The Brief

The aftermath of last summer’s militarized mass deportation campaign still reverberates in many of L.A. County’s Latino business corridors, this according to a UCLA report published on Wednesday.

The report, rooted in quantitative data and conversations with entrepreneurs countywide, was conducted by UCLA’s nonpartisan Latino Policy and Politics Institute and Inclusive Action for the City, a nonprofit based in Boyle Heights.

The participants include people who run restaurants, bakeries, hair salons, childcare centers, auto repair shops, furniture stores and other brick-and-mortar businesses. Most are located in neighborhoods that were most targeted by federal immigration agents. 

In the summer of 2025, L.A. County became the focal point of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. Federal immigration agents carried out operations at commercial corridors that serve as important economic hubs for Latino communities, as well as in residential areas and public spaces. Amid roving patrols and large-scale raids, the federal government deployed thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines to support these efforts, further militarizing the region.

The institute's report found that, since then, many entrepreneurs are still struggling to keep their businesses open. Some have taken on debt and made other sacrifices to stay afloat.

Amada Armenta, one of the lead researchers and director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute, underscored that the consequences of the raids go beyond economics.

In April, she and her colleagues conducted a series of focus groups for the report. And, “without fail,” Armenta added, at least one participant would end up in tears.

The entrepreneurs cried about the effects the raids had on their businesses, she said. They also cried about the toll they took on their health and on their families.

How the researchers calculated economic loss  

First, the researchers identified nine places that were subject to enforcement actions, with the goal of sampling a wide breadth of neighborhoods across L.A. County. Ultimately, they landed on businesses in:

1. Cypress Park
2. the Fashion District
3. Huntington Park
4. Pacoima
5. Paramount
6. Whittier
7. Ladera Heights
8. the Warehouse District 
9. Westlake

The researchers identified 989 businesses within that half a mile by measuring cellphone data near raids.

After that, “we looked to see how many cell phones visited those businesses in the two weeks after a raid happened, compared to the two weeks before,” Armenta told LAist.

That’s how the researchers determined that, after last summer’s raids, the businesses had 46,000 fewer visits. Then, the researchers estimated the lost revenue. In the two weeks after the raids, they calculated a loss of $3.16 million.

The price of chronic fear and distress 

To learn more about how businesses in those areas have fared since last summer, the research team conducted surveys and focus groups with 75 entrepreneurs.

The participants, Armenta said, shared “stories of tremendous hardship,” describing chronic fear and psychological distress.

In the surveys, the entrepreneurs repeatedly described a sustained sense of fear, anxiety, depression and hypervigilance. The entrepreneurs continue to limit their movement outside work and home; carry identification documents when they leave the house; monitor community reports of federal agent activity; and develop contingency plans for themselves, their families and their employees.

For many, dreams of expansion are gone. The entrepreneurs described having to lay off some of their employees, taking on more hours themselves and consolidating locales.

The stress of mounting bills has also taken a physical toll on the participants. One store owner described relapsing into alcohol use after maintaining sobriety. She attributed the relapse to prolonged feelings of helplessness and loss of control. Another business owner said the stress of seeing her family’s savings dry up caused her so much stress her face became paralyzed.

“We thought this was an important part of the story,” Armenta said. “There's been a couple of other reports that have come out about the way that the raids impact L.A.'s economy or businesses, but none of it has documented [their] effect on entrepreneurs.”

“And when we think about Latinos, particularly, they didn't just experience this as an attack on their businesses,” she added. “They experienced it as an attack on their communities, on their families, on themselves.”

In a follow up email, Armenta said specific policy recommendations are forthcoming. For now, she and her colleagues hope the report will inspire readers to support local vendors and businesses.

She said the public can use the report to not only strengthen policies that reduce the negative impacts of ICE on small businesses, but also "strengthen the groups and civic infrastructure that serve impacted businesses and communities," she wrote.

Disclosure: Julia Barajas is a part-time graduate student at UCLA Law.

At Chopin Noodle House in Monterey Park's Atlantic Times Square, the dining room is small. But there's still room for a baby grand piano.

If you’re lucky, you might catch owner Zi Yang playing for customers as they work through bowls of Lanzhou beef noodle soup. A few feet away, cooks pull a fresh batch of noodles by hand, made to each diner’s preferred thickness.

The traditional beef noodle soup at Chopin Noodle House in Monterey Park comes with clear broth, chili oil, sliced beef, leeks, and cilantro.

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Gab Chabrán

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LAist

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Noodles are pulled by hand to order at Chopin Noodle House.

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Gab Chabrán

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LAist

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Pianists turned chefs 

Yang and his wife, Mimi Song, are both former piano teachers who met through music.

After moving from China to the U.S., they hoped to make a living teaching piano, but it didn’t pay the bills. So they turned to another love: noodles.

Co-founders Mimi Song (left) and Zi Yang, both former piano teachers, have grown Chopin Noodle House to five locations.

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Courtesy Chopin Noodle House

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The couple opened the first Chopin Noodle House in Catonsville, Maryland, in 2023. They later expanded to Southern California, starting in Chino, and opened in Monterey Park in March. The chain now has five locations in Maryland, Virginia and Southern California.

When I visited, Yang stepped out from behind the counter, sat down at the baby grand and played Frédéric Chopin’s Waltz in C-sharp minor, its soft, rolling melody filling the small dining room. A group of diners in the corner looked up from their bowls of noodles, watched and cheered when he finished.

The restaurant name comes from the Polish composer. “We both love Chopin,” Yang said.

The Lanzhou connection

Yang is from Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province in northwest China, and the birthplace of the signature beef noodle soup.

“I was born in Lanzhou, a city along China’s ancient Silk Road,” he writes on the restaurant’s website. “Every morning, the streets fill with the scent of beef broth and the rhythm of pulled noodles slapping the counter.”

“Maybe 80% of the people eat it for breakfast or lunch,” he told me.

Before opening the restaurant, he returned to China for a crash course in its creation.

“I went back to learn how to pull the noodles and how to make the very delicious beef noodle soup,” he said.

The piano started as a practical idea.

“We saw that restaurant life would be so boring, so we decided to put a piano in our restaurant. So sometimes if there’s no customer, we can practice the piano,” Yang said.

What’s in the bowl

The most popular order is the traditional beef noodle soup ($14.99). It's made from beef bones and beef shank.

Diners choose from eight noodle styles, from extra-thin to extra-wide, plus knife-sliced and gluten-free rice noodles. The bowl follows what the restaurant calls Lanzhou’s five signature elements: clear beef broth, white radish, red chili oil, green cilantro and leek, as well as golden hand-pulled noodles topped with thinly sliced beef.

For sipping alongside the noodles, order the eight treasures tea, known in Lanzhou as san pao tai. It’s served in a lidded bowl called a gaiwan and brewed with green tea, dried red dates, goji berries, longan, raisins, rose petals, chrysanthemum and rock sugar. You use the lid to keep the fruit and leaves in place as you drink. It’s naturally sweet, a nice counterpoint to the chili oil.

An open bench

Anyone who visits is welcome to play the piano. Yang said they’ve had everyone from kids learning to play to professional musicians, including members of the San Gabriel Valley Symphony.

Some of the players are so good that Yang admits he’s now a little shy about taking his turn.

“I’m afraid to play because they are so good,” he said.

Longer droughts, more extreme heat, greater wildfire risk and more beach erosion: A new state-commissioned report finds that climate change is likely to reshape the Southern California landscape and way of life.

The study, which comes as part of California’s fifth statewide climate change assessment, includes more detailed models than previous reports.

“What we want to highlight with this report is not how doom and gloom everything is, but just to look at climate change in the L.A. area as something that is inevitable, but which we can adapt to, and in particular, protect the most vulnerable,” said UCLA climate researcher Jesse Norris, the lead author of the report focused on Los Angeles.

Sea level rise and beach erosion

If the recent stories of beach and coastline erosion have you concerned, buckle up. The report notes local coastal erosion rates are expected to triple by 2050.

Citing past research, the authors also note that coastal flooding is expected to quickly intensify in the mid-2030s and become a yearly event by the mid-21st century.

Between one-third and two-thirds of the region’s beaches are expected to be lost in the next 75 years.

Researchers found that in L.A. County, about 1,700 housing units are at risk of being permanently inundated. But if sea levels rise by 3.3 feet — which is possible by 2100 — 9,000 units would be at risk of being permanently flooded.

And if sea levels rise by 6.6 feet, which researchers described as an “extreme” scenario, flooding could be widespread during a 100-year wave event. In this scenario, large swaths of urban L.A. and Orange counties could be flooded, though it’s important to note the projections don’t account for any future infrastructure that may be built.

Extreme heat

Temperatures are expected to rise 4 degrees Fahrenheit between 2041 and 2070 — adding to the 4 degrees of warming that have already happened since 1900.

Researchers say those effects are more pronounced in inland areas, which are also projected to see more days of extreme heat. The average hottest day of the year is expected to rise to 115 degrees by midcentury.

Microclimates play a role

Most of the hazards predicted in the report will be familiar to Southern Californians, even as the effects are expected to intensify and become more common during climate change.

“It was quite striking to see how much more vulnerable certain locations are than others to different climate hazards,” Norris said. “In particular, the more inland areas being far more vulnerable to the increase in extreme heat, mountain communities being far more vulnerable to the impacts of extreme rain and flooding as well as reduced snowpack, and coastal areas being obviously far more vulnerable to the impacts of rising seas.”

Planning

Norris stressed that planning for these effects can be undertaken now. One example: increasing tree cover to mitigate heat.

“A lot of inland cities are thinking very seriously about increasing their tree canopies, increasing the ability for people to have shade as they're going about their business,” Norris said.

Norris highlighted the importance of protecting the most vulnerable in these situations, including people experiencing homelessness and those who work outdoors, and ensuring access to air conditioning and cooling centers.

Norris also said continuing and improving initiatives like active wildfire management, water management and coastal adaptation will be vital in the years to come.

Two weeks from the midterm elections, Democratic Party leaders are suing in federal court to block President Donald Trump’s administration from usurping states’ authority to administer elections or trying to intimidate state and local election officials into complying with illegal demands.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Washington, seeks a court order barring the administration from purging legally registered voters from statewide voter registration lists or denying ballots to legally registered voters.

The plaintiffs, including Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, also ask for a ruling that the administration has illegally threatened state election officials with prosecution before the Nov. 3 election.

The lawsuit cites the Justice Department’s recent actions in California, where it sued to block state election officials from counting mail-in ballots cast by people whom the federal government has identified as “likely” noncitizens until their immigration status can be confirmed.

“For over a decade now, President Donald J. Trump has bombarded the American people with lies and misinformation about American elections and voter fraud,” the suit says. “While these lies have been debunked at every turn, that has never deterred the President from employing them as a pretext to seize control over elections, even as courts overwhelmingly reject that effort.”

The Justice Department said in a statement that election integrity is a top priority for the administration and the department’s actions on that front are grounded in law and under court litigation.

The Democratic leaders’ lawsuit was assigned to Chief Judge James Boasberg, who has been vilified by the White House for rulings against the Trump administration since the start of the Republican president’s second term.

The suit’s other plaintiffs are the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Governors Association. Its named defendants are Trump, the Justice Department, Attorney General Todd Blanche, the Department of Homeland Security and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

Tom Cruise is being celebrated with a life achievement award from the American Film Institute, AFI’s board of trustees said Wednesday. The award will be handed out at a gala tribute in Los Angeles at the Dolby Theatre on April 24 next year.

“Tom Cruise is a global icon,” said Kathleen Kennedy, chair of AFI’s board of trustees, in a statement. She praised Cruise’s commitment as an actor and producer and his belief in movies’ ability to bring people together.

Cruise, 64, has worked in film for more than four decades, starring in movies including “Risky Business,” “A Few Good Men,” “Jerry Maguire,” “Minority Report” and the “Mission: Impossible” series. He has received three Academy Award nominations for acting: best actor in “Born on the Fourth of July” and “Jerry Maguire” and supporting actor for “Magnolia.”

As a producer, Cruise was nominated when “Top Gun: Maverick” received a best picture nomination.

Last year, he received an honorary Oscar at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Governors Awards.

The AFI Life Achievement Award, established in 1973, recognizes a person whose work has advanced film and stood the test of time. Cruise will join a roster that includes John Ford, Bette Davis, Sidney Poitier, Steven Spielberg, Denzel Washington, Nicole Kidman and Eddie Murphy, who received the honor earlier this year.

Proceeds from the tribute gala support AFI’s education and arts initiatives.