The Brief

As people who had left Islam to convert to Christianity, America offered Liam Azizi and wife Hananeh Alikaram a safe space to practice their faith, making their treacherous journey across 11 countries from Iran to the US-Mexico border worth it.

But now they’re caught in the cross hairs of a Trump administration that’s willing to break couples and families up.

Leaving Islam in Iran is a crime, but only Azizi was offered asylum and has since settled in Sun Valley. Now, with Alikaram’s request for asylum denied, she’s being held in Louisiana awaiting deportation back to Iran, where she faces prosecution.

“ I was in the home church, because in Iran you cannot go to the church directly. It's forbidden for people, ordinary people,” Azizi told LAist. “ Some neighbor called the police or force and they came to our house and they captured us. They beat me.”

Liam Azizi and Hananeh Alikaram.

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Courtesy Liam Azizi

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LAist has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment, but did not immediately hear back.

Paulina Reyes-Perrariz, managing attorney with Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said when a family seeks asylum, their cases are typically connected. But with the current administration, she said we are seeing enforcement of family separation policies.

“ This speaks a lot on how the system is broken, how there is no full and fair asylum hearings all the time,” Reyes-Perrariz said. “If the family is separated, they're not able to call on them as a witness or they're not able to relay their story that can help their family member.”

The first Trump tenure was marked by children separated from their parents at the border. In the second term, she said, there has been “a biased enforcement” of separating children from parents for some nationalities.

“ What we need now is comprehensive immigration reform. What we're seeing is like this family where the system is working against them,” she said. “Someone that has been fleeing persecution was able to show that they do meet the standard as an asylee because of their harm suffered in their home country. How is it that one person was able to show that and their family member wasn't?”

Liam Azizi and Hananeh Alikaram.

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Courtesy Liam Azizi

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Azizi ran a website where people could connect with prayer services in Iran, but that was shut down. Alikaram used to post YouTube videos, but because she didn’t have a headscarf on, the government shut it down. Now, the couple have a pending court case in Iran because they converted to Christianity. Azizi is worried that if Alikaram is deported, she could be killed.

The young couple’s case is playing out against the backdrop of an immigration crackdown, driven by promises President Donald Trump made on the campaign trail. And in Iran, spurred by rising inflation after sanctions were reimposed by the United Nations, thousands of people have been protesting the current regime for weeks. Outside observers say hundreds of people have been killed, sparking international condemnation.

“ This is one of those situations where both the left and the right should be supportive,” said Kevin Kang,  pastor at Tujunga United Methodist Church and Crescenta Valley United Methodist Church and a member of CLUE or Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice.

Fleeing religious persecution 

Kang said he has encountered a handful of Iranians who have fled religious persecution in Iran and are seeking a safe haven in the U.S.

His church is currently providing shelter, converting a room to house refugees who fled Iran and were in the midst of their asylum journeys when they were detained by ICE agents, meaning - they had to restart their cases.

 ”So, you know, it's not just people getting detained at the border. It's people who legitimately got approved for asylum and then ICE decided to take them anyway,” Kang said.

The current crackdown on immigration, he said, is not just about closing the borders, “it’s about race and tribalism.”

Some of the refugees from Iran have spoken out to church members sharing the horrific journeys they had to endure to come to America, navigating forests in Panama and the drug cartels in Mexico.

“Some of our members who did vote for Trump because of the border issue, they even flipped where they were like, ‘I'm so sorry. I didn't realize how hard it is to get into our country like this, and how unjust the system is,’” Kang said.

For Azizi, the journey started in Brazil.

“ We could have been killed on that journey because it was full of cartels, full of danger. I saw a dead body in a Panama jungle in the Darien Gap,” he said.

The Darien Gap is a 60-mile pathless hike through dense rainforest and the only overland passage between South and Central America.

And now, that journey could have been futile for Alikaram as she awaits her fate in Louisiana.

“It's so, so hard and it's heartbreaking,” Azizi said. “For a 32-year-old man, it's very difficult to cry every night. But I'm crying.”

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power officials said crews made significant progress overnight to repair a rupture in a 100-year-old water main in West Hollywood that caused a massive sink hole and severe flooding in the area on Thursday.

Repairs included cutting and removing a 25-foot-long section of the broken pipe and putting a replacement in place.

LADWP officials said the pipe will be repressurized, checked for leaks, and tested for regulatory compliance. It will need to be refilled before street paving.

The department doesn't have a specific completion date for the fix.

Sunset Boulevard between Sherbourne Drive and San Vicente Boulevard is still closed to traffic. Nearby streets have limited access, including at Cynthia and San Vicente, for public safety.

A map of road closures provided by LADWP as of July 18.

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Courtesy LADWP

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Where things stand for local businesses

Dialog Cafe on Holloway Drive said on Instagram on Thursday that the cafe sustained significant damage and didn't know when it can reopen.

And Book Soup reported on social media Saturday that they remained closed. The said they hope to reopen within a few days, noting the "the neighborhood remains inaccessible except to residents."

Republicans are leaning into immigration enforcement as one of their top campaign issues this midterm cycle — despite a rocky start to the year for messaging on the president's top policy.

An NPR analysis of advertisement data from the firm AdImpact shows that when it comes to immigration, Republicans are spending more money and running more ads than Democrats are. The data set includes ads purchased from January through June, before immigration enforcement officers shot and killed people in Maine and Texas this month.

These political ads offer one indication of where each party sees its momentum going with voters, as candidates across the country gear up for the general election in November. The data suggests Republicans see immigration as a winning issue: Since the start of the year, Republicans and their supporting organizations have run nearly 300 ads nationwide that either include a mention of immigration or are solely about immigration. This compares to 62 ads from Democrats and their supporting organizations.

"Republicans stood up for Americans. Democrats sat down for illegals. Thomas Massie sides with these radical-left lunatics," reads one ad funded by the MAGA KY PAC, a political action committee that was set up to defeat Republican Rep. Thomas Massie in the primary. The ad cost over $831,000; Massie, a frequent critic of President Trump, went on to lose his race to Trump-endorsed candidate Ed Gallrein.

Among the most expensive was a $928,000 ad buy in the Michigan governor's race.

"No greater example of waste, fraud, and abuse in Michigan than using our tax dollars to give benefits to illegal immigrants. As governor, I'll be incredibly supportive of ICE coming here and removing these fraudsters," says Republican candidate Perry Johnson, who calls himself a "MAGA Conservative" and has pitched his business approach to running a state.

Immigration was a winning issue for Republicans in the 2024 elections, with themes like increasing border security and reducing crime.

"Campaigns are not trying to change minds. They're trying to shape what the election's about. They're trying to energize the voters they already have," said Cameron Shelton, a professor of political economy at Claremont McKenna College. "If Republicans are investing much more heavily in immigration advertising, one interpretation is that they believe immigration is exactly that kind of [mobilizing] issue in today's electorate."

Immigration and enforcement are among the top issues for both parties

Most of the ads have run during the primary season, which is now more than half over. Since more than 90% of seats up for grabs in gubernatorial, House and Senate races are considered safe for one party or another, the primary campaign has become decisive for many candidates nationwide.

Some Democrats became more vocal on the issue of immigration at the start of 2026, particularly in states that were seeing intense waves of enforcement. Democrats in New Jersey, Illinois and Minnesota, for example, referenced the administration's tactics in their calls to "abolish ICE," or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and argued the administration had gone too far.

The Illinois Future PAC ran two ads, each worth more than $800,000, earlier this year to support Juliana Stratton's stance on abolishing ICE. The current lieutenant governor later won the Illinois Democratic primary for Senate.

But months into the year, Democrats have prioritized other topics, often to differentiate themselves from members of their own party, like on healthcare, while Republicans are keeping immigration-related themes on Americans' screens.

During the primary season, Shelton said, campaigns are testing out the issues they think might matter through the general election.

For both parties, "Donald Trump" is the top subject in TV ad buys, according to data from AdImpact. "Immigration" is the issue with the second-highest spending for Republicans; for Democrats, "ICE" is the third-highest, after "healthcare."

"It's a signal to donors, it's a signal to activists, to interest groups, to local candidates. It helps coordinate a lot of the actors that we think of as the party," Shelton said. "That's another reason why some of these early ads are interesting, because they are signals of the direction that is trying to be set out."

Republicans link top issues to immigration

Between January and June, Republicans outspent Democrats on immigration-related political advertising by about $36 million. Republican ads focused on immigration, which total $53 million in spending, have aired across the country in 88 races and 27 states. Ads for Democratic candidates, which total $17 million, have run in 20 races and 11 states, primarily those that have seen increased immigration enforcement action like California, New York and Illinois.

"Republican candidates have a large menu of issues we are on the right side of that are all very popular amongst voters," said Mike Marinella, national press secretary at the National Republican Congressional Committee. He listed the border, crime and the economy as issues that Republican candidates can connect to immigration.

"Immigration intersects with each of them," he said. "The most effective message depends on the district and how those issues are affecting that particular community," he added.

Zach Lahn, who won the GOP primary bid for Iowa governor, spent about $475,000 on an ad in May that vowed to ban H-1B visa holders from being hired by Iowa government agencies and universities, linking immigration and economic concerns.

Crossings at the border have plummeted since Trump took office. Marinella said candidates are still keeping the issue of border security top of mind for their voters.

A majority of the ads promoting Republican candidates include keywords such as "securing the border" and discuss border wall funding and crime. Some also go a step further to talk about specific proposals supported by the administration, such as limiting commercial driver's licenses and supporting the SAVE America Act, which would require stricter proof of citizenship to vote.

For example, in Florida's 19th congressional district, Jim Oberweis, one of several candidates vying for the GOP seat, spent $880,000 on seven ads that advocated for ending birthright citizenship.

Democrats lean into pro-immigration statements

Ads promoting Democratic candidates, on the other hand, shy away from specific policy proposals. Instead, they include criticism of incumbents for recent votes on bills that have provided funding to immigration officers or expanded the scope of who could be detained. Others focus on personal connections to immigration, proposals to limit enforcement and general pro-immigrant statements.

"Democrats are finding their voice on immigration after a rough few years during the Biden administration," said Frank Sharry, senior fellow at Third Way, a centrist think tank. "I don't think they'll be running a bunch of ads on it. I do think they'll be speaking to the issue and winning the argument, which is more important than whether they run ads on it or not."

A poll from Gallup released in July shows that most Americans think immigration is a good thing, and a majority support some form of pathway to citizenship rather than a blanket deportation policy — though there are sharp differences by party. A majority of Republicans favor hiring more Border Patrol agents, deporting anyone without legal status and banning sanctuary cities.

Republican ads broadcast during Senate races in Ohio, Texas and Alaska and gubernatorial contests in New York and Iowa are already starting to target Democrats. Strategists said this trend suggests how each party may lean into immigration leading up to the November election. But they also caution against reading too much into advertisements to gauge party strategy.

"Back in the day, ads were king. Now you have so many diverse streams of information arriving to people on their phones that it's just not the same," Third Way's Sharry said, noting interviews, debates, and other forms of public statements aren't captured in the ad data.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Making daylight saving time permanent moved a step closer to reality this week, when the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to pass a measure to eliminate the annual clock-changing ritual.

But some Orthodox Jewish organizations are fighting to prevent the bill from becoming law.

The measure, called the Sunshine Protection Act, passed in a 308-117 vote in the House on Tuesday (July 14). It now heads to the Senate, where its passage is uncertain. President Donald Trump has championed the effort, describing on his Truth Social account moving the clocks forward and back as a "ridiculous, twice yearly production."

If passed, the bill would give Americans an extra hour of sunshine in the evenings during the winter. But it would also push winter sunrises one hour later. That's of concern to Orthodox Jews, who pray three times a day, beginning with the Shacharit morning prayer service, which by tradition cannot begin in the dark.

"The bottom line is, if prayers have to start an hour later that will have a direct effect on people getting to work and on when schools can start," said Rabbi A.D. Motzen, national director of government affairs for Agudath Israel of America, an organization representing U.S. Orthodox Jews.

A constellation of other Orthodox Jewish groups also opposes the measure, including the Orthodox Union and the Coalition for Jewish Values.

In Jewish law, some prayers, such as those in the morning service, can only be said communally, in a quorum of 10 Jewish adults, called a minyan. That requirement means going to synagogue every morning before heading out for work or school and saying prayers, such as the Shema, the central prayer of Jewish life, collectively. The morning service typically lasts 35 minutes but on some occasions can last close to an hour.

"It becomes a communal issue when, for example, a synagogue that has had a morning prayer service for 100 years suddenly does not have a quorum of 10 men who can show up at the prayer time close to 9 o'clock because they have jobs," Motzen said.

Motzen, who works in the Washington, D.C., office of Agudath Israel, said the organization already has the support of Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who last year objected to fast-tracking the bill.

Orthodox Jews make up only 9% of the estimated 5.8 million Jewish adults in the U.S., according to Pew Research Center. Larger Jewish groups have not publicly taken a position.

Congress has grappled with turning back the clocks many times. In 1974, it tried to abandon clock-switching, but repealed the law a few months later following public outcry. In 2022, the Senate unanimously passed a measure making daylight savings time permanent, but the bill died in the House.

Orthodox Jews are not the only constituencies opposed to the change. Some medical and health advocates argue that the human body's internal clock is better aligned with the sun during standard time rather than daylight saving time. School boards and parents are also concerned about children walking to school in pitch-black conditions during winter mornings.

That latter concern, which Motzen described as a safety issue, is one Orthodox Jews share as well.

Making daylight saving time permanent would make sunrise after 8 a.m. in most parts of the country, and after 9 a.m. in a few select places. For example, according to a list compiled by Agudath Israel, sunrise would take place after 9 a.m., (and as late as 9:13 a.m.) for 55 days a year in South Bend, Indiana. In Detroit, Michigan, sunrise would take place after 9 a.m. for 23 days a year.

Hawaii and most of Arizona abide by standard time year round, as do Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands.

This story was produced through a collaboration between NPR and Religion News Service.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Updated July 18, 2026 at 14:11 PM ET

After Medicaid officials improperly shared data about millions of people in January with immigration officials, ICE then shared that data with the data analytics firm Palantir, according to new court filings. Palantir operates an app called ELITE that is used by ICE agents to show the addresses of noncitizens who may be subject to deportation.

That revelation was made public in a motion filed Thursday by more than 20 Democratic attorneys general who sued the Trump administration last year over its data-sharing agreement between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and ICE.

Palantir said in a statement to NPR that the dataset in question had been purged.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in California ruled in December that health officials could share with ICE certain details from Medicaid data about immigrants without lawful status from the states that had sued, such as home addresses, dates of birth and immigration status.

Chhabria, who was appointed by former President Obama, then temporarily paused data sharing between CMS and ICE for immigration enforcement purposes in late May after federal officials admitted CMS had shared data with ICE in January that went beyond what the court order allowed. One dataset of refugees in Minnesota included U.S. citizens, and another that was transferred on Jan. 7 contained data of millions of people, including those in the country legally.

ICE was supposed to delete the improperly shared data. Chhabria set a hearing for August to further clarify his order and clear up ambiguity regarding which categories of noncitizens' data could be lawfully shared with ICE.

But in recent days, federal officials have admitted to additional instances of improper data sharing.

In a court filing last week, the Justice Department said that CMS again inadvertently reshared with ICE the dataset with millions of names that CMS had first improperly shared with ICE in January. The government said the error occurred during an effort to share data from states not involved in the lawsuit.

Alberto Briseno, a section chief for ICE's Homeland Security Investigations, wrote in a declaration that ICE personnel deleted the file after it was discovered and it was not used for law enforcement purposes.

Then Briseno revealed that a day later, the agency had done a broader search and discovered that half a dozen users still had a copy of the Jan. 7 dataset.

In that most recent declaration, Briseno said he was not aware of any additional copies of the dataset, but said the recent searches have "highlighted technological difficulties of making a representation that every possible variation of the file has been searched for and located." He added, "ICE will continue to make good faith efforts to delete any copies that may be found in the future."

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice is asking the judge to expand his order to allow ICE to receive data on a broader category of noncitizens – to potentially include all immigrants who are not legal permanent residents, citizens or have another form of permanent status.

"ICE's inability to identify Medicaid records in its possession undercuts any claim that the agency should be entitled to more access to that data," the Democratic attorneys generals wrote in their motion filed late Thursday.

Their motion continued, "Each successive revelation of a violation of the Order makes it more difficult for Plaintiff States to have confidence in Defendants' ability to maintain and secure this data in compliance with the Order, and more difficult for Plaintiff States to communicate assurances to Medicaid providers, enrollees (and their counsel), and the public at large about the privacy and confidentiality of their healthcare data."

Palantir provided the following statement to NPR: "Our customers control their own data and manage access to that data. When Palantir employees are granted access to a customer's dataset, it is solely to help integrate and analyze that data — which is what our software does — not to store it or use it for our own purposes. Palantir can confirm that the dataset in question was purged pursuant to government instruction."

DHS didn't immediately return a request for comment about its transfer of data to Palantir.

According to a declaration filed by California deputy attorney general Anna Rich, when plaintiffs asked what federal officials did to ensure Palantir and other contractors had purged the data, defendants responded that the data had been shared over a Microsoft Teams chat and the shared data was deleted from the chat. Rich shared in her declaration a document turned over in discovery from federal officials that shows a redacted transcript of what appears to be ICE personnel asking Palantir to delete the file.

In an April 30 hearing, Chhabria had warned the federal government would not be able to continue using Medicaid data for deportation efforts if it continued improperly sharing the data of citizens and legal immigrants.

"If the federal government cannot be sufficiently careful then it can't use the information, ok?" Chhabria had said.

Copyright 2026 NPR