attention

After winning his first race for Congress in 1992, 34-year-old Xavier Becerra credited a wave of community supporters in Los Angeles, many Latino, for backing his upstart campaign, saying he hoped his win was proof that grassroots politics was more valuable than “heavy dollars.”

More than 30 years later, Becerra, 68, is again an upstart candidate — this time for California governor. Again he is facing monied competition — including from chief Democratic rival Tom Steyer, a self-funded billionaire — and relying on Latino and other grassroots support.

California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra speaks during a campaign event in Los Angeles on April 18.

(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)

“You are the people power that it takes,” he told a crowd of supporters at a recent “Fighting for the California Dream” town hall in Los Angeles. “California wasn’t built by billionaires. It was built by your families. It was built by our families.”

That Becerra is still fighting in the race — and drawing new people to his events — reflects a remarkable and hard-to-explain turnaround for a campaign that appeared all but dead less than a month ago, then bounded back into contention after Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped from the race and resigned from Congress amid sexual assault allegations.

Before Swalwell’s collapse, Becerra’s biggest splash in the race came in March, when USC excluded him and other low-performing candidates from a planned debate. The criteria left every candidate of color out, and after Becerra and others complained, the forum was canceled.

A California Democratic Party tracking poll, released in early April before the Swalwell scandal broke, showed Becerra near the bottom of the field with 4% support among likely voters. In a party poll taken after it broke, Becerra’s support jumped to 13% — the biggest increase of any candidate.

Certainly some of Swalwell’s supporters shifted to Becerra, but political observers are still pondering why so many did — and not to Steyer, former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter or other Democrats with single-digit support, such as former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa or San José Mayor Matt Mahan.

Whatever the answer, Becerra’s surge has sparked fresh interest in his candidacy. It also has raised questions about his time as California attorney general, when he sued the first Trump administration more than 120 times, and U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, when he backed the Biden administration’s strict COVID-19 rules and oversaw the agency’s response to a massive influx of unaccompanied minors at the southern border.

It has also put a growing target on Becerra’s back — including at Wednesday night’s gubernatorial debate, when rivals criticized him as a “D.C. insider” with poorly detailed plans for the state — and sparked hope among many Latinos that California will elect one of them as governor for the first time in state history, sending a strong message of resistance to the intensely anti-immigrant Trump administration.

Of course, Becerra faces hurdles. Steyer, a hedge fund founder who has donated more than $130 million to his own campaign, has been ahead of him in polling, as have two Republicans: Silicon Valley entrepreneur and former Fox News host Steve Hilton, who has President Trump’s endorsement, and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. Only the top two candidates in the June 2 primary advance to the November election.

Still, Becerra now has a path to victory, one that did not exist even a month ago, and new funding. Many Democratic voters remain undecided, and many — shocked by the Swalwell scandal — are looking for another Democratic front-runner to back.

In an interview with The Times, Becerra said he’s the man for the job, because “California needs a work horse, not a show horse.”

Xavier Becerra, left, gathers with other candidates for Los Angeles mayor in 2000.

(Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

Rising wave of Latino political power

A Sacramento native and the son of a Mexican immigrant mother and a Mexican American father, Becerra graduated from Stanford Law School and served as a deputy to California Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp before being elected in 1990 to the California Assembly.

In 1993, Becerra entered Congress on a rising wave of Latino political power and the heels of a fractious presidential election in which former White House aide Pat Buchanan challenged President George H.W. Bush in the Republican primary on a stridently anti-immigrant, “America First” message — one Trump repurposed in both 2016 and 2024.

It was a defining political moment for Latinos across the country, and for Becerra personally, said Fernando Guerra, founding director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.

“He certainly has been and is part of the incorporation of Latinos into California history and California politics, and it really begins in the early ’90s,” Guerra said. “His rise and political career is really a reflection of the rise and political incorporation of Latinos.”

In 1994, Becerra helped oppose Proposition 187, a state initiative to deny undocumented immigrants access to public education and healthcare. In 1996, he sharply criticized the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which cut federal benefits for many legal immigrants. By 1997, Becerra — just 39 — was chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the first Latino member to serve on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.

By 2016, Becerra, 58, was the highest-ranking Latino in Congress when then-Gov. Jerry Brown tapped him to replace a Senate-bound Kamala Harris as California attorney general. There, Becerra played a key role in defending the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, against Republican attacks.

In early 2021, Becerra was confirmed to serve as President Biden’s health secretary, another first for a Latino and a critical post given the COVID-19 crisis, and remained in that role until Trump’s second inauguration.

Then-U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra arrives for a hearing to discuss reopening schools during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021.

(Greg Nash / Associated Press)

Criticism and praise

In a rush of endorsements in recent days, Becerra’s supporters have lauded his executive experience, calling him a “proven leader” who, amid constant threats from the Trump administration, is “ready to fight back on day one.”

Becerra’s critics also have pointed to his leadership record, but to highlight what they contend are glaring failures.

Steyer spokesman Kevin Liao alleged Becerra was “absent, ineffective, or too late” in responding to COVID-19 and other public health crises as health secretary, and that California “cannot afford incompetence, or someone who disappears when things get hard.”

The remarks echoed others made during the pandemic, including by Eric Topol, who is executive vice president of Scripps Research in La Jolla, a professor of translational medicine and a cardiologist. During the pandemic, Topol accused Becerra of being “invisible” in the fight to control it. In a recent interview, he said he still believes that.

Topol said the Biden administration’s COVID response was defined by poor data collection and “infighting” among agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, including on vital issues such as when Americans should receive booster shots and how long they should isolate after infection.

Becerra “basically took a very absent, low profile — didn’t show up, didn’t harmonize the remarkable infighting,” Topol said. “The buck stops with him.”

Dr. David A. Kessler, the Biden administration’s top science official on COVID-19 and now a professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at UC San Francisco, fiercely defended Becerra, crediting him with rolling out some 676 million vaccines and steering the nation out of a wildly unfamiliar health crisis with substantial success — what Kessler called a “historical achievement” that proved government “can do big things.”

Kessler said Becerra rightly assessed that the country needed to hear from medical experts, not politicians, and so deferred at times to the doctors, epidemiologists and vaccinologists he smartly surrounded himself with and trusted — but he was never absent. “He enabled us. He was there. Anything I needed, he helped deliver,” Kessler said.

Becerra said there were a lot of people involved with the COVID-19 fight, including a White House team launched before his confirmation as health secretary. Still, it was his agency that ultimately led the response, and helped bring the pandemic to an end, he said.

“At the end of four years, when we had put some 700 million COVID shots into the arms of Americans and pulled the country and our economy out of the COVID crisis, it was HHS — and I was the secretary of HHS,” he said.

Becerra’s rivals in the governor’s race also have attacked him for how he responded to an influx of unaccompanied immigrant minors during the pandemic. They allege Becerra rushed their release to relatives and other sponsors while ignoring concerns from career health staff that some of those placements weren’t safe — resulting in thousands of kids being lost to the system, forced into child labor or trafficked.

The criticism stems in part from a sweeping New York Times investigation that found the health department couldn’t find some 85,000 children it had released, that Becerra had relaxed screening processes for sponsors and that placement concerns from career health staff went ignored or were silenced.

The investigation by reporter Hannah Dreier found that thousands of the 250,000 or so migrant children who arrived in the U.S. between early 2021 and early 2023 had “ended up in punishing jobs across the country — working overnight in slaughterhouses, replacing roofs, operating machinery in factories — all in violation of child labor laws.”

Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra holds a news conference in Border Field State Park in San Diego in 2017.

(Francine Orr/ Los Angeles Times)

It found there were many signs of “the explosive growth of this labor force,” and that staff had repeatedly flagged concerns about it in reports that reached Becerra’s desk. It also reported that, during a staff meeting in the summer of 2022, Becerra had pressed staff to move children even more quickly through the process, comparing them to factory parts.

“If Henry Ford had seen this in his plants, he would have never become famous and rich. This is not the way you do an assembly line,” Becerra said, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by the newspaper.

Danni Wang, another Steyer spokesperson, said children “were handed to gang members, traffickers, and abusers because [Becerra] stripped the background checks that had protected them for years.”

Becerra said the controversy is one he has addressed publicly for years, including in multiple congressional hearings. He said his team worked diligently to properly vet sponsors and do right by the thousands of children in their care, despite Congress failing to provide the budget needed to restore a system of licensed care facilities that the first Trump administration had dismantled.

“It was a wreck. They had closed facilities, they had fired the licensed caregivers. And remember, this was during COVID, [when] you didn’t want anyone to be near each other,” he said. “How do you take care of thousands of kids in a center that could house maybe 50 kids?”

He said he led an aggressive push to stand up temporary facilities — including in places like the San Diego Convention Center — while rebuilding the licensed care facilities Trump had dismantled and working to place kids into the community as quickly and safely as possible.

Ron Klain, who served as Biden’s chief of staff for the first two years of the administration, said Becerra helped lead the administration out of the crisis by being “an outspoken advocate” for the children in its care.

“Xavier was very, very insistent in meetings and very outspoken on the risk that some of these people [the kids] were being placed with were not the proper people to place them with, and pushed hard for more rigor in the process,” Klain said.

Becerra also has faced criticism and questions related to the federal indictment of his former chief of staff Sean McCluskie, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud after authorities accused him of stealing some $225,000 from Becerra’s dormant state political campaign account.

Becerra was not implicated in the scandal — which he’s previously described as a “gut punch” — and said he did everything he could to ensure McCluskie and others were held accountable once it came to light, including by providing “testimony and documents” to the FBI and federal prosecutors.

Hilton has said the scandal, which also implicated a former aide to Gov. Gavin Newsom, showed that “corruption has become totally ingrained and systemic” under Democratic rule in California.

Looking ahead

Experts said Becerra’s long resume will help him stand out in a race with less experienced competitors and no household names — and that Californians electing a Latino for the first time, as the Trump administration conducts one of the largest ever deportation campaigns, dismantles immigrant rights and targets people on the street based largely on their looking and sounding Latino, would be a major political moment.

Becerra said his extensive experience should matter to voters, because such experience will be necessary in the pivotal and no doubt chaotic Trump years ahead, when “pizzazz and dazzle” will matter less than steady competence from “someone who’s actually been in the midst of that hurricane” before.

“It helps to have gone through these things. I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and I’ve done it successfully,” he said. “I’ve proven that, whether it was taking on Donald Trump toe to toe as the [attorney general], whether it was getting us out of COVID working closely with the White House to deploy the resources and get that done, we made it happen.”

The elephant in the room for the Lakers as they enter the playoffs has been, and will continue to be, the status of their starting backcourt, Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves.

Both are out because of injuries — Doncic with a grade 2 left hamstring strain and Reaves with a grade 2 left oblique strain — and neither is expected to play in the best-of-seven, first-round playoff series against the Houston Rockets that begins Saturday at 5:30 p.m. at Crypto.com Arena.

After practice Friday, coach JJ Redick was quick to say “there’s not” when asked about an update on Doncic and Reaves.

After Doncic and Reaves were injured on April 2 at Oklahoma City, the Lakers said both would be out until the end of the regular season. According to people not authorized to speak on the matter, both are expected to be out four to six weeks.

Doncic went to Spain to get treatment, and Reaves has been working diligently in L.A., with the hope that they can return sooner.

The Lakers miss their combined output of 56.8 points, 13.8 assists and 12.4 rebounds per game. Doncic led the NBA in scoring (33.5) and was third in assists (8.3); he was second on the Lakers in rebounding (7.7).

During the week of practice, Reaves was around his teammates and seen shooting after a few practices. He appeared to be in good spirits. Doncic was supposed to be back by Friday.

“We love having Austin here and we’re glad he is in a position to do his return-to-play [work], however long it takes with us,” Redick said. “Excited to get Luka back and be around the group. Austin and I talk just about every day about different things. So he’s … just being a part of this. …

“The mindset for our team and for those two guys, like we’re gonna try to make this season as long as possible so that we can get those guys back at some point. We don’t know what that is, and that’s just our job. And their job is to do everything they can to be in a position to come back at some point. It may not work, but that’s what we’re trying to do.”

The theme of the Lakers’ week at practice was to “elevate” their work.

Yes, they won’t have Doncic and Reaves, but that didn’t mean the Lakers couldn’t work harder.

When they worked on box-out drills in preparation for the way the Rockets attack the offensive boards, the Lakers went hard. When they watched film and had practice sessions, the Lakers worked with a purpose.

“The word we’ve used all week is ‘elevate.’ I think that’s what it is,” Redick said. “We all know the playoffs are different. They’re harder. There’s no easy matchups, and you have to be able to elevate your play. But beyond that, it’s elevating your recovery, your attention to detail, your preparation.

“I talked about that with my coaches as we started this week on Monday morning. It was an off day for the guys, but we were in there for six hours and we’ve all collectively gotta elevate. And particularly when you’re missing two of your top guys, part of elevating is elevating each other and the belief that the group as a whole can be great.”

The Rockets are a tough and rugged team that is good on defense and at rebounding.

They ranked fourth in the NBA in points given up (110.0) and tied for fifth in opponents’ field-goal percentage (46.0). They were tops in rebounding (48.1) and offensive rebounds (15.0).

That has the Lakers’ attention and is why they worked so hard during practice.

“It’s been great. The level of focus and attention to detail, the communication, everything has been elevated,” forward Jarred Vanderbilt said. “We’ve got a lot of guys that’s been to the playoffs and know what it takes.

“Like you said, everything elevates around this time and having a veteran group that’s kind of been there and had a taste of the playoffs, we all know what it takes to win games in the playoffs. It’s everybody going out and doing their job and paying attention to the game plan.”

Americans could be forgiven if they’re unaware that President Trump recently performed one of his most essential tasks and sent his annual budget request to Congress, though months late and stunningly incomplete.

After all, so much else has been dominating the news lately: the Mideast war that Trump promised not to start. Price rises he’d vowed to end. His repeated insults of Pope Leo XIV. His portraying himself as Jesus Christ, then lying about having done so. An incompetent attorney general to fire. And the president’s actual priorities — plans for a $400-million White House ballroom and a massive “Triumphal Arch” nearby!

It’s a lot.

Once again, as in Trump’s first term, the public and press are inattentive to the nation’s fiscal health relative to past years. But that reflects the president’s own disengagement with reconciling spending and revenue — this from a president many Americans voted for based on his purported prowess as a businessman. For decades back to Ronald Reagan’s time, so-called deficit wars in Washington were a big story. Now, even Republicans in Congress complain of Trump’s absence from the fiscal fray as they struggle to belatedly finish this year’s budget work that was due last fall, and to end a weeks-old partial government shutdown, before turning to the budget for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1.

Yet it’s worth paying attention to U.S. budgets even if Trump won’t, for the sake of our children and grandchildren who’ll inherit the bills. In one document, a federal budget reflects the nation’s priorities. And these days, in the perennial guns-versus-butter debate, Trump has made his feelings all too plain.

“We’re fighting wars,” he told a group at the White House on April Fools’ Day. “We can’t take care of day care … Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.”

Forget that Trump swore to end wars. Or that last year, long before he went to war against Iran, he cut $1 trillion over 10 years from Medicaid and other healthcare programs in his misnamed “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

Yes, budgets can be boring, especially to a president with a famously short attention span. Trump and many of us Americans are distracted constantly by all the shiny objects he throws at the national consciousness by his words, acts and social media postings at all hours.

Yet the budgetary trend is clear to anyone bothering to look: As president, Trump is once again exacerbating the nation’s unsustainable course of piling up debt. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, among other credible sources, debt is now approaching the highest level in U.S. history, which was reached during World War II. It already surpasses the size of the entire economy and threatens higher borrowing costs and reduced investments.

For all the achievements Trump likes to claim — ending eight wars in a year! — here’s one that’s real: He is on a path to break his own record for the most debt in a single presidential term, $8.4 trillion in Trump 1.0, which was nearly double the increase under President Biden.

Need further proof of Trump’s brazen mendacity? Of course you don’t, but here it is: In the face of the well-documented budget record, Trump declared both this year and last year to a joint session of Congress, on national television, that he would balance the federal budget —“overnight,” he said in February.

The inequitable tax cuts and big spending increases for the military and immigration crackdowns that Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress enacted last year are significantly greater than in his first term, and are driving up the debt despite Republicans’ deep healthcare cuts. Just months after Trump took office, the ratings firm Moody’s downgraded the nation’s sterling credit rating for the first time in more than a century.

And now, in his new budget request, Trump seeks to inflate military spending from under $1 trillion when he regained office to $1.5 trillion, for the biggest year-to-year increase in military budgets since World War II.

This fiscal irresponsibility is happening at the worst possible time. For the last quarter of the 20th century, presidents and Congresses of both parties annually debated how to reduce deficits and several times reached consequential multi-year deals, culminating during the second Clinton term in four straight years of surpluses. (Those surpluses ended — wait for it — with Republicans’ tax cuts and war spending during the George W. Bush administration.)

Politicians back then were moved not just by the deficits of their time — deficits that, as a share of the economy, were less than half what they are now. They also were responding to experts’ warnings of a demographic tsunami by the 2020s: With the aging of the huge baby-boomer population, spending for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would greatly increase even as the workforce whose payroll taxes support those programs shrank. Today the number of people 65 or older is almost three times what it was 50 years ago, and rising.

This reckoning is upon us, though you wouldn’t know it as Trump keeps calling for cutting revenue and spending more for lawless wars, immigration raids and monuments to himself. Barring bipartisan action, in 2033 Social Security’s retirement fund and Medicare’s hospital fund will no longer be able to cover beneficiaries’ full claims, according to their trustees’ annual report, necessitating reduced benefits or shifts of money from other worthy programs.

Trump did put Vice President JD Vance in charge of a “war on fraud.” But that holds about as much promise as Elon Musk’s fiscal fiasco — remember DOGE? — that cost money instead of cutting $2 trillion as promised.

Like other problems, Trump likely will leave the fiscal follies to his successor, who, should he or she win two terms, would preside as Social Security and Medicare become insolvent. I’ve yet to hear any of the early 2028 presidential aspirants — or Trump — address or be asked about that.

Let the debate, belatedly, begin.

Bluesky: @jackiecalmes
Threads: @jkcalmes
X: @jackiekcalmes

Biblical stories like Jonah and the whale would be required reading for Texas public schools students under proposals that are putting the state at the center of another contentious wrangling over the role of religion in classrooms.

Religious leaders, teachers, parents and students spent hours Tuesday before the state education board arguing about the reading list for the state’s 5.4 million kindergartners to 12th-graders. The debate is part of widening efforts in the U.S. to incorporate religion in schools, mostly in Republican-led states, driving legislation and legal action.

Nationally, President Trump has pledged to protect and expand religious expression in public schools. And Texas, a red state that is home to about 1 in 10 of the nation’s public school students, often helps set the agenda.

Texas became the first state to allow chaplains, in 2023. And just last year, a Republican-led mandate that the Ten Commandments be displayed in public schools took effect in the state, although around two dozen districts took them down because of a lawsuit.

But while the debate over Texas’ reading list could have national implications, to the speakers the issue boiled down to whether the passages are essential to understanding the nation’s history and morals — or unconstitutional.

“Our children need truth,” said Nathan Irving, a pastor and father of eight from Myrtle Springs, Texas. “Truth is the only currency that never devalues. Investing truth into our children is the most loving thing that we can do for them. This is the truth. This country and this state were founded upon a Christian worldview. Like it or not, it is true.”

Final vote on the changes still ahead

A final vote on the list is expected in June, and if approved by the Texas State Board of Education, the changes would take effect in 2030.

Several speakers cited the “establishment clause” of the 1st Amendment, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

“This list is a tool of proselytization that has no place in our public schools,” Rabbi Josh Fixler, of Congregation Emanu El, a reform synagogue in Houston, told the board. “There is a difference between teaching about religion and teaching religion, and this list will force teachers to cross that line.”

Megan Boyden, a mother of three from Denton, Texas, described is as a direct attack on her private faith.

“As a Christian mother, it is my right and responsibility to teach our family’s religion,” she said. “It is not the state’s job to shed through the lens of a teacher who may not share the same beliefs I do. Will Bible passages be taught in conflict with my beliefs?

“What,” she asked, “of non-Christian students?”

The list stems from a state law passed in 2023, which called for the creation of a state-approved list of high-quality materials.

Third-graders would learn about the Road to Damascus, which tells the story of Paul’s transformation from an early persecutor of Christians into a follower. Seniors, meanwhile, would learn about the Book of Job, a story about a man whose faith is tested when he loses everything.

The list also includes classics like Dr. Seuss’ “The Cat in the Hat,” stories about the national folk hero Daniel Boone. And there are also works by famous African Americans like Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. and a book about Harriet Tubman of the Underground Railroad fame.

Texas has already approved optional curriculum that incorporates the Bible

The GOP-leaning board previously approved a new Bible-infused curriculum that is optional for schools to incorporate in kindergarten through fifth grades.

The board also is considering social studies standards that have been criticized as too state-centric, not focused enough on world events and rife with an undercurrent of American exceptionalism. They call for students to “identify the Texas flag as a symbol of Texas pride,” and recognize the state song “Texas, Our Texas.”

Students also are supposed to be able to understand stories about Texas Independence.

Curriculum debates crop up occasionally. Over the years, state boards in places such as Kansas have debated whether the teaching of evolution should reflect doubt about the well-established scientific theory — and leave room for arguments that the universe’s complexity points to an intelligent design.

Allison Cardwell, a mother of a fourth-grader and a fifth-grade social studies teacher, urged the board to rethink the standards. She said fifth grade would be the only time most Texas students would receive instruction in U.S. history until high school.

“We have to ask ourselves, how can we expect to create citizens who value liberty, responsibility, and the principles this country was founded on, if we don’t ensure that they truly understand those foundations?” she said.

Hollingsworth writes for the Associated Press.

A deaf 6-year-old boy snatched by immigration agents from Northern California and deported to Colombia this month needs to be returned to the U.S. immediately or he could die, a lawyer representing the child said Wednesday.

Attorney Nikolas De Bremaeker said the boy, Joseph Lodano Rodriguez, was “at risk every day that he is not getting his treatments.” The child has a cochlear implant that requires the same routine maintenance and cleaning he was receiving stateside but may not get in Colombia.

“Joseph is at immense risk for his life if he does not continue the treatment that he was receiving in the United States,” De Bremaeker said at a virtual news conference hosted by California Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate.

“He is at risk of infection, he is at risk of meningitis, he is at risk of death if he is not given the proper care for his surgical implants.”

Joseph, his 28-year-old mother, Lesly Rodriguez Gutierrez, and another son, 5, were detained by federal agents on March 3 while attending an immigration meeting and deported shortly after.

Rodriguez Gutierrez traveled to the United States in 2022 seeking asylum from domestic violence and lived in Hayward. She was told in the run up to the March 3 meeting that she needed to bring her two children for a routine check-in to update the photos Immigration and Customs Enforcement had of them.

Shortly after arriving, ICE agents “tried to force her to sign a document without explanation, and then pushed the family into a vehicle to be put on a flight to a faraway detention facility, “ De Bremaeker told The Times earlier.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions sent Wednesday after office hours but has consistently said that Rodriguez Gutierrez was “an illegal alien from Colombia” who “illegally entered the United States in 2022.”

She was issued a removal order on Nov. 25, 2024, according to DHS.

Thurmond, the superintendent, called on the public to lobby Congress and the Trump administration “to return Joseph so he can continue his studies.”

Thurmond showed a 40-second clip of Joseph and his family at a Colombian facility for the deaf.

The child appeared to struggle communicating with his sibling and mother, while his brother repeatedly tried to give directions to him in Spanish with little avail.

Joseph’s only language is American Sign Language, Thurmond said. Joseph was studying at the state-funded Fremont’s California School for the Deaf.

“Joseph is struggling,” Thurmond said. “He does not have the ability to communicate with anyone and in many ways, he can barely communicate with his mom. Like Joseph’s mom, Lesly was just beginning to learn American Sign Language.”

Both California senators — Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff — along with state Democratic congressional members Eric Swalwell, Nanette Barragán, Zoe Lofgren, Kevin Mullin and Lateefah Simon called on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the State Department to investigate the deportation.

The group is also calling on both government agencies to return the family to the U.S. through the process of humanitarian parole. That move would allow Joseph to re-enroll in school and receive specialized care.

Celena Ponce, founder of Hands United, a nonprofit organization dedicated to aiding deaf immigrant children and families, said her group was trying to connect the family with the deaf community and services, like interpreters, in Colombia.

She said, however, that Joseph and his family face several challenges. The first hurdle if he ends up staying in Colombia, is that he and his mother will have to learn Colombian sign language, which differs from American sign language.

Ponce added that Joseph also suffered language deprivation, meaning he is delayed in comparison to other 6-year-olds who are hearing.

“Because Colombia does not have residential schools similar to what California has, the ability to be fully immersed in language is not present,” she said.

Whatever gains he made at the California School for the Deaf would likely end, she said.

Times staff writers Clara Harter and Christopher Buchanan contributed to this report.

Here’s a hot take: South by Southwest is a Latin music festival.

When the De Los team headed to Austin, Texas, in 2024 to cover the event for the first time, approximately 60 acts that fell under the expansive Latin music genre umbrella had been invited to perform. Two years later, that number has more than doubled, with more than 150 Latin music acts featured at the iconic festival, now in its 40th year.

“Latin music has seen incredible growth at SXSW in recent years, reflecting its rise across the global music industry,” said Evelyn Gómez Rivera, associate programmer for Latin music. “2026 is shaping up to be our biggest year for the genre in over a decade, with several major labels showcasing their newest and most exciting Latin talent here.”

Ahead of the festival, which kicks off Thursday, the De Los team has assembled a list of acts that have caught our attention. And before you blow up our inboxes asking why the big acts (Fuerza Regida and Junior H are also slated to perform) weren’t included, keep in mind that what makes SXSW unique is that it’s a chance for attendees to see the next big thing before they blow up. In that spirit of discovery, our list is made up of acts you might not have heard of.

Big Soto

“Terminé siendo rapero cuando quería ser doctor,” Gustavo Rafael Guerrero Soto, better known as Big Soto, confesses in his pandemic-era collaborative session with Argentine mega-producer Bizarrap. It’s safe to say that he made the right career move. The 29-year-old from Venezuela (he now lives in Mexico) is signed to Rimas Entertainment and has been at the forefront of the Latin trap movement. — Fidel Martinez

Mariangela

Mexican-born singer Mariangela started off as a tender pop darling when she first uploaded covers to her YouTube channel in 2019, drawing inspiration from indie-pop singers like Carla Morrison and Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval before releasing her alt-pop debut album “Sensible” under Sony Music Latin in 2024. Now the Texas-based artist is taking her musical stylings in a new direction, drawing from her Monterrey roots with the release of her latest “Cuando Una Mujer,” a cumbia norteña about fierce female empowerment. — Andrea Flores

Esty

First-generation Dominican American singer Esty doesn’t like to be boxed in. From one track to the next, she’ll shift from a mix of dembow and alternative rock to bachata and pop, as seen in her recent single “V3n3n0,” from her upcoming album, “Domi Star.” — Cat Cardenas

Marilina Bertoldi

De Los contributor Ernesto Lechner is 100% responsible for this entry — he included the avant-garde alt rocker from Buenos Aires in his 2025 list of indie artists who deserved to win a Latin Grammy, calling her “the resident hurricane of Argentine rock, blessed with a corrosive sense of the absurd, a knack for pop-punk melodies, and attitude to spare.” How could you not want to see that? — FM

Ruido Selecto

Hailing from Medellín, Colombia, Ruido Selecto drives forward the Caribbean rhythms of cumbia, salsa, electronic dub and Afro-diasporic styles that have been traditionally transmitted through Picós, hand-painted sound systems popular throughout the country’s coast. His hybrid mixes also include elements of sonideros, most audible in tracks like “Lo Que Esconde.” I’m fascinated by his attention to detail in his project “Los 14 Cañonazos Bailables,” where he created experimental and contemporary tropical mixes using archives from Discos Fuentes, a Cartagena record label largely responsible for disseminating 1960s Caribbean sound across the coast of Colombia. — AF

Delilah

The Mexican American singer got her start in mariachi, eventually learning piano, guitar, violin and vihuela. At just 17 years old, her impressive vocals and ability to mix traditional and contemporary Mexican music have already gotten the attention of artists like Becky G and Iván Cornejo. — CC

Danny Felix

Among the biggest feathers in Danny Felix’s hat is being the producer behind the “Soy el Diablo (Remix),” a Natanael Cano track that also doubled as Bad Bunny’s first venture into the world of música mexicana. The Phoenix-based multihyphenate (in addition to producing, he is also a multiinstrumentalist and singer) has played a major role in shaping the current sound of corridos tumbados and will be repping the subgenre in Austin. — FM

60 Juno

Originating from Merced, Calif., this Central Valley post-punk band radiates a hazy, dreamlike sound, so much that one of their most popular tracks is titled “zzz.” While 60 Juno initially began as a solo project led by Jericho Tejeda in his bedroom during the pandemic, it has now expanded to include three additional members from Whittier, Calif. There’s a bit of everything in this band, mellowed surf-rock wading into punk territory that can be heard in songs like the upbeat “Enjoy the Sunset” and their most popular, hypnotic track to date, “J Song.” — AF

RIA

Before she stepped into the spotlight, Ria was writing songs for other artists. Now, she’s combining her knack for emotional lyricism with her soulful voice, recently opening for Tito Double P in Mexico, and breaking out with her recent single, “Pagana.” — CC

Sebaxxss

Sebaxxss is the on-tour DJ for Feid, the pop reggaeton singer and fellow Colombian. I’m interested to see how his set translates into a smaller, more intimate venue. — FM

Diles que no me maten

Diles que no me maten is an experimental, psychedelic rock band from Mexico City named after the famous short story by Mexican author Juan Rulfo about a man who pleads for his life after being captured for killing his neighbor decades earlier. If listeners didn’t know any better, they would think this band started in the late 1980s during the rise of homegrown rock, with its untouched vocals in songs like “Outro.” Tracks like “El Circo” sound like a gentle birth, while “(Radio Sonora Edit)” presents itself as a ghostly acoustic jazz ballad. — AF

Eydrey

Since competing on Netflix’s Latin music competition show, “La Firma,” in 2023, Eydrey has landed a record deal and released a steady stream of R&B, Mexican and reggaeton-infused tracks. Her borderland upbringing in El Paso has also shaped her Spanglish lyrics. — CC

Lena Dardelet

Hailing from Cabarete, Dominican Republic — the same beach resort town is home to the Bachata Academy, the only bachata school in the world — Lena Dardelet fuses pop with various Caribbean genres, including— yep, you guessed it — bachata. — FM

Mosmo

Signed with Rimas Entertainment, Hermosillo singer Mosmo is bringing his own crooning element to the corrido world. The rising singer first came into the spotlight in 2022 on Netflix’s “La Firma,” a competition looking to find the next Latin urban music star. Mosmo’s raw, drawled vocals can be heard in the romantic bélico “Modo B” and the agonizing “Terapia” that implores a past lover for their return. Mosmo also incorporates elements of trap and reggaeton in songs like “Dimensiones,” as well as pop in the bilingual track “Siempre Tú.” — AF

Selines

Inspired by artists like Natalia Lafourcade, singer-songwriter Selines’ guitar-based songs draw on the traditions of boleros, classical music and jazz, bringing a warm nostalgia and romance to her sound. — CC