Salvadoran woman was brought to Glendale Memorial Hospital with injuries suffered during a raid. In that case, camera crews descended on the hospital as activists protested the presence of ICE agents in the public lobby.

Meanwhile, White Memorial stayed out of the news. In June, a hospital leader sent an email to colleagues, flagging several incidents involving immigration detainees, including one in which agents remained in the room with a detained patient during the patient’s entire stay at the hospital. The email also noted that agents told doctors they could not call the patient’s family members when the patient couldn’t remember her medications, according to the email and doctors who spoke with LAist.

Doctors at White Memorial and other hospitals told LAist it’s not typical for law enforcement officers to remain in the room during patient care, even with criminal detainees, unless there’s a serious security risk. People in ICE custody are civil, not criminal detainees. Doctors also told LAist it’s common practice to call family members, with a patient’s permission, to inquire about their medical history and current medications.

So the doctors at White Memorial pressed hospital administrators for a clear policy and legal guidance on how to balance ICE agent demands with the hospital’s responsibilities for patient care.

The answer that came back from hospital administrators: defer to the agents.

Hospital leaders told doctors — both verbally, doctors say, and in writing in several emails reviewed by LAist — that immigration agents are allowed to be present at all times, even during discussions about a patient’s sensitive medical information. Doctors also were told they could not call a detained patient’s family member without an agent’s permission. In one email to subordinates, a hospital leader told White Memorial staff that doing so could be a “security risk.”

“That’s like encouraging medical negligence,” one White Memorial doctor told LAist in response to this guidance.

At least one doctor told LAist they are defying hospital leaders’ guidance, deferring instead to their medical duty to the patient and to follow medical privacy laws.

“There’s no way you can get me to not call a patient’s family if they’re hurt and need support,” the doctor said.

Why detainee care is under scrutiny

The concerns about White Memorial come at a time when the care of people in ICE custody is under scrutiny. In August, a man was severely injured while being detained at a car wash in Carson. Agents brought him to Harbor-UCLA medical center for treatment and remained by his bed, to which the man was cuffed, for over a month, according to a recent court ruling. He was never charged with violating any immigration laws, and in October, a federal judge ordered the agents monitoring him to leave the man’s hospital room and remove restrictions on the man’s “ability to make telephone calls to family and friends and to confer confidentially with counsel outside the presence of ICE agents.”

X'tiosu is located on the corner of Wabash and Forest avenues in Boyle Heights

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Concerns about the medical care of detainees also extends to formal ICE detention centers. In September, Ismael Ayala-Uribe, a Westminster man who was being held at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, became the 17th person to die in ICE custody this year. Last year, 12 people died in ICE custody, according to agency statistics.

Ayala-Uribe, 39, was a former DACA recipient who supporters say had lived in the country since he was 4 years old. He was picked up in an ICE raid in Fountain Valley in August and sent to Adelanto. From there, a medical provider at the detention facility sent Ayala-Uribe to a nearby hospital, where he was evaluated for an abscess, scheduled for surgery and sent back to the facility. He died in custody the following day.

Earlier this year, as immigration raids ramped up, the advocacy group Disability Rights California interviewed 18 people detained at the Adelanto ICE facility. In a subsequent report, the group concluded that "due to the surging numbers of people at Adelanto, conditions appear to have quickly deteriorated.” The report claimed detainees faced "inadequate access to medical treatment, such as life-saving medication and wound care and exposure to widespread respiratory illnesses."

In response to LAist’s emailed questions about medical care for ICE detainees, McLaughlin, the ICE spokesperson, said detainees received “medical, dental and mental health intake screening within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility, a full health assessment within 14 days of entering ICE custody or arrival at a facility and access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care. This is the best healthcare … many aliens have received in their entire lives," she wrote.

McLaughlin did not respond to LAist’s follow-up email asking her to specifically respond to questions about hospital care for detainees outside of detention centers or to questions about the availability of health care at the B-18 processing center, which unlike the Adelanto facility, is not an official detention center.

In a recent, ongoing lawsuit over the L.A. immigration raids, the ACLU and other groups called out alleged unsanitary conditions and a lack of medical care at B-18.

“Individuals with conditions that require consistent medications and treatment are not given any medical attention, even when that information is brought to the attention of the officers on duty,” reads the initial complaint, filed in July.

One doctor at White Memorial told LAist she had called ICE supervisors at the holding center on several occasions to inquire about follow-up care for patients and was told there were no doctors at the facility and there was no way to obtain medication.

What this all means for detainees — and doctors

Other groups have tried to bring attention to the problems associated with immigration agents in hospital settings. The Committee of Interns and Residents, which is is part of the Service Employees International Union, publicly denounced the presence of ICE agents at University of California hospitals in July, saying it creates “an unsafe environment that … directly contradicts our mission to provide safe, effective and quality healthcare to every member of our community.”

Mahima Iyengar, a doctor at L.A. General hospital and secretary-treasurer of the committee, told LAist that having a law enforcement officer present during doctor-patient conversations can compromise care.

“There's that level of trust that people have with their doctor that they don't necessarily have when somebody else is listening,” Iyengar told LAist. “Your doctor is then not getting as much information as they need, and that information … very well could be what helps them come up with a diagnosis or what helps them decide what treatment [the patient] is going to be on.”

Iyengar said doctors also are unlikely to feel comfortable asking a patient important non-medical questions when an ICE agent is present.

“A lot of what determines our patients' health are all of these social determinants, like where they're living, how they're getting to the hospital, if they have money, if they have kids that need childcare right now while they're hospitalized,” she said. “All of those questions are important questions to ask that I would not personally feel comfortable asking if an officer was standing right there.”

McLaughlin, the ICE spokesperson, did not respond to LAist’s specific questions about whether the agency recognizes detained patients’ privacy rights at hospitals.

What do legal experts say?

Last December, California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued “guidance and model policies” for health care facilities in responding to the anticipated increase in immigration enforcement. The guidance is not mandatory for private hospitals, like White Memorial, but all health care facilities were “encouraged to adopt” model policies. Doctors who spoke with LAist said they had read the guidance and felt beholden to it.

The document states that:

• State and federal medical privacy laws apply to all patients “regardless of immigration status.” 
• Health care facility staff “should identify circumstances in which granting immigration enforcement officers access to patients may interfere with physicians’ duty to provide competent medical care, to safeguard patient confidences and privacy, and to otherwise prioritize their obligations to their patients”; and
• Facilities “should educate patients about their privacy rights and reassure them that their healthcare information is protected by federal and state laws.”

A spokesperson for Bonta told LAist the attorney general could not comment on whether the office had received complaints about ICE privacy breaches in health care settings because they are confidential.

“We continue to monitor compliance with all state and federal laws,” the spokesperson said in an email.

LAist also asked two health care legal experts about White Memorial’s direction to staff to allow ICE agents to be present during patient exams and bar calls to detained patients’ family members. Both said the guidance could violate medical privacy laws and ethical standards.

“From a patient safety perspective, it certainly raises red flags,” said Paul Schmeltzer, an L.A.-based health care and data privacy lawyer, referring especially to the prohibition on calling a detained patient’s family member. Schmeltzer also said letting an ICE agent remain next to a patient throughout their hospital stay without the patient’s consent is likely illegal. Patient privacy is protected under the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, and California’s Confidentiality of Medical Information Act. Both generally prohibit doctors and hospitals from disclosing a patient’s medical information without their permission or a search warrant or other court order.

Schmeltzer said he saw “no permissible situation” under these laws for “disclosing” a detained patient’s hospital treatment to an ICE agent.

“The fact that an ICE agent is present in the room while this patient is receiving treatment, that's a disclosure,” he said.

Deven McGraw, chief regulatory and privacy officer for the company Citizen Health,  a patient data platform, agreed.

“ You're basically saying, ‘Yeah, patient, you don't have a choice but to disclose your medical information to this law enforcement official,'” she said.

McGraw was in charge of enforcing HIPAA at the federal Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights from 2015 to 2017. She said there are personal and public health reasons for shielding a patient’s medical information from law enforcement. For example, a patient might hide that they have a communicable disease out of fear they’ll be targeted or isolated.

“ We're supposed to treat people,” McGraw said. “The failure to treat them has potential consequences for their own health, plus the health of others.”

Schmeltzer and McGraw both said the administration at White Memorial might be making a calculated decision when weighing the hospital’s potential liability for violating the privacy rights of immigration detainees versus angering the Trump administration. Only the federal government and state attorneys general can prosecute a hospital for violating HIPAA, Schmeltzer and McGraw noted. 

Some of the behavior described by doctors could be prohibited under a new state law, enacted in September as an “urgency” measure. The law requires health care facilities to ban immigration agents from entering non-public areas without a valid warrant and to advise staff on how to respond to agents’ requests for entry.

Even before the law, groups like the Committee of Interns and Residents had begun to train colleagues on the privacy rights of detained patients and how to handle ICE agents. Iyengar said doctors at L.A. General, for example, distribute “Know Your Rights” cards to immigrant patients and hospital employees are instructed to immediately call hospital directors if immigration agents appear.

“ Even just if there is an ICE officer in the hospital, that will put people off from visiting a loved one, or if word gets out, the community finds out, and they don't want come to that hospital,” she said. “So, it's just an unsafe environment to have an ICE officer in a hospital, especially [a hospital] that's serving mostly immigrants.”

LAist’s Ted Rohrlich also contributed to this story.

Think of pretty much any country, and you can likely find its cuisine in Los Angeles. But when we saw that Belgium was lined up to play Iran on Sunday, June 21, at SoFi Stadium, it gave us pause. Is there a Belgian restaurant in L.A.?

It turns out the answer is complicated. Liège waffles — the dense, caramelized, pearl-sugar version of the Belgian classic — have a real foothold here, with spots like Belgium Waffle Haus in the San Fernando Valley. There's also FRitēS-FReaK, an Orange County food truck devoted entirely to Belgian-style double-fried fries, piled high with toppings like fried egg and bacon.

But a full Belgian dining experience, the kind with mussels and frites and a wall of Trappist beers, is harder to come by. For that, you'll need to drive about 40 miles south down the coast, where Brussels Bistro — with locations in San Clemente and Laguna Beach — pays homage to the cuisine of the distinct but tiny country that's the size of Maryland.

Walk into the San Clemente location, and a marquee above the bar spells out a kind of Belgian shorthand — WE ♥ BELGIUM, CROQUETTES, WAFFLE, FRITES — more mood than menu. Near the entrance, a replica of the Manneken-Pis — one of Belgium's best-known symbols, the naked young boy happily urinating into a basin — sits on a shelf dressed in the Belgian national team jersey, an American flag planted beside him.

Chef-owner Thomas Crijns came from Ottignies, outside Brussels, in the early 2000s to consult on the Laguna Beach location — and never left. He runs the restaurant alongside his wife Carol, who is French-born with Persian heritage, a combination that will make the June 21 match particularly interesting in their household. When asked to describe the food of his home country, Crijns quickly quips: "Belgian cuisine is like French cuisine but with less pretension."

A World Cup match plays above the bar at Brussels Bistro, alongside a deep list of Belgian beers including Chimay, Duvel and Kasteel.

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The menu reads like a love letter to Belgian culinary tradition — mussels, waffles, and carbonnade à la flamande, a Flemish stew made with beer and mustard — alongside a draft list that includes Chimay, Duvel, Rochefort and Delirium Tremens.

But the dish Crijns is most proud of is one most Americans have never heard of. The shrimp croquette is a staple of Belgian brasserie culture, made here with North Sea shrimp — what he calls "the caviar of the North Sea" — flown in every Thursday from a Dutch supplier.

Four golden, breaded croquettes arranged on a white plate over a bed of fried parsley, with a lemon wedge and a dollop of sauce on top of one croquette.

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The croquettes arrived four to a plate, golden and perfectly formed, the exterior giving way to a creamy molten interior where the tiny shrimp created a texture unlike anything I'd had before — something close to squid, but more delicate. The kind of dish that makes more sense with a Belgian beer in hand and a side of frites within reach. The match, though, is a more complicated proposition in the Crijns household.

A taste of Belgium, one tap at a time, at Brussels Bistro in San Clemente.

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Carol would know better than most. Her uncle runs a Persian restaurant in Irvine, part of an Orange County Iranian community of nearly 37,000 — a concentration that rivals many a concentration that rivals many larger cities

On June 21, she expects fans from both sides to fill the restaurant.

"I'm gonna do everything I can to bring as many family members," she said. "To tease my husband as much as I can."

"I'm grateful that the tournament allows us to put aside our differences and bring people together."

Coming from almost anyone else, that might sound like a talking point. Coming from a French-Persian woman married to a Belgian chef, watching Iran play Belgium at their own restaurant — it sounds like something she's earned the right to say.

For the Iranian diaspora in Los Angeles, the feelings around Iran's World Cup participation have been complicated. Monday's game between Iran and New Zealand ended in a 2-2 draw at SoFi Stadium. Now, Iran prepares to face Belgium at the same stadium on Sunday in a match that continues to carry weight well beyond the scoreline.

For Sahar Shomali, who owns Kouzeh, an Iranian bakery located in the Miracle Mile neighborhood, those feelings live somewhere between the oven and the morning news.

Kouzeh takes its name from the Farsi word for a clay jar. A small row of them sits on the bakery case that greets customers when they walk in. On the wall above, a laminated National Geographic map of Iran hangs alongside a small illustration featuring an Iranian saying: "What comes out of the vessel is whatever's inside it."

Sahar Shomali didn't plan for the name and the saying to connect. She just liked the way Kouzeh sounded.

Barbari is one of Iran's most beloved breads — a long, oval flatbread with a golden, slightly crisp crust and a soft, chewy interior. It’s as common in Tehran as a baguette is in Paris. And for Shomali, it was the one thing she couldn't stop thinking about after she left and arrived in the U.S.

A selection of breads at Kouzeh, including barbari (far left), kelaneh (the folded triangle), and several sweet breads tied to specific Iranian provinces.

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Growing up, she lived a 10-minute walk from a barbari bakery, and her father would go every morning before breakfast, coming home with two pieces still hot from the oven. There is a running understanding among Iranians, she said, that you never make it home with the bread whole. Someone always tears off a piece on the walk back.

Kouzeh, an Iranian bakery on Wilshire Boulevard in Mid-Wilshire, opened earlier this year.

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"I really missed that," she said. "Especially the barbari. That was my thing."

When she got to Los Angeles, she went looking for a replacement— and found Persian bakeries making barbari that were, to her, not the real thing. So she did what she calls the opposite: went to culinary school, and spent years moving as far from Iranian cuisine as possible, taking every Californian and French restaurant job she could find.

"So that I could just learn everything that I didn't know," she said.

It worked. In 2018 she left her last pastry chef job and applied everything she'd learned to make barbari. Once she felt she’d cracked it, Kouzeh followed.

Shomali doesn't just stick to barbari. She offers 25 very different breads, some sweet, some savory, each tied to a specific Iranian province. Standouts include kelaneh, a savory Kurdish flatbread with an herb filling — scallion, parsley, cilantro — pillowy soft with a slight char, somewhere between a flour tortilla and a scallion pancake. The kakouli bakhtiyari, made with grape molasses and flavored with fennel and fenugreek seeds, walks the line between sweet and savory. And eashly koukah, a festive bread from Tabriz filled with ginger and turmeric paste, rounds out a case that spans nearly the full breadth of the country.

The bakery case at Kouzeh, where each bread and pastry is labeled with its city or province of origin.

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None of the breads come from family recipes — Shomali built each one through research, conversations with friends, a single bread book her cousin sent from Iran, and a culinary background that lets her reverse-engineer a recipe from a description alone. The shelves lining the walls tell a similar story: Saba Jams, small-batch preserves made by a childhood friend now based in San Francisco; torshi from Nicole's Kitchen; goods from ZoZo Baking — all Iranian women food makers in California that Shomali sought out personally.

"I called them all up," she said. "I said, I have shelves, and I want Persian goods on those shelves."

While having little interest in sports or the World Cup, Shomali's heart lies with her home country. Every morning, before the bread goes in, she checks the news from Iran — a ritual her customers share.

Even mid-rush, Sahar Shomali makes time for the regulars who keep coming back.

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"We stress about it together, we grieve about it together. But people still show up and buy bread."

It's not lost on her, the duality of how she and her community feel torn between the country they adopted and the one they came from.

"Both of my countries are at war," she said. "I can't take sides in either one."

The Los Angeles City Council has approved a ballot proposal for November that would allow non-citizens to vote in council and school board elections.

The proposal, if approved by voters, could lay the groundwork for dramatically changing the electorate in Los Angeles. There are approximately 1.3 million to 1.4 million non-citizen residents living in the city, according to Data USA, making up nearly 36% of the city's population.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez championed the proposal, saying non-citizen residents have just as much of a stake in L.A. as citizens do.

“These are people who live here, they pay their taxes here, they raise their families here. And they are directly affected by the decisions we make every single day,” Soto-Martinez told the council. “They deserve to have a voice.”

The City Council voted 10-5 on Wednesday to place the charter change on the Nov. 3 ballot.

Councilmember John Lee voted no, expressing concerns about the cost of having non-citizens vote and the logistics of determining who is eligible. For example, how long would someone have to have lived in L.A. to vote?

“Those decisions will inevitably be viewed by some as benefitting allies or harming opponents even if that was not the actual intent,” Lee said. “The perception alone can undermine public confidence in our elections.”

Councilmember Imelda Padilla said she had another concern: “I am very nervous this could potentially create a disincentive to become a legal citizen.”

Soto-Martinez assured his colleague that the details of any plan to have non-citizens vote would be worked out in ordinances later. For now, he said, he wanted to send a message.

“I want this to be a way to show the world that Los Angeles is going the opposite direction of the federal government,” Soto-Martinez said. “While they are trying to take away people’s rights, we’re expanding it.”

The measure was one of several charter changes approved for the ballot.

The council is also placing before voters a plan to dramatically increase funding for the city’s beleaguered Department of Recreation and Parks. For years, the department has faced deep staffing cuts and struggled with aging facilities.

Under the proposal, parks funding would double over the next decade.

A coalition of parks advocates had sought the increase and many spoke to the council Wednesday.

“We need more green space and parks to have family gatherings,” said Ana Nieves of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust.

Councilmember Bob Blumenfield was the lone no vote on the measure. He said mandating an increase in funding for parks means there’ll have to be cuts elsewhere in the budget in the future.

“So don’t pat yourselves when you have an easy vote because it's out of context,” Blumenfield told his colleagues.

Voters in November will also be asked to expand the power of the City Council over the police department, including the ability to direct policy. Right now, a five-member civilian police commission appointed by the mayor has sole responsibility for setting policy.

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said the measure is needed because the commission has failed to reign in the police department on issues like pretextual stops. That’s when an officer uses a minor traffic violation as the reason to stop — and sometimes harass — a person.

“In some neighborhoods, policing is still like the 1990s,” Hernandez said. “It might not be happening like that in all parts of the city, but I can point to where it's happening in my district.”

Under the proposal, the council would be prohibited from getting involved in individual investigations or discipline.

Still, Lee warned the measure would lead to City Council meddling in the police department.

“Colleagues, I warn you against doing this,” he said. “Citizens oversight was put in place exactly to keep us out of politicizing the LAPD.”

The council approved a series of other proposed charter changes for the November ballot, ranging from increasing fines for ethics violations to establishing a director of public works.

The council rejected a number of other proposed charter changes, referring them instead to a City Council committee. They included a proposal to expand the City Council from 15 to 25 members and one to switch elections to ranked choice voting, saying the ideas needed more study.

The story first appeared on The LA Local.

Inglewood and L.A. Metro released a statement Wednesday after at least two videos went viral this week showing locals being blocked from their neighborhoods because of the World Cup events at SoFi Stadium.

One TikTok video, which received 1.4 million views and more than 92,000 likes, appears to show an officer telling a group of people in a car they cannot park on the street near their home. In an Instagram reel which received 221,000 likes, another officer tells drivers to turn around despite them heading home. 

“The City wants residents to know that denying access to homes has never been and will never be part of Inglewood’s traffic management plan for FIFA World Cup matches or any other event,” read the traffic update from Inglewood Mayor James Butts, which was posted on Instagram.

“Ensuring residents can safely access their homes and maintain a high quality of life during major events remains a top priority,” the statement read. 

In the same post, Metro L.A. released a statement explaining that they requested assistance from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department to support bus movement out of the area, but did not call for “complete street closures.” Metro and Inglewood are coordinating a plan to better mitigate traffic around the stadium, according to the statement.  

This comes as hundreds of thousands of people descend upon Inglewood and L.A. for the World Cup. Traffic and parking remain a concern for locals, especially in light of other upcoming mega-events like the Super Bowl in 2027 and 2028 Olympics. 

Both videos caused widespread outrage because of officers’ treatment of locals. 

In the TikTok video, an officer told the group he doesn’t care that they live close — despite one person in the group saying one of the passengers has mobility issues — and that they have two options: Find parking on the street and get their car later or wait in their car until the event ends. Text over the video mentions that the traffic is due to “the FIFA event at the SoFi Stadium.” 

The officers also say they’ll leave during the video, however the passenger wrote that the officers were in front of their home from 7 to 10 p.m.  

Several comments are calling for the drivers to file a complaint with the Inglewood officials. 

In the Instagram reel, the person filming from the backseat repeatedly tells the officers that they live in the building across the street, however the officers shuts them down. 

Text over the video also explains that this occurred during the World Cup at SoFi.  

Like the comments under the TikTok post, viewers are calling for the drivers to sue Inglewood. 

Two comments under each of the videos mentions how other cities with stadium events give residents alternative parking options and routes to take home.