The Brief

If you found out your neighbor had a past criminal conviction, your knee-jerk reaction might be that you’d want them relocated.

But what if that person committed a burglary in their late teens, served years in state prison, turned their life around, and now mentors at-risk youth?

Do the details matter? Researchers found that they do.

A new poll by Goodwin Simon Strategic Research examines California voters’ attitudes toward due process for immigrants with criminal convictions during the Trump administration’s nationwide crackdown on unauthorized immigration. The survey also examined support for how tax dollars are spent and Californians’ views on the state’s sanctuary policies.

It found bipartisan support for ensuring that immigrants facing deportation receive due process, including ones with criminal records.

“This survey shows that there’s clear concern about the current administration’s approach to immigration enforcement,” said Sara Knight, a research director at Goodwin Simon Strategic Research. “I’m not surprised by the results, but I am heartened to see how strong the support for due process is and the growing frustration with treating people inhumanely in our immigration system.”

President Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of mass deportations that targeted criminals, among other things, and he has made good on that. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have arrested more than 160,608 noncitizens nationwide with criminal convictions or pending charges, since his inauguration.

The Trump administration has sought to expand the use of “expedited removal,” which allows immigration officers to remove certain non-citizens, like those convicted of crimes, from the United States without a hearing before an immigration judge.

Researchers say this latest poll by Goodwin Simon Strategic Research, released to CalMatters this week, also reflects waning support, even among a small majority of Republicans for the harshest immigration enforcement practices. It showed 84% of Democrats, 61% of independents, and 54% of Republicans agreed that “even if someone does have a record, they deserve due process and the chance to have their case heard by a judge before being deported.”

The poll was commissioned by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, both pro-immigrant organizations. Goodwin Simon Strategic Research describes itself on its website as an “independent opinion research firm.” Researchers wrote the survey questions and polled more than 1,200 self-identified voters. Knight said the partisan divide among those polled mirrored the party-affiliation split in the electorate. The margin of error was 3 points.

Some other recent polls echo similar conclusions released in recent weeks, including one released last week by UC Berkeley’s Possibility Lab that found one-third of Latino voters who supported Trump now regret their choice. Another public opinion poll by the nonpartisan research firm Public Policy Institute of California found 71% of Californians surveyed said they disapproved of the job ICE is doing. And, a CNN exit poll after the Proposition 50 redistricting election on Nov. 4 found that about three-quarters of California voters said they’re dissatisfied with or angry about the way things are going in the U.S., and 6 in 10 said the Trump administration’s actions on immigration enforcement have gone too far.

Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, pointed to other recent national polls to argue the public supports Trump’s immigration policies.

“President Trump and (Homeland Security) Secretary (Kristi) Noem are delivering on the American people’s mandate to deport illegal aliens, and the latest polls show that support for the America First agenda has not wavered — including a New York Times poll that nearly 8 in 10 Americans support deporting illegal aliens with criminal records,” McLaughlin said in a written statement.

“The American people, the law, and common sense are on our side, and we will not stop until law and order is restored after Biden’s open border chaos flooded our country with the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens,” she continued.

From prison to ICE

In the more recent Goodwin Simon Strategic Research poll, 61% of voters surveyed said they want California’s prison system to stop directly handing immigrants over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation.

The state’s sanctuary law does not apply to immigrants who have been convicted of serious crimes. State prisons have transferred to ICE more than 9,500 people with criminal records since Gov. Gavin Newsom took office in 2019, according to data released to CalMatters. So far in 2025, ICE has picked up 1,217 inmates directly from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the data shows.

The corrections department also provides ICE with information that helps the agency locate, arrest, and deport people who are not directly transferred. CalMatters obtained and reviewed more than 27,000 pages of emails between state prison employees and ICE. The emails show prison employees regularly communicate with ICE about individuals in state custody, including U.S. citizens. They often share personal details about their families, visitors, and phone calls. Often, these family members have no criminal records and are U.S. citizens

Newsom, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, and Speaker Robert Rivas have all denounced ICE’s broader deportation efforts. But all three have also indicated some level of support for having federal immigration officials remove noncitizens with prior convictions for violent crimes from the community.

The governor has stated he would veto legislation that seeks to restrict the state prison system’s ability to coordinate with federal immigration authorities for the deportation of felons.

‘We may be deporting the wrong people’

Goodwin Simon researchers found that voters’ opinions change when they find out more details about the personal circumstances of a noncitizen with a past criminal conviction, even for violent crime. Pollsters gave two narratives to voters.

One was about a man who was brought to the United States from Mexico as a child. He got into a fight in his early 20s that left someone injured. The man was sentenced to seven years in state prison, where he turned his life around by taking college classes and helping other inmates get their high school diplomas. When he got out of prison, he was deported to Mexico before an immigration judge could decide on his case.

The other narrative was about a person closely connected to a man whose family fled genocide in Cambodia when he was a baby. In the U.S., the man was the lookout for a robbery when he was a teenager and served 30 years in state prison. Upon his release, prison officials turned him over to ICE.

“We may be deporting the wrong people. Although this last person did commit a crime, he has served his time and is now a valuable member of society, so it would be hard to say for sure if a person ever committed a crime deserves to be sent back. That is why the due process is important,” one Republican voter from Sacramento responded to the poll. She shifted her opinion from the view that people with past criminal convictions should be automatically deported to favoring a judge reviewing each individual case after hearing the narratives.

After voters reviewed both pro- and anti-messaging and the two stories, support for having an immigration judge review individual cases before deportation increased from 84% to 90% among Democrats; from 61% to 74% among independents, but it dropped from 54% to 51% among Republicans. Central Coast voters and Republican women voters increased support for due process by 9 points after hearing the stories.

Growing up, Eleu Navarro says he and his family dealt with food insecurity a lot. They came to the U.S. from Mexico in the early ‘70s.

“As a child and my other siblings, it was our job to either recycle cans or dumpster dive,” he told LAist.

Navarro says the experience made him realize that he wants to do his part to help others. Now, as the program director for Growing Hope Gardens, he’s helping fight food insecurity.

Every week, he and hundreds of other organizations partner with the North Hollywood nonprofit Food Forward to pick up fresh produce that feeds the community.

Gleaning at the markets

Eleu Navarro is a program director for Growing Hope Gardens, a nonprofit that maintains food gardens and teaches people how to grow food.

(

Cato Hernández

/

LAist

)

At the Santa Monica Farmers Market, Navarro picked up hundreds of pounds of free food. This kind of gathering is called gleaning, which is when excess food in public areas gets harvested.

That produce helped Growing Hope Gardens, a nonprofit that runs food gardens in Los Angeles County, feed more than 50 families in Santa Monica and residents at a workshop in Boyle Heights.

“ We make sure that whatever we glean from here doesn’t go to waste,” he said.

This is Food Forward’s farmers market recovery program, one of multiple ways they rescue good produce and get it into the hands of needy residents. On this day, dozens of boxes were stuffed with romanesco broccoli, fennel, white cauliflower, rainbow chard, artichokes, kale and more.

The nonprofit’s system is simple. Volunteers show up to markets in L.A. and Ventura counties with boxes and distribute them to farmers who’ve joined the program. Then, as the market nears closing time, they put in whatever produce they’d like that didn’t sell.

Samatha Teslik, Food Forward’s community programs director, said the boxes get collected, weighed, sorted and picked up within the hour. Weighing is how they track how much gets donated, which ends up as a tax write-off for farmers later on.

 On a good day, the Santa Monica Farmers Market alone yields upward of 5,000 pounds. On a slow day, they still get at least 1,000 pounds of fresh produce.

“ There is a little bit of physicalness to it for sure,” she said. “But we work really hard to provide a fun and engaging experience for our volunteers so that they leave feeling really good and want to come back.”

Volunteer Josh Debuque works with others on the team to weigh each box on a scale.

(

Cato Hernández

/

LAist

)

On this visit, Growing Hope Gardens was one of three partners picking up donated produce.

(

Cato Hernández

/

LAist

)

Helping Angelenos

Food insecurity affects about 1 in 4 L.A. County households, according to Food Base L.A. Largely low-income residents struggle with this, since it’s often tied to economic issues, but recently, more higher-income residents are also experiencing food insecurity.

Most of Food Forward’s fruits and vegetables goes to L.A. County, according to founder Rick Nahmias. He said they make it clear that the goods need to get passed along to someone who’s self-identified as being food insecure. They don’t check tax returns or citizenship.

“That produce can end up in soups at a soup kitchen,” he said. “It can end up in grocery bags being given out in MacArthur Park. They can go into boxes being given to veterans.”

A box of broccolini donated by Milliken Family Farms.

(

Cato Hernández

/

LAist

)

A box of rainbow chard also donated by Milliken Family Farms.

(

Cato Hernández

/

LAist

)

Residents can sign up to be part of the glean team at farmers markets or become a backyard harvester. These volunteers pick fruits from registered trees on private property, as well as public and commercial orchards. The minimum age for farmers market recovery is 12, while kids as young as 5 can join the backyard harvest program.

“Whether food waste is a big issue for you, food insecurity or just wanting to do something good in this world where sometimes we’re not feeling super great,” Teslik said, “[it’s] an hour-and-a-half to two hours where you can really make a tremendous impact.”

Two new studies have identified an alarming connection between exposure to wildfire smoke during pregnancy and autism in young children.

The unprecedented findings suggest the neurological consequences of breathing smoke are more profound than previously thought.

The research builds on a robust body of evidence that shows wildfire smoke is supremely unhealthy — about 10 times worse than inhaling car exhaust and other pollution emitted by burning fossil fuels. The ultra-fine particles that trees and vegetation release during combustion penetrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream, exacerbating preexisting conditions like asthma and, recent studies suggest, damaging internal organs.

In recent years, researchers have also begun to suspect that conflagrations — like the ones that leveled swaths of Los Angeles County last year — affect neurological health, but the effects of smoke on brain development are comparatively poorly understood. Two new studies shed light on the complicated web of genetic and environmental factors that contribute to autism spectrum disorder, building on previous research that found connections between the developmental disability and exposure to air pollution in genera

The first study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology, analyzed data on more than 200,000 children born in southern California between 2006 and 2014. It found that those born to mothers exposed to 10 or more days of smoke in their third trimester had a 23% greater risk of being diagnosed with autism by age 5. Pregnant women who endured between six and 10 days saw a 12% higher risk of such a diagnosis in their kids.

Notably, the study found that average wildfire smoke concentration across the entire pregnancy or individual trimesters had no material effect on autism diagnoses. What did make a difference was the number of days a person in their third trimester inhaled the pollutant. Even one day of exposure had an effect.

“The more you get exposed the worse it is,” said David Luglio, a postdoctoral fellow at Tulane University and the lead author of the study. “But we can’t necessarily answer why that is the case.”

Luglio said he hopes future research will help untangle why prolonged inhalation made such a big difference. Future studies may also help refine these results by incorporating information on how much time the subjects spent outside during fires and whether they wore masks that help filter particulate matter.

The second study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Environment International, examined a much bigger sample — some 8.5 million births in California between 2001 and 2019. It, too, found a link between wildfire smoke exposure and autism diagnoses, though its different methodology yielded more nuanced results. When researchers looked at average smoke exposure across all births, the association was relatively weak. But among women who experienced intense smoke episodes — particularly those in the top 10th percentile of exposure — the link was substantially stronger. And it was strongest in people who live in where population centers meet undeveloped land and are not exposed to very high levels of general air pollution normally.

In women in the highest percentile of wildfire smoke exposure who otherwise lived in areas with relatively little background air pollution — such as car exhaust and urban smog — the odds of having a child diagnosed with autism were 50% higher than among those with lower wildfire smoke exposure. The researchers adjusted their analyses for non-wildfire related sources of air pollution.

“It’s a really huge study,” Rebecca Schmidt, a professor of public health at UC Davis and the paper’s lead author, said, referring to the many millions of records her team analyzed. The earlier study was also quite large, she said, a sign that both findings are well-founded. “There’s more evidence when there’s replication of similar findings,” she said.

Autism spectrum disorder affects one in 31 8-year-olds in the United States. The extent to which the neurological condition, which researchers widely agree is largely determined by genetics, may also be influenced by environmental factors remains an active area of research. In recent years, as wildfires have burned with more severity and frequency in some parts of the world, researchers have been considering their affect on the disorder.

At the same time, public interest in autism and its causes has mounted since the late 1990s, when the esteemed British medical journal The Lancet published what was later found to be a fraudulent paper that claimed to find a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and one of the world’s most prominent vaccine skeptics, has long championed that theory. Under his leadership, the agency has radically remade the childhood immunization schedule, stacked an expert vaccine safety panel with his skeptics, and wound down mRNA vaccine development, among other moves that public health experts say undermine confidence in vaccines and threaten disease elimination status.

There is no credible evidence that vaccines cause autism.

Even the two studies on autism and wildfire smoke do not indicate that wildfire smoke specifically causes autism. Credible experts who study the disorder, including the authors of these studies, agree that a diagnosis is very likely the result of several factors working in tandem.

“All we can point out is this association in the third trimester,” Guglio said. “It takes other people down the line to investigate those pathways more directly.”

More than a dozen houses that were slated to be demolished as part of a failed effort to extend the 710 Freeway have sold, and several of them have gone for thousands of dollars above asking price.

All net proceeds from the sales will go toward developing affordable housing in the city, according to Pasadena Housing Director Jim Wong.

The historic homes, which sat vacant for decades, were put on the market as-is by the city of Pasadena last fall. According to the listings, a few of the homes were uninhabitable.

But that didn’t dissuade buyers.

The 13 houses sold for between $750,000 to more than $3.4 million, with the average purchase price around $1.5 million.

“We are very pleased with the outcome,” Wong told LAist. “These critically needed dollars will enable the city to address the affordable housing shortage in Pasadena.”

How we got here

The properties were set to be demolished decades ago to extend the 710 Freeway through Pasadena, South Pasadena and El Sereno.

Caltrans ended up purchasing hundreds of homes to make way for the extension, but construction was never completed.

The section of the 710 Freeway was built in the early 1970s and displaced thousands of residents when their homes were destroyed, according to Pasadena.

(

City of Pasadena

/

City Manager's Office

)

The project faced legal challenges and widespread opposition from residents who objected to how the freeway would impact their communities, particularly by displacing thousands of residents and destroying homes and businesses.

Several of the homes were put up for sale last year, including some properties earmarked for affordable housing in the L.A. neighborhood of El Sereno. Caltrans invited private and public groups to submit their interest in the El Sereno homes, which were slated to be auctioned off last summer.

When the city of South Pasadena put five of the homes on the market last fall, the properties attracted thousands of potential buyers. Most sold for thousands above asking — even with boarded up windows, damaged floors and peeling paint — with the costliest going for nearly half a million dollars more.

One of the former Caltrans homes in South Pasadena.

(

Makenna Sievertson

/

LAist

)

The former Caltrans property at 216 Fairview Avenue.

(

Makenna Sievertson

/

LAist

)

The former Caltrans property at 225 Fremont Avenue.

(

Makenna Sievertson

/

LAist

)

The former Caltrans property at 225 Fremont Avenue.

(

Makenna Sievertson

/

LAist

)

The former Caltrans property at 216 Fairview Avenue.

(

Makenna Sievertson

/

LAist

)

But unlike the South Pasadena properties, people didn’t get to scope out the Pasadena homes in person. There were no public open houses or broker tours allowed — virtual viewings only.

How much the Pasadena homes sold for

Most of the properties were sold as offered, including a four-bedroom, two-bath duplex on Pasadena Avenue. The house, which is more than a century old, was purchased for $750,000, according to city officials.

One property was purchased for nearly double the asking price.

A six-bedroom, four-bath house on State Street sold for more than $3.4 million, according to city officials. The house, built in 1912, was on the market for $1.75 million.

Five of the houses ended up selling for thousands over offer, including two on State Street that were represented by Bill Podley, a broker associate with the real estate company Compass.

Podley told LAist last October that most of the homes were in poor condition after sitting empty for so long. Some had paint peeling from the walls and holes in the floors, for example.

“These properties are not for the faint of heart,” he said. “Because you're really buying something you're not too totally certain as to its condition.”

The interior of 1112 S. Pasadena Ave., a six-bed, three-bath home.

(

EGP Imaging

/

Courtesy Sotheby's International Realty

)

What’s ahead for affordable housing

Pasadena also purchased four smaller, non-historic homes from Caltrans that were not on the market. Those properties may be renovated for affordable homeownership housing.

The city is required to fund three affordable units with the net sales proceeds from every property it purchased from Caltrans. Wong confirmed the 13 homes that were sold, in addition to the four non-historic ones set aside, will generate at least 51 units of affordable housing.

Pasadena officials have to use the proceeds for affordable housing by the end of this year. The city can extend the deadline if needed, subject to state approval, according to Wong.

There are other homes that have been or will be sold to their tenants, according to the city. Some will also be sold to nonprofits.

There's a difference between a good peach and a perfect one. The good ones make it to your local farmers markets. The perfect ones are too ripe to survive the trip; for those, you have to be standing under the tree. That's the idea behind the Masumoto Family Farm's Adopt-a-Tree program, now accepting applications through March 15.

Now in its 23rd year, the program allows teams of up to 12 people to harvest certified-organic fruit directly from the farm over two summer weekends.

Most participants are friends, neighbors, coworkers and families from urban and suburban areas, many returning year after year.

"So many folks are very disconnected from their sources of food," said Nikiko Masumoto, a fourth-generation Japanese American farmer and author. "We are trying to provide different portals of entry for folks to ask questions and wonder and be curious, and then get to experience themselves a slice of farm life."

This year brings a restructured format with two tiers: Junior ($950 for roughly 250 to 300 pounds of fruit) and Senior ($1,750 for roughly 500 to 600 pounds). How many individual peaches is that? It's hard to say — Masumoto said some Elbertas last year clocked in at over a pound each, while others were closer to a quarter pound.

The Masumotos recently added Baby Crawford peaches to the program — a grafted heirloom variety that helps buffer against climate-driven shifts in their Elberta peach and Le Grand nectarine ripening cycles.

If you’re new to the program

Fair warning — the Masumotos are upfront that this is a sweat-equity commitment, not a leisurely farm visit. Expect potentially 100-degree heat and a full morning of picking.

Teams also need to hold three weekends open — the last in July and the first two in August — because the farm won't know the exact harvest dates until mid-July.

David "Mas" Masumoto holds a freshly picked peach at the Masumoto Family Farm.

(

Nikiko Masumoto

/

Courtesy Masumoto Family Farm

)

"We are not centering this around human ease," Masumoto said. "It's about the fruit and what the trees are telling us."

New applicants must attend a virtual info session before applying. The remaining session is on Feb. 24. The farm must turn away applicants each year — they intentionally keep the program small to preserve the community feel.

For those who want Masumoto fruit without the full commitment, the farm also runs a low-key drive-through where you can order a flat of peaches online and pick them up at the farm.

For more information, visit masumoto.com/adopt-a-tree. Applications are due March 15. Questions can be directed to nikmasu@gmail.com.