The Brief

When U.S. National Park Service staff found out this spring that they were being instructed to scrub entire parks of any materials that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living” reactions among workers ranged from disbelief to anger.

“Sometimes I’m raging. Sometimes I’m in denial,” said one park superintendent, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation and losing their job.

It had already been a chaotic year for national parks under President Donald Trump’s second administration. First came the attempt to fire thousands of employees of the National Park Service and impose a hiring freeze — followed by threats to cut billions in funding and sell off federal lands, including some less popular national parks.

Then, in March, Trump issued an executive order called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” It ordered staff working at all National Park Service locations to remove any content that casts Americans in a negative light from parks, monuments and memorials.

It’s thrown staff into further chaos.

A view of a welcome sign as hundreds of tourists and photographers flock in Yosemite National Park.

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“Things that would normally take us years to do, like exhibit development, we’re trying to figure out how to wholesale make changes that many of us are morally opposed to in weeks,” the anonymous superintendent said. “It’s kind of wild.”

Many parks staffers are wary of speaking up on the record. “There’s worry and fear that telling the truth can get them in trouble,” said Neal Desai, Pacific regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association.

Across the nation, from Yosemite National Park in California to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., staff are now grappling with what the anonymous superintendent called a “Herculean” task: Inspect, document and potentially change or cover up thousands of signs ahead of a looming September deadline from the federal government.

Staff and advocates at California’s iconic national parks say they’re especially worried about the potential threat to the state’s cultural memory — and that the very nature of historical truth is now at stake.

Chaos and confusion

Trump’s order addressed what it called a “distorted narrative” about American history — one the White House claimed was permeating the country’s national parks, monuments and other federal institutions.

In demanding the signage review, Trump instructed parks staff to “focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people” and “the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape.”

“Interpretive materials that disproportionately emphasize negative aspects of U.S. history or historical figures, without acknowledging broader context or national progress, can unintentionally distort understanding rather than enrich it,” the National Park Service told KQED in an emailed statement.

The dismay and disbelief among park staff were instantaneous. “This is the fascist playbook,” said one park ranger, who also wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “You silence the voices that are inconvenient to you, and you control history, you control the narratives.”

U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum doubled down on Trump’s order in May, further instructing parks to report on any statues or monuments that had been removed since 2020 at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, including Confederate monuments.

Waysigns, interpretive signs, exhibits, brochures, films screened within park buildings, even merchandise sold in park kiosks and bookstores — according to the orders, all of it had to be entered into a federal database for the government’s review. Staff were also ordered to post new signs around parks land urging the public to submit feedback online about parks and their signage.

“Frankly, it’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen in this country,” California Rep. Jared Huffman, who serves on the House Committee on Natural Resources, told KQED. In August, Huffman co-authored a letter in response to the White House’s orders, requesting the rationale for “ongoing efforts to rewrite history,” and asking for more information about who within the federal government would ultimately decide what can or can’t go in national parks.

And in a state with as many parks resources and visitorship as California, the orders required a particularly enormous undertaking. The state has nine major national parks — the most of any state across the country — including Yosemite and Joshua Tree, each of which regularly receives 3 to 4 million visitors annually.

That’s not to mention the dozens of smaller national historic landmarks, smaller parks, monuments and historic trails on a scale matched only by Washington, D.C., including Alcatraz, the Presidio and Fort Point just in the Bay Area.

Unknown judges, unclear timeline

Who exactly within the federal government would make the final decisions on thousands of signs — covering hundreds of years of history — remains unclear.

Huffman said he has yet to receive any response to the Committee on Natural Resources’ queries. And the NPS did not respond to KQED’s query on who is evaluating submissions, saying only that they are done “manually.”

As first reported by the New York Times, the federal government originally told parks they’d know which exhibits were slated for removal by Wednesday. The anonymous superintendent said staff were initially told that a panel of subject matter experts would issue a memo on what should ultimately be removed.

But in mid-August, they were told they’d instead only “receive an email that identified which submissions were in conflict, but not tell us what exactly was considered problematic or why,” the superintendent said. And when the emails came, they didn’t make clear exactly when staff should pull down any material that had been, in the government’s words, “found to be out of conformance.” (The NPS did not respond to KQED’s questions about the timeline for removals.)

Ultimately, the confusing rollout has put the onus on parks staff to “determine what someone thought was in conflict” with the order, the superintendent said, and then decide themselves how to move forward in a way they think the federal government wants.

“Which is really frustrating,” they said. “Do we change a word in a sentence, or do we take down a whole exhibit? Or somewhere in between?”

But one of the first high-profile examples of such removal has already happened here in California — offering insight into the kind of history that’s being targeted.

Change already comes for California

With its towering redwoods, Muir Woods National Monument is one of California’s most popular parks, with annual visitorship of more than a million people.

In 2021, Muir Woods park rangers developed an exhibit called “History Under Construction,” which took the form of sticky notes placed on a permanent sign. The sticky notes represented an effort to add context to the park’s history, highlighting the foundational roles of women and Indigenous people in its creation and the oftentimes racist and violent past of its more notable founders.

Christine Lehnertz, president and CEO of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, stands in Muir Woods National Monument.

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“Part of our duty in the National Park Service is to tell the full story” of Muir Woods’ stewardship, the exhibit read.

But in mid-July, Muir Woods staff removed the sticky note exhibit altogether, with a spokesperson for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area confirming its removal was prompted by Trump’s executive order.

The swiftness of the Muir Woods removal was jarring to some observers. “We were surprised that changes happened at Muir Woods so quickly,” said Chris Lehnertz, president and CEO of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, the nonprofit partner of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which manages Muir Woods.

The Muir Woods removal was ordered by a higher-up outside of the park, according to Lehnertz and an anonymous source with knowledge of the exhibit’s development. The National Park Service did not reply to KQED’s request for confirmation of the directive’s source.

The federal government has yet to make widespread directives to parks staff to enact removals. Yet preemptive changes within other national parks have already been witnessed — with apparent anxiety over landing in the White House’s crosshairs even pre-dating the “Restoring Truth and Sanity” executive order.

As documented by the Resistance Rangers advocacy group, the website for New York’s Stonewall National Monument was altered in February to remove references to transgender people. Language on other national park websites was removed in February and then restored, including information about abolitionist leader Harriet Tubman on an NPS webpage about the Underground Railroad.

In the Bay Area, as reported by Richmondside, a handful of staff members at Rosie the Riveter World War II Homefront National Historic Park briefly removed an exhibit focused on the LGBTQ+ history of the region right after Trump’s inauguration in January, before putting it back up a few days later.

“It’s an anxious time to be a superintendent,” Lehnertz said.

Donna Graves, an independent historian who helped develop the Rosie the Riveter Park back in 2000, said Rosie is the kind of national park site where “inclusive storytelling permeates every aspect of the exhibits in the visitor center, the handouts, the films that are shown.”

Parks staff found themselves in a quandary, said Graves, who organized a rally against the order in August. Should employees submit every piece of content in the park for federal review, “seeing it as sort of flooding the zone”?

“Others took the stance of, ‘Well, we’re not ‘inappropriately’ disparaging anybody. We think what we’re doing is appropriate,’” Graves said. “So they did not report any content.”

‘Hard history’

The idea of taking a second look at history isn’t actually new for the National Park Service.

Lehnertz said when Jonathan Jarvis was parks director from 2009 to 2017, he made a sweeping effort to broaden the narratives on display, shifting from a previous focus on military and political history to including individuals’ stories, expanding the timeline to before the country’s founding and “opening up the story” of American history, she said.

Jarvis, she said, “helped us understand that the preamble to the Constitution — ‘We, the people’ — means ‘We, all the people; we, all the stories.’ And that means hard history sometimes,” she said.

By contrast, the Trump administration’s approach to revisiting history “isn’t an honest exercise,” argued National Parks Conservation Association’s Desai.

“It’s premeditated — there’s a goal in mind at the end,” Desai said. “They’re not really looking at all these things in a critical way or in a scholarly way. It’s about: ‘We want to erase certain parts of history, and clamp down on the Park Service from providing Americans with a full picture.’”

Jonathan Jarvis sits outside of his home in Pinole.

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Jarvis — who lives in Contra Costa County after retiring from NPS — agreed. Had he still been at the helm of national parks, Jarvis said, he’d have “gone upstairs and told them this was a really stupid idea.”

“Just the task of it in of itself is completely daunting,” he said. “To think that there’s going to be somebody back there with either the intelligence — or the capacity — to somehow give a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to a sign that is in some visitor center in Dinosaur National Monument that talks about evolution.”

“It’s absurd,” he said.

‘Going backwards’

The federal government’s orders are forcing national parks around the country to review hundreds of years of history — events that often sharply illustrate the human cost of that state’s development.

In states including Pennsylvania, Florida, Tennessee and Louisiana, staff have been asked to flag mentions of slavery for possible removal.

In California, where the arrival of white settlers in the 1840s and the subsequent Gold Rush sparked a decades-long genocide of Native Americans that killed tens of thousands of people, parks staffers must decide how to deal with this state’s painful history around its Indigenous communities.

When Sharaya Souza, co-founder of the American Indian Cultural District in San Francisco, first heard about the changes made to the Muir Woods sticky notes exhibit, she was “sad but not surprised,” she said.

“They’re removing Post-it notes from a piece of history,” said Souza, who is Taos Pueblo, Ute and Kiowa — in addition to being of both Spanish and Brazilian heritage — and spoke to KQED on her own behalf and not for the organizations she works with. “That’s all we got: Post-it notes.”

In her role at AICD and her previous work with the California Native American Heritage Commission, Souza has long strived to protect Native cultural sites and heritage via an effort called “placekeeping:” “Letting people know the full history of what happened here. And yes, some of it was a hard history,” Souza said.

The state’s history of violence toward its Native communities has long gone ignored in California, but in recent years, many national parks across California have begun to acknowledge that brutal history in their programming or signage — even though Souza said there’s still a long way to go.

And tribes’ relationships with the parks haven’t always been smooth either, advocate Morning Star Gali said. A member of the Ajumawi band of the Pit River Tribe and the founder of Indigenous Justice, Gali is also the California Tribal and Community Liaison for the International Indian Treaty Council, coordinating the annual Sunrise Gathering for Alcatraz Island. She has been driving work to remove racist place names and add signage, particularly to NPS sites like Alcatraz, that acknowledge its Indigenous history.

Gali said that while staff and leadership at some parks have supported their efforts, many are limited in the changes they can make — and others have dragged their feet in allowing tribes to access and use their sacred land or have scrutinized their practices and religious expression.

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“Where do we go when we’re shut out of our sacred places?” she said. “Where do we go when we’re no longer allowed into both state and federal sites?”

Souza agreed: “We’ve kind of become the Indian in the Cupboard,” she said. “You take them out when you want to play with them.”

“But you put them back in the cupboard when it comes to actually elevating that truth-telling, and it’s out of some sort of fear that it’s going to increase ‘a sense of national shame,’” she said, referencing the language used in Trump’s executive order.

“I’m a little afraid of the direction that we are going,” Souza said. “That we’re going backwards from all the progress that we’ve made over the years.”

‘A white nationalist effort’

Another aspect of California history that many worry could be erased: the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

These events are commemorated at the National Park Service’s Manzanar National Historic Site in the Eastern Sierra, where around 11,000 people were incarcerated. Around the country, well over 100,000 people were imprisoned this way.

Survivors of Japanese American incarceration have been among the most vocal against the Trump administration’s detainment and deportation of immigrants, after the president used the same law deployed against them in the 1940s — the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — to attempt to deport Venezuelans being held at a Texas detention center.

Now, advocates are worried the history they’ve fought so hard to tell will be at risk once again. The story told at Manzanar is “a cautionary tale,” said Bruce Embrey, who co-chairs the Manzanar Committee that his mother, who was incarcerated at Manzanar, co-founded in 1970.

For Embrey, the signage review at parks like Manzanar is “a white nationalist effort to erase our history,” he said — and he believes that “if they cannot rewrite the narrative of the Smithsonian or Manzanar or the various sites around this country, they will close them.”

Lehnertz said it’s stories like those on display at Manzanar that are most needed in parks.

Replica camp barracks stand at Manzanar National Historic Site near Independence, California.

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“The United States does not put its history into secret boxes,” she said. “It shares its history openly, and that’s what makes America great, is our willingness to sometimes disagree.”

“And our willingness to commit resources to a rigorous understanding of history, even when it disagrees with our family’s experience of history,” she said.

An uncertain future

Regardless of the federal government’s final decisions, many staffers are worried about the degrading effect that any hasty revision of information will have on the parks — and on visitors.

Normally, the anonymous superintendent said, they would work with historians, biologists and other subject matter experts to help develop park signage.

Signs also have to be accessible — often featuring braille or sitting at wheelchair height — and parks staff will often consult with tribal communities or descendants of the historical figure they’re writing about. Parks advocates have even argued the changes demanded by the executive order violate their legal obligation to consult with tribes before making significant changes to parks.

“We’re talking millions of dollars here in terms of process and years of work to do a full exhibit, and the signage, and all the interpretive materials that go with,” former NPS leader Jarvis said.

In the absence of those funds, covered-up signs will likely become a familiar sight to visitors, said Jesse Chakrin, the executive director of Fund for People in Parks. Chakrin’s group works with small or lesser-known parks in the West on elements like signage that aren’t typically funded by federal dollars — “a long and slow process,” which can cost up to $5,000 for a single sign.

In an era of reduced staffing, Chakrin said, these signs “may be the only way that a visitor actually better understands the park location that they’re in.”

But Chakrin’s biggest concern is that even if no more sign removal orders ever materialize, the order is so broad — and the penalties so nebulous — that parks staff will simply self-censor out of fear of retribution.

“People will stop telling full and complete stories,” he said. “People will start to think about the ways that they can be careful so as to not offend.”

This puts parks staff in a moral quandary, Jarvis said, with many feeling the order runs counter to the park service’s mission “to tell these stories authentically and based on the best scholarship in science.”

“It’s essentially a violation of that responsibility,” he said.

Visitors speak up

Amid all this turmoil, staff and advocates say that visitors have yet to see the biggest effects of the orders. Nonprofit partners like “friends” groups have been backfilling a lot of public-facing roles, as have seasonal staff.

“Visitors aren’t really seeing the full impact because of this veneer, this facade, of keeping parks ‘open and accessible’,” the superintendent said — referring to another secretarial order that mandates parks keep functioning even amid severe staffing shortages.

“Meanwhile, everything on the back end is falling apart.”

One thing that might give parks staff solace: Across California, the federally mandated signs urging the public to join the review of parks signage have so far not borne much fruit for the Trump administration.

According to a copy of the public submissions received by California parks and provided to KQED by the National Parks Conservation Association, out of around 300 entries across the state’s national parks sites from June and July of this year, just four were elevated for review — all of which critiqued the Muir Woods “History Under Construction” exhibit.

A handful of others alerted parks staff to infrastructure issues with bathrooms or fading signs that need replacing. But nearly all of the rest of the submissions were either in praise of rangers and parks staff or offering complimentary views of existing signage.

And hundreds of public comments were submitted specifically in protest of the signage order — commending displays at parks that highlighted Indigenous history and climate change. Manzanar, especially, wrote one visitor, “is an example that the beauty and grandeur of our constitution can never be taken for granted,” making reference to the language of Trump’s executive order. Another comment about Yosemite urged parks staff to “continue to educate people about the Native Americans who were displaced in this area.”

Supporters line the walkway with signs spelling “Protect Our Park” during the National Parks Conservation Association’s Day of Action at Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California.

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Parks advocates said the results of the public submissions give them hope that, amid everything, park visitors see the value in telling the whole story of American history.

“History aims to improve the nation by learning the lessons of the past,” Lehnertz said. “And the openness of any individual American to learning that, in my experience, has been 99% to 1%.”

Or as Graves put it: “They’ve said over and over — ‘We want to know the whole truth. Don’t dumb down our history.’”

The number of Californians without health insurance could double from 2 million today to 4 million by 2030, according to a report from the state Legislative Analyst's Office. It’s the state budget office’s preliminary attempt to quantify how federal legislation known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill” will reshape healthcare access statewide.

The One Big Beautiful Bill is driving nearly 90% of the projected coverage loss, according to the LAO report. It's mostly Medi-Cal enrollees who are expected to be dropped when new work requirements take effect in 2027. The remaining 10% are largely people leaving the state's health insurance marketplace, Covered California, after enhanced federal premium subsidies expired last year.

What's the impact to coverage?

L.A. County officials estimate that recent Medi-Cal changes could put coverage at risk for hundreds of thousands of residents and cost the health departments about $800 million a year. A UC Berkeley Labor Center analysis projected more than 1 million Medi-Cal enrollees could lose coverage by 2028.

The LAO report also warns that county indigent health programs for uninsured residents will soon face a surge in demand they’re not prepared to meet. Those county programs had enrolled about 850,000 people statewide before the federal government expanded Medicaid coverage in 2014. Total enrollment is currently 10,000 statewide, but the trend is going to reverse, according to the report.

What's the impact to health-care providers?

More uninsured people means hospitals and clinics provide more services without getting paid. The LAO projects that uncompensated care costs at hospitals could grow by several billion dollars statewide by 2030. Clinics face steeper losses because they run on smaller budgets and depend more heavily on Medi-Cal revenue.

The LAO also projects premiums on the individual health insurance market will rise as healthier people drop coverage.

What are proposals to help?

The LAO itself doesn’t recommend new spending and instead urges lawmakers to track what happens to hospitals, clinics and county programs before taking action. But both L.A. County and state officials are pushing tax efforts to combat federal cuts.

L.A. County voters will decide June 2 on Measure ER, a half-cent sales tax that would generate about $1 billion a year for hospitals and clinics. ANovember statewide ballot initiative would impose a one-time 5% tax on Californians worth over $1 billion and direct 90% of proceeds to Medi-Cal.

California regulators say State Farm has illegally delayed, underpaid and denied claims from policyholders affected by the 2025 L.A. fires — something fire survivors have said for months.

The California Department of Insurance announced Monday that it has taken the first step in the process to bring the allegations to a public hearing before an administrative judge. That could result in the state’s largest home insurer paying up to about $4 million in penalties, and suspension of its license for up to a year, meaning it could not write new policies in California during that time.

“Our investigation found that State Farm delayed, underpaid, and buried policyholders in red tape at the worst moment of their lives,” state Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara said in a statement.

The state analyzed 220 randomly selected claims — out of more than 11,000 filed with State Farm in response to last year’s fires — and found hundreds of violations in more than half them. Attorneys for the state called it a “troubling pattern” in their filing.

State Farm denied the allegations and called the state’s move “politically motivated” in a lengthy statement posted to its website.

Every Fire Survivors Network, a coalition representing thousands of L.A. fire survivors, pressured the state for months to investigate State Farm’s handling of wildfire claims.

Joy Chen, who co-founded the group after her home was damaged in the Eaton Fire, said the state’s action is far from enough.

“It’s just very disappointing to see our regulator issue a report that shows his own failures over the last 16 months,” she told LAist.

Only a few dozen homes have been rebuilt so far in both Altadena and Pacific Palisades since the fires destroyed more than 16,000 buildings, mostly homes, in those communities and nearby areas.

A survey by the nonprofit Department of Angels last year found that nearly three-quarters of L.A. fire survivors reported delays, denials and low payouts of their claims across all insurers.

“What we need is for all State Farm contracts to be enforced so that Los Angeles families can have the money that we need to move forward with getting back home,” Chen said.

The state’s alleged violations carry a fine of up to $5,000, and up to $10,000 if the violations are found to be willful. The case will be heard by a state administrative law judge, who will provide a recommendation to Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara on a possible penalty.

The Insurance Department said people with homeowners policies from any insurer can report problems with their claims at insurance.ca.gov or by calling (800) 927-4357.

Yes, you could put a screen in your backyard and call up your friends to watch a particularly compelling World Cup game after the tournament begins June 12.

But FIFA is turning each game into a public celebration, sponsoring 10 outdoor Fan Zone watch parties with large viewing screens across L.A. County through the final on July 19.

Details were released on Monday, including locations, dates and prices.

The Fan Zones open in a staggered schedule from one day to four days each, starting with the Original Farmers Market on June 18 - 21, and then popping up across the region until the glorious end on July 19 in downtown Burbank.

Ticket prices range from free (City of Downey, Union Station L.A., “Magic” Johnson Park, Whittier Narrows) to over $300 for a VIP experience with a viewing lounge and a concert at the downtown Burbank Fan Zone on the day of the World Cup final match on July 19.

Fan Zone kick off

At the first Fan Zone, at The Original Farmers Market from June 18 for four days, entry will cost you $5 per day or $17 for all four days. Kids age 3 and under are free. (FIFA says the zones are family friendly).

You’ll be able to see four matches there each of the four days, including Mexico vs. South Korea on June 18 at 6 p.m. and USA vs. Australia on June 19 at noon.

FIFA World Cup 2026 scarves are displayed during the ribbon cutting for the LAX/Metro Transit Center rail and bus public transportation station at LAX on June 6, 2025.

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You won’t have to squint to find your favorite player or catch the goals. The Farmer’s Market will include a 30-foot viewing screen as well as a 15-foot secondary screen to watch the games. There will be beer gardens, and you can purchase food from the Market's dozens of establishments.

Other Fan Zones

The West Harbor L.A. Fan Zone will give people an opportunity to experience the newest major development along the San Pedro waterfront, a 42-acre waterfront district that’s been years in the making.

The Union Station L.A. Fan Zone on June 25 is free and includes match viewing, music, food, and immersive fan experiences, featuring live DJs.

The final Fan Zone opens July 18 and 19 in downtown Burbank for the World Cup’s last two matches. FIFA says it’ll include “an adjacent international street fair filled with global flavors and cultural experiences.” Tickets range from $25 to over $300

The full list of the Fan Zones is here.

This of course, isn’t the only opportunity to watch World Cup matches with groups of people in SoCal. The city of L.A. will host its own watch parties.

Up against a massive court backlog that can drag their cases for years, asylum seekers face steep costs when pursuing their dreams of college in California.

Asylum-seeking students in California often face a double blow: they are charged higher tuition for nonresidents and excluded from most financial aid. For students and their families, this can mean thousands of dollars paid out of pocket and years of financial stress as their immigration cases remain unresolved.

Before establishing residency, asylum-seeking students are charged non-resident rates, which are about three times what state residents pay for public universities and roughly eight to 13 times more for community colleges, depending on the district.

All asylum seekers are disqualified from federal financial aid. The few who qualify for California’s state aid may never know their options, or face hurdles in obtaining it due to a patchwork of financial aid processes.

The state’s higher education systems are not mandated to track asylum seekers, making state budget impacts nearly unquantifiable during legislative attempts to expand financial aid eligibility.

“I only see them struggling,” said Eric Cline, social services program director at OASIS Legal Services, which supports LGBTQ+ asylum seekers across the Bay Area and Central Valley. “I’m always surprised (when) a few clients tell me 'I just graduated from college.’ I think, ‘Wow, how did that happen?’”

Policy changes stoke uncertainty for asylum seekers

Asylum seeking is one of the least-protected immigration statuses in the U.S. Asylum seekers, who’ve fled their home countries fearing persecution and are asking the U.S. for protection, differ from refugees, whose status is granted before they enter the country. Asylum seekers apply upon arriving in the U.S.

Applicants can stay as their cases remain pending for years, though experts say the Trump administration is expediting deportations for numerous asylum seekers and ending cases before they can receive a full hearing.

As of February 2026, a little over 2.3 million immigrants are awaiting asylum hearings nationwide, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks federal activity. The most recent data shows California alone had about 169,000 pending asylum cases in its immigration courts by the end of 2023 — the second-largest backlog of any state. The average wait for an asylum hearing in California was 1,412 days at that time.

The Trump administration paused asylum cases in November, creating even further delays. The administration has now allowed cases to resume for applicants from all but 40 countries. In the San Francisco immigration court system, which is popular among asylum seekers due to higher acceptance rates, a combination of firings by the Trump administration, retirements and relocations whittled the 21 immigration judges to two, according to reporting in Mission Local. Left behind is a caseload of nearly 119,000 immigration cases, the highest of any immigration court in California.

President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” also established new fees for asylum seekers, placing additional pressure on an already low-income population. Applicants must now pay an initial $100 application fee plus $100 per year while their case is pending, $550 for a work permit, and $745 each year to renew the permit. In addition, a new rule proposed by the Department of Homeland Security would effectively end the ability of asylum seekers to obtain work permits at all.

Royce Hall on the UCLA campus

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As they await a decision, asylum seekers are excluded from federal aid and some state financial aid programs, including Cal Grants under California law.

For one asylum seeker, Carol, being ineligible for financial aid meant she had to take time off from school to work to make ends meet. CalMatters is not using her full name because she fears speaking publicly may jeopardize her asylum case.

Carol did speak before the Assembly Higher Education Committee in 2023 urging lawmakers to pass AB 888, which would have expanded Cal Grant eligibility to certain asylum seekers. The bill ultimately did not pass.

She said she arrived in the United States at 17 and had spent more than six years waiting for her case to move through immigration courts, a period during which she said she was ineligible for financial aid.

“I’ve had to delay my educational journey several times, including going part-time and even taking a semester off from school to work,” Carol told lawmakers.

Without access to aid, she said she experienced homelessness, couch surfing and at one point slept on a mattress topper on a hardwood floor because she could not afford a bed. She worked multiple jobs at a time, skipped meals and attended class without the required course materials.

Her story, she said, was not new. Carol told the committee that four years earlier her brother had testified with a nearly identical experience on behalf of a previous bill that was ultimately vetoed, a cycle she argued could have been prevented.

“Had California taken action then, I wouldn’t have had to face the harrowing experiences that I shared with you today,” she said.

Despite the barriers, Carol graduated from Cal State Long Beach and worked as a caseworker with the International Rescue Committee, helping resettle refugees and asylum seekers. She told lawmakers she hopes to pursue a law degree and become an international human rights attorney.

The narrow path to college aid for asylum-seeking students

Many asylum seekers arrive eager to continue studies they began abroad, but quickly run into what Cline calls “a brick wall."

“All of our clients are low-income … they’re almost never eligible for generalized financial aid,” he said. “When you take away the financial aid aspect, it makes (college) pretty inaccessible.”

For California residents, annual undergraduate tuition is $15,588 at the University of California, $6,838 at the California State University and about $1,380 for 30 units at a community college. Students classified as non-residents — including some asylum seekers before establishing residency — can pay $54,858 at a University of California, about $20,968 at a Cal State before campus-based fees, and roughly $10,140 to $13,560 for 30 units at a community college, depending on the district. These figures do not include campus-based fees, housing or living expenses.

Even when students do manage to establish residency, the cost is still steep. For the many asylum seekers who arrive in the United States as adults, they may not have attended a California school previously, barring them from qualifying for state financial aid.

AB 540, the 2001 law that exempts undocumented students from paying non-resident tuition, only applies if the student attended a California high school or community college for three years.

Those who qualify through AB 540 can fill out the California Dream Act Application for state financial aid, such as Cal Grants, university system-specific grants, state loans, and the state’s middle class scholarship.

The application process can still be confusing for asylum seekers whose status is not fully accounted for in the design of the application. For example, asylum seekers often have Social Security numbers for work authorization, but affirming so while answering the financial aid pre-screening questions leads to undetermined eligibility because the questions don’t take into account the nuances of applying as an asylum seeker.

Stickers and flyers on a table in the Undocumented Community Center at the College of San Mateo in San Mateo, on Nov. 28, 2023. At this center, undocumented students can access financial and legal aid as well as guidance in navigating grant applications.

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Asylum seekers often require extra help from financial aid counselors, but even counselors may not know how to help navigate eligibility rules. Students often wind up seeking help from undocumented student resource centers on public campuses, which are designed to help students who lack legal residency and those from mixed-status families find aid and academic support.

Kaveena Singh, the director of immigration legal services at the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, which provides legal services to low-income immigrants, noted that she herself has written letters to financial aid offices to help explain the in-between nature of the few asylum-seeking students she has served.

As an asylum-seeking student in his mid-20s, L. ended up qualifying for state financial aid through AB 540. However, he misunderstood for six years exactly what aid he qualified for. L. wished to withhold his name and the names of the institutions he’s attended for fear of negative impacts on his pending asylum case.

Initially, community college didn’t cost him anything — but when he transferred to a large four-year university, the cost of college soared. He went to his university's financial aid office for help so often that all the staff there knew his name. It was a "big relief” when he was finally able to successfully fill out the California Dream Act Application, and obtain financial aid for his summer and fall quarters.

L.'s asylum case has been pending for nine years. He, his dad, mom and younger brother arrived in the United States in the winter of 2016, claiming asylum under fear of political retribution. His father organized political assemblies in China, and his mother was forced to have an abortion under the one-child policy.

“I just wish I could go home and visit family and friends and catch up for a good few weeks in the summer here and there to reconnect with my past,” L. said. “It's like there's two separate lives, like two entities being artificially cut.”

L. worked throughout high school and college, and worried about affording school.

Most days, the combination of family trauma and the limbo of waiting for his case means L. survives through “constant compartmentalization.”

In the meantime, he tries to carry on — he studies politics, and is interested in international relations and human rights.

"As rough as all that's happened, the silver lining is that one day hopefully I get a passport and a green card," L. said. "To help other people avoid such a hassle will be just as fulfilling for me."

Previous legislative efforts have failed

Legislative bills to extend state financial aid eligibility to asylum-seeking students have been introduced at least twice in recent years but have failed.

One attempt came in 2019, when Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat from El Segundo, introduced SB 296, a bill that would have extended Cal Grant eligibility to students with pending asylum applications. The measure passed the Legislature with some bipartisan support, but was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said that it would "impose costs on the General Fund that must be weighed in the annual budget process."

“That was frustrating, but I understood it,” Allen told CalMatters. “The real issue is that we don’t have good data. Our schools don’t track asylum seekers, so we can’t easily calculate the cost.”

UC data on asylum-seeking students is protected due to privacy policies, according to Stett Holbrook, a UC spokesperson. The Cal State system reports it has less than 500 students with "asylum status," which includes both those who have an asylum granted and asylum seekers, according to Cal State spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith. The numbers are self-reported during the admissions process.

In spring 2025, 13,507 students self-identified as “refugee/asylee” across the California Community Colleges — up from 11,537 the prior semester — per the CCC DataMart. The data does not include a category for just asylum seekers. Students can self-identify their immigration status while applying, but asylum seekers are not specifically tracked, according to the college system’s spokesperson Melissa Villarin.

Four years after SB 296 failed, Democrat Sabrina Cervantes — then representing Riverside in the Assembly and now as a state senator — revived the proposal through AB 888, introduced in 2023. Like Allen’s earlier bill, AB 888 sought to make Cal Grants accessible to students with pending asylum applications by creating a direct eligibility pathway outside the AB 540 residency requirements. The bill passed the Assembly unanimously but was held in the Senate Appropriations Committee last September, effectively ending its chances for the year.

Cervantes declined an interview with CalMatters. “My Assembly Bill 888 would have created a new pathway for pending asylum seekers in California to apply for Cal Grant financial aid in pursuit of their higher education,” Cervantes wrote in a statement.

Newsom’s office declined to say whether he would support a future version of the proposal, pointing instead to his brief 2019 veto message.

“There’s nervousness around anything that involves new expenses," Allen said. “... We’re going to have to spend some time seeing what information we can get with regards to better data to get better estimated costs. I think that will help to better inform the conversation."

Andrea Baltodano and Chrissa Olson are contributors with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

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