The Brief

A $1,044 outing at a glitzy Hollywood nightclub. A $1,316 meal at a Los Angeles steak and seafood restaurant. A $4,500 experience to see the L.A. Dodgers. Isaac Galvan paid for them all — with campaign cash, a state probe found.

In his nine years on the Compton City Council, Galvan frequently spent campaign donations for personal purposes, kept shoddy financial records and repeatedly failed to disclose donors and expenditures accurately and on time, if at all, the California Fair Political Practices Commission concluded in its investigation.

But the probe lasted six years — so long that voters reelected Galvan twice and he left office before those violations were made public in July 2022. During the investigation, he continued to miss filing deadlines, got indicted for an alleged bribery scheme and was tossed out of office by a judge in May 2022 for election fraud.

“What took them so long?” asked lifelong Compton resident Gilda Blueford, who only learned of Galvan’s campaign finance violations from CalMatters. “If we could have known what was going on … perhaps he would not have been re-elected.”

Historically plagued by what some staff called an “enormous” backlog, California’s campaign watchdog has sometimes taken years to resolve cases — exposing violations or exonerating politicians only after they left office or won an election, a CalMatters analysis has found. While the agency has worked to expedite enforcement, advocates, officials and past and current commissioners say delayed actions can diminish public trust in the state’s ability to prosecute corruption effectively.

“If the FPPC doesn’t really clamp down on those obvious abuses quickly, then it’s a toothless watchdog,” said state Sen. Steve Glazer, an Orinda Democrat who has championed laws to tighten campaign ethics regulations.

The lag in enforcement could leave some voters in the dark in upcoming elections. As of last week:

• On the November ballot, 20 of the 305 candidates for the state Legislature, U.S. House and U.S. Senate have an open case against them, commission data shows. 
• Two of the state’s eight constitutional officers are now under investigation — Gov. Gavin Newsom for late filings and Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara for allegations of “laundered campaign contributions” — and both won re-election as their cases were pending.
• Seven of the eight top constitutional officers — all but Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis — have had past violations, ranging from improper disclosures to illegal campaign contributions, according to commission enforcement records. 

The commission, created by California voters through a 1974 ballot measure following the Watergate scandal, has policed campaign and ethics violations statewide and in local races for 50 years. The backlog was an open secret among staffers and commissioners, with some senior counsels arguing in 2022 the problem had existed for “at least 20 years.”

Over the past decade, the agency has seen its caseload wax and wane, peaking in April 2020 at 1,874 unresolved cases, staff reports show. Among cases resolved between 2017 and 2023, 15% took more than two years to close, with the longest lasting almost seven years, according to a CalMatters analysis of data obtained through a public records request.

The agency has added staff, expanded programs to educate political candidates and streamlined enforcement of minor cases while freeing up resources for more serious violations, said commission Chairperson Adam E. Silver. In 2022, it adopted a policy directive to cap the carryover caseload at 625 each year and mandated a 75% reduction in cases opened before 2023, causing the backlog to plunge, he said.

“So long as that continues, then I would say the problem of cases building up and having a ‘backlog’ that grows and grows and grows, that’s resolved,” Silver said in an interview.

But some were concerned the agency may have become more lenient as it closed cases more quickly. Last year, the commission issued the lowest dollar amount of penalties and the highest percentage of warning letters — a method reserved for low-level offenses with minimal public harm — in the past decade, according to commission reports. Four in five cases where violations were found resulted in a letter.

James Lindsay, enforcement chief of the commission, said in multiple public meetings that the increased use of warning letters was partly because the agency prioritized closing minor cases and acknowledged in June that it would become more difficult to find “easy closures.” But he assured the commission in January that the letters were never issued “in scenarios that were not justified in the past.”

Some ethics advocates, however, warned against the practice.

“Because of a policy to be caught up on mandates, you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” said Sean McMorris, transparency, ethics, and accountability manager at the California Common Cause. “The answer is not less enforcement or diminished fines. The answer is more person power to enforce the law adequately.”

‘We don’t believe in the system’

Galvan — the first Latino to ever serve on the Compton City Council — was a symbol of hope for diverse representation, Blueford said.

But Galvan’s career was littered with violations, according to state and court records. He failed to file any disclosures before being elected in 2013, drawing a $1,000 fine from the commission that November. That did not stop him: He continued to file paperwork late, until in March 2017, he stopped filing altogether, according to the commission’s investigation, details of which have not been previously reported.

A month later, he was re-elected.

He also spent more than $55,000 of the money he raised between 2013 and 2017 for personal use, the investigation said. In 2017, he even posted about one of those expenses at a Beverly Hills winery on social media, according to bank records included in the probe.

During the investigation, Galvan was hard to find, at times promising to provide records he never delivered, and efforts to directly serve him the subpoena for those records failed, commission documents show. Once, he was celebrating the premiere of the movie “Daddy’s Home 2” on the day the subpoena server tried to reach him, according to his social media post. On another occasion, Galvan entered the City Hall through a “private entrance,” documents show.

The commission fined Galvan $240,000 in 2022. But the agency had not received a payment as of Oct. 9, commission spokesperson Jay Wierenga confirmed.

The agency opened the case in February 2016 and assigned it that September, adding more staff and devising a plan to investigate in June 2017, according to Wierenga and the agency’s own case chronology obtained via a public records request.

The commission’s leaders acknowledged that Galvan’s case “took too long to resolve and that staff should have been assigned sooner,” Wierenga said in an email. But he said that Galvan’s extensive violations and lack of responsiveness was why the case took longer than normal, and asserted that recent reforms will “prevent significant delays.”

Compton City Council member Isaac Galvan during a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Gonzales Park in Compton, on April 15, 2021.

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Compton City Council member Andre Spicer, who replaced Galvan in 2022, called the long duration of the case “a disservice.”

“I think that our lack of engagement is because we don’t believe in the system,” Spicer said. “If you have issues like this that take 10 years, eight years to sort out and damage is done, it reinforces the reasons why people don’t engage.”

Galvan and his then-bookkeeper, Gary Crummitt, did not respond to multiple inquiries over two weeks for comment. When reached by CalMatters last month, Galvan’s attorney during the investigation, Anthony Willoughby, said in an email: “There are a lot of moving parts to the matter you are seeking comment on.”

‘Notoriously slow’

Galvan’s case is among many where, by the time they were resolved, the officials in question had won an election or left office.

In the city of Campbell in 2017, council members paid for ads with taxpayer dollars to influence election outcomes on three ballot measures about marijuana regulations, the commission found. But the findings were only made public six years later, after most of those officials had left office.

Former state Assemblymember Bill Brough spent campaign cash on family cell phone plans, hotel stays and a trip to a Boston Red Sox game, according to the commission, which didn’t conclude his case until last year, three years after he left office. Even he complained: “I just wanted to go on with my life,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

And a three-year investigation into state Assemblymember Diane Papan wrapped in May, resulting in a warning letter for improper reporting of contributions when she ran for San Mateo City Council in 2020, according to records obtained by CalMatters. Papan’s campaign provided records to the agency in 2021, but the staff waited three years before reaching back out — so long that Papan’s attorney, former FPPC enforcement chief Gary Winuk, questioned the lack of action in an email to the staff, and one witness the agency interviewed said he no longer remembered details of the contributions in question, records show.

Delays could create a sense that “there’s justice denied,” said commission vice chairperson Catharine Baker. “If you act too slowly, if there isn’t a resolution, potential bad actors aren’t brought to any real significant justice, and the public can’t have faith that the rules are being enforced — that there is someone watching the henhouse.”

Some open cases have also lasted years. Newsom, for instance, has been under a previously unreported investigation since 2021 for late disclosure of behested payments — donations to a person, nonprofit or a state agency at the behest of the public official that ethics experts say can be another avenue for special interests to curry favor. Another probe for potential campaign reporting violations has also been open since 2021, commission records show.

Officials are required by state law to disclose behested payments that total $5,000 or more from a single donor in a year, and upon meeting that dollar threshold, the official must report the payments within 30 days.

Between 2019 and 2021, Newsom’s office failed to file 17 behested payments totaling more than $14 million on time, including one filed more than a year after the due date, according to records obtained by CalMatters via a public records request.

In emails to the commission, Newsom’s staff blamed the delays on donors notifying the governor’s office of the payments after filing deadlines. They also said the governor takes his “reporting obligations very seriously” and submitted the documents within days of discovering the payments.

Many of those behested payments were made during the pandemic, “when the Governor’s office was focused on the quick mobilization of resources,” Newsom spokesperson Izzy Gardon said in a statement last week. “Our office remains committed to transparency and complying with FPPC requirements.”

Lara — who accepted money in 2019 from donors with ties to insurers his agency oversaw — has been under investigation for two years for allegations of laundering campaign donations, records show. Between 2021 and 2022, insurance companies funneled $122,500 through the leadership fund of the California Legislative LGBTQ caucus — where Lara served as vice chairperson and remains an ex-officio member — to support Lara, according to a complaint filed by Carmen Balber, executive director of the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, which has also faced criticism for not disclosing its donors.

The last time she heard from the commission, Balber said, was when it opened the investigation in May 2022.

Lara told CalMatters last month he was not in touch with the agency and referred questions to his campaign attorney. The attorney, along with other groups named in the investigation, did not respond to a CalMatters inquiry.

Former commission chairperson Ann Ravel said while some cases are complicated and time-consuming, late filings of behested payments and campaign finance forms should be easy cases to close. “We know there are deadlines,” Ravel said. “If they cannot monitor that, what are they monitoring?”

Even with complex cases, Ravel argued, swift resolution is possible. Right before the November 2012 election, the agency under her leadership forced Koch Brothers-associated groups to disclose $11 million in illegal spending on a pair of propositions through an emergency ruling from the California Supreme Court. The groups were fined $1 million a year later.

“That transparency was so important to the public, to the press, in order for there to be fairness in the system and also for people to have trust in government,” she said.

But speed is not all, Silver argued. “Just because you are spending a lot of time on one case doesn’t make it a waste of time,” he said. “It could have the effect of limiting complaints and violations in the future.”

And cases must be investigated fully for due process, even if no violations are ultimately found, said commission executive director Galena West, who led the enforcement division for five years.

“Isn’t exonerating someone also valuable for the public to know?”

The agency’s goals are to ensure public officials “act in a fair and unbiased manner,” promote government transparency and to build public trust in the political system, according to its website. State law and commission regulations do not explicitly require staff to resolve cases before elections.

But frustration lingers among campaign finance attorneys, those who filed complaints and even politicians under investigation.

“The FPPC is so notoriously slow that it’s not worth bugging them,” Balber said. “If campaign violations are not identified and prosecuted in a timely manner, then after-the-fact penalties have no impact on the elected officials who are being investigated.”

Delays create loopholes for officials willing to chock up the penalties as the cost of winning an election, said McMorris of California Common Cause, who likened the state campaign finance laws to “a tube of toothpaste under pressure.”

“There’s multiple holes in it. You plug one, those bad actors immediately go find the other hole that they can exploit,” he said. “It diminishes public trust in the democratic process and in our representatives.”

And for public officials who “inadvertently” made a mistake or who are innocent, the lengthy probe is “like a sword hanging over your head” even after leaving office, said Glazer, the state legislator.

State Treasurer Fiona Ma — who was fined $11,500 earlier this year for failing to disclose more than $860,000 in payments in her 2018 campaign — said the yearslong investigation meant extra costs to retain her treasurer and attorney.

“I’m just going to have to pay a fine at some point, so just send me the bill,” Ma, a 2026 candidate for lieutenant governor, told CalMatters. “But you know what? This is … the cost of doing business in elected office. It just is. Everybody gets fined, just how much.”

What caused the backlog?

Anecdotes of backlogs and delays reached Baker before she was appointed to the commission in 2021, she said. And early in her tenure, she quickly noticed how old cases were by the time staff presented them for commission decisions.

“I said ‘Look, there’s a problem. It’s severe. And we must do something,’” Baker said in an interview with CalMatters, joined by Wierenga, the spokesperson. “If we don’t, our tenures on this commission … will be partly a failure.”

The influx of complaints and referrals from state and local agencies contributed to the backlog, Baker said. Over the past decade, the number of complaints and referrals has generally crept up and surged in election years, peaking in 2022 with 3,103, compared to a low of 1,205 in 2015, according to the CalMatters analysis.

Lawmakers also assigned the agency more duties over the years, Baker and Wierenga noted. Wierenga said the agency’s caseload jumped in 2015 when the California Secretary of State began referring campaigns that failed to file a $50 annual fee. The commission received 2,460 referrals on May 1, 2015 — almost five times the number of referrals from all other agencies combined that year, he wrote in an email. In 2021, the enforcement of the law was transferred back to the Secretary of State.

Laws increasing disclosure of donors in campaign ads — including a 2018 law that regulated the text, color and font size — added more work for the commission, Wierenga said.

Additionally, staff responsible for parsing out complaints and referrals worth investigating sometimes opened cases when they shouldn’t have, especially under the pressure of high caseloads, Lindsay told the commission in January. Inexperienced staff also lacked understanding of the law, leaving the manager scrambling to train them, according to a 2022 memorandum by unit manager Tara Stock.

“If you’re overwhelmed, you’re not sure what the right answer is, the thought process is: ‘There’s no harm in moving that case forward,’” Lindsay said.

Burdensome “red tape” — including layers of reviews and approvals required to escalate a case — and a digital recordkeeping system that’s hard to navigate compounded the problem, staff said. In a 2022 letter, staff described the system as “slow, cumbersome, and sometimes, downright tedious.”

Some lawmakers and ethics advocates — while bemoaning slow enforcement — argue the agency is chronically understaffed and underfunded. The department’s budget and its number of employees, however, have steadily climbed — from $11.8 million and 66 employees in fiscal year 2017-18 to $19.6 million and 109 employees this year, according to state budget records. 

The increases were largely tied to additional duties, however, and the agency’s base funding is not adequate, argued McMorris of California Common Cause. Elected officials may lack the political will to dedicate more money to the agency, or to expand the agency’s authority, McMorris said.

“You are essentially asking the politicians who are being policed by this agency to increase the budget for policing,” he said. “There’s a tendency to do the least amount and only do it when there’s a scandal or evidence that something’s being exploited.”

The commission has only been audited once — in 1998 — in its entire 50-year history. That’s because “elected leaders have decided it’s not in their interest to do so,” said Glazer.

Efforts to speed up enforcement

Over the years, the agency has created and expanded programs to expedite cases with minor violations. While commission leaders argue the steps can prevent backlogs, some ethics advocates say some programs are applied too broadly and could give bad actors too much leniency.

To free up staff to pursue more egregious cases, the commission created a “streamline program” in May 2015 and has since expanded it to include lower-tier violations, such as late filings, contributions above limits and recordkeeping errors. The cases often result in lower penalties approved by the enforcement chief. Between 2015 and 2023, an average of 20% of cases closed with violations found each year went through that program, according to executive staff reports.

The commission also has had an educational program since 2022 to allow inexperienced offenders with low-harm violations to complete a class to avoid penalties. The Legislature funded three full-time staffers for the program last year, and 280 public officials had completed the courses by August.

The program helps the commission spot those who flout the law, Silver said. “If you are taking that course for three hours, and you engage in the same violation … this person is acting in bad faith.”

In 2022, the agency adopted the policy directive to clear the enforcement backlog, and has added staff attorneys to weed out frivolous complaints, West told CalMatters.

But the policy stopped short of setting hard deadlines after roughly 20 investigators, attorneys and consultants argued it would worsen “out of control” caseloads.

The backlog was so severe that some enforcement staffers recommended closing all cases on alleged violations more than three years old, as long as they had not issued a “probable cause” report against them. “There are no amount of hours in the day to resolve the current number of cases open,” said a December 2022 staff letter.

But other staff warned the approach may be a quick fix, arguing previous attempts to close cases en masse due to insufficient resources “only treated the symptom — not the cause.”

Legislative efforts to set enforcement deadlines have failed. This year, a bill introduced by state Assemblymember Evan Low, a Cupertino Democrat, would have required enforcement actions against most violations within two years. Low, who is running for Congress, is still under investigation by the commission for alleged violations in 2020, when CalMatters reported that he failed to disclose donors to a nonprofit affiliated with a legislative caucus he helps lead.

Low told CalMatters the bill wouldn’t have applied to his case, but declined to comment on his own investigation. Expeditious enforcement, he said, would absolve the innocent quickly when ethics complaints are “weaponized.”

“If it’s not concluded in real time, then you have a cloud hanging over you for perpetuity,” he said.

The policy directive — and more warning letters — has worked, however. By September 2023 the division had already closed 35% of cases opened before 2023, according to a quarterly report. By January 2024, the closure rate climbed to 56%. And by the end of May, it reached 68%, with 917 unresolved cases.

Warning letters work to deter violations because, like penalties, they are a bad look “on a campaign mailer,” Silver said.

But some ethics advocates, such as McMorris, argued too many types of violations are eligible for warning letters or the streamlined process. “You now have a situation where you can take that backlog and scoop up a big load of those … complaints” and clear them, he said.

Balber cautioned against the heightened use of warning letters if the goal is solely to close cases more quickly, though a Consumer Watchdog-backed political committee — formed in 2022 to support a proposed ballot measure increasing compensation cap for medical malpractice victims — received a letter last year for failing to file disclosure reports on time.

“If you prioritize speed over quality, you get lesser results,” she said. “That to me says staff is being pressured to get done faster no matter the outcome, and that’s troubling.”

With fewer than six weeks to go before the June election, candidates running for City of L.A. and Los Angeles Unified School District offices have raised a combined $19 million, according to records from the L.A. City Ethics Commission.

Campaigns for mayor, District 11 City Council member and city attorney have emerged as the most funded races.

Here’s how they stack up:

L.A. mayor

Mayoral candidates Karen Bass and Adam Miller are leading all L.A. city candidates in fundraising, with $3.7 million and $2.7 million raised so far, respectively.

The candidates have tapped into very different sources to fund their campaigns.

Miller, a tech entrepreneur and leader of multiple nonprofits, has loaned $2.5 million to his own campaign and raised just $223,000 from donors since entering the race in February.

Bass, on the other hand, had already gathered more than $2.3 million in contributions by January. She’d received some of those donations as far back as July 2024.

The city’s matching funds program has also given Bass a nearly $874,000 boost over Miller, who did not qualify to receive a 6-to-1 match from the city on donations that meet certain criteria.

Nithya Raman, City Council member for L.A.’s District 4, has had the quickest growth in donor support out of all candidates for mayor after entering the race in February.

She’s received a combined $1.1 million from direct contributions and matching funds from the city.

Former reality TV star Spencer Pratt has received about $538,000 in contributions, and Presbyterian minister and community organizer Rae Huang has taken in about $273,000.

District 11

Traci Park, who is the current City Council member for the 11th district, has brought in about $1.4 million so far through contributions and matching funds.

Faizah Malik is an attorney at the nonprofit law firm Public Counsel and is challenging Park for her council seat. She has raised about $632,000.

This race also has the largest amount of outside spending across the city and LAUSD.

About $972,000 has been spent in support of Park, including about $634,000 from the Los Angeles Police Protective League and $297,000 from a committee sponsored by United Firefighters of L.A. City.

Unite Here, a labor union representing hospitality workers, has spent more than $220,000 in support of Malik.

City attorney

Hydee Feldstein Soto, the incumbent city attorney, has raised nearly $1.2 million in contributions and matching funds.

Marissa Roy, deputy attorney general, has raised nearly $1 million in her race to unseat Feldstein Soto.

Deputy District Attorney John McKinney and human rights attorney Aida Ashouri have raised about $73,000 and $14,000, respectively, in the race.

WASHINGTON — An appeals court on Friday blocked President Donald Trump's executive order suspending asylum access at the southern border of the U.S., a key pillar of the Republican president's plan to crack down on migration.

A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that immigration laws give people the right to apply for asylum at the border, and the president can't circumvent that.

The court opinion stems from action taken by Trump on Inauguration Day 2025, when he declared that the situation at the southern border constituted an invasion of America and that he was "suspending the physical entry" of migrants and their ability to seek asylum until he decides it is over.

The panel concluded that the Immigration and Nationality Act doesn't authorize the president to remove the plaintiffs under "procedures of his own making," allow him to suspend plaintiffs' right to apply for asylum or curtail procedures for adjudicating their anti-torture claims.

"The power by proclamation to temporarily suspend the entry of specified foreign individuals into the United States does not contain implicit authority to override the INA's mandatory process to summarily remove foreign individuals," wrote Judge J. Michelle Childs, who was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Joe Biden.

"We conclude that the INA's text, structure, and history make clear that in supplying power to suspend entry by Presidential proclamation, Congress did not intend to grant the Executive the expansive removal authority it asserts," the opinion said.

White House says asylum ban was within Trump's powers

The administration can ask the full appeals court to reconsider the ruling or go to the Supreme Court.

The order doesn't formally take effect until after the court considers any request to reconsider.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, speaking on Fox News, said she had not seen the ruling but called it "unsurprising," blaming politically-motivated judges.

"They are not acting as true litigators of the law. They are looking at these cases from a political lens," she said.

Leavitt said Trump was taking actions that are "completely within his powers as commander in chief."

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the Department of Justice would seek further review of the decision. "We are sure we will be vindicated," she wrote in an emailed statement.

The Department of Homeland Security said it strongly disagreed with the ruling.

"President Trump's top priority remains the screening and vetting of all aliens seeking to come, live, or work in the United States," DHS said in a statement.

Advocates welcome the ruling

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said that previous legal action had already paused the asylum ban, and the ruling won't change much on the ground.

The ruling, however, represents another legal defeat for a centerpiece policy of the president.

"This confirms that President Trump cannot on his own bar people from seeking asylum, that it is Congress that has mandated that asylum seekers have a right to apply for asylum and the President cannot simply invoke his authority to sustain," said Reichlin-Melnick.

Advocates say the right to request asylum is enshrined in the country's immigration law and say denying migrants that right puts people fleeing war or persecution in grave danger.

Lee Gelernt, attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, who argued the case, said in a statement that the appellate ruling is "essential for those fleeing danger who have been denied even a hearing to present asylum claims under the Trump administration's unlawful and inhumane executive order."

Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, welcomed the court decision as a victory for their clients.

"Today's DC Circuit ruling affirms that capricious actions by the President cannot supplant the rule of law in the United States," said Nicolas Palazzo, director of advocacy and legal Services at Las Americas.

Judge Justin Walker, a Trump nominee, wrote a partial dissent. He said the law gives immigrants protections against removal to countries where they would be persecuted, but the administration can issue broad denials of asylum applications.

Walker, however, agreed with the majority that the president cannot deport migrants to countries where they will be persecuted or strip them of mandatory procedures that protect against their removal.

Judge Cornelia Pillard, who was nominated by Democratic President Obama, also heard the case.

In the executive order, Trump argued that the Immigration and Nationality Act gives presidents the authority to suspend entry of any group that they find "detrimental to the interests of the United States."

The executive order also suspended the ability of migrants to ask for asylum.

Trump's order was another blow to asylum access in the U.S., which was severely curtailed under the Biden administration, although under Biden some pathways for protections for a limited number of asylum seekers at the southern border continued.

Migrant advocate in Mexico expresses cautious hope

For Josue Martinez, a psychologist who works at a small migrant shelter in southern Mexico, the ruling marked a potential "light at the end of the tunnel" for many migrants who once hoped to seek asylum in the U.S. but ended up stuck in vulnerable conditions in Mexico.

"I hope there's something more concrete, because we've heard this kind of news before: A district judge files an appeal, there's a temporary hold, but it's only temporary and then it's over," he said.

Meanwhile, migrants from Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela and other countries have struggled to make ends meet as they try to seek refuge in Mexico's asylum system that's all but collapsed under the weight of new strains and slashed international funds.

This week hundreds of migrants, mostly stranded migrants from Haiti, left the southern Mexican city of Tapachula on foot to seek better living conditions elsewhere in Mexico.
Copyright 2026 NPR

California’s trial courts will have to collect and report data on civil arrests at their facilities, including those by federal immigration agents, under a rule approved Friday by the state’s judicial policymaking body.

The new requirement by the Judicial Council of California comes in response to an unprecedented rise in detentions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at superior courts across California’s judicial system, the nation’s largest. Attorneys, judges and public safety advocates have criticized the practice.

“Our court users have expressed concern and hesitation about coming to court. That concern has been amplified by additional visits to the Oroville courthouse by federal officers,” Sharif Elmallah, the court executive officer of the Superior Court of Butte County, told the council of mostly judges and attorneys Friday. “We know that when individuals fear potential arrest and enforcement actions, many will choose not to appear, even when required to by court order.”

Elmallah said immigration enforcement officers apprehended several people who had cases before the court in Oroville on a single day in July. The agents have kept operating at the court, he added, including as recently as Wednesday of this week.

Victims of crimes such as domestic violence, sexual abuse and wage theft, advocates say, are declining to seek relief in court out of fear of encountering immigration enforcement there, hurting people’s access to justice.

“Making courthouses a focus of immigration enforcement hinders, rather than helps, the administration of justice by deterring witnesses and victims from coming forward and discouraging individuals from asserting their rights,” California Supreme Court Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero said in earlier statements.

The Alameda County Superior Courthouse in Oakland, seen on April 2, 2019.

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California already prohibits arrests related to immigration offenses and other civil law violations at court buildings, except when the enforcement agency has a written order signed by a judge, known as a judicial warrant. But immigrant advocates, public defenders and others say the state law lacks teeth, arguing that ICE has flouted it without any repercussions so far.

Meanwhile, a bill working its way through the state Legislature aims to strengthen the ban on courthouse civil arrests and expand protections for people going to and from courts.

Under the Judicial Council’s separate new rule, the state’s 58 trial courts starting in June will be required to track and report whether officers identified themselves, presented a warrant or took an individual into custody, as well as the date and location of each incident.

While the move will help state officials understand the scope of the issue, it won’t protect people’s fundamental right to access the courts, said Tina Rosales-Torres, a policy advocate with the Western Center on Law and Poverty who estimates that ICE has conducted hundreds of arrests at California courts since January 2025, when President Donald Trump took office.

“That’s a good first step. It is good to have data. I do not think it is sufficient to meet the crisis that we are in,” she said.

“So it is going to be helpful to kind of see at least a snippet of what is happening,” Rosales-Torres added. “But then what? The Judicial Council hasn’t proposed a solution, and data is only as effective as we use it.”

Immigration arrests at California courthouses used to be rare, reserved for cases involving national security or other significant threats. As recently as 2021, during the first year of the Biden administration, top ICE officials recognized that routinely apprehending people in or near courts would spread fear and hurt the fair administration of justice.

Since last year, as authorities moved to fulfill Trump’s mass deportation promises, federal officers have approached and handcuffed at least dozens of people at court hallways, exits and parking lots in Alameda, Fresno, Los Angeles, Sacramento and other counties. In San Bernardino, TV cameras filmed agents in black vests restraining several men at the Rancho Cucamonga court parking lot in a single day this month.

Some attorneys now warn clients they could see immigration enforcement in court.

Witnesses are failing to show up, and others are opting out of fighting legitimate cases, said Kate Chatfield, executive director of the California Public Defenders Association. She and Alameda County Public Defender Brendon Woods wrote an opinion piece condemning ICE’s presence in state courts after the agency arrested a man leaving a court hearing in Oakland in September.

“It’s a foundational element of democracy to have a functioning court system,” Chatfield said. “And when people are afraid to go to court for whatever reason, you’ve really denied justice to an entire segment of our residents.”

SB 873, the bill that would strengthen California’s ban on civil arrests at courthouses, would also authorize the attorney general and those who are arrested to sue over violations. People would be entitled to damages of $10,000. The bill, by state Sen. Eloise Gómez Reyes, D–San Bernardino, is supported by the California Public Defenders Association, the Western Center on Law and Poverty and other groups.

It is part of a larger pushback in California against a surge in immigration enforcement netting more people without criminal convictions in cities’ public areas, parking lots of stores like Home Depot and at routine immigration check-ins. SB 1103, for instance, would require big-box home improvement retailers to report ICE enforcement activity at their facilities.

Other states, such as New York, also prohibit the civil arrests of people at courthouses or those traveling to and from such facilities unless an officer has a judicial warrant. The Trump administration challenged New York’s law last year, but a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit.

The restaurant:

If you’re driving along York Boulevard toward Eagle Rock, you’ll see a variety of Mediterranean, Mexican and pizza spots.

Queen’s Raw Bar & Grill stands out as a seafood spot with a menu that offers oysters, fish-centric entrees and desserts like their derby pie. The restaurant has been around since 2023, brought to life by business partners Ari Kolender, who's executive chef, and Joe Laraja, who serves as managing director.

The food: 

Queen’s Raw Bar & Grill takes inspiration from South Carolina’s seafood scene, where Kolender grew up. Unlike the New England feel of their other restaurant, Found Oyster, Queen’s focuses on southern classics and refreshing raw bar food.

The interior of Queen's Raw Bar and Grill, including the signature oyster bar.

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Courtesy Queen's Raw Bar & Grill

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What we tried: tuna tostada, mackerel tartare and pimento cheese sliders.

The verdict:

“The flavor is so incredible [and] intense,” said AirTalk Friday host Austin Cross about the tuna tostada. “Everything comes together perfectly.”

“It’s got the acids down pat,” Austin said of the mackerel tartare. “The capers are doing their part, and then the dill does give it that finish you get traditionally in some Jewish foods.”

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