The Brief

Last year, the virtual book club at the Huntington Beach Public Library voted to read and discuss the humorous novel The Guncle during its May 2025 meeting. The book, published in 2021, is about a gay former sit-com star who suddenly finds himself the primary caretaker of his niece and nephew.

Then, just a month before the book club meeting, library staff were told to remove the book from the club’s discussion calendar, according to several sources. An LAist review of the book club’s calendar and library newsletters confirm the switch.

Some library supporters suspect the book was removed because it has a gay protagonist. It’s one of several indications, they say, of what’s sometimes called “soft” or “quiet” censorship.

“Any time that you restrict access or create an impediment to access, it's a form of soft censorship,” said Sam Helmick, president of the American Library Association.

The Guncle incident is also an indication that the book battles that have divided this historically conservative beach town are far from over — despite a special election last month in which voters rebuked the City Council’s conservative agenda for the public library system. The continued controversies over Huntington Beach’s libraries has put the city at the forefront of the so-called culture war battles taking place across the country.

“In reality, there's a lot of things going on still, even since the election, that we're concerned about,” said Carol Daus, a volunteer and former board member of the group Friends of the Huntington Beach Public Library, “certain areas that, again, could be involving book censorship.” These include:

• Conservative activists filing formal requests for library book reviews, effectively taking books off the shelf, potentially for months.
• The continued exile — to an isolated shelf in the city’s main library — of some books about puberty and sexuality that used to be available in the children’s section.
• The city’s still-existing resolution that restricts minors’ access to books deemed to have “sexual content,” a term that is debated.

Daus told LAist she asked a city official with library oversight about the removal of The Guncle from the virtual book club list earlier this year and was told it was necessary “to lower the temperature” ahead of the special election. One of two measures on the ballot asked voters if they wanted to repeal a board of residents with the power to decide which children’s books are appropriate for the library.

Corbin Carson, a city spokesperson, said staffers could not comment on the decision to remove the novel from the club’s reading list or otherwise comment for this story because of a pending lawsuit from several Huntington Beach residents and civil rights organizations, including the ACLU. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Aug. 22.

What happened after the special election?

In the June special election, a solid majority of Huntington Beach voters rejected the city’s efforts to exert greater control over the content and management of the libraries. Just over 58% voted to repeal the library review board. And an even greater margin, nearly 61%, voted to restrict the city’s ability to privatize the libraries.

The proudly all-MAGA City Council quietly accepted the results of the election at its meeting earlier this month. “The people have spoken,” Councilman Chad Williams, who campaigned against the ballot measures, said in a phone interview. He said the point of the book review committee was to give the community more say over which books are selected for the library.

But as of Friday morning, more than a month after the election, the city’s website had yet to be updated to fully reflect the election results. The review board is still listed on the city’s website as one of the official advisory bodies, and it has yet to be removed from the city’s municipal code, as called for in the ballot measure.

Plus, the library’s website still links to a collection development policy — guidelines to help librarians select and maintain library materials — that cites the powers of the repealed “Community Parent/Guardian Review Board” and contradicts the new selection policy adopted by voters in the special election. Although, as of last week, the website now notes that pursuant to the results of the election, the city is “reviewing the Collection Development Policy.”

“ I think it's just a matter of time,” Williams said. “It's all going to be codified.”

Librarians at the Huntington Beach Central Library review books in the children's section on Feb. 7, 2024.

(

Jill Replogle

/

LAist

)

What's in the restricted books section?

The City Council’s establishment of the book review committee, by way of a resolution passed in 2023, was just one part of its efforts to restrict access for minors to certain library materials. The resolution also states: “No city library or other city facility shall allow children ready access to books and other materials that contain any content of a sexual nature.” The question of what that means is very much alive.

The issue will be discussed when Judge Lindsey Martinez hears oral arguments in the lawsuit that seeks to overturn the sexual content resolution. The plaintiffs argue the resolution violates California’s Freedom to Read Act. The law, which went into effect in January, was squarely aimed at Huntington Beach. The city argues that it’s not subject to the law because it’s a charter city, which gives it more independence from the state.

Currently, the central library maintains a shelf labeled “Youth Restricted Books Section” for books that librarians have moved out of the children’s section under an evolving set of criteria intended to comply with the sexual content restrictions. The mostly empty shelf sits between an art gallery and a study area. Minors are not allowed to check out the books without a parent’s consent.

The library posted its most recent list of books restricted to that shelf in December 2024. The list has seven titles, including It’s So Amazing! A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families, first published in 1999, and It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health, first published in 1994.

A recent visit by LAist found just two books on the restricted shelf, It’s Perfectly Normal and The Care and Keeping of You, a book published by the American Girl doll company. The latter is not on the library’s list of books with restricted access under the youth sexual content resolution, raising questions as to how and why it was on the restricted shelf.

Why challenged books are unavailable books

Other books considered inappropriate by some City Council members and conservative activists have been completely removed from shelves while librarians review them. The review policy, which has existed for years, allows library patrons to lodge complaints about books and ask that they be recatalogued or removed altogether.

Until recently, librarians had only received official complaints about a handful of books. But in recent years, dozens of complaints have been lodged, including from City Councilmember Gracey Van Der Mark and Carla Strickland, president of the group Huntington Beach Republican Women and the wife of Tony Strickland, a state senator and former mayor. Van Der Mark and Carla Strickland did not respond to repeated requests from LAist for interviews for this story.

In a social media post following the special election, the Huntington Beach Republican Women vowed to “never give up this fight to keep our children safe from sexualized content, both in our HB libraries and schools.” The group wrote that its members had challenged more than 40 books that “have no business being in our taxpayer funded libraries.”

The challenges alarmed library advocates, who filed a public records request for related documents, which they shared with LAist. Some of the challenged books are frequent targets by conservative activists across the country, including the young adult books This One Summer and Flamer, both coming-of-age books with LGBTQ protagonists.

Other challenges to books catalogued as children’s books included:

• Making a Baby, billed as answering the classic question “Where did I come from?” 
• Pride Puppy! an ABC book in which a family’s dog gets lost at a Pride parade.
• The Big Bath House, a picture book about Japanese bath house culture.
• The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish, written by Lil Miss Hot Mess, the founder of Drag Queen Story Hour. 

On the library complaint form about The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish, the complainant, whose name was redacted, wrote that the book's “content is gender confusing.” The complainant also wrote that the book had “sexually explicit” content. LAist reviewed the children’s picture book and found no sex, kissing or nudity.

The person who filed a complaint about The Big Bath House wrote that the content included “sexual and obscene themes.” The complaint included drawings from the book depicting naked women at a communal bath with penciled pubic hair and sketched outlines of breasts.

Another of the complaints was about an adult book, Call Me By Your Name, about a love affair between two men. Adult books catalogued as such are not subject to the city’s sexual content restrictions for minors.

At least one copy of each challenged book, including Call Me by Your Name, is currently unavailable for check out at the central library while the books undergo evaluation. Those evaluations could take up to a year, according to the library’s collection development policy.

“ We see that as making books inaccessible to readers who want to read them,” said Daus, from Friends of the Huntington Beach Public Library.

Khloe Rios-Wyatt, chief executive of the group Alianza Translatinx, one of the groups suing the city over the sexual content restrictions, told LAist the actions of city leaders and their allies are “a direct attack on LGBTQ people's ability to access library resources that are self-affirming.”

The unexpected reach of censorship

Proponents of Huntington Beach’s book restriction efforts have said their goal is to protect children from age-inappropriate sexual content. When asked whether those efforts constitute censorship, Williams, a City Council member, said, “ I think that we all believe in censorship to some degree. And I guess the question is, where's that threshold?”

Williams cited the book Let’s Talk About It: The Teen's Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human as one of the books he thinks should not be available to minors without parental permission. The book, which the library catalogues as young adult nonfiction, contains a discussion about pornography and advice on how to explore it ethically, including that you should pay for it.

“ I think that [voters] weren't aware that that's one of the things that they were voting on,” Williams said. He said if his critics feel like restricting access to a book “that instructs its readers, minors, to go and watch porn and pay for porn, if they think that that's censorship … I guess that's on them. I guess that's on each individual community member.”

Ada Palmer, a University of Chicago professor who studies the history of censorship, said the goals and effects of censorship go well beyond the obvious target. “What they're going for is the chilling effect, side effect of censorship,” she said.

For example, “if you have a big, scary, public ceremonial book burning of Harry Potter books … a nearby school librarian will be more conservative with what she orders for the school library. A young writer will be more conservative with what she puts in her book if she wants to get published, right? It makes other people self-censor,” Palmer said.

Another potential effect in Huntington Beach: Nearly a dozen librarians and other library staff members have left their jobs since the book controversies started. One librarian was let go days after the June special election, despite being promoted in January.

“Everybody who I know who left, left because of the City Council and the resolution,” said Melissa Ronning, the former principal librarian and one of the first to announce her resignation. (She did so at the public podium during a contentious City Council meeting about the library.)

A local lawsuit, a national debate

Versions of Huntington Beach’s book battles are taking place across the country. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a group of Maryland parents who sought to excuse their children from class during discussions of books featuring LGBTQ+ themes and characters, citing religious beliefs. One of the much-discussed books throughout the case was Pride Puppy!

There’s evidence that conservative national leaders want to elevate Huntington Beach’s library debate to a bigger platform. Last week, a nonprofit law firm co-founded by Stephen Miller, a top White House aide to President Donald Trump, signed on to defend Huntington Beach against the lawsuit that seeks to block the city’s library book restrictions. It’s a high-profile ally for a city that has emerged as a conservative darling in the so-called culture wars.

Helmick, from the American Library Association, said librarians have a duty to provide a wide variety of material for all sectors of the population. “It is the responsibility of credentialed library staff to offer a wide and robust collection of information for the community to pursue,” Helmick said, and to let people “make their own determinations” about what books to read or not read.

Otherwise, Helmick said, “I am afraid we will have a generation that is afraid to think and afraid to reason on their own.”

Erik and Lyle Menendez may get another chance at parole — and a bit sooner than expected.

The brothers were convicted of murder for the August 1989 shotgun killings of their parents in their Beverly Hills home. They’ve been held in prison for more than three decades.

On Monday, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation revealed the brothers had been granted a parole suitability hearing tentatively scheduled for March 2027. Previously, the state had determined they would not get another parole hearing until August 2028.

The Menendez family issued a statement Monday, expressing appreciation to the Parole Board for recognizing the brothers’ efforts to change themselves and help others in prison.

“For almost 40 years, Erik and Lyle have worked to take responsibility for their actions, confront and heal from the unimaginable abuse and trauma they endured, grow as individuals, and dedicate themselves to serving others,” the statement read.

It continued: “Through efforts such as helping to establish a hospice program and creating Green Space, they have sought to build an environment that reminds people serving life sentences that their lives still have meaning and that, regardless of their circumstances, they can choose each day to grow, heal, accept accountability, and contribute something of value to the world around them.”

Background

Erik Menendez was 18 years old at the time of the murders. He’s now 55.

Lyle Menendez is now 58. He was 21 in 1989.

The brothers were tried twice in the 1990s in connection with the killings of their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez. The brothers claimed they were sexually abused by their father, a wealthy business and former music executive, and that their mother had been complicit.

The first trial ended in a hung jury and a mistrial.

The defense argued that the brothers believed their lives were in danger at the time of the killings, and that their actions were not murder but imperfect self defense, meaning they genuinely believed the danger was imminent even if they were wrong.

In the second trial, the sexual abuse evidence was limited, and the jury reached a verdict.

The brothers were sentenced to life in prison without parole.

A chance at parole

After they spent decades in prison, the brothers' asked the court for a hearing that would give them a chance at getting out. A judge later resentenced each of them to 50 years to life, making them eligible for parole.

Last August, the brothers were denied parole for three years.

Parole commissioners said they took into account the brothers’ positive actions while in prison as well as their ages at the time of their crimes. But the commissioners also found each sibling would still pose a danger to the public if released, despite their efforts at rehabilitation.

It’s not clear why parole authorities moved up the brothers’ tentative parole suitability hearing date, but family members said they were grateful.

The family said in the statement that the move brings them “one step closer to a future with [the brothers] that once seemed impossible.”

Tropical Storm Marie dumped around an inch of rain in the Southern California region over the Labor Day weekend. Forecasters say we might see minimal rain on Tuesday in the region, and temperatures are expected to rise for a hot and humid week ahead.

Coastal flood and high surf advisories are in effect for Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange and San Diego counties until Tuesday 11 p.m.

Officials with the National Weather Service warned beachgoers that there was an increased risk of drowning in the ocean.

“Rip currents will be widespread and very strong, potentially pulling swimmers and surfers out to sea,” the advisory read.

They also advised beachgoers to remain out of the water or, if they do go in, to stay near occupied lifeguard towers and away from rock jetties.

Effects of Marie

Southern California felt the effects of the tropical storm on Sunday particularly along the coast. In Long Beach, one person was injured after being hit by a piece of plywood while prepping their home for the storm.

Long Beach Fire Department Capt. Jack Crabtree told LAist that 12 garages and two homes in the city flooded. City lifeguards and Fire Department personnel rescued three surfers, he said.

Waves pushed Long Beach’s water taxi, the Aqua Link, into the Alamitos Jetty. The Fire Department’s Marine Safety Division pushed it back onto the water, Crabtree said.

In Newport Beach, Adam Yacenda, lifeguard battalion chief for the Fire Department in Newport Beach, told LAist the department had conducted 187 rescues over the weekend as of Monday morning.

The majority of those rescues — 177 — happened Saturday.

Even so, he said, “the rain was a nice reprieve,” from most long weekends, when the department is usually much busier. He said many people stayed away from the beaches. The red flag surf warnings were also a deterrent.

Because of the high surf advisory, Yacenda advised beachgoers to stay out of the water through Tuesday. But for those who plan to get into the water anyway, he recommended speaking with a lifeguard who can provide advice on some locations that are safer than others.

Further south in San Clemente, high surf damaged the Metrolink Pacific Surfliner track. Service was paused from the Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo station in Orange County to the Oceanside stop in San Diego County while crews made emergency repairs.

Two beach parking lots are closed in Seal Beach because of flooding concerns.

What’s ahead

Rose Schoenfeld, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, told LAist there is a small chance of thunderstorms Monday and Tuesday afternoon.

 ”We're not completely out of the woods for any precipitation, but should be much more isolated, generally more minimal,” she said.

Schoenfeld said she expects a warming trend to start Monday and continue through the week.

 ”By Wednesday when temperatures will be peaking, we're looking at temperatures even at the coast, 90s to maybe around 106,” she said. “That's pretty warm.

"And then if you add on top of that the tropical humidity that we still will have lingering in the area, we're looking at a pretty significant heat event, especially for those near the coast without air conditioning,” she continued.

Because of the humidity, low temperatures later in the day won’t be as cooling as they would be otherwise.

A federal judge in Los Angeles is weighing whether to place new restrictions on immigration agents arresting people without warrants — a decision that could shape enforcement across Southern California. That decision, expected any day, echoes a fight already playing out in the Central Valley, where farmworkers had won a court order that shielded them for more than a year.

On Aug. 24, a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel put that Central Valley injunction on hold.

That order had blocked Border Patrol from the race-based stops and warrantless arrests that swept through Bakersfield in January 2025, when agents fanned out through farm towns as part of "Operation Return to Sender."

For Rosa, a 37-year-old farmworker from Oaxaca, Mexico, news of the raids arrived by text message. She was working a grape field near Bakersfield on Jan. 8, 2025, when word spread that immigration agents were sweeping the town. Her son was at school. She remembers wanting to go to her son and fear freezing her and other parents in place.

"We just wanted to reunite with them and know they were OK," Rosa said in Spanish.

She said her son called her asking if she was OK and he warned her: "... things are happening. The school has started telling the kids that [immigration agents are] everywhere, and I want you to take care of yourself.'"

What happened in Bakersfield matters in Los Angeles now because the same tactics — and some of the same lawyers — are at the center of the case pending before U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong. United Farm Workers and the American Civil Liberties Union, who won the Central Valley injunction, are also representing plaintiffs in the L.A. case.

What happened in Bakersfield

“Operation Return to Sender” took place before the new Trump administration even began, and it set the tone for immigration enforcement actions to come. Around 60 Border Patrol agents moved into the Central Valley in a show of force. After the three-day operation, Department of Homeland Security officials issued a statement claiming to have arrested 78 people.

Of those arrested, all but one person had no criminal history, according to court documents filed in the case.

In a Facebook post, Border Patrol called the operation an “overwhelming success.” Federal officials made statements signaling the agency intended to return to Bakersfield and deploy the same tactics throughout California.

Lawyers representing several people caught up in the raids and the United Farm Workers called the operation disruptive and unlawful.

In a lawsuit in February 2025, they asked the courts to put a stop to tactics used during “Operation Return to Sender” saying “agents indiscriminately arrested people…, including people with pending immigration applications, no criminal history, established residences in the community, steady employment, family in the United States, or other community ties mitigating any purported flight risk.”

They argued those tactics violated the Constitution, immigration law and the Department of Homeland Security’s stated policies.

The raids shook the Central Valley “to its core,” the plaintiffs argued. “Agricultural fields were deserted and school attendance dipped, as farmworkers and their families feared being profiled by Border Patrol Agents.”

In April 2025, District Court Judge Jennifer Thurston, who serves the Eastern District of California, made two key findings: that the plaintiffs were likely to win their case, and that the practices described in the lawsuit threatened irreparable harm to people living in the district. To stop that immediate harm, she issued a preliminary injunction barring Border Patrol from using those tactics there until the lawsuit could be resolved.

That order stood until the ruling late last month when, more than a year and four months after it was put in place, a panel of judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals put the injunction on hold. The federal government did not defend Border Patrol’s conduct in the Eastern District, but instead argued the plaintiffs’ allegations did not describe an imminent threat of harm, so they lacked standing to call for an injunction. The 9th Circuit said the lower court must now address the issue of standing.

The 9th Circuit’s decision strips the Eastern District of the injunction’s protections, but Mayra Joachin, an attorney with the ACLU of Southern California, said it does not give the government free rein.

“The order itself does not give Border Patrol any license to violate the Constitution or federal law,” Joachin said. “The government does nonetheless still need to comply with the law when conducting stops and arrests.”

The order also recognizes the lower court can issue new forms of relief in response to new allegations of harm, Joachin said. “We will be monitoring to see what happens, and we will be prepared to return to court in the event that we see any unlawful stops or arrests.”

LAist asked DHS officials about the stay and how that might change their enforcement actions in Bakersfield. We also asked whether they'd challenge a similar injunction in the L.A. region.

The emailed response did not directly address those questions but said:

“ICE has authority for lawful arrests where authorized under 8 USC 1357. Law enforcement officers use ‘reasonable suspicion’ to investigate immigration status and probable cause to make arrests consistent with the statute and the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court has already vindicated us on these practices.”

What this means for other litigation

Similar lawsuits to the one being fought out in Bakersfield have been filed in districts across the country, including one in the Central District of California which covers Los Angeles and parts of Southern California. U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong in Los Angeles is now considering issuing a preliminary injunction setting limits on immigration officers' practice of arresting someone without a warrant.

The case before Frimpong was brought in July 2025 by five people and three organizations: the Los Angeles Worker Center Network, United Farm Workers, and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. The plaintiffs quickly secured a temporary restraining order that same month that barred immigration agents from stopping people without reasonable suspicion that they were violating immigration law and from relying on their race, spoken language or occupation as a basis for the stops. The U.S. Supreme Court voted to stay that order in September 2025.

Joachin said the decision by the Supreme Court has, in part, led the court to speed up the discovery process, so the plaintiffs have been able to take depositions from federal immigration officials.

“Through those depositions, as well as other evidence that we’ve uncovered through the government, it has confirmed what we understood to be the nature of these operations,” Joachin said. “Which is that they are indeed unlawful, lacking any information about the person that they're stopping before they proceed to the stop, and also unlawful with regards to conducting arrests without warrants and any assessments of escape risk.”

Joachin and other attorneys on the case said they are hopeful Frimpong will issue an injunction regarding those warrantless arrests soon.

Fear spreads through the Central Valley

At the height of the raids in Bakersfield, Erika Navarrete, vice president of the United Farm Workers, said she heard stories of people across the Central Valley sleeping in fruit orchards to avoid contact with immigration authorities.

“People would speak in hushed tones — 'Don't be scared, come out, they're gone, they're gone,’” Navarrete told LAist in Spanish. “But many people didn't want to come out; they waited because they didn't trust the situation — they just didn't trust it.”

The lawsuit, which is ongoing, alleges Border Patrol agents subjected plaintiffs and people to three unlawful acts:

• Stops based on race and occupation, rather than grounded in evidence of legal status, which violates the Fourth Amendment protecting people from unreasonable search and seizure.
• Warrantless arrests conducted without an individualized determination that the person violated immigration law and was likely to escape before a warrant could be obtained, as required by immigration law.
• Coercing people to accept voluntary deportations without fully understanding their right to an immigration court hearing, which violates the Fifth Amendment protections of due process.

Those same tactics are described in the lawsuit against ICE and DHS in the Central District. UFW is also one of the plaintiff organizations in that lawsuit.

Navarrete said that fear lingered for months after the January raids, slowing work in the fields and disrupting daily life throughout the region.

“Our people didn't want to leave their homes; they didn't want to go to the store. I mean, they weren't living their daily lives,” she added.

Erika Navarrete, vice president of the UFW, has been helping farmworkers and their families deal with the raids' aftermath.

(

Julia Barajas

/

LAist

)

Navarrete said she still gets goosebumps when she thinks about how the raids impacted children in the area.

“If they saw any white van or white car . . . or vehicles that didn't have California license plates or whatever, they’d immediately ask, ‘Mom, is that la migra?’ Is la migra going to take us away?’"

Other kids would tell Navarrete they had a backpack ready so they could go with their parents if they were deported.

Preliminary injunction provides some relief

In issuing the now-on-hold injunction in April 2025, Judge Thurston wrote: “The evidence before the court is that Border Patrol agents under DHS authority engaged in conduct that violated well established constitutional rights.”

Despite public statements indicating they planned to come back to Bakersfield, Border Patrol never returned with the same kind of large-scale operation.

In July 2025, when Border Patrol agents staged a raid at a Home Depot in Sacramento, the government was required under the court order to provide documentation to the plaintiffs.

“Having carefully examined the entire record, including the recorded footage of the Sacramento action, the court finds that Defendants have again detained people without reasonable suspicion for doing so,” Thurston wrote in her order enforcing the preliminary injunction.

Federal agents submitted 11 forms, known as I-213s, documenting the circumstances of the arrests in Sacramento. Thurston determined that those forms “rely on unsupported assumptions, hunches and generalizations.”

During the proceedings, federal agents admitted to retroactively modifying at least two of the forms “to reflect descriptions of the circumstances that are flatly incorrect,” Thurston wrote in the order, which required immigration officials to improve the way they document arrests.

The “clear lesson,” according to Joachin, “is that injunctions work.”

“While one would expect federal agents to comply with the law, we know that they're not,” Joachin said. “When we see immigration agents asked to comply with the law, the number of stops and arrests significantly plummet.”

The injunction, while it was in place, didn’t completely ease the fears of community members. Immigration officials have continued to arrest people in the months since. But in small, important ways, it did provide a return to some kind of normalcy for the people in Bakersfield.

Leticia, who's been a farmworker for over two decades, takes a break with her daughter at a park in Bakersfield.

(

Jared Bennett

/

LAist

)

Leticia, a 40-year-old mother of four, said she stayed home from work from January until May.

Leticia has since returned to work harvesting carrots, a physically grueling job that requires her to be on her knees most of the day. She said that while parties were canceled last year, she now planned to celebrate a baptism with friends the weekend after speaking with LAist.

Where things stand in Los Angeles

In July 2025, attorneys representing five individuals and three organizations filed a lawsuit against the federal government in the Central District, which includes Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California, alleging a similar pattern to the raids seen in Bakersfield.

“The tactics challenged here — including widespread racial profiling, suspicion-less stops, and warrantless arrests without determination of flight risk — bear the unmistakable hallmarks of ‘Operation Return to Sender,’” the complaint states.

Lawyers representing plaintiffs in both cases say the issues in the case carry national implications.

While the case continues to move through the Eastern District, the court recently ordered the federal government to turn over documents showing national DHS policies that plaintiffs argue informed the raids in Bakersfield and, by extension, Los Angeles.

“We haven't seen what they've produced yet in response to that order,” said Bree Bernwanger, a lawyer with the ACLU who is representing plaintiffs in both cases. “We expect to see and be able to put into the record evidence of what we all know these agencies have been doing nationwide since the early raids in Bakersfield.”

In August, attorneys held a press conference ahead of a hearing for Vasquez Perdomo v. Mullin, the lawsuit filed in the Central District of California.

(

Jared Bennett

/

LAist

)

Similar to the situation in Bakersfield, high-profile confrontations with large groups of immigration agents have died down in Los Angeles, but Joachin, who is also representing the UFW in the Central District case, said officials are still arresting people using tactics that violate the law.

“There continue to be roving patrol operations,” Joachin said. “The only difference is that now they're stopping a fewer number of individuals, and they are still stopping individuals based on perceived characteristics of whom they presume to be undocumented.”

A masked man in plain clothes pointed a rifle at Rev. Tanya Lopez, the senior pastor at Downey Memorial Christian Church, when she witnessed an arrest in her parish’s parking lot last June.

Lopez said the threat of indiscriminate enforcement has spread fear throughout Los Angeles.

“It’s been so heavy,” Lopez said. “Whether or not you’re undocumented, these raids, these stops have been without a doubt conducted to racially profile people.”

Frimpong issued one preliminary injunction in the case in July 2025 barring immigration agents from stopping people without reasonable suspicion that they were violating immigration law, but the U.S. Supreme Court paused that order in September.

Frimpong is now considering issuing another injunction, this one aimed at curtailing warrantless arrests.

(Third from the right) Rev. Tanya Lopez participated in a rally outside a federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles.

(

Julia Barajas

/

LAist

)

Lopez said she is now, like many other people in Southern California, eagerly waiting on the judge’s decision. Earlier this summer, she attended a hearing in federal court, clad in a clerical collar and stole.

“While it doesn’t undo the harm and all of the trauma that’s already been inflicted, [the lawsuit] represents one step towards accountability and the long road towards justice,” she said.

“I think we’re learning that it’s up to us as people, right? We, the people, have to essentially hold agencies — our government, even law enforcement — accountable,” Lopez said. “It has impacts for all of us.”

Three years after Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaimed Imperial County's "Lithium Valley" to be a game-changer for California's economy and alternative energy transition, little has changed.

The southern end of the Salton Sea contains rich sources of lithium, a mineral used for electric car batteries, cellphones and other electronics. A few years ago California politicians raved about prospects for extracting the critical mineral from desert aquifers.

But lithium resources remain untapped, as plans to mine them falter amid legal challenges and funding problems.

The Hell's Kitchen project by Controlled Thermal Resources has been delayed by lawsuits arguing that the company neglected to address its environmental impacts. Last month an appeals court sent the environmental review back to Imperial County to correct deficiencies regarding water and air quality effects.

The appellate decision validates residents’ questions about the project, Luis Olmedo, executive director for one of the plaintiffs, Comite Civico del Valle, said in a statement to CalMatters.

“Do we have enough water to support these projects over the long term?” he wrote. “What happens to our communities if Colorado River supplies are reduced? And what happens to our air as less water reaches the Salton Sea? The Court of Appeal made clear that those questions deserve credible and well supported answers.”

Lauren Rose, communications officer for Controlled Thermal Resources, said the company is reviewing legal options and would not comment because of ongoing litigation. Two other lithium projects are in various stages of development, but none are near full operation.

Newsom’s office didn’t respond to CalMatters’ questions about lithium development, but referred them to the California Energy Commission.

“Though efforts to develop the resources have been slower than anticipated – largely due to global lithium markets and prices – progress is being made, with developers securing funding to advance projects,” said Niki Woodard, communications director for the commission.

Imperial County Supervisor Ryan Kelley said the setbacks aren’t surprising; lithium mining is technically tricky and procedures to extract it from thermal aquifers are new.

“It’s not an easy thing to work with,” he said. “It’s a hot resource with a lot of solids in it, and that’s why the lithium is there. So we’re still very optimistic and encouraged by the companies that are still proceeding.”

The buzz over Lithium Valley

In 2023, Newsom visited the Salton Sea to promote the region as a global center for lithium mining and battery production that would drive a worldwide transition to zero-emission vehicles.

“We’ve been all-in on Lithium Valley, building up a global hub for clean energy and making sure that local communities benefit from this once-in-a-generation opportunity,” he declared.

The Salton Sea is a hypersaline lake in an active volcanic zone that includes five small lava domes, boiling mud pots and underground reservoirs of hot, mineral rich water. Geothermal plants tower over the desert floor with arrays of tanks, pipes and cooling towers that turn steam from the thermal aquifers into electricity.

Those aquifers also contain the highest concentrations of lithium of any geothermal brine in the world, according to the California Energy Commission. The federal Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that there’s enough lithium to make 375 million batteries for electric vehicles, more than the number of cars on the road in the U.S. now.

Developers propose extracting lithium and other minerals such as zinc and manganese from the brine, through a closed loop system they promise will be cleaner and safer than hard rock mines in Australia and China, or evaporation ponds in South America.

For years California politicians were giddy about prospects for a domestic source of the key mineral. In 2021 the state convened the Lithium Valley Commission, which offered recommendations on mining and marketing the mineral, and addressed economic and environmental issues involved in its extraction.

In 2022 Newsom promoted the plan with former President Joe Biden, and directed more than $100 million toward research and development of lithium extraction.

Community groups raise concerns

As companies geared up to start lithium production, environmental advocates put the brakes on plans for Hell’s Kitchen, which would extract up to 300,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate per year and generate almost 50 megawatts of geothermal energy: enough to power tens of thousands of homes.

Comite Civico del Valle, a social justice organization, and Earthworks, an energy and mining watchdog group, challenged the Environmental Impact Report for the project in 2024. They argued that the company neglected potential problems with air quality, water use, hazardous materials and tribal cultural resources.

In January, 2025, a judge rejected their claim and gave Controlled Thermal Resources the go-ahead for Hell’s Kitchen, ruling that the company had met legal requirements for environmental review. Rodney Colwell, CEO of Controlled Thermal Resources, told CalMatters at that time that he expected to start construction shortly, but said the lawsuit put the project at risk and disrupted its financing, setting it back a year or more.

In August an appeals court reversed parts of that decision. It ruled that the project’s environmental documents don’t prove that the Imperial Irrigation District can supply water to the project for 50 years, nor account for possible cuts to Colorado River water supplies.

It also found that the environmental review didn’t address how water use could affect air quality by drying out the Salton Sea lakebed. The court kicked the environmental review back to Imperial County, ordering it to remedy those deficiencies.

“What we see is a big win for the people and environment of Imperial County,” said Jared Naimark, western senior mining manager at Earthworks.

He said the appeals court vindicated complaints that the project didn’t clearly identify its water source.

“They can't just say, we'll figure that out later,” Naimark said. “They need to show their work on where that water is going to come from now, and analyze the impacts of it.”

How lithium development affects people in Imperial County

Although the appellate court concluded that the company properly consulted with local tribal representatives, they want more of a say. Kwaaymii tribal elder Carmen Lucas is calling for protection of key sites, including mudpots that tribes consider the heartbeat of Mother Earth.

“From the beginning I have made it clear that I’m not opposed to development,” she said. “I am asking that it be done in a balanced way.”

She’s pushing to place the Salton Sea area known as the Southeast Lake Cahuilla Active Volcanic Cultural District on the National Historic Register. While that designation doesn’t necessarily limit development, it would affirm the region’s value.

“It’s clear to me that Washington is looking at California’s desert as a wasteland,” Lucas said. “There's a beauty in the desert, and it opens the door for creativity and imagination.”

The county is reviewing the appellate ruling and deciding its next steps, Bari Bean, the assistant executive officer for Imperial County, wrote in a statement to CalMatters.

In the meantime workers who trained for jobs in the upcoming lithium industry are sidelined, as facilities where they hoped to work are stalled.

San Diego State University opened an $80 million STEM facility in Imperial County to train workers to “reap the benefits of the ‘white gold,’” SDSU president Adela de la Torre wrote in CalMatters. “But unless progress in Lithium Valley accelerates rapidly, these students will graduate into an empty local job market,” she warned.

Last year the Trump administration slashed federal clean energy commitments and Congress eliminated federal tax credits for electric cars, leaving lithium development uncertain.

And the Imperial County Board of Supervisors adopted a controversial plan for splitting up lithium tax revenue that reserves most of the money for the county, while dividing remaining funds between local cities based on size, instead of how close they’ll be to lithium facilities.

What happens next?

Despite legal delays, the Hell’s Kitchen project has plodded forward with some notable changes to its business strategy. Last year the Army Corps of Engineers extended permitting deadlines for the project under a designation called FAST-41.

Then in January Controlled Thermal Resources announced a new venture to supply geothermal power for data centers, signalling that it may be shifting its focus from lithium mining to powering artificial intelligence.

Shortly after that it merged with a U.S. firm, Plum Acquisition Corp. to become a publicly traded company and accelerate the first phase of construction for Hell’s Kitchen.

Two other projects are also in the works. Berkshire Hathaway’s CalEnergy operates 10 existing geothermal plants at the Salton Sea and recently completed a pilot of direct lithium extraction, then converted it into battery-grade lithium compounds, Christina Fleming, senior vice president at Berkshire Hathaway Energy Renewables, told CalMatters in a statement.

It plans to launch a demonstration plant in Calipatria by the end of the year and operate it through 2027. Then it will decide whether to build a full-scale commercial project, which could produce 90,000 metric tons of lithium per year: enough for 11 million EV batteries.

A third company, EnergySource Minerals, has permits for a lithium facility called Project ATLiS in the Imperial Valley. Company officials didn’t provide a timeline for the project, but said it’s moving ahead and could bring millions of dollars in tax revenue and hundreds of construction and operations jobs.

“We are actively engaged with all stakeholders to move this project forward as quickly as possible,” said CEO Eric Spomer.

Imperial County aims to streamline and standardize lithium development by creating a Lithium Valley Specific Plan and Program Environmental Impact Report, which would establish a planning and environmental framework for future development.

“I wish we had something of the commodity being produced today, but if it’s going to be produced in the years to come, that’s a good thing,” Kelly said. “And it will be done in accordance with all of the rules and regulations of the state of California, which are not as easy as other states and other regions of the world.”

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