The Brief

Recent immigration raids carried out by the Trump administration across Southern California have routinely violated detainees’ constitutional rights, according to allegations in a lawsuit filed Wednesday against the federal government.

The lawsuit was brought by five workers who’ve been detained and four community organizations that focus on immigrant and worker rights. They allege federal agents have disregarded Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure and Fifth Amendment rights guaranteeing access to an attorney.

Attorneys for the workers say they hope the case will become a class action.

Mohammad Tajsar, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said at a news conference that his clients want a judge to stop federal agents from continuing to arrest people based solely on the color of their skin.

“Armed, masked goons in unmarked cars have descended in our communities and have stopped and rounded people up from all walks of life, often at gunpoint and without any justification,” Tajsar said. “To them, if you are brown, they will hunt you down. To them, if you have dark skin, they will take you in.”

Officials with the Department of Homeland Security told LAist that federal immigration agents are not racially profiling people for arrest and are not holding detainees in substandard conditions.

Detainment conditions called ‘deplorable’

The lawsuit alleges the government is holding hundreds of people in the basement of a downtown L.A. federal building that lacks beds, showers and medical facilities. The suit also claims that detainees are being held in cramped, windowless rooms where they often cannot sit or lie down.

Alvaro Huerta, an attorney with the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said his firm “has attempted to get a hold of people who are being held at the basement of the federal building downtown… and we have been denied access to those people.”

Tricia McLaughlin, Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary, said in an email to LAist that federal agents do their due diligence when conducting immigration enforcement, and they are “highly targeted.”

“All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with lawyers and their family members,” McLaughlin said.

Her husband went to work and never came back

Maria, the wife of a man arrested by federal agents while he was working at a car wash in Pomona, said medical care has been inadequate for her husband. She said he wasn’t given his diabetes medication when he was first detained.

“They just barely gave it to him after two weeks,” said Maria, who asked that her full name not be used because she is concerned about her personal safety. “He's there, holding on.”

Maria says her husband was arrested by federal immigration officials while working at a car wash in Pomona.

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David Wagner/LAist

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Maria said she doesn’t know why her husband was singled out for arrest.

“He's not a criminal,” she said. “He just went out to provide for his family. And you never think that these things would happen to your family, until it does.

“It's heartbreaking,” she continued. “My grandkids asked for him, and I just don't know what to tell them.”

What the plaintiffs hope to achieve

The U.S. Attorney's Office declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to certify this case as a class action lawsuit, covering all people subject to "suspicionless" stops and warrantless arrests by unidentifiable federal agents.

Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, said her group and the other plaintiffs hope to be in court within days. She said they plan to ask the judge to issue a temporary restraining order barring the federal government from arresting people without probable cause or holding detainees without access to a lawyer.

“Our community is asserting their rights, and ICE and all of these federal agents don't care,” Salas said. “It's super simple. Follow the Constitution.”

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The Supreme Court has ruled that Colorado's law banning conversion therapy "regulates speech based on viewpoint."

At issue was the practice of an evangelical Christian, Kaley Chiles, a counselor who wants to provide talk therapy to teenagers seeking to discuss their sexual orientation or gender identity, including those hoping to "reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions, change sexual behaviors, or grow in the experience of harmony with one's physical body," according to her complaint.

Her lawyer argued that Colorado's law prevents voluntary conversations with minors seeking her help.

The majority opinion states, "the lower courts erred by failing to apply sufficiently rigorous First Amendment scrutiny."

"As applied to Ms. Chiles, Colorado's law regulates the content of her speech and goes further to prescribe what views she may and may not express, discriminating on the basis of viewpoint," the opinion says.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, pointing to precedent on states regulating health care professionals. "Stated simply, the majority has failed to appreciate the crucial context in which Chiles's constitutional claims have arisen," she wrote. "Chiles is not speaking in the ether; she is providing therapy to minors as a licensed healthcare professional."

The court heard arguments on the case in October and appeared to lean toward the therapist at the time.

The case involved a new wrinkle on "conversion therapy." It's generally defined as a treatment used to change a person's attraction to same-sex individuals and to similarly cure gender dysphoria. In whatever form, the therapy has been forcefully repudiated by every major medical organization in the country on the grounds that it doesn't work and often leads to depression and suicidal thoughts in minors.

But during arguments in the fall, Chiles' lawyer, James Campbell, told the justices that the way his client wishes to practice conversion therapy involves no physical restraints or coercion of any kind. Rather, he said her practice involves only talk therapy.

"Ms. Chiles is being silenced. The kids and families who want help — this kind of help that she offers — are being left without any support," he asserted.

The outcome of the case could mean a rollback on conversion therapy bans across the country.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Tuesday is the first time in over 25 years that California and many cities in Southern California will not be celebrating disgraced union leader César Chavez.

Scores of local governments in Southern California have rewritten the holiday and renamed it to “Farmworkers Day,” including Los Angeles County, which heard from Asian American communities across the region. Many who spoke during last week’s Board of Supervisors meeting said they wanted to see farmworkers and other union leaders centered in those conversations.

The move to rename the last days of March came after a New York Times investigation uncovered allegations that Chavez sexually assaulted at least two girls and a woman, including fellow union leader Dolores Huerta.

Chavez was head of the United Farm Workers union and is widely recognized by Latinos and other communities as one of the most influential labor leaders in American history.

One man’s actions do not define this movement, Nina Cabardo of the Pilipino Workers Center wrote in a letter of support for the changes. As local leaders tackle the renaming and redefining of Farmworkers Day, she added, it’s also time for another “long-time injustice” to be rectified.

“This is also the time for Filipino farmworkers and Filipino farmworker leaders' real roles in the farmworker movement to be truthfully uplifted,” Cabardo said. “Leaders like Larry Itliong, Philip Vera Cruz, Pete Velasco, Lorraine Agtang and Luciano Crespo.”

A complicated history

Chavez’s legacy had been complicated for years before the explosive investigation, according to Alexandro José Gradilla, associate professor of Chicana and Chicano studies at Cal State Fullerton.

“People have, in the last 20, 30 years, already been de-centering César Chavez from the 60s and social movements of the farmworkers. It’s because of the history of sabotaging the Filipino workers, the history of being openly and virulently anti-immigrant,” Gradilla told LAist. “So, I don't have to go back and delete or scrub or erase in my PowerPoints any hero worship or adulation of Chavez. That I think has already been done.”

This is a reminder, Gradilla added, that power corrupts.

“Anybody who is put in this position of being viewed as a hero, who is given untapped power, whether they are a person of color, queer, a woman, we are all in danger of falling into that trap,” Gradilla said. “That's the more important lesson that we cannot submit to this cult of personality that can happen. And apparently, in the case of the farm worker movement, that did happen.”

The work to de-center Chavez

Many community members who spoke during public comment at last week’s L.A. County Board of Supervisors meeting were in support of the holiday name change. But many also think the work to de-center Chavez shouldn’t end there.

Community members have also called on leaders to remember the names of the Filipino workers who drove the farmworkers union toward success.

Aquilina Soriano Versoza, executive director of the Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California, said inspiration from the farmworker movement catalyzed the organization.

“ We are a strong organization of strong Filipino domestic workers, immigrant workers,” Versoza said. “We support the inclusion of the community-driven process that centers survivors, and we need to make sure that we rectify that Filipinos are also uplifted in this process, so we honor everyone who should be honored as the Farm Workers movement.”

 Celeste Friedman of the Asian Civil Rights League said history has omitted key components and figures of the farmworker movement.

“While César Chavez is widely recognized, the movement itself was ignited in 1965 by Filipino farm workers led by Larry Itliong and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee,” Friedman said. “They initiated the Delano grape strike. Organized, mobilized, and took the first risk. Yet their contributions have been largely underrepresented in our textbooks, public commemorations, and collective memory.”

When the truth of the full history fails to be acknowledged, Friedman added, future generations are denied the richness of solidarity between the Filipino and Latino communities.

Mayra Castañeda, a member of the SEIU United Healthcare Workers, said the name change better reflects the legacy of farmworkers.

“Establishing Farmworkers Day is an opportunity to uplift the collective contributions of farm workers across generations, many of whom remain invisible despite the essential work they do every day,” Castañeda said. “It also helps educate future generations about the ongoing struggles for labor rights, equity and the respect in the field.”

What’s next?

L.A. County officials will report back to the board in the coming weeks with more on renaming streets, buildings, monuments and programs that bear Chavez’s name.

DELANO, Calif. — A few hours north of Los Angeles, the small city of Delano is surrounded by miles and miles of grapevines, orange groves and almond orchards. According to Monike Reynozo, everyone here either works in those fields, or knows someone who does.

"This is what drives and fuels our city," she said.

Reynozo works for a youth advocacy group known as Loud For Tomorrow, but she said her parents were farmworkers, and their parents before them.

On a recent spring morning, she's walking down an alley to a brightly colored mural that covers the side of a building in the center of town. It shows people in sun hats harvesting fruit, and a little girl proudly holding a bunch of plump, purple grapes.

"It really showcases some of our local farm labor movement leaders as well as the diverse faces of Delano," she said.

One of the most prominent faces on the mural is César Chavez, who lived in Delano for nine years. The city was also home to the first headquarters of the United Farm Workers (UFW) labor union, which he cofounded in the 1960s and has been lobbying for reforms to farm labor ever since. He's long been considered a local hero.

Monike Reynozo, associate director of programs for the non-profit Loud for Tomorrow, stands in front of a mural depicting Cesar Chavez and other leaders of the farm labor movement in downtown Delano, Calif. on March 29.

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Jennifer Emerling for NPR

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A mural depicting civil rights icon Cesar Chavez, along with other leaders of the farm labor movement in downtown Delano, Calif. on March 29. In the fallout of the sexual abuse allegations against Chavez, many landmarks are under review to be renamed and his likeness is being taken down across California.

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Jennifer Emerling for NPR

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But earlier this month the New York Times published a bombshell investigation alleging the late civil rights leader sexually abused young girls in the 1970s, and raped his longtime ally and co-leader in the farmworkers labor movement, Dolores Huerta in the 1960s. The investigation came out nearly two weeks before Chavez's birthday – March 31 – which has long been a holiday in many places. And in the aftermath of the allegations, some states, including California, have scrambled to rename the day. Meanwhile, farmworker communities are reeling – especially in Central California, which became the cradle of the farm labor movement.

As Reynozo looks up at his portrait, she says the allegations against him are heartbreaking. He was one of her role models. But she thinks this mural – and the farmworker narrative – don't need him anymore.

"He's just one individual amongst, you know, thousands of people who have been fighting for this and continue to fight for it," she said.

No consensus among Delano residents on how to process allegations

Across California, statues of Chavez are being torn down and elected officials are moving to erase his name from public spaces.

Some in Delano are pushing for similar changes. The Delano Joint Union High School District voted last week to rename Cesar E. Chavez High School. And city leaders are likely to discuss renaming the city's Cesar Chavez Park in a city council meeting in early April.

"Everything that we want to take into account, for how does accountability look like at the Delano level, will be on the table," said city councilmember Bryan Osorio.

But he's not certain the city council will vote to make changes, because there's a lot of resistance here.

Cesar E. Chavez High School in Delano, Calif. After sexual abuse allegations came out against Cesar Chavez, local students organized a petition to change the name of the school.

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Jennifer Emerling for NPR

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Cesar E. Chavez Park in Delano, Calif. In the fallout of the sexual abuse allegations against Chavez, the park is under review to be renamed by city council.

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Jennifer Emerling for NPR

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Chavez's union helped transform conditions for farmworkers – including higher pay, work breaks, and even bathrooms, which weren't guaranteed in the fields. That changed people's lives. And that's why, Osorio says, many are struggling with the allegations against Chavez. Some even feel angry at his accusers.

"This man was a huge part of Delano's history, is still part of Delano's history," Osorio said. "There's always going to be folks who are skeptical."

That includes Armando Pulido. He picks grapes in the nearby town of Earlimart. And like a lot of farmworkers in the area, he says he doesn't believe Chavez's accusers.

"I think everything is a lie, that they made up, because they came out with it now after Chavez died," he said in Spanish. "Why didn't they bring it up while he was alive?"

Dolores Huerta explained why she waited to come forward in an interview with Latino USA on March 19.

"When people say, why didn't you leave? Why didn't you tell people? Well, this is why, because I felt that my coming out and saying what occurred would have hurt the movement," she said.

United Farm Workers leaders Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez display photos of the conditions that farmworkers endure in San Joaquin Valley farm labor camps at a news conference outside U.S. District Court in Fresno, California, on Nov. 21, 1989.

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Richard Darby/Fresno Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

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The New York Times reported that some people had previously been made aware of abuse claims by two other women – Ana Murgia and Debra Rojas – and nothing came of it. They cited internal emails among union members about Murgia's claims going back over a decade. And they also said Rojas posted a message over ten years ago about Chavez's alleged abuse to a private Facebook group for longtime Chavez organizers and supporters – and "was accused by some who saw it or heard about it of jeopardizing all that had been accomplished." NPR has not independently confirmed these details.

Some see an opportunity for more informed conversations

Whether or not the city ultimately erases Chavez's name from public spaces, some think this is an opportunity to highlight other pivotal labor leaders – including Filipino organizer Larry Itliong.

Itliong, who was born in 1913, organized farmworkers for decades before Chavez and Huerta came along. And Filipino workers under Itliong's leadership started the 1965 Delano Grape Strike, which later led to the founding of the UFW.

"A lot of Filipinos, to this day, we always say: without Larry Itliong, there'd be no Cesar Chavez," said Rogelio "Roger" Gadiano, who was born in the Philippines and grew up in Delano.

Cesar Chevez's Huelga Day March in San Francisco, 1966: Julio Hernandez (UFW officer), Larry Itliong (UFW director), and Cesar Chavez.

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Gerald French/Corbis via Getty Images

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Gadiano worked in the fields off and on from childhood into middle age. Today, he leads tours of local historical sites that were important to the early farm labor movement. That includes The Forty Acres, a sprawling site on the outskirts of town that held the UFW's first headquarters as well as a retirement village for aging Filipino farmworkers.

Gadiano wishes Itliong's story – and the story of Filipino farmworkers – were better known.

"We got buried in history," he said. "We were the spark, the ultimate spark."

Whatever happens with Chavez's legacy, Gadiano hopes this situation can lead to more informed conversations about farmworker history.

Copyright 2026 KVPR

The finalists for the James Beard Awards were announced this morning. Four Los Angeles chefs advanced to this next stage, while several restaurants also made it through, an impressive achievement given the stellar competition.

The James Beard awards are often called the Oscars of the food world, and advancing to this stage will mean more attention and months of booked-up reservations.

For restaurant goers, it's also a sign of the direction that American food culture is heading.

Who are the LA finalists?

They are:

Outstanding chef: Gilberto Cetina of Holbox and Niki Nakayama of n/naka

Emerging chef: Fátima Juárez of Komal

Best chef in California: Dave Beran of Seline

Best new restaurant: Ki

Outstanding hospitality: Providence

Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program: Kato

Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service: Jack Benchakul, endorffeine coffee bar

The ultimate winners will be announced in June.