The Brief

President Donald Trump returned to office last month with a major show of force on immigration, issuing numerous orders and directives to dramatically crack down on enforcement.

They’ve sparked glee from his supporters, condemnation from his opponents, fear from immigrant communities amid nationwide raids — and also plenty of false alarms.

The flurry of new policies — some pushing long-held legal boundaries — are part of a “shock and awe” strategy meant to amplify the promises of a military-assisted mass deportation, experts said. Among the administration’s goals is for fearful immigrants to “voluntarily depart.”

“The big issue is this basically full-court press (from the administration) on immigration enforcement and the fear it’s generated,” said UC Davis immigration law professor Kevin Johnson. The fear "probably is the biggest impact of all.”

The uncertainty over immigrants’ futures has led communities to question whether workers should continue to show up to businesses, children to school and patients to doctors’ offices — and whether there will be economic disruptions and school funding consequences as a result.

Many immigrants are staying home. Others have little choice but to continue their routines.

In Kern County, an immigrant citrus picker who spoke on the condition that her name not be used because she fears deportation said like many of her coworkers, she stayed home for a day in the wake of a Border Patrol operation last month — conducted before Trump took office — that seemed to target farmworkers.

But she has bills to pay, so she’s continued going to work and sending her child to daycare. Rumors of immigration authority sightings have also continued to spread, including one that prompted the contractor she works for to keep her crew in the orange grove at the end of a recent workday. The contractor didn’t release them to go home until checking that the roads were clear, she said.

“Everybody goes out with fear,” she said. “But one has needs. And my needs are bigger than the fear.”

Trump’s actions have the potential to drastically remake the immigration landscape. Here’s what’s changed so far and how California is responding.

Targeting birthright citizenship

One of Trump’s first-day executive orders sought to end the century-plus-old practice of granting citizenship to all children born on U.S. soil even if their parents are undocumented. Courts have affirmed the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship since 1898, in the case of a San Francisco man whose parents were from China.

Two federal judges, responding to separate lawsuits, quickly halted the order.

A third lawsuit, brought by 18 states including California and the city of San Francisco, was heard in a Massachusetts federal court last Friday. Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office says the executive order would strip citizenship rights from about 24,500 children who are born in California each year.

Expanding ICE’s reach

The administration has directed the Immigration and Customs Enforcement to expand use of a process called “expedited removal”: deportations that are allowed to bypass immigration courts, where a judge would normally decide the merit of allowing someone to stay in the country. In the past, immigrants without legal status and who did not make an asylum claim could be placed in this process if they were arrested within 14 days of entering the country, and within 100 miles of the border.

That already covered most of California. The new order expands the process to the entire country, and to immigrants arrested within two years of entering.

“That could have a huge effect” on the number of people authorities can arrest and put in the fast-tracked deportation process far from the border, said UCLA law professor Ahilan Arulanantham.

Immigration courts have a longstanding backlog that in late 2024 rose to 3.5 million cases.

Other Trump actions could also dramatically increase those cases:

• He revoked a policy prohibiting agents from making arrests in “sensitive locations” such as churches, schools and hospitals; 
• And he signed the Laken Riley Act, a GOP bill that had some Democratic support, directing ICE to detain and deport immigrants who are charged — not just convicted — with certain crimes.

Experts say much of how this is carried out still depends on how much Congress is willing to allow ICE to spend. The agency, which operates on about $9 billion a year, estimates it needs $27 billion to carry out the Laken Riley Act, NPR has reported.

The reach of ICE’s recent activity is also unclear. The agency in the last week of January posted daily arrest numbers on the social media platform X, showing nationwide an average of about 800 arrests a day. That’s far higher than daily arrests during the Biden administration, which averaged about 300 in 2024, according to ICE.

But it’s not clear how many people have been held in detention, released with immigration court cases pending, or deported: ICE spokesperson Richard Beam said those figures aren’t available, nor was a state-by-state breakdown.

The agency also would not provide figures of how many of those arrested have the criminal convictions the administration says it’s targeting. An NBC News report in late January found for one of the days, nearly half of those arrested were nonviolent offenders or had no criminal record.

Cancelling legal immigration paths

In addition to targeting immigrants without legal status, Trump is revoking pathways for immigrants to arrive legally, often on humanitarian grounds.

Trump suspended refugee admissions in one Day One order. In other actions, he’s gone after the temporary legal statuses of immigrants whom the Biden administration allowed to enter. Trump’s administration has called those statuses another way to allow illegal immigration under the guise of government support.

For example, his Homeland Security department canceled the temporary status of about 300,000 Venezuelans that had allowed them protections from deportation and work permits. That status, intended to protect people from tumultuous home countries, expires in April, and another 250,000 protected Venezuelans’ status expires in September.

The administration also is preparing, according to the New York Times, to strip the temporary legal status of immigrants from four countries (Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti) that the Biden administration had allowed to enter — and gain work permits — if they found American sponsors, as a way to curb illegal border crossings.

Similarly, on Day One, Trump ended a Biden-era program allowing migrants at the border to schedule appointments to be temporarily allowed into the U.S. with work permits while they wait for immigration cases to be decided.

Because many of those immigrants are newer arrivals, Kathleen Bush-Joseph, policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute said, they’re particularly likely to be put in the fast-tracked deportation process.

Trying to secure local cooperation

The administration is again trying to overturn local and state sanctuary laws, meaning we’re likely to see a return to the California-versus-federal showdown from the first Trump administration on how much the state can be required to help immigration agents.

Those fights, Arulanantham said, “really are fundamental to balance of power between the federal government and states with respect to how immigration enforcement plays out on the ground.”

From the arresting immigration agents to the detention bed space to the judges considering whether to order deportations, the Trump administration doesn’t have nearly the capacity to carry out the level of crackdown he vows.

So his orders seek to sign on more local police as partners in the effort. The administration is also suing Chicago and Cook County over their non-cooperation policies, accusing the cities of “thwarting” enforcement, and has threatened to prosecute local officials who fail to cooperate with immigration agents.

On her first day as attorney general, Pam Bondi ordered the Justice Department to once again pause grants for sanctuary cities and states. That could include California, which in 2017 passed a law barring police and sheriffs from arresting or detaining immigrants on behalf of federal agents.

In the previous iteration of this standoff, California won in court when the federal government tried to withhold funding. On Friday, San Francisco and Santa Clara counties renewed the fight, suing Trump over his latest threats.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Friday said he hadn’t seen any interruptions to grants yet, but “if that happens, we will sue.”

California conservative sheriffs are now in an odd position between a blue state and a red federal administration. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, in a video Thursday, sought to quell fears and “misinformation” among constituents that his agency was involved in immigration enforcement. Yet in the same video, he said he hoped to assist ICE “within the confines of the sanctuary state laws” with arresting undocumented immigrants who are being held in his jails.

California’s response

The Legislature recently passed $50 million in a special session Gov. Gavin Newsom called to help “Trump-proof” the state — $25 million for the state Department of Justice to sue the federal administration on a variety of matters including immigration, and $25 million toward legal aid to represent immigrants in deportation proceedings.

Democratic lawmakers have introduced a series of bills seeking to discourage the presence of immigration authorities near or at schools.

Newsom has scaled back his own criticisms of the president in recent weeks as he seeks to secure federal wildfire aid.

Bonta has continued to push back with a series of press statements encouraging immigrants to know their rights, and advising school employees they don’t have to assist immigration agents in apprehending immigrant students.

California notched some big wins in court opposing many policies during the last Trump administration, including halting the Muslim ban and Trump’s efforts to undo temporary legal status for immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

But Bush-Joseph noted the Supreme Court in 2023 limited the states’ powers to challenge presidential immigration policies when Texas and other red states tried to sue Biden.

“The inverse can be true under the Trump administration if blue states try to bring lawsuits,” Bush-Joseph said.

Drive around Newport Beach this election season, and you’re likely to see lawn signs with an image of four giant concrete bunnies behind bars below the phrase “SAVE OUR PARK.” It’s a reference to the current City Council’s controversial idea of building a new police headquarters and jail on the parkland that surrounds the Newport Beach Civic Center, home to the famous, or infamous, “Bunnyhenge” sculpture.

The proposal, one of several the city is considering for a new police headquarters, wouldn’t actually lead to the sculpture’s demise, but the idea of paving over a significant portion of the open space and paths around the sculpture has emerged as a top issue in the city’s November City Council race. Other major issues include protecting the city’s vulnerable shoreline from El Niño and preventing the kind of chaos that engulfed the Balboa Peninsula on July 4, when looting, illegal fireworks and street brawls broke out, leading to hundreds of arrests.

Three seats on the seven-member council are contested (in a fourth seat, Robyn Grant, the incumbent has no challengers). Two challengers, Walter Stahr and Andy Gerken, entered the race in their respective districts specifically to fight against building a new police station in the park, which would include the city jail.

“I am 100% opposed to a jail in the park. That is my number one issue,” Stahr said at a candidate forum in September.

Walter Stahr, a candidate for Newport Beach Civic Council District 3, jumped into the race out of concern for the proposal to build a new police headquarters in Civic Center Park.

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At the same forum, Gerken said, “I imagined a police department there and the park gone, and I thought, ‘How could I not run?’ So I ran to save the park.”

The issue illustrates a classic Southern California debate, and one that gains increasing urgency as developable land grows ever more scarce — how valuable is open space?

Everyone agrees Newport PD needs new digs. But where? 

Newport’s current police headquarters, off Jamboree Road, is more than 50 years old. The force has outgrown the building, and it is plagued by maintenance problems. “It’s routine that we have sewage backup; we had the electrical fire last month, the power outage with the failure of the backup generator in November,” Dave Miner, the police chief, said at a city meeting in March. “We definitely do need a new building.”

Neither the City Council members nor the candidates running to unseat them dispute the need. The question is where.

A series of ad hoc committees has looked into several options:

• Rebuild the headquarters in its current spot
• Build on a city-owned site near John Wayne Airport, which was purchased years earlier with a potential police headquarters in mind
• Purchase private land for the new headquarters
• Convert a portion of Civic Center Park, right across from City Hall, which would mean razing some of the sculpture garden that includes Bunnyhenge
  

Concept designs show the police station taking up to one-quarter of the existing parkland on a slope that would put it right under the watchful gaze of the giant concrete rabbits of Bunnyhenge.

Earlier this year, when the majority of City Council members seemed to favor the park option, opponents sprang into action. Dozens of people showed up to a City Council meeting in March to speak against the idea, including Stahr. He is challenging incumbent Erik Weigand in District 3 along with another challenger, Tim Stoaks.

“Parks are sacred spaces,” Stahr said from the lectern at that meeting. “One does not destroy a park to make way for an office building, because, face it, that’s what the police station really is: it’s an office building and a parking structure and a huge gas station.”

Up to a quarter of Newport Beach Civic Center Park, and up to about half of the lower part of the park, could be razed to build a new police headquarters.

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Supporters say putting the new police station on city property makes financial sense and would consolidate the city’s main services at the Civic Center.

No decision has been made to build the new headquarters on the parkland. But the city has allocated at least half a million dollars to evaluate the option.

Once maligned, Bunnyhenge hopped into locals’ hearts

The controversy over potentially putting a new police station in the park has echoes in Newport Beach history. In the early aughts, the city was desperate to replace its outgrown City Hall. One controversial option was to build it on part of the land, the same slender parcel at issue now, that residents had been promised as their own coastal version of a Central Park.

Residents put the idea on the ballot in 2008, and after a whopping $800,000 in spending for and against the measure (the equivalent of about $1.2 million today), voters approved the new Civic Center.

One of the walking paths that would likely have to be rerouted or eliminated if a new police headquarters is built in Civic Center Park.

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The park was developed along with the Civic Center, including the sculpture garden where Bunnyhenge sits. It also includes wetlands, walking paths through native coastal vegetation and a dog park.

The quirky installation of giant rabbits at the park has spawned love and ire over the years. Families take their holiday pictures with the concrete beasts, and they’ve become a destination for out-of-town visitors thanks, at least in part, to their inclusion in the popular Atlas Obscura travel guide.

But some, including former City Councilmember Scott Peotter, thought the bunnies were a waste of money. In a 2014 campaign video, Peotter criticized city officials for spending money on the installation. At the end of the video, Peotter walks away while one giant bunny’s heads spontaneously explodes. (It wasn’t real, and the bunnies still stand.)

Park lovers say a new police station would not only intrude on the sculptured bunnies’ territory, but the project would also eliminate walking paths, jeopardize the adjacent wetlands and reduce habitat for the real bunnies and other animals that live in the park.

What do the candidates say about building a police station in the park?

At a forum held in late September at the OASIS Senior Center, City Council candidates were asked which site is most appropriate for a future police station and why. The two challengers running on the issue, Stahr and Gerken, were unequivocal about where it should not be located.

“Definitely not the Civic Center Park,” Gerken said, adding that he would consider the police department’s preferences regarding the other options.

Stahr said, “I don't know the precise place it should be. The one thing I am absolutely morally convinced of is that it does not belong in the park.”

The other two challengers, Stoaks and Tina Babajanians, also said they opposed the idea.

In contrast, incumbents Weigand, Lauren Kleiman and Joe Stapleton didn’t rule out the possibility. “What I will agree with a lot of people in the community is this process has been flawed from the beginning,” Stapleton said, noting that he would have favored a “more public-facing committee” rather than the initial ad hoc committee, which had no public members.

Kleiman, who is facing a challenge from Gerken to represent District 6, said she supports building a new station “anywhere that is central and that allows the police to have continued operation … that would not impact safety in the city.” She said ideally the new HQ would get built where the current one sits, but doing so would be logistically challenging and disrupt police operations.

Weigand, who is facing a challenge from Stahr and Stoaks to represent District 3, said he was “OK with studying the Civic Center site … to figure out if it actually works.” If it turns out it's not feasible, he said, the city should look at nearby properties that would put the new HQ in “the heart of our city.”

After the candidate forum, resident Pamela Marks said her top issue is making sure the police station doesn’t get built in the park. But more than the idea itself, she said, she doesn’t think the current City Council has listened to residents’ concerns about the proposal. “I get that feeling when I go to the meetings. They kinda roll their eyes and, you know, they just blow it off,” she said.

Asked why preserving Civic Center Park is important to her, Marks said, “The park's important to me because open space is important to me.” She said she volunteers for the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in neighboring Huntington Beach. “I've released wildlife in that park because that's where it was found.”

GKN Aerospace opened its $100 million claims program Tuesday for those affected by the Garden Grove hazmat scare that forced more than 50,000 nearby residents to evacuate in May.

The company is also hosting a community meeting Tuesday night to go over the program.

The claims money comes from a $125 million settlement between the Orange County District Attorney and GKN Aerospace. Another $8.5 million will be used to reimburse government agencies that responded to the emergency, including the county, the Orange County Fire Authority and others. The remaining $15 million will be used to pay civil penalties.

How it works 

People and households who lived within the mandatory evacuation zone are eligible for the claims program. Businesses can file a Business Interruption Claim for losses of income.

Residents who lived in the warning zone, not the mandatory evacuation zone, do not qualify.

Eligible evacuees can be reimbursed for lodging, meals and lost wages or profits through the claims process.

Here’s how the process is outlined:

1. Residents who were impacted by the emergency can start their claim here, add up costs or losses, as well as upload documents that verify identity, address and costs or losses.
2. After a claim is filed, it will be reviewed, and an offer will be made. 
3. Applicants can accept, appeal or decline this offer. 
4. If the offer is accepted, the company will issue the reimbursement and close the claim. 

Only one claim per household is allowed. Duplicate claims will be rejected.

GKN Aerospace will not be administering the claims. An independent claims administrator, Ernst & Young, will administer them, and a retired federal judge will supervise.

Earlier this year, GKN Aerospace committed $3 million to OC United Way’s OC Community Resilience Fund for people impacted by the evacuation orders. If you received support from this fund, you can still apply to the new claims program.

Dozens of lawsuits have been filed against GKN Aerospace following the scare.

People who are involved in a lawsuit can still apply for a claim, according to the company. But those who choose to accept a compensation offer will be required to sign a settlement agreement and must dismiss any current litigation. They must also forfeit the right to participate in future litigation or settlements related to the Garden Grove hazmat scare.

You can find more information on this FAQ page or get support by calling the GKN Aerospace support line at 657-526-7470.

What about the community event? 

GKN Aerospace officials are expected to answer questions about the claims portal. The event will take place Tuesday, Oct. 27, at 6 p.m. at the Delta Hotels Anaheim Garden Grove, 12021 Harbor Blvd.

Public pushback over municipal police drones is boiling over across California, turning routine local policy hearings into high-stakes battles over the boundaries of neighborhood surveillance.

The increasingly heated public debates are driven by landmark privacy litigation and a 2021 law that mandates explicit local board approvals for the use of “military equipment,” including drones. Those disclosures make clear that police are increasingly looking to drones as potential “first responders” in cities like San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Ana and Stockton — forcing local leaders to face skeptical residents in public hearings required before drone programs can expand.

At those appearances, law enforcement agencies are pushing to broaden their drone use beyond emergency-only response to aid in everyday patrols, while citizens are concerned about drones conducting warrantless searches, if municipalities are hoarding too much data collected by drones, and whether drone makers have too much power and information.

Those tensions were on stark display earlier this month in San Francisco, when a policy debate at a police commission meeting drew a packed room of opposing residents.

The San Francisco Police Department asked commissioners to approve a policy allowing drones for a wide array of uses, including “public safety response,” active investigations, training, and “community outreach.” While prohibiting random “general surveillance” or tracking activities protected by the First Amendment, the draft stipulated that public footage would be retained for 30 days unless tied to an open investigation.

“With drones, you can fly at much lower altitudes, you can get thermal imaging, you can get tracking.”

Supporters argued the technology is vital for modern crime-fighting. “Public safety and personal privacy shouldn't be competing interests,” said Anna Carney, president of Stop Crime SF, urging commissioners to give officers every responsible advantage to save lives.

But privacy advocates and skeptical residents saw a slippery slope toward unchecked surveillance, drawing explicit parallels to the contentious rollout of automated license plate readers across the state. In recent years, cities like San Francisco and Stockton built extensive fixed camera networks supplied by vendors like Flock Safety. Now, communities fear that attaching drones to those same networks creates an inescapable, multi-dimensional dragnet — one that tracks citizens not just by car on the street, but from the air above their homes.

“We are all here today because these drones are impacting all of our communities, " said Manny, a member of the privacy advocacy group DeFlock SF, who urged the commissioners to cancel the department’s contract with drone manufacturer Skydio. "If SFPD truly cared about operating these drones with any respect to privacy, the very least that can happen is one of you make an amendment to require a warrant,” he added, referring to language used in the department’s proposed policy.

Although commissioners voted to advance the policy to labor negotiations without adding a warrant mandate, the friction displayed in San Francisco reflects a statewide reckoning.

Legal uncertainty and the policy vacuum

The 2021 rules governing military equipment in law enforcement still leave a policy vacuum confronting municipalities across California: Local agencies that deploy drones are stepping into a legal gray area where technology is far outpacing state regulation.

A lawsuit against Sonoma County underscores the uncertainty. Privacy concerns festered for years in the county after officials launched a drone program in 2019 for code enforcement. But investigators with the American Civil Liberties Union later uncovered hundreds of warrantless searches over private yards, homes, and windows — all conducted without a published policy in sight. In 2025, the ACLU of Northern California sued Sonoma, and last month, the county settled. Sonoma pledged to reel in its drone use, obtain warrants or consent before conducting residential property code inspections, restrict data retention, and directly notify residents if their property was subjected to aerial surveillance.

The case brought to the forefront the complex legal matrix officials must navigate in deploying unmanned aircraft.

"There's three main buckets," explained Katie Inman, a drone policy expert and attorney at Holland & Knight who previously worked at the Federal Aviation Administration. "You've got the broad … constitutional law principles, then you've got state statutes, and then you've got the third bucket, which is FAA operating rules."

Inman noted that California belongs to a category of states that lack a comprehensive state statute explicitly governing law enforcement drone use, leaving municipalities on their own to read and comply with constitutional Fourth Amendment case law, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

She said the Supreme Court has ruled that aircraft surveilling areas that are visible to the naked eye from lawful altitudes do not violate Constitutional protections.

"But those were manned aircraft; they are not drones,” she said. ”With drones, you can fly at much lower altitudes, you can get thermal imaging, you can get tracking, you can get just a lot of hovering — a lot of surveillance potential there that you would not normally have."

Across the state, nearly 60 law enforcement agencies use drone programs, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Most foundational policies, including those in Chula Vista, Fremont, and the policy proposed in San Francisco, prohibit random surveillance, but programs diverge when it comes to deployment triggers and public oversight. Departments like Chula Vista deploy automated "Drone as First Responder" units broadly ahead of ground officers for routine 911 calls, whereas newer or more heavily scrutinized frameworks, such as San Francisco's proposed policy, attempt to draw tighter lines by limiting flights to active criminal investigations, vehicle pursuits, or specific, incident-based emergencies.

Multimillion-dollar contracts and unproven safety claims

Beyond constitutional and policy questions, the rapid growth of drone programs is closely tied to an aggressive push by defense and surveillance technology vendors.

Both the San Francisco and Los Angeles police departments rely on hardware manufactured by San Mateo-based Skydio, while industry peers like Axon, which makes body cameras, and license-plate-reader manufacturer Flock Safety have also aggressively expanded into the market. Skydio originally launched to give extreme sports athletes a way to track and film themselves doing parkour or snowboarding. But after the U.S. government labeled Chinese drone maker DJI a national security risk in 2020, Skydio pivoted to fill the void for military, police, and enterprise customers.

At a recent customer conference, Skydio CEO Adam Bry laid out an ambitious roadmap: small drones for tactical flights inside buildings, mid-range aircraft for vehicle pursuits, and high-speed models capable of traveling 100 mph up to a 30-mile radius. Bry also outlined a future driven by AI, envisioning software that analyzes 911 calls in real time to automatically recommend dispatching an autonomous drone to a scene.

Executing that vision requires major investments — from taxpayers and billionaire backers alike. Santa Ana recently greenlit $682,900 for its Drone as First Responder initiative in partnership with Skydio, while the Stockton City Council approved a $3.15 million contract expansion with Flock Safety to integrate six drones into its existing network of 120 license plate reader cameras. In San Francisco last year, the police department received a $9.4 million donation from the crypto billionaire and Ripple cofounder, Chris Larsen, to expand its drone program and surveillance systems, Mission Local reported.

“The premise of the Bill of Rights is respect for liberty of the individual, and that used to mean something in this city,” a San Francisco resident named Ilona said at the Oct. 14 Commission meeting, lambasting officials for accepting Larsen’s drone donation. “But it doesn't anymore because now we have sold out to tech billionaires. ... SFPD has been sloppy and reckless with our privacy. How can we trust them with these tools?”

Venture-backed drone vendors have spent heavily to influence local officials to support their expansion — Flock Safety, for instance, has reportedly spent millions of dollars on local and federal lobbying, claiming its technology helped “solve” a million crimes last year alone. Yet researchers are increasingly skeptical of what vendors and law enforcement say the technology can help accomplish.

Police argue that drones help them respond to incidents more quickly, help them deescalate potentially dangerous situations, and improve crime clearance rates. A February 2026 study by the UC Berkeley Criminal Law and Justice Center found that while first-responder drones can improve response times, there is no evidence they reduce officer-involved shootings, lower overall use of force, or improve case resolution rates.

The rapid rollout has also intensified community anxiety over interconnected surveillance networks, and intensified the brewing nationwide backlash against AI-powered police tech.

Jesus Gabriel Yanez, a recently-retired police commissioner, spoke at the San Francisco commission meeting. He briefly read a passage from George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” before expressing his opposition to the drone use policy outlined by his former peers.

“SFPD should tie deployments to specific incidents that cannot be addressed without compromising officer safety — period,” Yanez said. “Those are the only times when we should allow for the deployment of a drone. No general routine patrol. No general surveillance.”

Opponents like Yanez point to past instances where California law enforcement agencies illegally shared license plate tracking data with federal immigration authorities, as well as technical missteps like a recent leak that exposed live police drone video feeds online due to vendor misconfigurations. That anxiety over vendor overreach and AI surveillance isn't confined to California—similar resistance is bubbling up across the country. In Minneapolis, the city council voted to reject a police drone contract with Skydio following community protests over privacy and dual-use military technology. In New Orleans, advocacy group Eye on Surveillance successfully mobilized against a proposed policy that would have allowed weapons on police drones.

Whether through public city council debates sparked by AB 481 or court-enforced settlements like Sonoma County's, California communities are trying to make it clear that adopting cutting-edge public safety technology will not come at the cost of privacy. The automated eye in the sky may arrive in seconds, but citizens are demanding to know exactly who is watching — and who holds the remote.

CalMatters Technology Reporter Khari Johnson contributed to this report.

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

Free events centered around Dia de Los Muertos are coming to MacArthur Park where people can celebrate the memory of their loved ones. 

Music, Arts & Community Los Angeles (MAC·LA) kicked off the holiday by hosting two hands-on art making workshops led by artist Marelené Nancy Lopez this past Sunday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and this Monday from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the MacArthur Park Bandshell. 

Lopez will be gathering art and stories from residents that will be part of a large canvas mural and also a part of the community altar that’s going to be built for their main “Dia de Los Muertos” event on November 1st. 

“This is free and open to all ages, and a wonderful way for people to embrace the diverse cultures of the Westlake community,” said Allegra Padilla, executive director of MAC·LA. 

Since 2007, MAC·LA, formerly known as the Levitt Pavilion Los Angeles, has turned the MacArthur Park Bandshell into a space for concerts in the summer and community events. 

The Dia de Los Muertos event on Nov. 1 will start at 3:30 p.m. with a procession on Alvarado and Sixth streets led by the Project for the Arts and Dreams of Indigenous Oaxacan Heritage in collaboration with the Westlake Theater Community Alliance. 

According to the PADIOXH website, the nonprofit is on a mission to save and share the vibrant culture of Oaxacan communities in Mexico and the U.S. through a mix of educational programs like dance, artisan workshops, traditional cuisine and indigenous language courses. 

The Westlake Theater Community Alliance is a nonprofit organization with the goal of  turning the Westlake Theatre into a community space for the arts, events, spaces for vendors and more. 

The group will arrive at the park at 4 p.m. to kick off the event and there will be an opening prayer and ceremony with local indigenous leaders. 

Although primarily associated with Mexico, Dia de Los Muertos is a holiday that’s also celebrated in different Central and South American countries where families welcome back the souls of loved ones who have passed away in a celebration that includes altars, prayer and traditional food and drink.

The theme for this year’s event at MacArthur Park is “Ancestral Protection,” according to MAC·LA.

The event will include dance performances, a fashion show, music, community organizations hosting resource booths and there will be a community altar that people can participate in.

The event organizers encourage rideshare, carpooling, walking, biking and public transportation whenever possible. 

The post Dia de Los Muertos celebrations starts early in MacArthur Park appeared first on LA Local.