community

As Mayela got off the bus, she saw Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers raiding the pupusería she worked at in Los Angeles. The undocumented transgender Salvadoran woman watched from behind a car as her co-workers — including another trans Central American woman — were handcuffed and taken away in broad daylight.

“I had so much hope when I arrived to this country,” Mayela, played by Fernanda Celarie, says in her prayers later on. “Now that I’ve begun to feel comfortable living here, this is a nightmare. Why so much pain and suffering?”

“Trans Los Angeles” director Kase Peña wrote that scene into her feature film well before the ongoing ICE raids and subsequent protests in L.A., but the harsh reality of fear for the many undocumented people of the city was something she knew she needed to include.

“When I wrote it in 2021, ICE was a hot subject, and then it died down,” Peña told said ahead of her film’s premiere at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival on May 30. “My film was always relevant and needed. The fact that who we have in the White House right now makes my film even more relevant, more needed now that he’s brought the ICE thing back. That part [of the movie] is not going to look old. It’s unfortunate, but that’s going on.”

This is what Peña set out to do with her feature-length movie, which is composed of three non-overlapping vignettes sharing a wide-ranging set of experiences that Angelenos face daily.

Born and raised in New York, the Dominican American director moved to L.A. nearly a decade ago and was inspired to make her film after noticing a lack of representation for trans stories that reflected the realities of her community.

“When I started hanging with my trans community here in Los Angeles, my intentions were not to tell those stories,” Peña said. “It was something that I felt like there’s a void here, and I’m the right person to tell it because I’m both a filmmaker and a trans person.”

While the storylines of “Trans Los Angeles” drew inspiration from Peña’s personal experiences and fellow members of the trans community‘s stories, the film’s format was influenced by global cinema.

The director pulled from the seminal Soviet/Cuban political work “Soy Cuba” to land on the vignette structure of her film. She had originally wanted to mirror the 1964 movie’s four episodes but was unable to secure funding — a common dilemma faced by truly independent filmmakers — for her fourth snippet, which centered on a transmasculine character.

“A lot of people ask you questions like, ‘Why don’t the stories intertwine?’ It’s because it makes my life more difficult as an independent filmmaker,” she noted. “If you give me a million dollars, I can make the stories intertwined, but I was only getting enough money to shoot one segment at a time. I didn’t have money to shoot all three segments.”

These restraints forced “Trans Los Angeles” to be filmed over the course of several years. The first vignette, “Period,” was shot in March 2021; “Feliz Cumpleaños” was filmed soon after in June; “Trans Day of Remembrance” had to be pushed due to finances and was eventually recorded in November 2023 on Peña’s iPhone. That last segment was shot using “stolen locations” for exterior scene — the crew showed up to a spot and recorded without having film permits or insurance.

“That’s one reason why I decided to shoot it with my iPhone,” she said of the guerrilla filmmaking strategy. “If somebody would have came to me and said, ‘Hey, what are you guys doing over there?’ [We’d say] we’re just shooting something for Instagram on my iPhone. They’d be like, ‘Oh, OK.’”

The vignette “Period” centers on Vergara, a formerly incarcerated trans Latinx woman played by actor and model Carmen Carrera. The character lands a job as a nanny to a preteen girl while doing sex work on the side.

Carrera says she was drawn to the project because Peña’s script allowed her to portray a three-dimensional character.

“That is valuable because oftentimes us trans people are told that we’re not valuable, or that we’re wrong for existing, or that we shouldn’t be around kids, or we shouldn’t have responsibility or be people who are a contributing factor to society,” Carrera told said. . “It’s a reflection of my own life too. I am an active girlfriend, I am an active daughter, I’m an active sister. The trans experience is just a small part of my life. It’s not the totality of my human experience. I was just happy I felt more related to Vergara because it’s how I have always felt as well. In my own life, people judge me all the time.”

Another aspect of “Period” that connected Carrera to Vergara was the character’s relationship with her mother.

“I think as a first-generation American, you have that extra layer of [thinking], ‘My parents came to this country and sacrificed so much, and if I don’t make them proud it’s gonna be a waste,’ ” she said.

Central to the plot of “Period” was the community that Vergara was able to tap into thanks to the TransLatin@ Coalition, a real-life advocacy group based out of L.A. that seeks to create safe spaces for transgender, gender expansive and intersex immigrant women in the city.

“The reason the TransLatin@ Coalition is in the film is because that came from me,” Peña said. “I in real life have gone to TransLatin@ to seek the services that they provide for trans people of color. Because I’m a writer and I go there, I see this place and I’m like, ‘I can tell the story and include them.’ ”

The second segment of the feature, “Trans Day of Remembrance,” is named after the annual day of observance on Nov. 20 of those whose lives were lost due to transphobia.

The story follows Phoebe (Austria Wang), a Taiwanese American transgender woman, as she maneuvers her romantic life and processes the death of one of her fellow trans friends. For this vignette, Peña intentionally cast transmasculine actor Jordan Gonzalez to play Phoebe’s cis boyfriend, Sam. .

“We’ve had cisgender people play trans roles, and it’s the first time [Gonzalez has played a cisgender role]. It was something that they’ve been wanting to do for a while, but this industry doesn’t see them as that, because they only see them as trans,” Peña said. “It was something that they yearned for and perhaps now, because they’ve done it, other people would consider casting them that way too.”

The final segment, “Feliz Cumpleaños,” portrays an ICE raid on a Salvadoran business while telling the story of Mayela’s hopes and aspirations for her life as she prepares for her baptism at an LGBTQ+ friendly church.

As an outsider to the Salvadoran experience, Peña leaned on actual members of the Central American country to adjust and approve of her script.

“I want to acknowledge that I’m not from El Salvador. As a person of color, as a Dominican filmmaker, as a transgender filmmaker, I have often seen filmmakers from other communities come and tell my story, and they don’t check in,” Peña explained. “They think they can just write it. They don’t get it right sometimes, and then they go win major awards. I didn’t want to disrespect the community like that.”

Peña emphasizes that the movie tells stories that get to the heart of the struggle and beauty of being human in L.A.

But ultimately her film is only a slice of the overall trans experience, she says, a unique series of stories informed by a writer whose ethos can be encapsulated in her own views on her own trans identity.

“For me, being transgender is not about passing. Being transgender is about having the freedom to be who you are,” Peña said. “I’m not trying to look like a woman. This is me. That’s it, whatever that means.”

Why is it always the women who stand up first?

That’s a rhetorical question, of course. But it’s one that has a basis in fact because girl power is real.

From Joan of Arc to Cassidy Hutchinson, whenever men have proven too cautious, cowardly or complacent to act, women have had the courage to do the right thing. The latest example of this feminine fearlessness came last Saturday, after federal immigration agents launched a series of raids throughout the Southland targeting everyone from schoolchildren to elderly churchgoers.

Within hours of the first arrests, Angel City, a women’s soccer club, became the first local sports franchise to issue a statement, recognizing the “fear and uncertainty” the raids had provoked. A day later LAFC, Angel City’s roommate at BMO Stadium, released a statement of its own.

That was a week and a half ago. But Angel City didn’t stop there. While the collective silence from the Dodgers, the Galaxy, the Lakers, Kings and other teams has been deafening, Angel City has grown defiant, dressing its players and new coach Alexander Straus in T-shirts that renamed the team “Immigrant City Football Club.” On the back the slogan “Los Angeles Is For Everyone /Los Angeles Es Para Todos” was repeated six times.

“The statement was the beginning,” said Chris Fajardo, Angel City’s vice-president of community. “The statement was our way of making sure that our fans, our players, our staff felt seen in that moment.

“The next piece was, I think, true to Angel City. Not just talking the talk but walking the walk.”

Angel City, the most valuable franchise in women’s sports history, has been walking that walk since it launched five years ago with the help of A-list Hollywood investors, including Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria, Jessica Chastain, America Ferrera and Jennifer Garner.

Angel City coach Alexander Straus wears a shirt with the words, “Immigrant City Football Club” before Saturday’s match.

(Jen Flores / Angel City FC)

It has used its riches and its unique platform to provide more than 2.3 million meals and more than 33,000 hours for youth and adult education throughout Southern California; to provide equipment and staff for soccer camps for the children of migrants trapped at the U.S.-Mexico border; and to funnel $4.1 million into other community programs in Los Angeles.

But while much of that has happened quietly, last Saturday’s actions were provocative, boldly and publicly taking place in a city still under siege from thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of U.S. Marines.

“We always talk about how we wanted to build a club that was representative of our community. But we built a club where we are part of the community,” said Julie Uhrman, who co-founded the team she now leads as president.

“In moments like this it’s how do we use our platform to drive attention for what’s happening, to create a sense of community and tell our community that we’re there for them.

“Our supporters wanted to do more,” Uhrman added. “And we wanted to support them.”

Angel City’s Sydney Leroux poses for photo before a match against North Carolina on Saturday.

(Ian Maule / NWSL via Getty Images)

So Fajardo reached out to the team’s staff and supporters. What would that next step look like this time?

“We knew we wanted to do shirts but like, is this the right move?” Fajardo said. “Also, let’s talk about language. It had to resonate and it had to be something they felt was true.

“And so it was through conversation that we landed on the Immigrant City Football Club and everybody belongs in L.A.”

That was late Wednesday afternoon. Fajardo needed more than 10,000 shirts to hand out to players and fans by Saturday morning. That led him to Andrew Leigh, president of Jerry Leigh of California, a family-owned clothing manufacturer based in Los Angeles.

“We wanted to be a part of it,” Leigh said. “These were definitely a priority as we believe in the cause and what Angel City stands for.”

That first run of T-shirts was just the start, though. Leigh’s company has made thousands more for the team to sell on its website, with the net proceeds going to Camino Immigration Services, helping fund what the team feels is a pressing need.

The campaign has resounded with the players, many of whom were drawn to Angel City by the club’s commitment to community service and many of whom see this moment as especially personal.

“My mom’s parents came here from China, and it wasn’t easy for them,” captain Ali Riley told the team website. “They had to find a way to make a life here. My dad is first-generation American. Being from Los Angeles, everything we do, everything we play, everything we eat, this is a city of immigrants.”

“It feels so uncertain right now,” she continued, “but to look around the stadium and see these shirts everywhere, it’s like we’re saying, ‘this is our home, we know who we are, and we know what we believe in.”

It has resonated with the supporters as well.

“It is great that they showed support and put it into action,” said Lauren Stribling, a playwright from Santa Clarita and an Angel City season-ticket holder from the club’s inception. “They really showed an empathy for the community they serve.

Shirts with the words “Los Angeles Is For Everyone” in English and Spanish were handed out to fans before Angel City’s game against North Carolina at BMO Stadium on Saturday.

(Jen Flores / Angel City FC)

“They stand up. It makes me proud of the team and makes me a bigger fan.”

And it makes the Dodgers, the Galaxy and the other Southern California franchises who have remained silent look smaller. On the same night Angel City was stepping up, seven miles away the Dodgers were once again stepping back, warning singer Nezza, the daughter of Dominican immigrants, to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in English, not Spanish.

“I didn’t think I would be met with any sort of like, ‘no,’ especially because we’re in L.A. and with everything happening,” said Nezza, whose real name is Vanessa Hernández. “I just felt like I needed to do it.”

So she sang in Spanish. Of course she sang in Spanish.

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.

SACRAMENTO — In response to immigration raids by masked federal officers in Los Angeles and across the nation, two California lawmakers on Monday proposed a new state law to ban members of law enforcement from concealing their faces while on the job.

The bill would make it a misdemeanor for local, state and federal law enforcement officers to cover their faces with some exceptions, and also encourage them to wear a form of identification on their uniform.

“We’re really at risk of having, effectively, secret police in this country,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), co-author of the bill.

During a news conference in San Francisco announcing the legislation, Wiener criticized the Trump administration for targeting illegal immigrants without criminal records and alleged that current tactics allow ICE agents to make themselves appear to be local police in some cases. Under the proposal, law enforcement officials would be exempted from the mask ban if they serve on a SWAT team or if a mask is necessary for medical or health reasons, including to prevent smoke inhalation.

Recent immigration enforcement sweeps have left communities throughout California and the country frightened and unsure if federal officials are legitimate because of their shrouded faces and lack of identification, said Sen. Jesse Arreguín (D-Berkeley), co-author and chair of the Senate Public Safety Committee. He said the bill would provide transparency and discourage impersonators.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agencies, called the proposal “despicable,” saying it posed a threat to law enforcement officers by identifying them and subjecting them to retaliation.

“We will prosecute those who dox ICE agents to the fullest extent of the law. The men and women of ICE put their lives on the line every day to arrest violent criminal illegal aliens to protect and defend the lives of American citizens,” the department said in a post on the social media site X. “Make no mistake, this type of rhetoric is contributing to the surge in assaults of ICE officers through their repeated vilification and demonization of ICE.”

Wiener, however, said members of law enforcement are public servants and people need to see their faces so they can be held accountable for their actions.

He likened ICE officials to Stormtroopers, fictional helmeted soldiers from the movie “Star Wars,” and said masking the faces and concealing the names of law enforcement officials shields them from public scrutiny and from the communities they are meant to serve.

“We don’t want to move towards that kind of model where law enforcement becomes almost like an occupying army, disconnected from the community, and that’s what it is when you start hiding their face, hiding the identity,” he said.

California law already bans wearing a mask or other disguise, including a fake mustache, wig or beard to hide your identity and evade law enforcement while committing a crime, but there are no current laws about what police can or cannot wear. It was unclear whether the proposal would affect undercover or plainclothes police officers, or if a state law could apply to federal police forces.

The proposal is being offered as an amendment to Senate Bill 627, a housing measure that would essentially be eviscerated.

The bill also includes an intent clause, which is not legally binding, that says the legislature would work to require all law enforcement within the state to display their name on their uniforms.

“Finding a balance between public transparency and trust, along with officer safety, is critical when we’re talking about creating state laws that change the rules for officers that are being placed into conflict situations,” Jason Salazar, president of the California Police Chief Assn., said in a statement. “We have been in touch with Senator Wiener, who reached out ahead of the introduction of this bill, and we will engage in discussions with him and his office to share our concerns so that we ensure the safety of law enforcement first responders is a top priority.”

Wiener said the new measure would make it clearer who is a police officer and who is not, which would be essential in the wake of the politically motivated killing of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband, and the attempted killing of another politician and his wife. The suspect, Vance Boelter, is accused of knocking on the doors of the lawmakers in the middle of the night and announcing himself as a police officer to get them to open up, authorities said.

U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), wrote in an X post that the bill would endanger ICE agents.

“Do not forget — targeted attacks on ICE agents are up 413%. This is yet another shameless attempt to put them in harm’s way,” she said.

On a recent walk through the charred and twisted remains and scraped-flat plateau of the Pacific Palisades, local historian Randy Young paused a couple of hundred yards into the mouth of Temescal Canyon, above Sunset Boulevard, to let the eerie randomness of the January flames sink in. So much was erased in so little time, leaving the lasting impression, whether from afar or close-up, of a wasteland — a place almost wiped off the map.

But here, in the narrows of the canyon, where Temescal Creek tickled the roots of sycamores and cooled the air beneath the heavy branches of valley oaks, Young lighted up with the enthusiasm of an amateur botanist.

“The oak trees took all of the fire’s embers. They caught them like catcher’s mitts,” said Young, who grew up in adjacent Rustic Canyon and until recently lived in a Palisades apartment near Temescal.

The 1920s Chautauqua Conference Grounds in what became Pacific Palisades included a grocery and meat market.

(Pacific Palisades Historical Society)

Those trees, and the green (and thus less flammable) edges of the creek, helped to save a row of small, wooden cottages and a cluster of wood-shingled, pitched-roof buildings that were the remains of the 77-acre Chautauqua Assembly Camp, once the thriving nucleus of a 1920s effort to shape the Palisades as a spiritual and intellectual lodestar on the California Coast. The Chautauqua movement — founded in 1874 at Lake Chautauqua, N.Y., to better train Sunday-school teachers — swept the country in the late 19th century, blossoming into a network of assemblies drawing rural and working-class Americans hungry for education, culture and social progress. While short-lived, the local camp would form the blueprint for Pacific Palisades to this day.

Young, who has co-written books about the Palisades and its surrounding communities, stepped onto the short boardwalk fronting a modest wooden structure. “This was the grocery store and meat market,” he noted. Rounding the slope at the back, he pointed to an old Adirondack-style dining hall — now called Cheadle Hall but originally Woodland Hall — its simple post-and-beam and wood wainscoting preserved from the early 1920s. He also spoke of what had been lost over the decades: Across the glade had stood a barnlike, three-tiered auditorium. Nearby, he said, had been a log-cabin library. Up and down the canyon were dozens of river-rock cottages and timbered casitas, and 200 canvas tents raised on wooden platforms.

South of Sunset Boulevard (then known as Marquez Road), on a site that now includes Palisades Charter High School, was the Institute Camp, containing an amphitheater carved out of a natural bowl, where thousands of summertime campers would hear the likes of Leo Tolstoy’s son, Illya, speaking on “The True Russia,” or Bakersfield-born Lawrence Tibbett, who would become one of the country’s greatest baritones, perform selections from his Metropolitan Opera repertoire. The Institute Camp also housed the Founders Oak, a tree that marked the site of the community’s 1922 founding ceremony, and lots for independent groups, like the WE Boys and Jesus our Companion (J.O.C.), Methodist-affiliated clubs who made a former Mission Revival home into the Aldersgate Lodge (925 Haverford Ave.) in 1928.

A 1922 Thanksgiving gathering fills rows of the since-destroyed amphitheater set under oaks and sycamores in Temescal Canyon.

(Pacific Palisades Historical Society)

In the sylvan canyon, the Palisades Chautauqua offered a bewildering array of ways to lift oneself up: hiking and calisthenics, elocution and oratory, homemaking and child psychology, music, history, politics, literature and theater. Tinged with piety, these were, in their own words, “high class, jazz-free resort facilities.”

The official dedication of the Palisades Chautauqua on Aug. 6, 1922, would be the last of its kind in the country. It was spearheaded by Rev. Charles Holmes Scott, a Methodist minister and educational reformer who dreamed of creating the “Chautauqua of the West.” The influence of the movement was so central to the Palisades’ identity that in 1926, one of its main thoroughfares — Chautauqua Boulevard — was named in its honor.

Scott, inspired by the Chautauqua tradition’s ideals of self-transformation, envisioned Pacific Palisades as a place where character would matter more than commerce. “Banks and railroads and money is always with us. But the character and integrity of our men and women is something money cannot buy. We will prove the worth of man,” Scott declared. Residents signed 99-year leases to ensure the community’s cooperative nature. The leasehold model was also meant to prevent speculation, fund cultural facilities and events, and uphold moral standards. Alcohol, billboards and architectural extravagance were all prohibited — as was, alas, anyone who wasn’t Protestant or white.

The Palisades Assn., under Scott’s guidance, purchased nearly 2,000 acres of mesa, foothills and coastline. Pasadena landscape architect Clarence Day drew up the first plans, establishing a new axis, Via de la Paz, or Way of Peace, eventually home to Pacific Palisades United Methodist Community Church (1930) and terminating at a neoclassical, Napoleonic-scaled Peace Temple, atop Peace Hill. He laid out two tracts: Founders Tract I, a tight-knit grid of streets (now known as the Alphabet Streets) for modest homes above Sunset Boulevard, and the curving Founders Tract II, closer to the coast with larger lots for more affluent residents.

Soon after, Day was replaced by the renowned Olmsted Brothers, who refined the layout to follow natural contours, planted thousands of trees and designed a stately civic center in which they wanted to include a library, hotel, lake, a park with a concert grove and a far larger, permanent auditorium. Only one major element of that center was realized: Clifton Nourse’s Churrigueresque-style Business Block building at Swarthmore and Sunset, completed in 1924.

Residents gather on Peace Hill on Easter Sunday in 1922.

(Pacific Palisades Historical Society)

By the end of 1923, it seemed as if the Palisades was destined to become a boom town, with 1,725 people making down payments totaling more than $1.5 million on 99-year renewable leases. In early 1924, demand slumped, never to revive. To preserve the dream, in 1926 Scott abandoned the lease-only model and began selling lots. That same year the association borrowed heavily to purchase 226 more ocean-view acres from the estate of railway magnate Collis P. Huntington, installing underground utilities and ornamental street lighting in an area that would become known as the Huntington Palisades. Debt soared from $800,000 in 1925 to $3.5 million by the end of 1926.

As the 1929 stock market crash hit and revenue dried up in the Great Depression, the association collapsed. Its assets were sold off. Grand plans, like the Civic Center and the Peace Temple, were abandoned. The dream withered.

“There wasn’t a moment where they said ‘we’re stopping,’” Young said. “It just sort of petered out.”

Yet fragments endured, stubbornly. In 1943, the Presbyterian Synod purchased the Chautauqua site and operated it as a retreat. In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, local activists fought off a plan to extend Reseda Boulevard right through Temescal Canyon (though buildings like the library and assembly hall had already been torn down in anticipation of the roadway). In 1994, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy acquired the land. Today, it survives as the city-run Temescal Gateway Park, its board-and-batten cabins and rustic halls weathered but largely intact.

The Business Block — since January a fire-blackened shell awaiting its undetermined fate — narrowly escaped demolition in the 1980s when a developer proposed replacing it with a concrete and glass mall. A preservationist campaign under the slogan “Don’t Mall the Palisades” saved the structure.

But by then, the character of the Palisades had begun to shift. Faint echoes of the quiet, rustic past remained, but modest bungalows had given way to mansions. The artists, radicals and missionaries were largely gone.

“It’s not Chautauqua anymore — it’s Château Taco Bell,” Young quipped, of much of the area’s soulless new built forms.

Today, thanks to the fire’s brutality, the original Chautauqua sites offer something unusual: a landscape where past and present momentarily coexist. Slate roofs held firm. Ancient oak groves performed better than modern landscaping. For Young, the fires stripped away modern gloss to reveal what continues to matter.

“When you go through a fire,” he said, “you get down to the basics.” He added: “The fires brought us back to 1928.”

Pacific Palisades is one of a long list of failed California utopias. Like Llano del Rio, the socialist settlement in the Antelope Valley, or the Kaweah Colony, a cooperative in the Sierra foothills, it was a high-minded gamble dashed on the shoals of capitalism and human nature. The idealistic outpost lingers, etched into the land, embossed in the Palisades’ deeper memory. The dream may no longer be intact, but its traces are still legible.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration directed immigration officers to pause arrests at farms, restaurants and hotels after the president expressed alarm about the impact of his aggressive enforcement, an official said Saturday.

The move marks a remarkable turnabout in Trump’s immigration crackdown since he took office in January. It follows weeks of increased enforcement since 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 five months of Trump’s second term.

Tatum King, an official with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit, wrote regional leaders on Thursday to halt investigations of the agricultural industry, including meatpackers, restaurants and hotels, according to the New York Times.

A U.S. official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed to the Associated Press the contents of the directive. The Homeland Security Department did not dispute it.

“We will follow the president’s direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America’s streets,” Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security spokesperson, said when asked to confirm the directive.

The shift suggests Trump’s promise of mass deportations has limits if it threatens industries that rely on workers in the country illegally. Trump posted on his Truth Social site Thursday that he disapproved of how farmers and hotels were being affected.

“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” he wrote. “In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”

While ICE’s presence in Los Angeles has captured public attention and prompted Trump to deploy the California National Guard and Marines, immigration authorities have also been a growing presence at farms and factories across the country.

Farm bureaus in California say raids at packinghouses and fields are threatening businesses that supply much of the country’s food. Dozens of farmworkers were arrested after uniformed agents fanned out on farms northwest of Los Angeles in Ventura County, which is known for growing strawberries, lemons and avocados. Others are skipping work as fear spreads.

ICE made more than 70 arrests Tuesday at a food packaging company in Omaha. The owner of Glenn Valley Foods said the company was enrolled in a voluntary program to verify workers’ immigration status and that it was operating at 30% capacity as it scrambled to find replacements.

Tom Homan, the White House border advisor, has repeatedly said ICE will send officers into communities and workplaces, particularly in “sanctuary” jurisdictions that limit the agency’s access to local jails.

Sanctuary cities “will get exactly what they don’t want, more officers in the communities and more officers at the work sites,” Homan said Monday on Fox News Channel. “We can’t arrest them in the jail, we’ll arrest them in the community. If we can’t arrest them in the community, we’re going to increase work-site enforcement operation. We’re going to flood the zone.”

Madhani and Spagat write for the Associated Press.

Pacific Palisades will reopen to the general public Saturday, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell told The Times Friday afternoon.

The affluent coastal enclave has remained closed to the public since the devastating January wildfires, months after other fire-damaged neighborhoods reopened. Access to the neighborhood was limited to residents and workers with passes. Dozens of LAPD officers have been staffing 16 checkpoints on major streets into the community, according to the mayor’s office.

Those checkpoints will no longer be staffed as of Saturday, but there “will still be a heavy police presence for the foreseeable future there,” McDonnell said.

The decision was made in conjunction with Mayor Karen Bass, with input from members of the community, McDonnell said. Bass did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The city is bracing for widespread demonstrations against the Trump administration on Saturday that will include a heavy law enforcement presence. The need to shift personnel to other parts of the city ahead of the protests was “a factor” in McDonnell’s decision, but he said it was also a necessary evolution months after the fires.

The status of the checkpoints will be reassessed after this weekend, LAPD spokesperson Jennifer Forkish said.

While publicly chastising groups protesting immigration raids, Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell has offered support to officers in his Latino-majority department who may have mixed feelings about the Trump administration‘s crackdown.

In a department-wide missive sent out earlier this week as protests ramped up, McDonnell acknowledged some officers were “facing criticism from the community or wrestling with the personal impact,” of recent events and needed support.

“When federal immigration enforcement actions take place in communities that may reflect your own heritage, neighborhoods, or even your family’s story, it can create a deep and painful conflict,” he wrote. “You may be wearing the uniform and fulfilling your duty, but inside, you’re asked to hold a complex mix of emotions.”

It was an unusual display of solidarity for a chief who has rarely waded into the contentious immigration debate. McDonnell has bristled over criticism about his relationship with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement while serving as Los Angeles County Sheriff during Trump’s first term.

In interviews and public comments since becoming chief McDonnell has sought to distance himself from a policy as sheriff that allowed federal immigration authorities to operate freely, targeting people for deportation in the nation’s largest jail system.

Both McDonnell and current L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna have stressed that their departments do not cooperate with federal authorities solely for immigration purposes — polices adopted long ago to help build trust within the city’s diverse communities.

In his own message to his department this week, Luna thanked deputies for their “professionalism, resolve, and unwavering dedication” — but only briefly alluded to the immigration debate.

“Despite the complexity of this situation — made even more challenging by the heightened political environment — I trust and fully expect that you will continue to demonstrate the same level of excellence, thoughtfulness, and integrity that have brought us this far,” Luna said.

Critics of local law enforcement actions in recent days note that racial bias also remains a contentious issue, with LAPD officers pulling over and shooting Latino Angelenos at a higher rate than their share of the overall population.

Jim McDonnell was introduced by Mayor Karen Bass to serve as the new Chief LAPD during a press conference at City Hall on Oct. 4, 2024.

(Ringo Chiu/For The Times)

When asked about how he is working to keep the city’s immigrant population safe, McDonnell often cites Special Order 40, the landmark policy adopted in 1979 that forbids LAPD officers from stopping people to inquire about their citizenship status.

But Trump’s actions have put the chief and other local leaders in the awkward position of having to defend federal officers and property — while also trying to communicate that they are not on the side of immigration agents.

In his recent message to department employees, McDonnell said he recognized they “may feel loyalty, frustration, fear, or sometimes even shame as the community mistakenly views you as part of something that you are not.” The public may not “see the nuance,” of the LAPD’s postion, he said, because “simply being present can make it seem like you support an action you may not agree with, or that you’re complicit in pain affecting your own community.”

Publicly, though, the chief has struck a different, sometimes defensive tone, often focusing his remarks on destruction caused by some protesters.

At a City Council hearing Tuesday, he sparred with city leaders who challenged the department’s relationship with federal authorities.

In one exchange, City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said he disagreed with the chief on referring to agencies such as ICE as “law enforcement partners.”

“I don’t care what badge they have on or whose orders they’re under. They’re not our partners,” Harris-Dawson said.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, who sits on the Council’s public safety committee and represents an Echo Park-to-Hollywood district, said in a statement to The Times that he wasn’t surprised that Latino police officers may be feeling conflicted.

“Families are being ripped apart, and I’d bet nearly every one of them has a parent or relative who’s undocumented, or were even undocumented themselves at some point,” said Soto-Martinez.

Art Placencia, a retired LAPD detective, recalled being a young cop on the job in the years when cops would arrest Latinos simply because they believed that they might be in the country illegally and deliver them into federal custody.

The LAPD of today is vastly different than when he was on the job, he said. Prodded by lawsuits and consent decrees, the once-mostly white department has grown to become more than half Latino, which more or less mirrors the city’s demographics. And while Latino officials are under-represented in the LAPD’s upper echelons, they wield more political clout than ever, Placencia said.

Placencia, the former president of an prominent association for Latino officers that once sued the LAPD for discrimination in promotion decisions, said McDonnell is caught in a bind of having to navigate the city’s left-leaning politics while also backing up his rank-and-file officers on the front lines against hostile crowds.

“He’s gotta show that he’s concerned about the officers and their feelings,” said Placencia. “They’re the ones that are out there, they’re the ones that are getting rocks thrown at them.”

In past interviews, McDonnell has spoken proudly about his immigrant upbringing — both of his parents moved to Boston from Ireland a year before he was born — saying that he understands the struggle of trying to make a better life in America. But as sheriff he also came under fire by breaking ranks with many other area politicians by opposing a “sanctuary state” bill that sought to prevent federal immigration agents from taking custody of people being released from California jails.

The selection of McDonnell last November came as a disappointment among some within the department, who had hoped Bass would pick Robert Arcos, a third-generation Mexican American, who had the backing of some powerful Latino civic leaders and would have been the first Latino chief of a city that is more than 50% Latino.

Ruben Lopez, a retired LAPD SWAT lieutenant, said he appreciated that McDonnell decided to address the internal moral dilemma that some officers face.

Lopez remembers wrestling with similar feelings when, as a young cop, he was on the front lines of a massive protest over Proposition 187, a controversial law — later struck down by a federal court — that barred undocumented immigrants from receiving public school educations and a range of other state- and county-funded benefits.

“I remember some of the command staff wanted to be more aggressive, and I felt these were just families and kids wanting to exercise their right to protest,” he said. “Because if we don’t have that trust in the community, including immigrant communities then we’re not going to get that collaborative approach to police a city of this size.”

Times staff writer Connor Sheets contributed reporting.

The clashes between National Guard troops, police and protesters in recent days have evoked memories for some Angelenos of the deadly riots that erupted after LAPD officers were acquitted of brutally assaulting Black motorist Rodney King in 1992.

But leaders who were involved in dealing with the uprising more than three decades ago say what has unfolded with President Trump’s deployment of soldiers to Los Angeles and surrounding communities bears no resemblance to the coordinated response that took place then.

“It’s not even close,” said former LAPD chief and city councilman Bernard Parks, who was a deputy chief in the police department during the 1992 unrest. “You get a sense that this is all theatrics, and it is really trying to show a bad light on Los Angeles, as though people are overwhelmed.”

Protesters continue to gather in downtown Los Angeles due to the immigration raids in L.A. on Tuesday.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

The chaos of 1992 unfolded after four LAPD officers who were videotaped beating King the prior year were not convicted. It took place at a time of deep distrust and animosity between minority communities and the city’s police department.

Federal troops and California National Guard units joined forces with local law enforcement officers to quell the turmoil, but not without harrowing results. More than 60 people were killed, thousands were injured and arrested, and there was property damage that some estimate exceeded $1 billion.

What has played out recently on the city’s streets is significantly more limited in scope, Mayor Karen Bass said.

“There was massive civil unrest [then]. Nothing like that is happening here,” Bass said on CNN on Sunday. “So there is no need for there to be federal troops on our ground right now.”

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1. A demonstrator is arrested as protesters and police clash downtown Monday . (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times) 2. Los Angeles police officers in riot gear prepare to clear a street in Downtown Los Angeles on Monday. (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times) 3. Blood spots on the ground near the Metropolitan Detention Center, in Los Angeles on Sunday. (Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times) 4. National Guard are stationed at the Metropolitan Detention Center, on Sunday. (Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

As of Wednesday evening, several hundred people had been arrested or detained because of their alleged actions during the protests, or taken into custody by federal officials because of their immigration status. On Tuesday, after the 101 Freeway was blocked by protesters, buildings in downtown Los Angeles were vandalized and businesses ransacked, Bass imposed a curfew in the city’s civic core from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. that is expected to last several days.

Zev Yaroslavsky, who served on the City Council in 1992, recalled that year as “one of the most significant, tragic events in the city’s history.”

He described the riots as “a massive citywide uprising,” with “thousands of people who were on the streets in various parts of the city, some burning down buildings.”

Yaroslavsky, who was later on the county Board of Supervisors for two decades, said that while some actions protesters are currently taking are inappropriate, the swath of Los Angeles impacted is a small sliver of a sprawling city.

“All you’re seeing is what is happening at 2nd and Alameda,” he said. “There’s a whole other city, a whole other county that is going about its business.”

Another significant distinction from 1992, according to people who lived through it, was the bipartisan coordination among local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, and Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley requested assistance from then-President George H.W. Bush.

That’s a stark contrast from what started unfolding last week, when Trump’s administration sent ICE agents to Los Angeles and federalized the state’s National Guard without request by the state’s governor, which last happened in the United States in the 1960s.

“The biggest difference is that the governor requested federal help rather than having it imposed over his objection,” said Dan Schnur, a political professor and veteran strategist who served as Wilson’s communication’s director in 1992. “There were some political tensions between state and local elected officials. But both the governor and the mayor set those aside very quickly, given the urgency of the situation.”

Loren Kaye, Wilson’s cabinet secretary at the time, noted times have changed since then.

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1. Critics say police gave up when the rioting erupted in 1992, letting big chunks of the city burn while looters and hoodlums ruled. Street cops say commanders held them back, fearing violent clashes would produce an endless stream of Rodney Kings. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times) 2. A National Guardsman stands at alert near graffiti that spells out support for Rodney King, April 30, 1992. (Los Angeles Times)

“What I’m worried about is that there aren’t the same incentives for resolving the contention in this situation as there were in ’92,” he said. Then, “everyone had incentives to resolve the violence and the issues. It’s just different. The context is different.”

Parks, a Democrat, argued that the lack of federal communication with California and Los Angeles officials inflamed the situation by creating a lag in local law enforcement response that made the situation worse.

“You have spontaneous multiple events, which is the Achilles heel of any operation,” he said.

“It’s not that they’re ill-equipped, and it’s not that they’re under-deployed,” Parks said. “It takes a minute. You just don’t have a large number of people idly sitting there saying, okay, we are waiting for the next event, and particularly if it’s spontaneous.”

Protests can start peacefully, but those who wish to create chaos can use the moment to seek attention, such as by burning cars, Park said. The end result is images viewed by people across the country who don’t realize how localized the protests and how limited the damage was in recent days.

“The visuals they show on TV are exactly what the folks in Washington want to be seen,” Parks said.

On Monday, the president deployed hundreds of Marines from Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms. State leaders have asked for a temporary restraining order blocking the military and state National Guard deployments, which is expected to be heard in federal court on Thursday.

Trump, speaking to U.S. Army troops at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina on Tuesday, said that he deployed National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles “to protect federal law enforcement from the attacks of a vicious and violent mob.”

The president descried protesters as leftists pursuing a “foreign invasion” of the United States, bent on destroying the nation’s sovereignty.

“If we didn’t do it, there wouldn’t be a Los Angeles,” Trump said. “It would be burning today, just like their houses were burning a number of months ago.”

Newsom responded that the president was intentionally provoking protesters.

“Donald Trump’s government isn’t protecting our communities — they’re traumatizing our communities,” Newsom said. “And that seems to be the entire point.”

Activists who witnessed the 1992 riots said the current turmoil, despite being much smaller and less violent, is viewed differently because of images and video seen around the world on social media as well as the plethora of cable outlets that didn’t exist previously.

“They keep looping the same damn video of a car burning. It gives the impression cars are burning everywhere, businesses are being looted everywhere,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable.

Hutchinson, an activist from South L.A. who raised money to rebuild businesses during the 1992 riots, said he was concerned about the city’s reputation.

“L.A. is getting a bad name,” he said.

As looming fear over ongoing ICE raids in the greater Los Angeles area continues, one group of music enthusiasts is using their platform to call out for more visibility and support from famed artists — underscoring tense conversations about influence in the Latino music scene.

Since 2021, the “Agushto Papá” podcast — founded and hosted by Jason Nuñez, Diego Mondragon and Angel Lopez— has played a key role in chronicling the rise of música Mexicana by giving up-and-coming artists a platform to showcase their talent and personalities. Popular genre acts like Xavi, Eslabon Armado, Becky G, DannyLux, Ivan Cornejo and more have appeared on their YouTube channel, which has amassed over 635,000 subscribers to date.

However, on Monday, the trio strayed away from their standard entertainment content, uploading an Instagram reel reflecting disappointment over ICE sweeps, which have targeted communities of Paramount, Huntington Park, Santa Ana and other predominantly Latino communities.

“It’s super unfortunate to see what’s happening within our Latino community,” Nuñez states in the clip. “I think it’s very important that we stay united and spread as much awareness as possible.”

The video initially highlighted efforts by Del Records, who are providing free legal assistance to members of the community who are facing deportation orders; earlier this year, the Bell Gardens label was caught in a web of guilty court verdicts due to their links to cartels. Still, the label is one of the few Latino-led music entities outspoken about providing resources for affected individuals, “but I definitely think they shouldn’t be the only ones,” added Nuñez in the video.

Podcast co-host Lopez prompted viewers to tag their favorite artist in the comment section if they would like for them to speak up, he said, “I think it’s fair and just that [artists] show some of that love back to the community that’s in need and that is hurting.”

“I think that [artists] do play a big role because I think we see them as role models or leaders in our community,” said Lopez in a Tuesday interview with The Times. “These are times when we need those leaders to speak up and for us and people that maybe can’t speak up as well.”

The topic of immigration hits close to home for two of the members; Nuñez and Mondragon are both DACA recipients and openly discuss their unique experience on the podcast. The Obama-era program, which provides temporary relief from deportation and work authorization, has also come under attack in recent years by Trump-appointed judges and is currently recognized as unlawful by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, although application renewals remain.

“I feel betrayed because with [“Agushto Papá”], we have a lot of artists and companies and labels reach out to us to promote albums, tours,” said Mondragon. “We’ve actually reached out to some of these companies [and] they’ve been ignoring us.”

While Mondragon won’t disclose names, he says that many individuals have not spoken out because, “their artists are not born in the U.S.” To that he quips, “We don’t have papers as well, and we’re still using our platform.”

There’s a sense of betrayal, the group says, especially given how various artists and labels came out to support Californians during the January wildfires, “but now when it comes down to bringing awareness to things that are happening to their people, it’s just unfair that they’re keeping quiet,” says Nuñez.

Still, the “Agushto Papá” podcast is not alone in this sentiment; if you scroll across the comment sections of trending música Mexicana acts, you’ll likely come across comments asking them why they’re staying silent about recent sweeps, which immigration-leaders say have totaled at least 300 people.

“I think my big let down is that these companies/artists are vocal about their culture, their heritage, their ethnicity every chance they get, but now I feel like they’re picking and choosing only when it matters,” said Lopez.

In days following public demonstrations and protests, several Mexican American artists have vocalized their support of the immigrant communities including big acts like Ivan Cornejo, Becky G, and Chiquis.

On Tuesday, the boisterous San Bernardino band Fuerza Regida, uploaded a statement to their 9.1 million followers, sharing support for the Latino community. The podcast trio later thanked in a follow-up video.

“There’s still a lot of artists that are staying silent and we hope by this week they speak out about what’s going on,” states Mondragon in the video, urging artists to spread awareness, or perhaps, if they’re bold, front a portion of their millions to the community, even if it means opting for first class instead of their private jet, he says.

Alarm spread through California agricultural centers Tuesday as panicked workers reported that federal immigration authorities — who had largely refrained from major enforcement action in farming communities in the first months of the Trump administration — were showing up at farm fields and packing houses from the Central Coast to the San Joaquin Valley.

“Today we are seeing an uptick in the chaotic presence of immigration enforcement, particularly the Border Patrol,” said Elizabeth Strater, vice president of the United Farm Workers. “We’re seeing it in multiple areas.”

Department of Homeland Security officials declined to confirm specific locations, but said enforcement actions were taking place across the southern area of state. Advocates from numerous immigrant advocacy groups said their phones were lighting up with calls, videos and texts from multiple counties.

The Times reviewed a video that showed a worker running through a field under the cover of early morning fog, with at least one agent in pursuit on foot and a Border Patrol truck racing along an adjacent dirt road. Eventually, the worker was caught.

In Tulare County, near the community of Richgrove, immigration agents emerged near a field where farm laborers were picking blueberries, causing some workers to flee.

In Oxnard in Ventura County, organizers responded to multiple calls of federal immigration authorities staging near fields and entering a packing house at Boskovich Farms. Hazel Davalos of the group Cause, said there were reports of ICE agents trying to access nine farms in Oxnard, but that in many cases, they were denied entry.

In Fresno County, workers reported federal agents, some in Border Patrol trucks, in the fields near Kingsburg.

Strater said she did not yet have information about the number of people detained in the raids, but said the fear among workers was pervasive. At least half of the estimated 255,700 farmworkers in California are undocumented, according to UC Merced research.

“These are people who are going to be afraid to take their kids to school, afraid to go to graduation, afraid to go to the grocery store,” Strater said. “The harm is going to be done.”

The expansion into rural communities follows days of coordinated raids in urban areas of Los Angeles County, where authorities have targeted home improvement stores, restaurants and garment manufacturers. The enforcement action has prompted waves of protest, and the Trump administration has responded by sending in hundreds of Marines and National Guard troops.

Two Democratic members of Congress who represent the Ventura area, Reps. Julia Brownley and Salud Carbajal, released a statement condemning the raids around Oxnard.

““We have received disturbing reports of ICE enforcement actions in Ventura County, including in Oxnard, Port Hueneme, and Camarillo, where agents have reportedly stopped vehicles, loitered near schools, and attempted to enter agricultural properties and facilities in the Oxnard Plain,” they said. “These actions are completely unjustified, deeply harmful, and raise serious questions about the agency’s tactics and its respect for due process.”

They added that “these raids are not about public safety. They are about stoking fear. These are not criminals being targeted. They are hardworking people and families who are an essential part of Ventura County. Our local economy, like much of California’s and the country’s as a whole, depends on undocumented labor. These men and women are the backbone of our farms, our fields, our construction and service industries, and our communities.”

Farmworker advocates noted that Tuesday’s raids came despite a judicial ruling stemming from a rogue Border Patrol action in Kern County earlier this year.

ACLU attorneys representing the United Farm Workers and five Kern County residents sued the head of the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Border Patrol officials, alleging the Border Patrol’s three-day raid in the southern San Joaquin Valley in early January amounted to a “fishing expedition” that indiscriminately targeted people of color who appeared to be farmworkers or day laborers.

Judge Jennifer Thurston of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California said in an 88-page ruling that evidence presented by the ACLU lawyers established “a pattern and practice” at the Border Patrol of violating people’s constitutional rights when detaining people without reasonable suspicion, and then violating federal law by executing warrantless arrests without determining flight risk.

Thurston’s ruling required the Border Patrol to submit detailed documentation of any stops or warrantless arrests in the Central Valley and show clear guidance and training for agents on the law.

California National Guard troops arrived in Los Angeles on Sunday in a show of force following scattered clashes between immigration agents and protesters and amid a widening political divide between California and the Trump administration.

The move by President Trump to activate nearly 2,000 guardsmen marked the first time since 1965 that a president has deployed a state’s National Guard without a request from that state’s governor. The decision was met with stern rebukes from state and local officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom who said the deployment was “not to meet an unmet need, but to manufacture a crisis.”

Newsom’s office on Sunday afternoon sent a formal letter to the Trump administration asking them to rescind their deployment of troops.

“There is currently no need for the National Guard to be deployed in Los Angeles, and to do so in this unlawful manner and for such a lengthy period is a serious breach of state sovereignty that seems intentionally designed to inflame the situation, while simultaneously depriving the state from deploying these personnel and resources where they are truly required,” the letter reads.

On Sunday afternoon, there were tense moments outside a federal detention center in downtown L.A., with officers firing tear gas and nonlethal rounds at protesters.

But other areas that had seen unrest over the last few days, including the Garment District, Paramount and Compton, seemed calm.

It was unclear exactly how many troops were deployed to Los Angeles as of Sunday afternoon. The National Guard’s 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, based in San Diego, said Sunday that 300 personnel were on the ground to protect federal property and personnel.

Trump administration officials have seized on the isolated incidents of violence to suggest wide parts of L.A. are out of control. On Sunday, Trump took to social media to claim “violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking” federal law enforcement.

“A once great American City, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals,” he wrote, blaming Democratic politicians for not cracking down earlier.

While officials have not said how long the immigration enforcement actions will continue, Trump told reporters Sunday, “we’re going to have troops everywhere. We’re not going to let this happen to our country.”

Many California officials, who have long been at odds with Trump, say the president was trying to exploit the situation for his political advantage and sow unneeded disorder and confusion.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called the deployment of federalized troops a “chaotic escalation” and issued a reminder that “Los Angeles will always stand with everyone who calls our city home.”

While most demonstrators have gathered peacefully, some have hurled objects at law enforcement personnel, set garbage and vehicles on fire and defaced federal property with graffiti.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in Los Angeles over the past week has resulted in the arrest of 118 people, including some who have been convicted of drug trafficking, assault, child cruelty, domestic violence and robbery, according to the agency.

Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin and Republican politicians who support Trump’s immigration actions have characterized the protests as riots intended to “keep rapists, murderers and other violent criminals loose on Los Angeles streets.”

Representative Maxine Waters speak to the media at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles on Sunday.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

On Sunday morning, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) addressed roughly two dozen National Guard soldiers posted outside the Metropolitan Detention Center on Alameda Street. She had arrived at the center to inquire about Service Employees International Union California President David Huerta, who was injured and detained while documenting an immigration enforcement raid in downtown Los Angeles on Friday.

“Who are you going to shoot?” Waters asked the solders. “If you’re going to shoot me, you better shoot straight.”

Remnants of tear gas used by law enforcement during protests Saturday lingered in the air around the building, at times forcing Waters to cough. Waters, an outspoken critic of the president, called the deployment of National Guard troops an unnecessary escalation of tensions and accused Trump of “trying to make an example” out of Los Angeles, a longstanding sanctuary city.

Leonard Tunstad, a 69-year-old Los Angeles resident, rode his bike up to the edge of the loading dock where troops were stationed and asked them if they really wanted to be loyal to a president that “had 34 felony convictions.” He said he felt compelled to shout facts about Trump at the guardsmen because he feared the young men have been “indoctrinated against their own citizens.”

Tunstad said he believed the deployment was a gross overreaction by the Trump administration, noting the city has been home to far more raucous protests that were handled by local police.

“This is just a show. This is just a spectacle,” he said.

A Department of Homeland Security officer approached one of the louder demonstrators saying that he “didn’t want a repeat of last night” and didn’t want to “get political.” He told protesters as long as they stick to the sidewalk and don’t block vehicle access to the loading dock there wouldn’t be any problems.

Later, DHS and California National Guard troops shoved dozens of protesters into Alameda Street, hitting people with riot shields, firing pellets into the ground and deploying tear gas to clear a path for a caravan of DHS, Border Patrol and military vehicles to enter the detention center.

Jose Longoria struggled to breathe as clouds of tear gas filled Alameda Street. He pointed to a white scuff mark on his shoe, saying that a tear gas canister had hit him in the foot, causing him to limp slightly.

“We’re not armed. We’re just peacefully protesting. They’re acting out,” Longoria said of the officers.

Julie Solis, 50, walked back and forth along Alameda Street holding a Mexican flag and urging the crowd to make their voices heard, but to keep the scene peaceful. She said she believes the National Guard was deployed solely to provoke a response and make Los Angeles look unruly to justify further aggression from federal law enforcement.

People march toward the Metropolitan Detention Center during an immigration march in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday.

(Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)

“They want arrests. They want to see us fail. We need to be peaceful. We need to be eloquent,” she said.

National Guard troops were last summoned to Los Angeles and other Southern California cities in 2020, during the George Floyd protests. Those deployments were authorized by Newsom.

However, the last time the National Guard was called on by a president without a request from a state governor was 60 years ago, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators.

Antonio Villaraigosa, former speaker of the California Assembly and a former L.A. mayor, said Trump’s move was “meant to incite more fear and chaos in our community.”

“Trump’s military-style mass deportation ICE raids in California have gone too far, tearing families apart and threatening public safety,” he said in a statement. “The raids at stores and workplaces are wrong, just as it’s wrong to separate families with raids at schools, graduations, and churches.”

In Paramount, a group of camouflaged National Guard troops were stationed in a business park with armored vehicles where a Department of Homeland Security office is located.

Jessica Juarez walked along Alondra Boulevard with a trash bag full of spent tear gas canisters on Sunday morning. Her voice grew hoarse as she helped a group of volunteers clean up after clashes between protesters and law enforcement the day before.

United States Attorney Bill Essayli told NBC in an interview that an officer suffered a broken wrist and others were injured by rocks and cement block pieces that were thrown at them during Saturday’s protest. He said it was “an extremely violent crowd,” but officials are “undeterred.”

An acrid odor still hung in the air from the gas and flash bang grenades law enforcement fired on protesters Saturday, while scorched asphalt marked the intersection outside a Home Depot where federal authorities had staged.

“I’m proud of our community, of the strength we showed,” said Juarez, 40. “It’s like they put so much fear into Paramount and for what? These guys didn’t even clean up after themselves.”

The images of Paramount shrouded in smoke and flanked by police in riot gear are unusual for this community of about 50,000 residents. In many ways, the city became the starting point for the escalating federal response.

“What else do you call it but an attack on Paramount and the people who live here?” said resident and union organizer Alejandro Maldonado. “People in the community were standing up to unjust immigration policies.”

For some, the fight between Los Angeles residents and the federal government is akin to David and Goliath. “It really does seem like they wanted to pick a fight with the little guy,” union organizer Ardelia Aldridge said.

Staff writer Seema Mehta and Brittny Mejia contributed to this report

WASHINGTON — After the raucous rainbow-hued festivities of Saturday’s parade, the final day of World Pride 2025 in the nation’s capital kicked off on a more downbeat note.

More than 1,000 people gathered under gray skies Sunday morning at the Lincoln Memorial for a rally that will lead into a protest march, as the community gathers its strength for a looming fight under President Trump’s second administration.

“This is not just a party,” Ashley Smith, board president of Capital Pride Alliance. “This is a rally for our lives.”

Smith acknowledged that international attendance numbers for the biannual World Pride were measurably down, with many potential attendees avoiding travel to the U.S. because of either fear of harassment or in protest of Trump’s policies.

“That should disturb us and mobilize us,” Smith said.

More than 1,000 people cheered on LGBTQ+ activists taking the stage while waving traditional Pride flags and flags representing transgender, bisexual, intersex and other communities. Many had rainbow glitter and rhinestones adorning their faces. They held signs declaring, “Fight back,” “Gay is good,” “Ban bombs not bathrooms” and “We will not be erased.”

Trump’s campaign against transgender protections and oft-stated antipathy for drag shows have set the community on edge, with some hoping to see a renewed wave of street politics in response.

“Trans people just want to be loved. Everybody wants to live their own lives and I don’t understand the problem with it all,” said Tyler Cargill, who came wearing an elaborate costume with a hat topped by a replica of the U.S. Capitol building.

Wes Kincaid drove roughly six hours from Charlotte, N.C., to attend this year. Sitting on a park bench near the reflecting pond, Kincaid said he made a point of attending this year, “because it’s more important than ever to show up for our community.”

Drag dancer Violeta puts on a show for visitors to Beaches Pride Paradise at the WeHo Pride Street Fair along Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood on May 31.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Reminders of the cuts to federal government programs were on full display Sunday. One attendee waved a massive rainbow flag affixed on the same staff as a large USAID flag; another held a “Proud gay federal worker” sign; and a third held an umbrella with the logos of various federal programs facing cuts — including the PBS logo.

Trump’s anti-trans rhetoric had fueled fears of violence or protests targeting World Pride participants; at one point earlier this spring, rumors circulated that the Proud Boys were planning to disrupt this weekend’s celebrations. Those concerns prompted organizers to install security fencing around the entire two-day street party on a multi-block stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue.

But so far, the only clear act of aggression has been the vandalizing of a queer bar last week. Late Saturday night, there was a pair of violent incidents near Dupont Circle — one of the epicenters of the World Pride celebrations. Two juveniles were stabbed and a man was shot in the foot in separate incidents. The Metropolitan Police Department says it is not clear if either incident was directly related to World Pride.

Fernando, Hussein, Martin and Pesoli write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — When he first ran for office, Donald Trump appeared to be a new kind of Republican when it came to gay rights.

Years earlier, he overturned the rules of his own Miss Universe pageant to allow a transgender contestant to compete. He said Caitlyn Jenner could use any bathroom at Trump Tower that she wanted. And he was the first president to name an openly gay person to a Cabinet-level position.

But since returning to office this year, Trump has engaged in what activists say is an unprecedented assault on the LGBTQ+ community. The threat from the White House contrasts with World Pride celebrations taking place just blocks away in Washington, including a parade and rally this weekend.

“We are in the darkest period right now since the height of the AIDS crisis,” said Kevin Jennings, who leads Lambda Legal, a longtime advocacy organization. “I am deeply concerned that we’re going to see it all be taken away in the next four years.”

Trump’s defenders insist the president has not acted in a discriminatory way, and they point to public polling that shows widespread support for policies like restrictions on transgender athletes.

“He’s working to establish common sense once again,” said Ed Williams, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, which represents LGBT conservatives.

Harrison Fields, the principal deputy press secretary at the White House, said, “the overall MAGA movement is a big tent welcome for all and home to a large swath of the American people.”

“The president continues to foster a national pride that should be celebrated daily, and he is honored to serve all Americans,” Fields said.

Presidential actions were widely expected

Trump made anti-transgender attacks a central plank of his campaign reelection message as he called on Congress to pass a bill stating there are “only two genders” and pledged to ban hormonal and surgical intervention for transgender minors. He signed an executive order doing so in January.

His rally speeches featured a spoof video mocking transgender people and their place in the U.S. military. Trump has since banned them outright from serving. And although June is recognized nationally as Pride month, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters this week that Trump has “no plans for a proclamation.”

“I can tell you this president is very proud to be a president for all Americans, regardless of race, religion or creed,” she added, making no mention of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Williams described Pride activities as a progressive catch-all rather than a civil rights campaign. “If you’re not in the mood to protest or resist the Trump administration,” he said, “Pride is not for you.”

Trump declined to issue Pride Month proclamations in his first term, but did recognize the celebration in 2019 as he publicized a global campaign to decriminalize homosexuality headed by Richard Grenell, then the U.S. Ambassador to Germany and the highest-profile openly gay person in the administration. (Grenell now serves as envoy for special missions.)

“As we celebrate LGBT Pride Month and recognize the outstanding contributions LGBT people have made to our great Nation, let us also stand in solidarity with the many LGBT people who live in dozens of countries worldwide that punish, imprison, or even execute individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation,” Trump posted on social media.

Times have changed where Trump is concerned

This time, there is no celebrating.

The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which Trump named himself chairman of after firing members of the board of trustees, canceled a week’s worth of events celebrating LGBTQ+ rights for this summer’s World Pride festival in Washington, D.C., at one of the nation’s premier cultural institutions.

Trump, who indicated when he took up the position that he would be dictating programming, had specifically said he would end events featuring performers in drag. The exterior lights that once lit the venue on the Potomac River in the colors of the rainbow were quickly replaced with red, white and blue.

Multiple artists and producers involved in the center’s Tapestry of Pride schedule, which had been planned for June 5 to 8, told The Associated Press that their events had been quietly canceled or moved to other venues.

Inside the White House, there’s little second-guessing about the president’s stances. Trump aides have pointed to their decision to seize on culture wars surrounding transgender rights during the 2024 campaign as key to their win. They poured money into ads aimed at young men — especially young Hispanic men — attacking Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for supporting “taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners,” including one spot aired during football games.

“Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” the narrator said.

Jennings flatly rejected assertions that the administration hasn’t been discriminatory. “Are you kidding me? You’re throwing trans people out of the military. That’s example No. 1.”

He points to the cancellation of scientific grants and funding for HIV/AIDS organizations, along with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “petty and mean” order to rename the USNS Harvey Milk, which commemorates the gay rights activist and Navy veteran.

Jennings also said it doesn’t help that Trump has appointed openly gay men like Grenell and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to high-profile positions: “I would call it window dressing.”

Less tolerance for the issues as time passes

Craig Konnoth, a University of Virginia professor of civil rights, compared the U.S.’ trajectory to that of Russia, which has seen a crackdown on gay and lesbian rights after a long stretch of more progressive policies. In 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court effectively outlawed LGBTQ+ activism.

Williams said Trump has made the Republican Party more accepting of gay people. First lady Melania Trump, he noted, has hosted fundraisers for his organization.

“On the whole, we think he’s the best president ever for our community. He’s managed to support us in ways that we have never been supported by any administration,” Williams said. “We are vastly accepted within our party now.”

Trump’s approach to LGBTQ+ rights comes amid a broader shift among Republicans, who have grown less tolerant in recent years.

While overall support for same-sex marriage has been stable, according to Gallup, the percentage of Republicans who think marriages between same-sex couples should be recognized as valid with the same rights as traditional marriage dropped to 41% this year. That’s the lowest point since 2016, a year after the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, and a substantial decline from a high of 55% in 2021.

There’s been a similar drop in the share of Republicans who say that gay and lesbian relations are morally acceptable, which has dropped from 56% in 2022 to 38% this year. Democrats, meanwhile, continue to overwhelmingly support same-sex marriage and say that same-sex relations are morally acceptable.

An AP-NORC poll from May also found that Trump’s approach to handling transgender issues has been a point of relative strength for the president. About half (52%) of U.S. adults said they approve of how he’s handling transgender issues — a figure higher than his overall job approval (41%).

Douglas Page, who studies politics and gender at Gettysburg College, said that “trans rights are less popular than gay rights, with a minority of Republicans in favor of trans rights. This provides incentives for Republicans to speak to the conservative side of that issue.”

“Gay people are less controversial to Republicans compared to trans people,” he said in an email, “so gay appointees like Secretary Bessent probably won’t ruffle many feathers.”

Megerian and Colvin write for the Associated Press. Colvin reported from New York. Linley Sanders and Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.

The morning after a man hurled Molotov cocktails at a crowd of Jewish Americans in Boulder, Colo., Rabbi Noah Farkas celebrated the first day of Shavuot in the usual way: He read the Torah about the giving of the Ten Commandments to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai.

But Farkas, the president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, said what was supposed to be a holiday celebrating the establishment of law and order was marred by the weekend violence.

“The community is terrified,” Farkas said outside Temple Ramat Zion in Northridge.

“It’s remarkable to me that those who want to assault us are coming up with ever new and novel ways to do harm to us and to try to kill us.”

Twelve people between the ages of 52 and 88 were burned in the Colorado attack. A man — identified by law enforcement as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, an Egyptian citizen who had overstayed his tourist visa — used a “makeshift flamethrower” to attack demonstrators marching peacefully in a weekly event supporting Israeli hostages in Gaza.

According to an FBI affidavit, the attacker yelled “Free Palestine!” — the same cry uttered by the suspect in a May 21 incident in which two Israeli Embassy aides were shot and killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington.

The back-to-back attacks have unnerved many Jewish Americans — particularly as they come just a month after a man set fire to the residence of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish. A suspect later said the fire was a response to Shapiro’s stance on Israel’s war on Gaza.

“We are in a completely new era for antisemitic violence in the United States,” said Brian Levin, the founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism and professor emeritus at Cal State San Bernardino. “We are now at a point of extraordinary national security concern with respect to protecting Jewish communities across the U.S. and worldwide.”

Anti-Jewish hate crimes, Levin said, hit record levels nationally in 2023 and 2024. In 2023, the last year that the FBI has available data, anti-Jewish hate crimes rose 63% to a record 1,832 incidents, Levin said. Last year, religious hate crimes were up significantly in major U.S. cities, Levin said, with anti-Muslim hate crimes rising 18%, and anti-Jewish ones rising for the fourth consecutive year, up 12% to a new record.

“Over the last decade, we’re seeing more mass casualties attacks and they’re becoming more frequent and more fatal,” Levin said. “It used to be that anti-Jewish hate crimes, unlike a lot of other hate crimes, were much more tied to property damage and intimidation. Now were seeing just a slew of high intensity types of attacks.”

The attacks in the U.S. come as United Nations officials and aid groups warn that the situation in Gaza has become increasingly dire, with Palestinians in Gaza on the brink of famine as Israel continues its 19-month military offensive against Hamas militants.

Two weeks ago, Israel agreed to pause a nearly three-month blockade and allow a “basic quantity” of food into Gaza to avert a “hunger crisis” and prevent mass starvation.

On Sunday, Gaza health officials and witnesses said more than 30 people were reported killed and 170 wounded as Palestinians flocked to an aid distribution center in the southern Gaza, hoping to obtain food. The circumstances were disputed. Witnesses said Israeli forces fired on crowds about 1,000 yards from an aid site run by a U.S.-backed foundation, but Israel’s military denied its forces fired at civilians.

Levin attributed the rise in violence in the U.S. to a number of factors, including the Israel-Hamas war and the “increasingly unregulated freewheeling online environment.” Horrifying imagery coming out of the Middle East, Levin said, was amplified on social media by those who ascribed responsibility to anyone who believes Israel has a right to exist, or is Jewish, or wanted hostages to be released.

“What happens is angry and unstable people not only find a home for their aggression, but a honed amplification and direction to it that is polished by this cesspool of conspiracism and antisemitism,” Levin said.

In Los Angeles’ Pico-Robertson neighborhood, the mood was subdued Monday as a smattering of Orthodox families made their way to services to observe Shavuot. Many kosher establishments were closed and armed guards flanked entrances to larger Jewish centers and temples.

On Pico Boulevard, a 25-year-old Orthodox man carried a prayer shawl close to his chest as he headed to a service at a temple just before noon. He had slept just a few hours after staying up all night reading the Torah.

Despite the news of the attack in Colorado, the man — who identified himself as Laser — carried an easy smile.

“It’s a joyous holiday,” he said.

The Colorado attack was horrifying, he said, but it was not anything new and paled in comparison with the feeling that descended on the Jewish community in Los Angeles and across the world after Oct. 7.

“It’s never good to see or read about those types of things,” he said. “We just pray for the ultimate redemption, for peace here, peace abroad, peace around the world.”

At Tiferet Teman Synagogue, a man standing at the door repeatedly apologized to a Times reporter, saying that he would not discuss the event that happened in Colorado.

“I’m not going to invite politics into the community,” he said. “God bless you all.”

Others observing the holiday declined to have their photo taken and many of the businesses were closed. A quiet buzz pervaded Pico Boulevard as Orthodox members of the community made their way to services, many of them trying their best to avoid eye contact.

A Persian Jewish man from Iran said he has always been hesitant about religious violence. The man, who declined to give his name, was on his way to service.

“You always have to keep your eyes open,” he said. “No matter where you are in the world.”

Noa Tishby, an Israeli-born author who lives in L.A. and is Israel’s former special envoy for combating antisemitism and delegitimization, said that many Jewish people were afraid to congregate.

“The Jewish community feels under siege,” she said. “People are removing their mezuzahs from their doorsteps. They’re removing Jewish insignia from themselves, removing their Star of David or hiding it. They’re afraid to go to Jewish events.”

Tishby said that the Colorado attacker appeared to be motivated by antisemitism: the views and beliefs of the victims didn’t matter.

“What if that particular woman that man tried to burn alive yesterday, what if she was a Bibi hater, would that appease him?” Tishby asked, using a nickname for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The answer is no. He doesn’t know what her political opinions are in America or in Israel. He just burned her because she was Jewish.”

Antisemitism, Tishby argued, was a shape-shifting conspiracy theory that had evolved into anti-Zionism.

“What happened is that the word Zionist is now a code name for Jew,” she said. “We have been warning for decades that anti-Zionism is the new face of antisemitism…. They’re taking all the hate, everything that’s wrong in the world right now, and they’re pinning it on the Jewish state.”

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass was quick to denounce the attack Sunday as “an atrocious affront to the very fabric of our society and our beliefs here in Los Angeles.” In a statement, she said she would call an emergency meeting at City Hall addressing safety and security across the city immediately after Shavuot.

“LAPD is conducting extra patrols at houses of worship and community centers throughout LA. Anti-Semitism will not be tolerated in this city,” she said.

After speaking to Bass on Sunday, Farkas said that he planned to meet in person with the mayor on Wednesday after the Shavuot holiday to have a “real, frank conversation” about antisemitism.

“There is a cycle that we go through where our hearts are shattered and yet we have to keep enduring,” Farkas said. “And it makes us call into question the commitment of our wider community and our government to the safety of the Jewish community.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Three years ago, an armed young man entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and killed 19 students and two teachers. Hundreds of law enforcement officials reportedly stood around the school campus for more than an hour without approaching the shooter.

In the midst of the inaction, one mom — Angeli Rose Gomez — pleaded with officers to take action or let her go in to get her two children and nephew. She was apprehended and handcuffed, but ultimately talked her way out of arrest before she sprinted inside the school to grab the kids.

Videos on social media captured the moments that Gomez brought her sons and nephew out of the school. The Texas field worker and mother of two was quickly dubbed a hero in national and local publications for her courage.

The new documentary film “Uvalde Mom” follows Gomez after becoming nationally recognized — while examining the forces at play in the Uvalde community which allowed for the shooting to take place, as well as the aftermath of such a tragedy.

“All I wanted that day was my kids to come out of the school alive, and that’s what I got,” Gomez says in one pivotal moment in the film. “I don’t want to be called a hero. I don’t want to be looked at as the hero because the only job that I did that day was being a mom.”

The feature’s director Anayansi Prado was “moved” and “horrified” by what had happened and felt motivated to make a film about the event after seeing members of the affected families on TV.

“I saw that there were Latinos, they were Mexican American, that it was a border town, that it was an agricultural farming town, and that really resonated with me and with communities I’ve done film work with before,” Prado told The Times.

Prado began reaching out to people in Uvalde shortly after the shooting, but didn’t hear back from anyone for over two months due to the inundation of media requests everyone in the city was receiving. The only person to reply to her was Gomez.

Ahead of the film’s screening Saturday at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival, Prado spoke with The Times about the process and the challenges of making her documentary.

This interview has been edited and shortened for clarity.

Was the idea always for this project to be a feature-length film? Or were there talks of making it a short or a series?

I’ve always thought about it as a feature because I really wanted to dive in and understand Uvalde as a character. I wanted to understand the history of the criminal justice system, the educational system. I knew I wanted to make something that was going to be of a longer form rather than just a piece that was about Angeli or something. And a few people told me this would make a great short, but as I uncovered more about Uvalde, I was like, “No, Uvalde itself has its own history, just like a person.”

When it came to choosing Angeli, was she the first and only person who responded to your outreach?

I think the people in town were oversaturated with media coverage, and Angeli was the one that got back to me. What was really interesting is that I learned on that first trip [to Uvalde] about her backstory and I learned about how the criminal justice system had failed her. I saw a parallel there of how the system failed the community the day of the shooting and how it was failing this woman also individually. I wanted to play with those two stories, the macro and the personal. Once I learned who she was, beyond the mom who ran into the school, I was like, “I have to tell this woman’s story.”

How did you go about balancing her personal stuff and the failures that happened on a larger scale?

So much of the way the film is structured is reflective of my own experience as a filmmaker. It was a sort of surreal world, these two worlds were going on: what was happening to Angeli and then what was going on outside with the lack of accountability and the cover-up. So that informed the way that I wanted to structure the film.

In terms of the personal, it was a journey to gain Angeli’s trust. At some point at the beginning, she wasn’t sure she wanted to participate in the film, and so I told her, “You don’t owe me anything. I’m a stranger, but all I ask is that you give me a chance to earn your trust.” And she was like, “OK.” From there on, she opened up and, pretty quickly, we became close and she trusted me. I was very cognizant [of] her legal past and even the way she’s perceived by some folks. I also didn’t want Angeli to come off as a victim and people to feel sorry for her, but I still wanted to tell her story in a way where you get mad at the system for failing her.

What kind of struggles did you have trying to get in communication with some of the officials of the city?

We used a lot of news [archives] to represent that part of the story. The [authorities] weren’t giving any interviews, they were just holding press conferences. So access was limited, but also the majority of the time that we were filming, we were very low-key about the production — because Angeli was on probation and there was retaliation for her speaking to the media. We tried to keep it under wraps that we were filming, so not a lot of people knew about it [besides] her family. Obviously other folks in town [were] part of the film, like her friend Tina and family members. Outside of that, it was too risky to let other people in town know what was going on.

Ultimately I wanted to make [“Uvalde Mome”] a personal portrait. I was just very selective on the people that we absolutely needed to interview. I’m happy with Tina, who’s an activist in town, and Arnie, a survivor of the shooting and a school teacher, [plus] Angeli’s legal team. I felt like those were people we needed to tell a fuller story. But we just couldn’t be out in the open making a film about her and let people know.

What kind of reception have you gotten from people of Uvalde that have seen the film?

We had our premiere at South by Southwest, which was great. A lot of folks came from Uvalde and spoke about how, almost three years later, a lot of this stuff is still going on. Every time Gov. Greg Abbott came on-screen, people would scream, “Loser!” It was really moving to have those screenings.

As was expected from the folks who are not fans of Angeli, there was some backlash. It’s the same narrative you see in the film of, “She’s a criminal, don’t believe her.” It’s a town that is an open wound. I just try to have compassion for people. Ultimately, Angeli’s story is the story of one person in Uvalde of many that need to continue to be told. And I hope that other filmmakers, journalists and other storytellers continue to tell the story there, especially with the lack of closure and accountability. I’m happy that the film is putting Uvalde back into the headlines in some way; that way we don’t forget about it.

Had you ever spent an extended amount of time in Texas before?

I had been to Texas, but I hadn’t done a project in Texas. Because I’m an outsider, it was very important for me to hire a 100% local Texas crew for this film. My crew was entirely Texas-based, from our PAs to our sound to our DPs. I also wanted to have a majority Texas-born Mexican American crew so that they could guide me. We began production in September of 2022 and the atmosphere was very tense.

This is a story that is deeply rooted in the Latino community and the tension about the law enforcement in Uvalde. What was it like dealing with that tension and how did you personally feel that when you went into the town?

When I got to Uvalde, I saw that the majority of the Latino community had been there for several generations. You would think a town with that kind of Mexican American history, and them being the majority, that they’d be pretty cemented and represented, right? It was really eye-opening to see [how] these folks are still considered second-class citizens. A lot of them are being repressed. And then you have folks that get in positions of power, but they’re whitewashed in line with the white conservative agenda. So even those that are able to get into positions of power don’t lean towards the community. They turn their back on it.

I heard from folks that the history of neglect was what led to the response that day at Robb Elementary. And they’re like, “Yeah, that’s what happens on that side of town. You call the cops, they don’t come. Our schools are run-down.” You really see the disparity. This was a Mexican American community that had been there for a long time. It’s fascinating how the conservative white community, even if they’re the smaller part of the population, they can still hold the power.

Pride Month, which officially starts Sunday, is already in full swing and continuing through June with a host of activities and events. (After Long Beach Pride in mid-May, West Hollywood, Los Angeles, Venice, Santa Monica, San Fernando Valley, Catalina Island and other communities are following up with their own Pride celebrations.)

Although there is no shortage of opportunities for enjoying this worldwide celebration of the LGBTQ+ community, this year seems like a particularly pivotal time to partake in activities that uplift queer arts programs.

In 2025 and beyond, arts and culture funding is facing increasing threats of cancellation and cuts by the Trump administration. Los Angeles is home to numerous forms of art, but nothing is guaranteed to last forever. And in a world increasingly dominated by AI and virtual technologies, engaging with our imaginations can play a more important role than we might realize.

“I think more than ever people need to embrace the arts because we don’t know how much time we have left or how bad things can get,” said Lucé Tomlin-Brenner, a queer comedian and filmmaker who hosts the film-comedy show “Video Visions” at Highland Park video rental store Vidéothèque.

“We have to get into the practice of recognizing that what makes us feel free and joyful matters because that will strengthen us for the hard times,” she said. “If we’re just despairing, if we feel like we’re trapped already, then they’ve won because we’re not using our voices or our talents to change our realities.”

So this Pride Month, along with celebrating via boozy drag brunches and dancing at the Pink Pony Club until the sun rises, partake in L.A.-area activities that serve as a lifeline for queer community and creativity.

From learning how to use oil paints to discovering queer films streaming networks ignore and sewing your own Pride flag, opportunities abound throughout June to connect with your imagination and help ensure the survival and growth of local arts programs.

California Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán urged the Federal Communications Commission on Monday to follow through on plans to modernize the federal emergency alert system and provide multilingual alerts in natural disasters for residents who speak a language other than English at home.

The call comes nearly five months after deadly fires in Los Angeles threatened communities with a high proportion of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders — some with limited English proficiency — highlighting the need for multilingual alerts.

In a letter sent to Brendan Carr, the Republican chair of the FCC, Barragán (D-San Pedro) expressed “deep concern” that the FCC under the Trump administration has delayed enabling multilingual Wireless Emergency Alerts for severe natural disasters such as wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis.

“This is about saving lives,” Barragán said in an interview with The Times. “You’ve got about 68 million Americans that use a language other than English and everybody should have the ability to to understand these emergency alerts. We shouldn’t be looking at any politicization of alerts — certainly not because someone’s an immigrant or they don’t know English.”

Multilingual emergency alerts should be in place across the nation, Barragán said. But the January Pacific Palisades and Eaton fires served as a reminder that the need is particularly acute in Los Angeles.

Not only does L.A. have a significant risk of wildfires, flooding, mudslides, and earthquakes, but the sprawling region is home to a diverse immigrant population, some of whom have limited English proficiency.

“When you think about it, in California we have wildfires, we’re always on earthquake alert,” Barragán said. “In other parts of the country, it could be hurricanes or tornadoes — we just want people to have the information on what to do.”

Four months ago, the FCC was supposed to publish an order that would allow Americans to get multilingual alerts

In October 2023, the FCC approved rules to update the federal emergency alert system by enabling Wireless Emergency Alerts to be delivered in more than a dozen languages — not just English, Spanish and sign language — without the need of a translator.

Then, the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau developed templates for critical disaster alerts in the 13 most commonly spoken languages in the US. In January, the commission declared a “major step forward” in expanding alert languages when it issued a report and order that would require commercial mobile service providers to install templates on cellphones within 30 months of publication of the federal register.

“The language you speak shouldn’t keep you from receiving the information you or your family need to stay safe,” then-FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a January statement.

But shortly after, Trump took control of the White House. Under the chairmanship of Brendan Carr, the commission has yet to publish the January 8 Report and Order in the Federal Register — a critical step that triggers the 30-month compliance clock.

“This delay is not only indefensible but dangerous,” Barragán wrote in a letter to Carr that was signed by nearly two dozen members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus. “It directly jeopardizes the ability of our communities to receive life-saving emergency information in the language they understand best.”

Barragán noted that Carr previously supported the push for multilingual alerts when he was a member of the commission, before taking over leadership.

“Your failure to complete this ministerial step — despite having supported the rule itself — has left this life-saving policy in limbo and significantly delayed access to multilingual alerts for millions of Americans,” she wrote.

Asked by The Times what explained the delay, Barragán said her office had been told that Trump’s regulatory freeze prohibited all federal agencies, including the FCC, from publishing any rule in the Federal Register until a designated Trump official is able to review and approve it.

“It’s all politics,” she said. “We don’t know why it’s stuck there and why the administration hasn’t moved forward, but it seems, like, with everything these days, they’re waiting on the president’s green light.”

Barragán also noted that multilingual alerts helped first responders.

“If you have a community that’s supposed to be evacuated, and they’re not evacuating because they don’t know they’re supposed to evacuate, that’s only going to hurt first responders and emergency crews,” she said. “So I think this is a safety issue all around, not just for the people receiving it.”

A study published earlier this year by UCLA researchers and the Asian American and Pacific Islanders Equity Alliance found that Asian communities in harm’s way during the January L.A. fires encountered difficulties accessing information about emergency evacuations because of language barriers.

Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of AAPI Equity Alliance, a coalition of 50 community-based groups that serves the 1.6 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who live in Los Angeles, told The Times the FCC’s failure to push alerts in more languages represented a “real dereliction of duty.”

Over half a million Asian Americans across L.A. County are classified as Limited English Proficiency, with many speaking primarily in Chinese, Korean, Tagalog and Vietnamese, she noted.

“President Trump and many members of his administration have made clear they plan to go on the attack against immigrants,” Kulkarni said. “If this makes the lives of immigrants easier, then they will stand in its way.”

During the January L.A. fires, Kulkarni said, residents complained that fire alerts were sent only in English and Spanish. More than 12,000 of the 50,000 Asian immigrants and their descendants who lived within four evacuation zones — Palisades, Eaton, Hurst and Hughes — need language assistance.

“There were community members who didn’t realize until they were evacuated that the fire was so close to them, so they had little to no notice of it,” Kulkarni said. “Really, it can mean life or death in a lot of cases where you don’t get the information, where it’s not translated in a city and county like Los Angeles.”

Community members ended up suffering not just because of the fires themselves, Kulkarni said, but because of federal and local officials’ failure to provide alerts in languages every resident can understand.

“It is incumbent that the alerts be made available,” she said. “We need those at local, state and federal levels to do their part so that individuals can survive catastrophic incidents.”

A growing coalition of HIV prevention organizations, health experts and Democrats in Congress are sounding the alarm over sweeping Trump administration cuts to HIV/AIDS prevention and surveillance programs nationally, warning they will reverse years of progress combating the disease and cause spikes in new cases — especially in California and among the LGBTQ+ community.

In a letter addressed Friday to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) and 22 of her House colleagues demanded the release of HIV funding allocated by Congress but withheld by the Trump administration. They cited estimates from the Foundation for AIDS Research, known as amfAR, that the cuts could lead to 143,000 additional HIV infections nationwide and 127,000 additional deaths from AIDS-related causes within five years.

Friedman said the effects would be felt in communities small and large across the country but that California would be hit the hardest. She said L.A. County — which stands to lose nearly $20 million in annual federal HIV prevention funding — is being forced to terminate contracts with 39 providers and could see as many as 650 new cases per year as a result.

According to amfAR, that would mark a huge increase, pushing the total number of new infections per year in the county to roughly 2,000.

“South L.A. and communities across California are already feeling the devastating impacts of these withheld HIV prevention funds. These cuts aren’t just numbers — they’re shuttered clinics, canceled programs, and lives lost,” Friedman said in a statement to The Times.

As one example, she said, the Los Angeles LGBT Center — which is headquartered in her district — would likely have to eliminate a range of services including HIV testing, STD screening, community education and assistance for patients using pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a medicine taken by pill or shot that can greatly reduce a person’s risk of becoming infected from sex or injection drug use.

A list reviewed by The Times of L.A. County providers facing funding cuts included large and small organizations and medical institutions in a diverse set of communities, from major hospitals and nonprofits to small clinics. The list was provided by a source on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid about the funding of organizations that have not all publicly announced the cuts.

The affected organizations serve a host of communities that already struggle with relatively high rates of HIV infection, including low-income, Spanish speaking, Black and brown and LGBTQ+ communities.

According to L.A. County, the Trump administration’s budget blueprint eliminates or reduces a number of congressionally authorized public health programs, including funding cuts to the domestic HIV prevention program and the Ryan White program, which supports critical care and treatment services for uninsured and underinsured people living with HIV.

The county said the cuts would have “an immediate and long-lasting impact” on community health.

Dozens of organizations and hospitals, such as Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, are bracing for the disruption and potential vacuum of preventative services they’ve been providing to the community since the 1980s, according to Claudia Borzutzky, the hospital’s Chief of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine.

Borzutzky said without the funding, programs that provide screening, education, patient navigation and community outreach — especially for at-risk adolescents and young adults — will evaporate. So, too, will free services that help patients enroll in insurance and access HIV prevention medications.

Patients who “face a variety of health barriers” and are often stigmatized will bear the brunt, she said, losing the “role models [and] peer educators that they can relate to and help [them] build confidence to come into a doctor’s office and seek testing and treatment.”

“We are having to sunset these programs really, really quickly, which impacts our patients and staff in really dramatic ways,” she said.

Answers to queries sent to other southern California health departments suggested they are trying to figure out how to cope with budget shortfalls, too. Health officials from Kern, San Bernardino and Riverside counties all said the situation is uncertain, and that they don’t yet know how they will respond.

Friedman and her colleagues — including fellow California representatives Nancy Pelosi, Judy Chu, Gilbert Cisneros Jr., Robert Garcia, Sam Liccardo, Kevin Mullin, Mark Takano, Derek Tran and George Whitesides — said they were concerned not only about funding for programs nationwide being cut, but also about the wholesale dismantling or defunding of important divisions working on HIV prevention within the federal government.

They questioned in their letter staffing cuts to the National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as “the reported elimination” of the Division of HIV Prevention within that center.

In addition to demanding the release of funds already allocated by Congress, the representatives called on Kennedy — and Dr. Debra Houry, deputy director of the CDC — to better communicate the status of ongoing grant funding, and to release “a list of personnel within CDC who can provide timely responses” when those groups to whom Congress had already allocated funding have questions moving forward.

“Although Congress has appropriated funding for HIV prevention in Fiscal Year 2025, several grant recipients have failed to receive adequate communication from CDC regarding the status of their awards,” Friedman and her colleagues wrote. “This ambiguity has caused health departments across the country to pre-emptively terminate HIV and STD prevention contracts with local organizations due to an anticipated lack of funding.”

The letter is just the latest challenge to the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to federal agencies and to federal funding allocated by Congress to organizations around the country.

Through a series of executive orders and with the help of his billionaire adviser Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” and other agency heads, Trump in the first months of his second term has radically altered the federal government’s footprint, laying off thousands of federal workers and attempting to claw back trillions of dollars in federal spending — to be reallocated to projects more aligned with his political agenda, or used to pay for tax cuts that Democrats and independent reviewers have said will disproportionately help wealthy Americans.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office has repeatedly sued the Trump administration over such moves, including cuts and layoffs within Health and Human Services broadly and cuts to grants intended to make states more resistant to infectious disease specifically — calling them unwise, legally unjustifiable and a threat to the health of average Americans.

LGBTQ+ organizations also have sued the Trump administration over orders to preclude health and other organizations from spending federal funding on diversity, equity and inclusion programs geared toward LGBTQ+ populations, including programs designed to decrease new HIV infections and increase healthy management of the disease among transgender people and other vulnerable groups.

“The orders seek to erase transgender people from public life; dismantle diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives; and strip funding from nonprofits providing life-saving health care, housing, and support services,” said Jose Abrigo, the HIV Project Director of Lambda Legal, in a statement. The legal group has filed a number of lawsuits challenging the Trump administration cuts, including one on behalf of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and other nonprofits.

Trump has defended his cuts to the federal government as necessary to implement his agenda. He and his agency leaders have consistently said that the cuts target waste, fraud and abuse in the government, and that average Americans will be better served following the reshuffling.

Kennedy has consistently defended the changes within Health and Human Services, as well. Agency spokespeople have said the substantial cuts would help it focus on Kennedy’s priorities of “ending America’s epidemic of chronic illness by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water, and the elimination of environmental toxins.”

“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy has said. “This Department will do more — a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”

Kennedy has repeatedly spread misinformation about HIV and AIDS in the past, including by giving credence to the false claim that HIV does not cause AIDS.

As recently as June 2023, Kennedy told a reporter for New York Magazine that there “are much better candidates than H.I.V. for what causes AIDS,” and he has previously suggested that environmental toxins and “poppers” — an inhalant drug popular in the gay community — could be causes of AIDS instead.

None of that is supported by science or medicine. Studies from around the world have proven the link between HIV and AIDS, and found it — not drug use or sexual behavior — to be the only common factor in AIDS cases.

Officials in L.A. County said they remained hopeful that the Trump administration would reverse course after considering the effects of the cuts — and the “detrimental impacts on the health and well-being of residents and workers across” the county if they are allowed to stand.

“Of course, it’s important to qualify, but except for Newcastle who won the Carabao Cup, Liverpool won the Premier League and Manchester City that won the Community Shield – the other teams didn’t win trophies,” Guardiola said.

“So the other teams like Chelsea, who can win one title [Europa Conference League] against Real Betis, and [Manchester] United and Tottenham can win the Europa League.

“All the other teams, they are expecting of course to qualify for the Champions League but this is important for every club that play this in competition next year.

“We played a really good [FA Cup] final, not enough to win it, and we have the last two games, we need four points to be in the Champions League next year and this is enough and everyone has to be aware of that.”

With Liverpool Premier League champions and Arsenal sealing second spot, City have a fight to qualify for Europe’s elite club competition and a fascinating race has developed for the top five, with third-placed Newcastle and Nottingham Forest in seventh separated by a solitary point.

Results over the weekend means City have dropped to sixth in the table, but they hold a game in hand over the challengers which comes against Bournemouth on Tuesday (kick-off 20:00 BST), with the final round of games taking place on Sunday.

Bertolt Brecht wrote that, in the dark times, there will also be singing. In Susanna Kwan’s debut novel, she asks whether those songs may be sung if there are no choirs to sing them. Choirs require community, and the role of community during environmental disaster is one of the themes that runs through this thoughtful novel about art, creation and the ways we care for one another.

Bo is a 40ish woman living in a San Francisco high-rise in the mid-21st century. The city is underwater after being swamped by the rising Pacific Ocean and incessant rain. But the city continues to exist. Those who have not fled inhabit the upper floors of skyscraper apartment blocks. Bo’s cousins have lined up work opportunities for her in Canada, but when the novel begins, she is insistent on staying. What keeps her there is grief; two years before, her mother disappeared during a storm. Bo clings to the hope that one day she will be reunited with her.

Like Bo before the rains, Kwan is an artist and she conveys what goes missing in her character’s life after environmental disaster: In the perpetual rain there are no longer seasons. And without seasons, there are no holidays or festivals to mark the changes in the year. Bo marks time with her twice-weekly visit to the rooftop markets, where merchants sell food they’ve grown or had brought in by boat. But it’s also where she scans the bulletin boards filled with photos of the missing and lost in search of her mother.

Kwan’s novel hones in on the ways that isolation and boredom sap vital parts of ourselves. The book captures America’s recent history: 2020 and isolating in our apartments and houses while outside, the dead piled up in freezer vans and mass graves. The ways that anxiety and loneliness caused many to turn inward, to make what was happening personal, as if no one else was affected. The loss of community and empathy for others drowned in the waves of fear, uncertainty, and for many, anger. Bo herself struggles with her individual feelings of frustration and grief, but then reminds herself that she hasn’t been singled out for bad fortune.

“What made her special in the long human history of crisis and displacement?” Bo wonders. “She had followed reports of heat waves that never subsided, outbreaks of anthrax and smallpox and malaria, continents dried to deserts, genocidal regimes, military blockades at borders that prevented passage to hundreds of thousands of people with nowhere to go, children drowning at sea. And yet the matter of her own privileged leaving felt extraordinary and without precedent, even as she registered this delusion.”

Before her mother disappeared, Bo worked constantly as an illustrator and painter, a source of joy that sustained her. But after her mom dies — and it is clear that her mother has most likely been washed out to sea — she is paralyzed. “Art, she’d come to feel, served no purpose in a time like this. It belonged to another world, one she’d left behind.” Grief has grayed-out her love for colorful creation.

One day, a neighbor slips a note under her door. It is a request that Bo come help out Mia with household chores. Mia lives alone, and at age 129, is struggling.

Bo has supported herself in the constricted economy as a caregiver. Many of those in the high-rises are the elderly, in some cases abandoned by their fleeing children, but sometimes just too fragile to be moved. By 2050, people are living past 100 and living to 130 isn’t rare. But 130-year-old elders have elderly children and even elderly grandchildren. Weaker bonds with third- and fourth-generation descendants has left many to look after themselves.

Bo is the daughter of Chinese immigrants; Mia came from China with her parents. Mia’s daughter and further descendants live thousands of miles away. Caring for Mia reminds Bo of the time she spent with her mother when they made frequent treks to check in on family elders, a way of paying respect, her mom told her when Bo was a child.

In Mia’s apartment, the two women begin to bond in the kitchen. Bo prepares food while Mia tells stories of her life in San Francisco. She had been born in the 1920s, not that long after the earthquake and devastating fire that leveled the city in 1906. Mia’s life parallels the growth of San Francisco and her memories of how the city changed through the decades in the 20th century intrigues Bo. So much was lost, first in the wave of explosive population growth and wealth, but when the rains came, entire parts of the city disappeared, their histories swallowed by the relentless rise of the Pacific.

Bo’s memories have already been dulled by perpetual grayness. But hanging out with Mia loosens something inside of Bo, and she notices that her senses can serve as “time machines,” and give her access to her own past. There are obvious reminders — a photograph — but songs are especially evocative even before she recognizes the tune. “A song provided passage from the present station back to a place and time, distinct and palpable. The trip was quick, a sled tearing down a luge track, the body sensing its arrival before the mind could register the journey.”

Bo’s occasional lover is a man who visits San Francisco as part of his job working in natural resources. He spends much of the time counting and cataloging what species remain, or what is about to be lost. When he arrives back in town after she has started working for Mia, Bo finds that her growing sense of purpose, her desire to return to art-making, is motivated by a similar impulse.

She wants to catalog Mia’s experiences, her memories of the city that no longer exists. In their long conversations, Mia summons images and histories of places that Bo never knew existed. Inspired by Mia, Bo goes to the city’s archive and searches for the photographs, newspaper articles, blueprints, maps and other ways that the now-missing city documented its existence.

For Mia’s approaching 130th birthday, which Bo senses will be her employer’s last, she decides that she will use her skills as an artist to bring the old city back to life one more time — a gift for her employer, but also a means by which Bo can recapture the wild energy that is creation.

Survivalists preparing for an imagined catastrophic future hoard food and supplies and stock up on guns to “protect” themselves from those in need. But as Kwan shows, such visions of the future are the refractions of nihilism and the American belief that individual survival and success is due solely to individual effort. But that’s never been the case. What preserves human life — even a life in horrific circumstances — are relationships of caring and cooperation. Community built on taking care of each other is the only way that we will thrive. The networks we build to support others eventually becomes the social safety net we will ourselves need.

In dark times, the songs that will comfort us will not be the cacophony of individual voices wailing their grief. The darkness will be lifted by the harmonies of those who recognize each other’s humanity.

Berry is a writer and critic living in Oregon.