Adult

A federal judge has temporarily blocked a new Trump administration policy to keep migrant children in detention after they turn 18, moving quickly to stop transfers to adult facilities that advocates said were scheduled for this weekend.

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras on Saturday issued a temporary restraining order to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement not to detain any child who came to the country alone and without permission in ICE adult detention facilities after they become an adult.

The Washington, D.C., judge found that such automatic detention violates a court order he issued in 2021 barring such practices.

ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond Saturday to emails seeking comment.

The push to detain new adults is yet another battle over one of the most sensitive issues in President Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda — how to treat children who cross the border unaccompanied by adults.

The Associated Press reported Friday that officials are offering migrant children age 14 and older $2,500 to voluntarily return to their home countries. Last month a separate federal judge blocked attempts to immediately deport Guatemalan migrant children who came to the U.S. alone back to their home country. Some children had been put on board planes in that late-night operation before a judge blocked it.

“All of these are pieces of the same general policy to coerce immigrant youth into giving up their right to seek protection in the United States,” said Michelle Lapointe, a lawyer for the American Immigration Council, one of the groups that asked Contreras to intervene in a filing made early Saturday, just after midnight.

Unaccompanied children are held in shelters run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which isn’t part of ICE. Contreras’ 2021 order instructed federal officials to release minors who turn 18 from those shelters to “the least restrictive setting available.” He ruled that that is what’s required by federal law as long as the minor isn’t a danger to themselves or others and isn’t a flight risk. Minors are often released to the custody of a relative, or maybe into foster care.

But lawyers who represent unaccompanied minors said they began getting word in the last few days that ICE was telling shelters that children who were about to turn 18 — even those who had already-approved release plans — could no longer be released and would instead be taken to detention facilities, possibly as early as Saturday. One email from ICE asserted that the new adults could only be released by ICE under its case-by-case parole authority for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefit.” From March through September, ICE has paroled fewer than 500 people overall.

The plaintiffs argued that “release on parole is all but a dead letter” and that children aging out of shelters would experience lasting harm from unnecessary and inappropriate adult detention” in jails that might be overcrowded or in remote locations. The plaintiffs said that was especially true because some of the clients they cited had been victims of trafficking or had been abused, neglected or abandoned by their parents.

U.S. border authorities have arrested children crossing the border without parents more than 400,000 times since October 2021. A 2008 law requires them to appear before an immigration judge before being returned to their countries.

Children have been spending more time in government-run shelters since the Trump administration put them under closer scrutiny before releasing them to family in the United States to pursue their immigration cases.

The additional scrutiny includes fingerprinting, DNA testing and home visits by immigration officers. Over the summer, immigration officers started showing up and arresting parents.

The average length of stay at government-run shelters for those released in the U.S. was 171 days in July, down from a peak of 217 days in April but well above 37 days in January, when Trump took office.

Amy writes for the Associated Press.

Chuck E. Cheese is all grown-up. Sort of.

Brea Mall is now home to a Chuck’s Arcade, the first location in California and 10th in the U.S. When the company unveiled the concept earlier this year, headlines branded it as an “adult” Chuck E. Cheese. There’s some truth in that, but it’s not the full story.

Combine the word “adult” and “arcade” and recognizable spaces — say, Dave & Buster’s — instantly come to mind. Here in SoCal, we also have Two Bit Circus in Santa Monica, which marries retro and modern games with beer and cocktails. Chuck’s Arcade isn’t all that similar to either.

Chuck’s Arcade has a merchandise booth with vintage looks.

(Gabriella Angotti-Jones / For The Times)

But we were intrigued by its promise of retro gaming and its attempts to appeal to a less kid-focused audience. You won’t, for instance, encounter a pizza party full of 7-year-olds here.

So what will you find? And will it possess the vintage arcade vibes many of us are craving? With the company and its mouse mascot now a cool 48 years old, we weren’t sure what to expect. So we took a visit to Chuck’s Arcade seeking answers.

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Where an adult can be a ‘kidult’

It’s not surprising to encounter a grown-up with fond memories of Chuck E. Cheese. For me, I was hooked by the stilted-yet-charming robotic performances from their once ubiquitous animatronic bands, in which tunes were delivered amid the clickety-clack of machinery. Yet a Chuck E. Cheese today is a fully-realized kid-focused video-game-inspired rec room, one where digital floors encourage a more active form of play. David McKillips, president and chief executive of the company, says the firm’s core locations heavily target those between the ages of 3 and 8.

And thus, Chuck’s Aracade, says McKillips, will fill a void. He’s hoping it taps into the marketing segment known as the “kidult” — grown-ups, perhaps, who were raised on games and still cherish the thought of crowding around a “Ms. Pac-Man” console. The kidult sector is booming, encompassing everyone from the so-called “Disney adult” to those who carry a Labubu doll as a fashion accessory. Think anyone who believes that a childlike openness to play and silliness doesn’t have to be eradicated by maturity.

David McKillips, president and chief executive of Chuck E. Cheese, poses for a portrait with a retired Mr. Munch figure.

(Gabriella Angotti-Jones / For The Times)

So how does Chuck’s Arcade plan to reach the kidult? Its 3,600-square-foot space boasts 70 games, including a small — emphasis on small — retro section where one will find coin-op cabinets of “Tron,” “Centipede,” “Mortal Kombat” and a “Ms. Pac-Man” head-to-head arcade table. And while a modern Chuck E. Cheese is school-cafeteria bright, Chuck’s Arcade is dark, its black walls and low lighting recalling the arcades of the ’80s and ’90s.

McKillips says Chuck’s Arcade “is appealing to the collectible market,” betting large on grown-ups being drawn to its plethora of claw machines. There are also prize apparatuses dedicated largely to Funko’s plastic figurines.

It’s near the mall food court — which is part of the business strategy

The Chuck E. Cheese company has long had it eye on the Brea Mall.

In an era when malls are being refocused to cater to a more experience-based economy — see, for instance, the escape rooms of Westfield Century City, or Meow Wolf eventually taking over a portion of what is currently the Cinemark complex at Howard Hughes L.A. — Chuck E. Cheese saw an opportunity in Orange County.

One game at Chuck’s Arcade may drop Chuck E. Cheese plushies.

(Gabriella Angotti-Jones / For The Times)

“We’ve been trying to get in here for a year and a half,” says McKillips. “The foot traffic is phenomenal. The anchors are strong. They have a really solid food court.”

The food court was a massive selling point.

“That’s where teens are congregating,” he says. “That’s where parents and kids are together. They’ll have a bite to eat and come over and play some games.”

There’s no booze … or even pizza

Here’s one way to think about Chuck’s Arcade: Imagine a Chuck E. Cheese, but subtract the pizza and detract the drinks. In one corner of Chuck’s Arcade rests a giant Skittles machine, and there is more candy available at the front counter. But the company decided to go without a proper food and beverage program for Chuck’s Arcade, meaning those grown-up kidults won’t be sipping on booze or mocktails.

I told McKillips I was surprised. At home, I’m more than 40 hours into “Donkey Kong Bananza,” but I wind down by playing the game and enjoying a beer — one of the core benefits, I believe, of being a certified kidult.

McKillips argues this is actually an advantage for Chuck’s Arcade, allowing it to reach a grown-up audience but still feel family-friendly. Just one Chuck’s Arcade, he says, is equipped to serve beer, wings and pizza, and it’s in Kansas City, Mo.

“This is an arcade destination,” he adds. “We’re not hosting birthday parties. We don’t do [food & beverage] here. You’re going to come here and play games.”

Where’s the nostalgia?

Chuck’s Arcade staffer Sabrina Hernadez checks out games at the new Brea location hours before it opens it doors.

(Gabriella Angotti-Jones / For The Times)

I should be the audience for Chuck’s Arcade. I have fond memories of the brand.

Chuck E. Cheese, the character and the pizza chain, was the brainchild of Nolan Bushnell, best known as the founder of Atari. The franchise launched in 1977 in San José, first branded as Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theatre. As Chuck E. Cheese flourished throughout the early ’80s, the original animatronic figures were a bit more bawdy (Chuck was a smoker). Bushnell envisioned the initial Chuck E. Cheese robotic characters as entertainment that appealed to the grown-ups while the kids played games in the neighboring room.

When I first heard of Chuck’s Arcade, I hoped the company was getting back a bit to its roots. And there’s a nostalgic touch here and there. Aside from the aforementioned selection of vintage games, there’s also a Mr. Munch figurine, who is displayed in a clear case and does not turn on. Munch, a friendly, purple-ish hairball of a creature, was once the anchor of Chuck E. Cheese’s Make Believe Band.

Seeing that one figure treated as a museum piece felt like a half-hearted wave to fans who grew up with Chuck. And while claw gizmos and plastic figurines aren’t my thing, I understand their popularity and wouldn’t mind their presence if there was a greater supply of old-school games, and perhaps some pinball machines.

With a digital key card for Chuck’s Arcade starting at $10, the buy-in to try out the space isn’t large, but this felt like a tentative step into adulthood. After all, Chuck is well beyond drinking age. The mouse deserves a cocktail.

Put down the book, pick up the phone.

So it goes in the United States, where daily reading for pleasure has plummeted more than 40% among adults over the last two decades, according to a new study from the University of Florida and University College London.

From 2003 to 2023, daily leisure reading declined at a steady rate of about 3% per year, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal iScience .

“This decline is concerning given earlier evidence for downward trends in reading for pleasure from the 1940s through to the start of our study in 2003, suggesting at least 80 years of continued decline in reading for pleasure,” the paper states.

Jill Sonke, one of the study’s authors, said in an interview Tuesday that the decline is concerning in part because “we know that reading for pleasure, among other forms of arts participation, is a health behavior. It is associated with relaxation, well-being, mental health, quality of life.”

“We’re losing a low-hanging fruit in our health toolkit when we’re reading or participating in the arts less,” added Sonke, the director of research initiatives at the UF Center for Arts in Medicine and co-director of the university’s EpiArts Lab.

The reading decline comes as most Americans have more access to books than ever before. Because of Libby and other e-book apps, people do not need to travel to libraries or bookstores. They can check out books from multiple libraries and read them on their tablets or phones.

But other forms of digital media are crowding out the free moments that people could devote to books. More time spent scrolling dank memes and reels on social media or bingeing the “King of the Hill” reboot on Hulu means less time for the latest pick from Oprah’s Book Club.

But researchers say there are factors besides digital distraction at play, including a national decline in leisure time overall and uneven access to books and libraries.

The study analyzed data from 236,270 Americans age 15 and older who completed the American Time Use Survey from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics between 2003 and 2023. [The year 2020 was excluded because data collection was briefly paused amid the COVID-19 pandemic.]

Participants were asked to provide granular detail of their activities beginning at 4 a.m. on the day prior to the interview and ending at 4 a.m. the day of the interview.

Researchers found that people who do read for pleasure are doing so for longer stretches of time — from 1 hour 23 minutes per day in 2003 to 1 hour 37 minutes per day in 2023.

But the percentage of Americans who leisure-read on a typical day has dropped from a high of 28% in 2004 to a low of 16% in 2023.

Researchers said there was an especially concerning disparity between Black and white Americans.

The percentage of Black adults who read for pleasure peaked at about 20% in 2004 and fell to about 9% in 2023. The percentage of white adults who picked up a book for fun peaked at about 29% in 2004 and dropped to roughly 18% in 2023.

The study showed that women read for fun more than men. And that people who live in rural areas had a slightly steeper drop in pleasure reading than urban denizens over the last two decades.

In rural places, people have less access not only to bookstores and libraries, but also reliable internet connections, which can contribute to different reading habits, Kate Laughlin, executive director of the Seattle-based Assn. for Rural and Small Libraries, said in an interview Tuesday.

Although there have been concerted national efforts to focus on literacy in children, less attention is paid to adults, especially in small towns, Laughlin said.

“When you say ‘reading for pleasure,’ you make the assumption that reading is pleasurable,” Laughlin said. “If someone struggles with the act of actually reading and interpreting the words, that’s not leisure; that feels like work.”

As rural America shifts away from the extraction-based industries that once defined it — such as logging, coal mining and fishing — adults struggling with basic literacy are trying to play catch-up with the digital literacy needed in the modern workforce, Laughlin said.

Rural librarians, she said, often see adults in their late 20s and older coming in not to read but to learn how to use a keyboard and mouse and set up their first email address so they can apply for work online.

According to the study, the percentage of adults reading to children has not declined over the last two decades. But “rates of engagement were surprisingly low, with only 2% of participants reading with children on the average day.”

Of the participants whose data the researchers analyzed, 21% had a child under 9 at home.

The low percentage of adults reading with kids “is concerning given that regular reading during childhood is a strong determinant of reading ability and engagement later in life,” the study read. “The low rates of reading with children may thus contribute to future declines in reading among adults.”

Researchers noted some limitations in their ability to interpret the data from the American Time Use Survey. Some pleasure reading might have been categorized, mistakenly, as digital activity, they wrote.

E-books were not included in the reading category until 2011, and audiobooks were not included until 2021.

From 2003 to 2006, reading the Bible and other religious texts was included in reading in personal interest — but was recategorized afterward and grouped with other participation in religious practice.

Further, reading on tablets, computers and smartphones was not explicitly included in examples, making it unclear whether survey participants included it as leisure reading or technology use.

“This may mean that we underestimated rates of total engagement, although … we expect any such misclassifications to have minimal effects on our findings,” they wrote.

“The Institute,” a 2019 novel by Stephen King, Maine’s Master of the Macabre — or horror, I just said macabre for the alliteration — has become a miniseries with some major additions and minor emendations. Premiering Sunday on MGM+, it belongs to a popular genre in which superpowerful young’uns are gathered in some sort of academy, and more specifically to one in which children with extraordinary powers are weaponized by adults for … reasons. They always have reasons, those cruel adults.

The child at the center of the story is 14-year-old Luke Ellis (Joe Freeman, who shoulders a lot of dramatic weight), a genius with a mostly untapped ability to move things with his mind. (Classic power!) One night while Luke is asleep, people break into his house, and when he wakes in the morning in his bed, you know as well as I that what he’ll find outside his bedroom door is not the rest of his house — just like Patrick McGoohan in “The Prisoner,” one of several other works for the screen that may cross your mind as the show goes on. “Stranger Things,” “The Matrix,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “The Breakfast Club” and “Severance” are some others that came to my mind.

Luke is in the Institute, a drab complex, whose young inmates are identified either as “TK” (telekinetic) or “TP” (telepathic), or once in a blue moon, “PC” (precognitive). Just how Luke’s kidnappers fixed on him in the first place is something for you not to think about. But there he is, and because he is also a genius, his warders think he might be more than usually useful to them. Ms. Sigsby (Mary-Louise Parker) runs the place; her cheery tone and promises of fun food and no bedtime does not hide from you, or from Luke, the fact that she is a liar. That she tells Luke he’s there as part of a project to “serve not just your country but the whole world” is not something to impress any kidnapped teenager.

Fionn Laird, left, Mary-Louise Parker, Simone Miller, Viggo Hanvelt and Arlen So in “The Institute.”

(Chris Reardon / MGM+)

Aiding and abetting Sigsby are sepulchral security head Stackhouse (Julian Richings), who at one point will speak the words “unjustly vilified term final solution”; Tony (Jason Diaz), an almost comically sadistic orderly; and Dr. Hendricks (Robert Joy), who has cooked up the pseudoscientific nonsense at the heart of the plan and puts Luke through a variety of upsetting “tests.” Housekeeper Maureen (Jane Luk) is nice, though — not to be completely trusted, necessarily, but nice.

Meanwhile, handsome Tim Jamieson (Ben Barnes), a former policeman, decorated for an incident that left him bad about feeling decorated, hitchhikes into town — the town near the Institute, whatever it’s called — and gets himself a job with the local constabulary as its “nightknocker,” checking that businesses have locked their doors and the streets are trouble free. At the police station, he meets Officer Wendy Gullickson (Hannah Galway), which makes space for some light guy-gal vibing, while his nocturnal peregrinations will bring him into contact with Annie (Mary Walsh), a street person and conspiracy theorist, who does know an actual thing or two, and who will inspire Tim to poke around that place up on the hill with the guards and the barbed-wire fence. He may not be a cop anymore, but he is not, he says, “the kind of guy who can look the other way.”

At the mostly empty, sort of shabby Institute — like a student center that hasn’t been updated in 30 years, because what’s the point — Luke meets fellow inmates Kalisha (Simone Miller), who inexplicably kisses him upon first meeting, Iris (Birva Pandya), cool kid Nick (Fionn Laird), and later little Avery (Viggo Hanvelt), who may prove the most powerful of all.

The institute has a Front Hall and a Back Hall; at some point, kids from the former are transferred to the latter, which completes a “graduation” the staff mark with a cake and candles. (They’re told that after doing time in the Back Hall, they’ll be going home, which could not possibly be part of the plan.) The meaning of the column of smoke rising from one of the compound’s buildings should be immediately obvious.

Written by Benjamin Cavell (who co-wrote the 2020 adaptation of King’s “The Stand”) and directed by Jack Bender (King’s “Mr. Mercedes”), it drags at times and isn’t particularly interesting to look at, though there’s action and a few special effects toward the end, which, King being King, isn’t over until it’s over — and it never is. Parker is always good to watch, and her Mrs. Sigsby is given some material to make her seem human — if not quite to humanize her — but nothing regarding the Institute and its complicated plans and methods really makes any sense, even in King’s made-world.

Still, if you regard “The Institute” as a kind of YA novel about resistance and revolt, and a metaphor for the way young people have been sacrificed by the old to feed their agendas and wars, it has some legs.

Vera, the heroine of Gary Shteyngart’s sixth novel, “Vera, or Faith,” is a whip-smart 10-year-old Manhattanite, but she’s not quite smart enough to figure out her parents’ intentions. Why is dad so concerned about “status”? Why does her stepmom call some meals “WASP lunches”? How come every time they visit somebody’s house she’s assigned to see if they have a copy of “The Power Broker” on their shelves? She’s all but doomed to be bourgeois and neurotic, as if a juvenile court has sentenced her to live in a New Yorker cartoon.

Since his 2002 debut, “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook,” Shteyngart has proved adept at finding humor in the intersection of immigrant life, wealth and relationships, and “Vera” largely sticks to that mix. But the cynicism that has always thrummed underneath his high-concept comedies — the dehumanizing algorithms, the rapacious finance system — is more prominent in this slim, potent novel. Vera is witnessing both the slow erosion of her parents’ marriage along with the rapid decline of democracy in near-future America. Her precocity gives the novel its wit, but Shteyngart is also alert to the fact that a child, however bright, is fundamentally helpless.

Not to mention desperate for her parents’ affection, which is in short supply for Vera. Her father, the editor of a liberal intellectual magazine, seems constantly distracted by his efforts to court a billionaire to purchase it, while her stepmom is more focused on her son’s ADHD and the family’s rapidly dwindling bank account. Things are no better outside in the world, where a constitutional convention seems ready to pass an amendment awarding five-thirds voting rights for “exceptional Americans.” (Read: white people.) Vera, the daughter of a Russian father and Korean mother, may be banished to second-class citizenry.

Even worse, her school has assigned her to take the side of the “five-thirders” in an upcoming classroom debate. So it’s become urgent for her to understand the world just as it’s become inexplicable. Shteyngart is stellar at showing just how alienated she’s become: “She knew kids were supposed to have more posters on their walls to show off their inner life, but she liked her inner life to stay inside her.” And she seems to be handling the crisis with more maturity than her father, who’s drunk and clumsy in their home: “If anyone needed to see Mrs. S., the school counselor with the master’s in social work degree, it was Daddy.”

It’s a challenge to write from the perspective of a child without being arch or cutesy — stories about kids learning about the real world can degrade to plainspoken YA or cheap melodrama. Shteyngart is striving for something more supple, using Vera’s point of view to clarify how adults become victims of their own emotional shutoffs, the way they use language to at once appear smart while covering up their feelings. “Our country’s a supermarket where some people just get to carry out whatever they want. You and I sadly are not those people,” Dad tells her, forcing her to unpack a metaphor stuffed full of ideology, economics, self-loathing and more.

Every chapter in the book starts with the phrase “She had to,” explaining Vera’s various missions amid this dysfunction: “hold the family together,” “fall asleep,” “be cool,” “win the debate.” Kids like her have to be action-oriented; they don’t have the privilege of adults’ deflections. Small wonder, then, that her most reliable companion is an AI-powered chessboard, which offers direct answers to her most pressing questions. (One of Shteyngart’s most potent running jokes is that adults aren’t more clever than computers they command.) Once she falls into a mission to discover the truth about her birth mother, she becomes more alert to the world’s brutal simplicity: “The world was a razor cut … It would cut and cut and cut.”

Shteyngart’s grown-up kids’ story has two obvious inspirations: One, as the title suggests, is Vladimir Nabokov’s 1969 novel “Ada, or Ardor,” the other Henry James’ 1897 novel “What Maisie Knew.” Both are concerned with childhood traumas, and if Shteyngart isn’t explicitly borrowing their plots he borrows some of their gravitas, the sense that preteendom is a crucible for experiencing life’s various crises.

In its final chapters, the novel takes a turn that is designed to speak to our current moment, spotlighting the way that Trump-era nativist policies have brought needless harm to Americans. A country can abandon its principles, he means to say, just as a parent can abandon a child. But if “Vera” suggests a particular vision of our particular dystopian moment, it also suggests a more enduring predicament for children, who live with the consequences of others’ decisions but don’t get a vote in them.

“There were a lot of ‘statuses’ in the world and each year she was becoming aware of more of them,” Vera observes. Children will have to learn them faster now.

Athitakis is a writer in Phoenix and author of “The New Midwest.”

McALLEN, Texas — Adults fighting kids for clean water, despondent toddlers, and a child with swollen feet denied a medical exam: These first-hand accounts from immigrant families at detention centers included in a motion filed by advocates Friday night are offering a glimpse of conditions at Texas facilities.

Families shared their testimonies with immigrant advocates filing a lawsuit to prevent the Trump administration from terminating the Flores settlement agreement, a 1990s-era policy that requires immigrant children detained in federal custody be held in safe and sanitary conditions.

The agreement could challenge President Trump’s family detention provisions in his massive tax and spending bill, which also seeks to make the detention time indefinite and comes as the administration ramps up arrests of immigrants nationwide.

“At a time when Congress is considering funding the indefinite detention of children and families, defending the Flores Settlement is more urgent than ever,” Mishan Wroe, a senior immigration attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, said in a statement Friday.

Advocates with the center, as well as the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, RAICES and Children’s Rights contacted or visited children and their families held in two Texas family detention centers in Dilley and Karnes, which reopened this year.

The conditions of the family detention facilities were undisclosed until immigration attorneys filed an opposing motion Friday night before a California federal court.

The oversight of the detention facilities was possible because of the settlement, and the visits help ensure standards of compliance and transparency, said Sergio Perez, the executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law. Without the settlement, those overseeing the facilities would lose access to them and could not document what is happening inside.

Out of 90 families who spoke to RAICES, an immigration legal support group, since March, 40 expressed medical concerns, according to the court documents. Several testimonies expressed concern over water quantity and quality.

Emailed messages seeking comment were sent to the office of U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and to CoreCivic and Geo Group, the private prison companies that operate the detention facilities in Dilley and Karnes, respectively. There was no response from Bondi’s office or the operators of the facilities as of midday Saturday.

One mother was told she would have to use tap water for formula for her 9-month-old, who had diarrhea for three days after. A 16-year-old girl described people scrambling over one another for water.

“We don’t get enough water. They put out a little case of water, and everyone has to run for it,” said the declaration from the girl held with her mother and two younger siblings at the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center. “An adult here even pushed my little sister out of the way to get to the water first.”

Faisal Al-Juburi, chief external affairs officer for RAICES, said Friday in a statement that the conditions “only serve to reinforce the vital need for transparent and enforceable standards and accountability measures,” citing an “unconscionable obstruction of medical care for those with acute, chronic, and terminal illnesses.”

One family with a young boy with cancer said he missed his doctor’s appointment after the family was arrested after they attended an immigration court hearing. He is now experiencing relapse symptoms, according to the motion. Another family said their 9-month-old lost more than 8 pounds while in detention for a month.

Children spoke openly about their trauma during visits with legal monitors, including a 12-year-old boy with a blood condition. He reported that his feet became too inflamed to walk, and even though he saw a doctor, he was denied further testing. Now, he stays mostly off his feet. “It hurts when I walk,” he said in a court declaration.

Arrests have left psychological trauma. A mother of a 3-year-old boy who saw agents go inside his babysitter’s home with guns started acting differently after detention. She said he now throws himself on the ground, bruises himself and refuses to eat most days.

Growing concerns as ICE ramps up operations

Many of the families in detention were already living in the U.S., reflecting the recent shift from immigration arrests at the border to internal operations.

Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and main architect of Trump’s immigration policies, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would target at least 3,000 arrests a day, up from about 650 a day during the first few months of Trump’s second term.

Leecia Welch, the deputy legal director at Children’s Rights, said that as bad as facility conditions are, they will only get worse as more immigrants are brought in.

“As of early June, the census at Dilley was around 300, and only two of its five areas were open,” Welch said of her visits. “With a capacity of around 2,400, it’s hard to imagine what it would be like with 2,000 more people.”

Pediatricians such as Dr. Marsha Griffin with the American Academy of Pediatrics Council said they are concerned and are advocating across the country to allow pediatric monitors with child welfare experts inside the facilities.

Challenge to Flores agreement

The Flores agreement is poised to become more relevant if Trump’s tax and spending legislation, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passes with the current language allowing the indefinite detention of immigrant families, which is not allowed under the Flores agreement.

Trump’s legislation approved by the House also proposes setting aside $45 billion in funding, a threefold spending increase, over the next four years to expand ICE detention of adults and families. The Senate is now considering the bill.

Under these increased efforts to add more detention space, Geo Group, the corporation operating the detention facility in Karnes, will soon be reopening an infamous prison — which housed gangsters Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly — for migrant detention in Leavenworth, Kan.

Immigration advocates argue that if the settlement were terminated, the government would need to create regulations that conform to the agreement’s terms.

“Plaintiffs did not settle for policy making — they settled for rulemaking,” the motion read.

The federal government will have a chance to submit a reply brief. A court hearing is scheduled for mid-July.

Gonzalez writes for the Associated Press.

It took Crystal Strickland years to qualify for Medicaid, which she needs for a heart condition.

Strickland, who’s unable to work due to her condition, chafed when she learned that the U.S. House has passed a bill that would impose a work requirement for many able-bodied people to get health insurance coverage through the low-cost, government-run plan for lower-income people.

“What sense does that make?” she asked. “What about the people who can’t work but can’t afford a doctor?”

The measure is part of the version of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful” bill that cleared the House last month and is now up for consideration in the Senate. Trump is seeking to have it passed by July 4.

The bill as it stands would cut taxes and government spending — and also upend portions of the nation’s social safety net.

For proponents, the ideas behind the work requirement are simple: Crack down on fraud and stand on the principle that taxpayer-provided health coverage isn’t for those who can work but aren’t. The measure includes exceptions for those who are under 19 or over 64, those with disabilities, pregnant women, main caregivers for young children, people recently released from prisons or jails — or during certain emergencies. It would apply only to adults who receive Medicaid through expansions that 40 states chose to undertake as part of the 2010 health insurance overhaul.

Many details of how the changes would work would be developed later, leaving several unknowns and causing anxiety among recipients who worry that their illnesses might not be enough to exempt them.

Advocates and sick and disabled enrollees worry — based largely on their past experience — that even those who might be exempted from work requirements under the law could still lose benefits because of increased or hard-to-meet paperwork mandates.

Benefits can be difficult to navigate even without a work requirement

Strickland, a 44-year-old former server, cook and construction worker who lives in Fairmont, North Carolina, said she could not afford to go to a doctor for years because she wasn’t able to work. She finally received a letter this month saying she would receive Medicaid coverage, she said.

“It’s already kind of tough to get on Medicaid,” said Strickland, who has lived in a tent and times and subsisted on nonperishable food thrown out by stores. “If they make it harder to get on, they’re not going to be helping.”

Steve Furman is concerned that his 43-year-old son, who has autism, could lose coverage.

The bill the House adopted would require Medicaid enrollees to show that they work, volunteer or go to school at least 80 hours a month to continue to qualify.

A disability exception would likely apply to Furman’s son, who previously worked in an eyeglasses plant in Illinois for 15 years despite behavioral issues that may have gotten him fired elsewhere.

Furman said government bureaucracies are already impossible for his son to navigate, even with help.

It took him a year to help get his son onto Arizona’s Medicaid system when they moved to Scottsdale in 2022, and it took time to set up food benefits. But he and his wife, who are retired, say they don’t have the means to support his son fully.

“Should I expect the government to take care of him?” he asked. “I don’t know, but I do expect them to have humanity.”

There’s broad reliance on Medicaid for health coverage

About 71 million adults are enrolled in Medicaid now. And most of them — around 92% — are working, caregiving, attending school or disabled. Earlier estimates of the budget bill from the Congressional Budget Office found that about 5 million people stand to lose coverage.

A KFF tracking poll conducted in May found that the enrollees come from across the political spectrum. About one-fourth are Republicans; roughly one-third are Democrats.

The poll found that about 7 in 10 adults are worried that federal spending reductions on Medicaid will lead to more uninsured people and would strain health care providers in their area. About half said they were worried reductions would hurt the ability of them or their family to get and pay for health care.

Amaya Diana, an analyst at KFF, points to work requirements launched in Arkansas and Georgia as keeping people off Medicaid without increasing employment.

Amber Bellazaire, a policy analyst at the Michigan League for Public Policy, said the process to verify that Medicaid enrollees meet the work requirements could be a key reason people would be denied or lose eligibility.

“Massive coverage losses just due to an administrative burden rather than ineligibility is a significant concern,” she said.

One KFF poll respondent, Virginia Bell, a retiree in Starkville, Mississippi, said she’s seen sick family members struggle to get onto Medicaid, including one who died recently without coverage.

She said she doesn’t mind a work requirement for those who are able — but worries about how that would be sorted out. “It’s kind of hard to determine who needs it and who doesn’t need it,” she said.

Some people don’t if they might lose coverage with a work requirement

Lexy Mealing, 54 of Westbury, New York, who was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2021 and underwent a double mastectomy and reconstruction surgeries, said she fears she may lose the medical benefits she has come to rely on, though people with “serious or complex” medical conditions could be granted exceptions.

She now works about 15 hours a week in “gig” jobs but isn’t sure she can work more as she deals with the physical and mental toll of the cancer.

Mealing, who used to work as a medical receptionist in a pediatric neurosurgeon’s office before her diagnosis and now volunteers for the American Cancer Society, went on Medicaid after going on short-term disability.

“I can’t even imagine going through treatments right now and surgeries and the uncertainty of just not being able to work and not have health insurance,” she said.

Felix White, who has Type I diabetes, first qualified for Medicaid after losing his job as a computer programmer several years ago.

The Oreland, Pennsylvania, man has been looking for a job, but finds that at 61, it’s hard to land one.

Medicaid, meanwhile, pays for a continuous glucose monitor and insulin and funded foot surgeries last year, including one that kept him in the hospital for 12 days.

“There’s no way I could have afforded that,” he said. “I would have lost my foot and probably died.”

Mulvihill writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.

Heartwarming tributes have poured in for the late Australian adult film star Koby Falks.

The tragic news was announced on 1 June via the 39-year-old’s Instagram account.

“Koby Falks passed away earlier this week. He was loved by many and will be missed. If this post has affected you, please reach out to Lifeline at 13 11 14,” the post read.

Known as Anthony Cox to his family and friends, the Australian native made his debut in the adult film world in 2022.

Although his time in the industry was brief, he starred in 76 projects and amassed over 400,000 followers across Instagram, X, Facebook and YouTube.

He also led a fruitful career as a content creator on the subscription-based websites OnlyFans and JustForFans.

Since his tragic passing was announced, a handful of Koby’s peers, friends and fans have taken to social media to share heartbreaking tributes. 

The late actor’s talent agent, Matthew Leigh, described him as “a light, a creative force, and a genuinely beautiful soul.”

“Though our time working together was brief, the impact Koby had was anything but small. From the moment we connected, I was struck by his warmth, his charisma and his incredible professionalism,” he wrote in a lengthy statement on Instagram.

“He was organised, kind-hearted, and deeply respectful. The kind of person you instantly felt grateful to work with. It was an honour to represent his remarkable body of work and to witness first-hand the power of his presence, both on and off-screen.

“His ability to connect with people, not just here in Australia but across the world, was something truly special. Never did I imagine I would be writing such a post, especially for someone I had the privilege of managing. And I sincerely hope I never have to again.”

OnlyFans star Keller Wolfe echoed similar sentiments, writing: “Rest in peace, mate. My thoughts are with your Partner, your family, your friends and loved ones during this impossible time.”

Lastly, Koby’s partner Sam Brownell celebrated the late talent’s life in a now-deleted Instagram story, writing, “I will love you always.”  

As of writing, the official cause of death has not been revealed.

Days before his tragic passing, Koby took to Instagram and shared a photo of his younger self alongside a caption reflecting on his journey.

“Took me years to drop the act. Turns out, the scariest thing wasn’t being rejected—it was being seen. No more masks. No more performance. Just me, as I am. Raw. Real. Free. Yeah, I fucked up along the way. Yeah, I wore the armour a bit too long. But I never stopped searching for the bloke underneath it all,” he wrote.

“This is for the younger me who just wanted to be loved without pretending. And for anyone else out there still hiding— You don’t have to be a symbol. Just be you. Rough edges and all. That’s where the beauty is.”

Our thoughts are with Koby’s family and friends during this unthinkable time.

CONTROVERSIAL porn star Bonnie Blue appeared to be kicked out of Nottingham Forest’s stadium.

The adult film actor was issued a ban at the City Ground in April after offering to “entertain” fans before a game.

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So Bonnie – real name Tia – wore a black wig and cap to disguise herself after entering Chelsea’s away end against Forest.

She said: “I am playing hide and seek with Nottingham Forest’s security. The first security officer that finds me, gets to boink me.”

Bonnie was eventually found and escorted out – with footage circulating online capturing the moment.

She then made a lewd gesture behind one of the security guards.

Bonnie shot to recognition earlier this year after she claimed to break the world record for sex after allegedly sleeping with 1,057 men in 24 hours.

She ditched her 9 to 5 to become a cam girl and later an adult film star.

The Sun previously revealed how the controversial model is currently filming  a documentary with Channel 4 about her life.

And we also revealed how her most recent controversy – when she appeared to get arrested – was nothing more than another desperate publicity stunt.

Bonnie opened up on how she was banned from Forest’s ground on the Only Stans podcast.

She said: “I recently went to a Nottingham Forest game. Well, I attempted to.

“I put on my socials, ‘hey boys, I’m going to be at the game, I’d like to film with you afterwards’.

“I turn up at the football game and the gate security was like, ‘you are permanently banned from the ground’.

“I thought when they asked me to go to the side, ‘maybe they’re upgrading my tickets, maybe they want to escort me to my seat, this is quite nice, it’s a good service’.

“They asked to see my tickets, I showed them and they took them off me, saying, ‘we’re escorting you off the premises’.

“Apparently they don’t discriminate against sex workers but I was banned because I was a sex worker.

“I was going to encourage them (the players), give them a good time. I also think if I’m entertaining the supporters it’s less people drinking so I’m actually doing something good for their health.”

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There’s a new interactive exhibit opening on Thursday at the California Science Center across the street from the Coliseum that will provide Disneyland-like sports entertainment for all ages, and it’s free.

Using censors, cameras and 21st century technology, “Game On!” takes up 17,000 square feet formally occupied by the Space Shuttle Endeavor exhibit. It allows visitors to learn about science, sports and movement. You get to actively participate by hitting a softball against pitcher Rachel Garcia, take batting practice instructions from Freddie Freeman and kick a soccer ball into a goal while learning from Alyssa and Gisele Thompson. All are mentors.

Yet there’s so much more. You get to try swimming strokes, skateboarding, snowboarding, cycling. There’s climbing, yoga, dancing and challenging your senses during an exhibit that tests your quickness trying to block a hockey puck. There’s a basketball exhibit where you shoot a ball toward the basket and learn if your form is good or not.

One of the murals at the new interactive sports exhibition at California Science Center.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

“There’s something for everybody,” said Renata Simril, president and CEO of the LA84 Foundation that helped provide funding along with the Dodgers Foundation and Walter Family Foundation.

She’s not embellishing. Parents, children, adults, teenagers — they’re all going to be smiling. Don’t be surprised if nearby USC students discover a new place to enjoy an hour break for fun and laughter from studying by walking over to the exhibition hall when it opens at 10 a.m.

The California Science Center new interactive sports exhibit — “Game On!” — opens on Thursday. It’s free.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

It’s supposed to be open through the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, but don’t be surprised if popularity creates momentum to keep it around longer.

“It’s really cool,” said Garcia, a former UCLA All-American softball pitcher who appears on a screen showing off her 60 mph pitch as a participant swings a real bat trying to hit an imaginary ball as a light trail moves down a rail toward the batter. “I think it’s phenomenal. It’s going to get a lot of kids engaged.”

Garcia even tried to hit against herself. “I missed the first time,” she said.

The batting cage where Freeman is providing hitting advice has a real soft ball and bat. It will be popular for all ages.

The rock climbing exhibit still has not been completed, but participants will wear a harness as they climb toward the ceiling.

While kids will be the most enthusiastic, a dinner recently held at the facility that had adults dressed in tuxedos and dresses resulted in them trying out the exhibits and acting like teenagers again.

Using science to teach lessons could provide inspiration for non-sports visitors. There’s sound effects throughout and most important, pushing a button doesn’t just mean you watch and listen. It means you get to participate, whether hitting a baseball or softball, trying to make a free throw, trying to swim or skateboard.

Don’t be surprised when word gets out how fun this exhibition creates. There will be lines. The only question will it be kids lining up or adults?