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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Mario Tama

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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.

Dennis Block, a prominent Los Angeles lawyer who once boasted about filing thousands of evictions every year, is facing new disciplinary charges from the California State Bar.

Some of the allegations stem from a case LAist covered in 2023, in which Block submitted a filing in eviction court that cited non-existent case law.

Block didn’t appear in court to explain how the brief was created. But legal experts told LAist at the time that the document appeared to have been generated by artificial intelligence, which is known to produce faulty information.

The charges filed last Thursday build on previous charges filed against Block late last year. The new charges allege that by submitting the filing, Block “failed to perform with diligence” and “committed acts involving moral turpitude, dishonesty, and corruption.”

If the charges against Block are proven, the State Bar proceedings could lead to him facing suspension or — in the most serious outcome — disbarment.

Block referred LAist to his attorney for comment on the charges, but they didn’t respond for this story.

The backstory on a ‘fabricated’ court filing

Over the course of nearly 50 years as an attorney, Block established his eponymous firm as a go-to resource for L.A. landlords seeking to evict their tenants. But recent actions by the State Bar have called into question his treatment of clients.

In December, the bar filed a series of disciplinary charges against Block, alleging he wrongly collected “non-refundable” fees, failed to account for client charges and didn’t return property in a timely manner after a client fired him.

Last week, the State Bar filed a new round of charges. Some are similar to the previous allegations. But two of the new counts relate to the 2023 filing, which led to $999 in court sanctions against Block’s firm.

A judge at the time said the filing contained “an entire body of law that was fabricated.”

Lydia Nicholson, the attorney who was defending the tenant involved in the underlying eviction case, said the charges against Block are appropriate.

“Tenants are already so vulnerable in these court cases,” said Nicholson, who works with the Los Angeles Center for Community Law and Action. “And to have that added step of basically just trying to lie to win is even worse.”

The dangers of using AI in court

Ari Waldman, a UC Irvine School of Law professor, said AI tools can be helpful for gathering background information about particular areas of law. But he said lawyers who use the technology to draft and file briefs without critically assessing the results should be disbarred.

Reacting to the new charges against Block, Waldman said, “No responsible lawyer should ever use AI to replace critical thinking, analysis and basic research.”

Daniel Yukelson, executive director of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles, a landlord advocacy group, defended Block. In an email to LAist, he said the disciplinary charges are still only allegations — not proven facts.

“Mr. Block has shown himself to be very knowledgeable of rental housing regulations and he is a wonderful educator and presenter on the complicated regulations our members are forced to comply with,” Yukelson said.

During the 2023 sanctions hearing, an attorney from Block’s firm blamed a recently hired lawyer for producing the fabricated filing. He said she no longer worked at the firm.

But by signing the filing himself, Block vouched for its accuracy to the court, according to the State Bar.

Since the 2023 case, Block has dabbled in other uses of AI. During his regular YouTube briefings for landlords, he has often included imagery that appeared to have been created with AI tools.

He opened one 2025 video with a dance pop song titled, “The Tenant From Hell.” He described it as an “original song by Dennis Block, with a lot of help from artificial intelligence.”

As allegations of sexual abuse of minors by farmworker labor legend César Chávez become public, local officials are sharing their shock at the news.

L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn said in a statement she was horrified to learn of sexual abuse detailed in a New York Times report published Wednesday.

“For those of us who grew up admiring the farmworker movement, today’s news is heartbreaking. But as in any other civil rights movement, men were only half the story,” she wrote. “The abuses of one man will never diminish the extraordinary sacrifices, accomplishments, and legacy of the women of the farmworker movement. It’s time we put them first.”

Hahn is calling for L.A. County to change its March 31 public holiday named in honor of Chávez to “Farmworker Day.”

The New York Times reported allegations that Chávez abused girls for years. In an interview included in the report, Dolores Huerta, Chávez's United Farm Workers co-founder, says he sexually assaulted her in 1966, and years earlier had pressured her to have sex on a work trip.

Meanwhile, Mayor Karen Bass said: “I am keeping Dolores Huerta, Ana Murguia, and Debra Rojas in my heart, and I honor their strength and that of every woman and girl horrifically harmed by those in power.

“The sickening reality is that what Dolores, Ana, and Debra endured is not isolated, nor is it of the past. Real progress requires more than moments of reckoning – it demands sustained action to dismantle social, cultural, economic, and political structures that have hurt women throughout our history."

Nonprofit California Rising is also advocating for Cesar Chavez Avenue to be officially named Dolores Huerta Avenue, saying "public spaces must reflect values that honor and protect communities."

"Deeply troubling and sickening"

L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez said in a statement that while the news is devastating, it’s important to be honest about history in the fight for justice.

“Today is a reminder that movements must extend beyond their leaders and be grounded in their missions, and it is our collective responsibility to foster environments that protect the vulnerable, challenge silence, and uphold the safety and humanity of all,” she said.

In Orange County, Anaheim City Council member Natalie Rubalcava said "We do not diminish the movement by telling the truth — we strengthen it. We honor it more fully when we recognize all those who contributed to it and ensure that our values today reflect both justice and compassion.

For too long, we have placed icons on pedestals without fully reckoning with their failings and any harm they may have caused."

Rep. Luz Rivas, who represents the Northeastern San Fernando Valley, said the allegations are "deeply troubling and sickening".

In a statement, she said, "I absolutely condemn these actions and commend the bravery of those who came forward to share their stories, including Dolores Huerta. They deserve to be heard and supported.

“Today’s reporting is painful for generations of us who grew up knowing Cesar Chavez as a household name and learning about his contributions to the labor movement. However, we must acknowledge that a person’s legacy does not excuse the harm they caused or overshadow the trauma victims have carried for decades."

This is a developing story and will be updated.

In a step backward for transparency, the Los Angeles Police Department has delayed its release of previously-available crime data for more than a year.

Multiple organizations have requested the data after the LAPD stopped regularly releasing the detailed location of most L.A. crimes and the department’s online crime map quietly went dark in early 2025.

Court records and email correspondence shared with LAist show that SpotCrime, a crime mapping and alert provider, filed one of the first public records requests for the unpublished data in February 2025. LAist and nonprofit research organization RAND also submitted separate requests in the following months.

None of the organizations have received that data, despite public records requests and a lawsuit filed by SpotCrime asking a court to order its release.

According to court documents, SpotCrime alleges the LAPD has wrongfully withheld the crime data and engaged in an “unlawful pattern of delaying tactics” to prevent the release of public records.

LAist reached out to the LAPD for comment, but did not receive a response as of the time of publication. Court documents show the department has denied all claims of wrongdoing.

Why the records matter

The LAPD changed how it reports crime data on the city’s open data portal in early 2025 to no longer include location information down to the city block where crimes were reported.

Roland Neil from RAND said this kind of block-level data is very important for criminal justice researchers.

“ One thing, which is a major focus of the discipline of criminology over the past two decades, especially, is the fact that most crime tends to concentrate in a very small part of the city," Neil said.

He said that just 5% of what researchers call “micro places” — like city blocks or intersections — can account for half a city’s crime. Neil said that makes the block-level data critical when it comes to understanding exactly where crime is happening and determining what could be done to intervene.

The LAPD stopped providing this block-level data when it transitioned to the federally-mandated National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS.

Neil said local law enforcement agencies across California saw disruptions over the past few years as they each moved over to the new system, but some police departments were able to keep providing regular, detailed location data as they did before the switch.

San Francisco transitioned to the new system at about the same time as L.A., Neil said, and he can now search that city’s public website for information on crimes that happened just the day before with location data down to the nearest street intersection.

Meanwhile, RAND is still waiting for the LAPD to release its block-level data from months prior.

Jason Ward, director of the RAND Housing Center, told LAist he filed a records request for those records last October.

“They’re not saying no,” Ward said, “they’re just taking a very long time.”

Ward said he understands that the LAPD has limited resources to work on records requests, but he questions why the department would risk being seen as less transparent by allowing a delay in the release of information that used to be readily available.

He said he just wants the LAPD to continue providing what they had already been releasing for years: “accurate, geolocated crime data.”

This data isn’t just important for researchers.

Paul Nicholas Boylan is an attorney representing SpotCrime in the company’s lawsuit against the LAPD. He told LAist there are few things he believes to be as important to the public interest as crime data.

“It allows the public to decide whether they live in a safe space,” he said. “It allows them to determine whether or not law enforcement is doing a good or bad job.”

Why LAPD says the data hasn’t been released

Boylan said he has practiced First Amendment law for decades, but has never seen another case where an agency has taken so long to release public data without providing substantial justification for the delay.

The LAPD told SpotCrime in August that the records were unavailable, according to court documents and email correspondence reviewed by LAist — but not because the department didn’t have them.

“The data is not user-ready simply because that the raw data needs additional processing,” the department wrote to SpotCrime. The LAPD message also said the data would be published on the open data portal “as soon as practical.”

Seven months later, the data has not been released and Boylan is skeptical of the department’s argument.

Other agencies like the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department made the same transition to NIBRS, he said, but no other agency has taken as long to solve this problem.

He said there could be legitimate reasons any additional data processing has taken more than a year, but that it could also be due to incompetence or an attempt to hide information that could reflect poorly on the department.

SpotCrime has also argued that they never requested “user-ready” data, according to court records and emails reviewed by LAist. The company told the LAPD their request was for raw data, and additional processing they did not ask for was “not a valid reason for denying access.”

LAist was given a different explanation for why the records could not immediately be released.

The department initially denied LAist’s May 2025 request for detailed crime data in October, claiming the data in its raw form is exempt from disclosure because it “has the potential to lead to misguided public policy discussions or unjustified public panic.”

David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, told LAist at the time that he had never heard of such an argument. He said if taken seriously, it would “destroy” the entire California Public Records Act.

The LAPD has not directly responded to LAist’s request for clarification on the claim that the data is exempt for such a reason, but appears to have abandoned the argument. The department told LAist on March 11 that “the Department continues to repair, sanitize, and review” crime and arrest data that may be released.

Boylan said he expects more answers to come out in court.

Whatever the LAPD claims is the reason for the delay, he said, “they're going to have to prove it.”

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 own regulations, 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 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 this 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 September 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 are summoned to reunite with their kids, only to be arrested, or even 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.

ORR regulations also state 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.”

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.”

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.