A year ago tomorrow , the Zacatecas native suffered a heart attack and mild stroke in the moments after seeing his Dodgers win Game 2 of the World Series against the New York Yankees. He spent three days in a medically induced coma at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood and regained consciousness to news from jubilant nurses that the Dodgers had won the championship.
The lifelong baseball fan had no idea what they were talking about. His passion for the sport was lost along with his memory.
When family members put on highlights from the 2024 championship during his rehabilitation at a clinic in Gardena throughout the end of the year, the former carpenter would shrug and change the channel. When someone told him that legendary Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela had died, Contreras swore that he had just seen his fellow Mexican pitch at the stadium.
It wasn’t until the 2025 baseball season came along that Contreras’ mind began to truly rebound. He watched games from his longtime home in the unincorporated Florence-Graham neighborhood and learned to love the Dodgers anew. But he didn’t cheer like before. Contreras followed doctor’s orders to stay calm when the Dodgers were losing instead of cursing like the past and quietly applaud when the team was winning when he would’ve previously roared.
He’s the father-in-law of my sister Alejandrina. And I wanted to hang out with Don Conrado for Game 1 of this year’s World Series to experience fandom in all its mortality.
Wearing a flat-brimmed fedora and a blue Dodgers 2024 World Series champion, I caught Contreras just as he was entering my sister’s Norwalk home holding on to his walker with the help of Alejandrina’s husband, Conrad. His father talks slower than he used to and can’t drive anymore, but Contreras is once again the same man his family knows: witty, observant and baseball-crazy.
A schoolyard pitcher in his hometown of Monte Escobedo, Contreras fell in with the Dodgers almost as soon as he migrated to the United States in 1970 to join a brother in Highland Park. He used to attend games every week “when $10 got two people into the stadium and you could also eat a hot dog,” Contreras told me in Spanish before Game 1 began.
His stories from those years were immaculate. Don Sutton throwing a shutout. The Cincinnati Reds always “ready to play to the death.” Pittsburgh Pirates slugger Willie Stargell hitting a home run out of Dodger Stadium in 1973 “and all of us just staring above our heads in awe.”
Contreras was such a fan that he took his pregnant wife Mary to watch Valenzuela pitch on the day in 1983 that Conrad was due because they were giving out “I (Heart) Fernando” T-shirts, an anecdote that left their son flabbergasted.
“What happened to the shirt?” Conrad asked his mom in Spanish.
“I threw it away,” replied the 61-year-old Mary.
“They’d cost a lot of money now!” he groaned.
“They were cheap! The color really faded fast.”
Los Angeles Dodgers two-way player Shohei Ohtani hits a two-run home run during the seventh inning of Game 1 of the World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays at Roger Centre on Friday in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Blue Jays won, 11-4.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
The family continued to attend games through Conrad’s teenage years but stopped “when even the birds couldn’t afford to attend,” Mary said. Conrad, 42, thinks the last time he went to a game with his dad was “at least” 20 years ago. But they regularly watched games on television. It was he who administered the CPR a year ago that saved his dad’s life.
“He was walking around the house angry all that game,” Conrad said.
“No, well, Roberto was making me mad,” Conrado replied, his nickname for Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. “But I can’t get mad anymore.”
I asked how he thought this year’s series would go. He mentioned Shohei Ohtani, whom he kept calling el japonés in a respectful tone because, well, his memory can be fuzzy.
“He strikes out too much, but when he hits it, he hits it. If he plays like that, they win the series. But if Toronto hits, forget it.”
One more question before game time, the one too many liberal Latino Dodgers fans are belly-aching over right now: is it ethical to root for the team considering they haven’t been too vocal in opposing Donald Trump’s deportation campaign and owner Mark Walter has investments in companies that are profiting from it?
“Sports shouldn’t get into politics, but all sports owners are with Trompas,” he said, using a nickname I’ve heard more than a few rancho libertarians use for Trump. He shrugged.
“So what’s one to do? They kept la migra out of the stadium,” referring to an unsuccessful June attempt by federal agents to enter the stadium parking lot. “If the team had allowed that, then there’d be a huge problem.”
Mary wasn’t as sympathetic. “Latinos shouldn’t let the Dodgers off so easy. But when Latinos surrender, they surrender.”
It was game time.
Conrad slipped into a gray Dodgers away jersey to match his black team cap. My sister, an Angels follower for some reason, wore a Kiké Hernández T-shirt “because he stands with immigrants.”
“The only good thing about the Dodgers is that they aren’t winning with a gringo,” said Mary, who actually doesn’t care much about baseball because she finds it boring. “It’s someone [Ohtani] who doesn’t want to speak English who’s winning it for them.”
Her husband smiled.
“Let’s see if Mary gets into baseball.”
“That’ll be the real miracle,” she snapped back.
Contreras rubbed his hands in glee as the Dodgers went up 2-0 in the top of the third and merely frowned when the Blue Jays tied it in the bottom of the fourth while we were enjoying takeout from Taco Nazo. “His anger comes in waves, it’s a trip,” Conrad said. “He’s calmer but se enoja.”
“Who?” Conrado deadpanned.
When Dodger starting pitcher Blake Snell left the game with the bases loaded and no one out in the bottom of the sixth, Contreras shook his head in disgust but kept his voice calm.
“This is what gets me mad. They should’ve taken him out long ago, but Roberto didn’t. This is what I was afraid of. When Toronto get on, they get on. They won’t stop until they destroy.”
Earlier in the game, Alejandrina had told Conrado that Kirk was a Tijuana native. The pride in shared roots, albeit generations apart, took a little bit of sting off his home run, which made the score a humiliating 11-2.
“Thank goodness he’s Mexican,” Conrado told his son, patting his knee. “That’s what’s left for us” to be happy about the game.
An inning later, Contreras began to feel woozy. His sugar level was elevated. Mary took off his jacket to fix his insulin device. My sister’s corgi, Penny, jumped onto the couch and lay on his lap.
“They do know when someone someone’s ill, right?” he said to no one before scratching Penny’s tummy and cooing, “You know I’m ill, right? I’m ill!”
When the “massacre” finally ended, Contreras remained philosophical.
“It’s incredible that I’m able to see this. But I’m still malo. My feet hurt, my memory isn’t what it used to be, my sense of balance isn’t there. But there’s the Dodgers. But they need to win.”
Conrad went to the bedroom to grab his father’s walker.
“Do you want a Toronto shirt now?” he joked.
His dad stared silently. “No, that would give me another heart attack.”
After Contreras’ offensive coordinator, Carlos Trujillo, did his work on Friday night during his team’s 39-14 win over Hollywood, he was picked up by car and whisked off to Los Angeles International Airport to take a red-eye flight to Chicago so he could complete the 11th marathon of his life.
“I will never be crazy enough to do one,” Contreras head coach Manuel Guevara said.
Running 26.2 miles is pretty challenging, but Trujillo has found something he enjoys, and players admire his commitment.
“The entire varsity [team] wished him good luck,” Guevara said. “It teaches the kids that coaches challenge themselves in different ways.”
He’ll be back for practice on Tuesday as Contreras (4-3, 2-0) prepares for a key Central League game against Bernstein on Thursday night.
Trujillo, 43, said he started running marathons when he was head coach at North Hollywood. He has run marathons in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas and New York besides Chicago.
This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].
A federal judge has temporarily blocked a new Trump administration policy to keep migrant children in detention after they turn 18, moving quickly to stop transfers to adult facilities that advocates said were scheduled for this weekend.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras on Saturday issued a temporary restraining order to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement not to detain any child who came to the country alone and without permission in ICE adult detention facilities after they become an adult.
The Washington, D.C., judge found that such automatic detention violates a court order he issued in 2021 barring such practices.
ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond Saturday to emails seeking comment.
The push to detain new adults is yet another battle over one of the most sensitive issues in President Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda — how to treat children who cross the border unaccompanied by adults.
The Associated Press reported Friday that officials are offering migrant children age 14 and older $2,500 to voluntarily return to their home countries. Last month a separate federal judge blocked attempts to immediately deport Guatemalan migrant children who came to the U.S. alone back to their home country. Some children had been put on board planes in that late-night operation before a judge blocked it.
“All of these are pieces of the same general policy to coerce immigrant youth into giving up their right to seek protection in the United States,” said Michelle Lapointe, a lawyer for the American Immigration Council, one of the groups that asked Contreras to intervene in a filing made early Saturday, just after midnight.
Unaccompanied children are held in shelters run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which isn’t part of ICE. Contreras’ 2021 order instructed federal officials to release minors who turn 18 from those shelters to “the least restrictive setting available.” He ruled that that is what’s required by federal law as long as the minor isn’t a danger to themselves or others and isn’t a flight risk. Minors are often released to the custody of a relative, or maybe into foster care.
But lawyers who represent unaccompanied minors said they began getting word in the last few days that ICE was telling shelters that children who were about to turn 18 — even those who had already-approved release plans — could no longer be released and would instead be taken to detention facilities, possibly as early as Saturday. One email from ICE asserted that the new adults could only be released by ICE under its case-by-case parole authority for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefit.” From March through September, ICE has paroled fewer than 500 people overall.
The plaintiffs argued that “release on parole is all but a dead letter” and that children aging out of shelters would experience lasting harm from unnecessary and inappropriate adult detention” in jails that might be overcrowded or in remote locations. The plaintiffs said that was especially true because some of the clients they cited had been victims of trafficking or had been abused, neglected or abandoned by their parents.
U.S. border authorities have arrested children crossing the border without parents more than 400,000 times since October 2021. A 2008 law requires them to appear before an immigration judge before being returned to their countries.
Children have been spending more time in government-run shelters since the Trump administration put them under closer scrutiny before releasing them to family in the United States to pursue their immigration cases.
The additional scrutiny includes fingerprinting, DNA testing and home visits by immigration officers. Over the summer, immigration officers started showing up and arresting parents.
The average length of stay at government-run shelters for those released in the U.S. was 171 days in July, down from a peak of 217 days in April but well above 37 days in January, when Trump took office.
Smack-dab in the middle of Hispanic Heritage Month, PBS will air the 38th Hispanic Heritage Awards tonight.
The show took place on Sept. 4 at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., and honored a collection of musicians, artists, actors, journalists and business leaders.
This year’s honorees, selected by the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, included NPR’s “Alt. Latino” journalist Felix Contreras, stoner comic and Chicano art collector Cheech Marin, Puerto Rican pop music visionary Rauw Alejandro, Oscar-nominated actor and dancer Rosie Perez, Rizos Curls Chief Executive Julissa Prado and “Mexican Queen of Pop” Gloria Trevi.
Honoree Felix Contreras accepts the Journalism Award onstage during the 38th Hispanic Heritage Awards in Washington, D.C.
(Paul Morigi / Getty Images for Hispanic Heritage Foundation)
Contreras is one of the few journalists to ever receive the esteemed honor, though he was initially reticent to accept. “We learn early on that [journalists] are not supposed to be the story,” Contreras told The Times earlier this year.
Recently, Marin has moved on from a successful career making stoner comedy films and is now best known for his work as a collector of Chicano art. After being a lifelong gatherer of art, the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum opened to the public in June 2022.
Rauw Alejandro, meanwhile, has innovated the Latin music scene with his experimental albums, such as 2022’s techno-infused psychedelic album, “Saturno”; his beachy follow-up, “Playa Saturno,” in 2023; and his 2024 ode to the 1970s New York City salsa scene, “Cosa Nuestra.”
Cheech Marin accepts the Arts Award onstage during the 38th Hispanic Heritage Awards.
(Paul Morigi / Getty Images for Hispanic Heritage Foundation)
Rosie Perez made a name for herself as a dancer on the TV show “In Living Color” and with starring roles in Spike Lee films before being nominated for an Oscar for 1993‘s “Fearless.”
Gloria Trevi is one of the most successful Latina artists of her time. She has garnered over 30 million sold albums and 7 billion combined streams, along with several top-selling albums and an induction into the Latin Music Songwriters Hall of Fame.
As the Rizos Curls co-founder and CEO, Prado is being honored, per the HHF, for “her personal journey of self-discovery into a nationally celebrated, multi-million-dollar business specializing in textured hair care.”
Gloria Trevi performs onstage at the 38th Hispanic Heritage Awards.
(Paul Morigi / Getty Images for Hispanic Heritage Foundation)
The ceremony was hosted by actor and writer Mayan Lopez, and viewers will be able to take in performances by Trevi, along with artists Daymé Arocena, DannyLux, Lisa Lisa and RaiNao.
The awards show was established in 1988 by the White House to honor cultural visionaries within the Latino community. Previous awardees include Bad Bunny, Anthony Quinn, Sonia Sotomayor, Linda Ronstadt, Los Tigres Del Norte, Gloria Estefan and Tito Puente, among others.
On the day immigration agents swooped through MacArthur Park in armored vehicles, wearing tactical gear and riding on horseback, Contreras Learning Center football coach Manuel Guevara said more than 20 of his players skipped summer practice.
“Kids were messaging me their parents don’t want them to leave their house,” Guevara said.
The fear among families with students attending three downtown Los Angeles high schools minutes apart — Contreras, Roybal and Belmont— is real.
“Everybody’s on edge,” Guevara said.
Players don’t know if their parents will feel safe enough to watch games from the school bleachers this fall.
As official football practice begins on Monday, three downtown Los Angeles head coaches — Guevara, Roybal’s Michael Galvan and Belmont’s Kenneth Daniels — have been in constant communication and united to help their players and parents deal with ICE raids. No one knows when the raids might subside or how the ongoing anxiety might affect teams this fall.
One of the first raids happened outside an elementary school across the street from Contreras. A 17-year-old Contreras cross country and track athlete, Nory Santoy Ramos, was detained and later deported to Guatemala with her mother after showing up for an immigration appointment. Families in the area rely on afterschool programs that are facing budget cuts. Students continue to deal with issues involving homelessness, gangs and drug use at nearby MacArthur Park.
Even though all three coaches said players feel safe on campus, with Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Alberto Carvalho vowing to make schools “safe havens,” coaches are most concerned about students’ commutes to and from school.
Federal immigration agents near MacArthur Park in the Westlake area on July 7.
(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)
“A piece of me worries about them getting home safe,” Roybal’s Galvan said.
Guevara said one Contreras player told him he’s 80% certain his mother is going to leave and take him with her because of ICE fears. He’s had kids message him this summer that they couldn’t come to practices because their parents feared for their safety.
The Times has confirmed U.S. citizens are among those who have been detained during immigration raids in Southern California that have continued for more than six weeks. More than 2,700 people have been arrested during the raids and more than two-thirds of those detained had never previously been convicted of a crime.
“I understand their plight,” Guevara said. “I was brought here when I was 1. I became a citizen when I was 17. It’s not like you can tell anyone in this situation, ‘Suck it up.’ It’s a completely different animal. Our area is targeted.”
Students at Miguel Contreras Learning Complex in downtown Los Angeles continue to be affected by ICE raids.
(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)
Belmont is struggling to field a football team this fall. School enrollment is down to less than 700 after once being a school of more than 6,000 — the largest in the county — until Contreras and Roybal were built. Athletic director Carlos Calderon said four sports that have been practicing on the Belmont campus this summer — cheer, girls volleyball, cross-country and football — have been affected by parental safety concerns.
“We’ve seen a deduction in kids coming to practices and increase communication with parents and having them call us [to say,] ‘We don’t feel comfortable in kids coming to practice,’” he said.
Calderon, who helps coach cross-country, has had athletes train on the school track instead of running the hills at Elysian Park to assuage parental fears.
Daniels said after one summer practice, when he learned an ICE raid was unfolding nearby, he instructed players to leave school from the back entrance instead of the front entrance.
“It’s really affecting us,” he said. “We’re not getting the numbers we need to get the workouts in.”
Belmont has 20 football players signed up, but only about half have been showing up for workouts. The team usually adds players once classes begin Aug. 14. Daniels, a walk-on coach, is already consumed by the challenge of building a new house in Altadena after his burned down during the Eaton fire.
“Nothing has been easy in 2025,” he said.
Galvan said he’s had players miss practices to go shopping for family members who feel they have to stay home. Others had medical appointments delayed because parents didn’t want to leave their homes.
“In all of my 25 years of teaching in the area, I’ve never experienced anything like this,” he said. “You just don’t know. It’s hard to explain. How do we get through one day? … We’re taking it day by day.”
The Garfield-Roosevelt game, known as the East L.A. Classic, draws the largest L.A. high school football attendance each year. It’s scheduled for Oct. 24 at a site to be determined and officials want to make sure fans attending feel safe, so a decision on the site and security arrangements in light of continuing ICE raids are being taken into consideration along with budget.
“We will continue to follow district guidelines to ensure the well-being of our entire school community,” Garfield athletic director Lorenzo Hernandez said in a text message. “Our priority is — and will always be — to keep students and families safe, informed and supported.”
Said Galvan: “We definitely have to approach this season differently and see who we can accommodate and support the kids and balance understanding the situation and keeping them safe. It’s going to be on a weekly basis how we approach each game.”
Skipping summer practices won’t prevent a team from going forward. But if players start missing practices this fall, that will cause problems, because practices are needed to help prevent injuries and get athletes into the proper physical condition to participate.
Guevara still remembers July 7, the day of the MacArthur Park show of force. He addressed players who showed up to practice and were going home.
“Be vigilant, be careful,” he told them.
It’s a message likely to be repeated again and again this fall.
National Public Radio journalist Felix Contreras, best known for chronicling Latino music in his podcast “Alt.Latino,” will be honored this year at the 38th annual Hispanic Heritage Awards.
The Hispanic Heritage Foundation named Contreras as a recipient of the 2025 Hispanic Heritage Award for journalism on Thursday, one of several honors bestowed on notable public figures for their accomplishments and cultural contributions to the Latino communities.
Past awardees at the Hispanic Heritage Awards include Bad Bunny, America Ferrera, Becky G, J Balvin and others; Contreras is one of the few journalists to receive the esteemed honor, one he says is hard for him to accept.
“We learn early on that [journalists] are not supposed to be the story,” explains Contreras in a phone call with The Times. “That’s the largest stumbling block as to why I’m having a difficult time accepting this accolade.”
Known among friends and colleagues as “Tío Felix,” a familial term of endearment, Contreras has been a dedicated reporter for close to 50 years. Born and raised in Sacramento, he began his journalistic career as a TV news photographer for the NBC affiliate station in Fresno until 1998, later transitioning to NBC News in Miami.
“My point has always been to tell our Latino stories through the news, good or bad,” he says.
Contreras began working for NPR in 2001 as a producer and reporter for the news arts desk. In 2010, he co-created the innovative “Alt.Latino” radio program and podcast alongside NPR’s current immigration correspondent Jasmine Garsd. It was a way to fill the dearth of coverage of alternative Latino music — Spanish-language stations gave little airtime to alternative rock groups such as Los Fabulosos Cadillacs or Café Tacvba, says Contreras. Their first guest on the show was a young, then-burgeoning artist from Colombia named Juanes, who appeared just after releasing his debut album, “Fíjate Bien.”
At first, it was an uphill battle to get artists to recognize the podcast’s cultural significance. “ We had to beg people to send us their CDs,” Contreras admits.
Now in its 15th year, “Alt.Latino” has become a go-to hub for Latin music enthusiasts looking to learn more on the rise of musica mexicana, the rumblings of Latin jazz, the transformation of Latin rock and more.
“Independent artists, alternative artists, even some pop artists now consider ‘Alt.Latino’ and NPR as a viable source to get their artist seen or heard,” Contreras says.
To this day, Contreras continues in his role as co-host of “Alt.Latino,” now alongside Tiny Desk producer Anamaria Sayre, who says she cried when she heard Contreras was being recognized.
“ Felix created space for us in the music media landscape in where there wasn’t previously,” says Sayre, who has been working with Contreras since 2023. “He did it with no one telling him that what he was doing was valuable.”
The 38th annual Hispanic Heritage Awards will take place on Sept. 4 at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C.
Commentary: He’s just happy to root for the Dodgers again after almost dying during the last World Series
There was probably no Dodgers fan more grateful to see the Blue Crew lose badly in the opening game of the World Series than Conrado Contreras. See, the 75-year-old was happy to enjoy any Fall Classic at all.
A year ago tomorrow , the Zacatecas native suffered a heart attack and mild stroke in the moments after seeing his Dodgers win Game 2 of the World Series against the New York Yankees. He spent three days in a medically induced coma at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood and regained consciousness to news from jubilant nurses that the Dodgers had won the championship.
The lifelong baseball fan had no idea what they were talking about. His passion for the sport was lost along with his memory.
When family members put on highlights from the 2024 championship during his rehabilitation at a clinic in Gardena throughout the end of the year, the former carpenter would shrug and change the channel. When someone told him that legendary Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela had died, Contreras swore that he had just seen his fellow Mexican pitch at the stadium.
It wasn’t until the 2025 baseball season came along that Contreras’ mind began to truly rebound. He watched games from his longtime home in the unincorporated Florence-Graham neighborhood and learned to love the Dodgers anew. But he didn’t cheer like before. Contreras followed doctor’s orders to stay calm when the Dodgers were losing instead of cursing like the past and quietly applaud when the team was winning when he would’ve previously roared.
He’s the father-in-law of my sister Alejandrina. And I wanted to hang out with Don Conrado for Game 1 of this year’s World Series to experience fandom in all its mortality.
Wearing a flat-brimmed fedora and a blue Dodgers 2024 World Series champion, I caught Contreras just as he was entering my sister’s Norwalk home holding on to his walker with the help of Alejandrina’s husband, Conrad. His father talks slower than he used to and can’t drive anymore, but Contreras is once again the same man his family knows: witty, observant and baseball-crazy.
A schoolyard pitcher in his hometown of Monte Escobedo, Contreras fell in with the Dodgers almost as soon as he migrated to the United States in 1970 to join a brother in Highland Park. He used to attend games every week “when $10 got two people into the stadium and you could also eat a hot dog,” Contreras told me in Spanish before Game 1 began.
His stories from those years were immaculate. Don Sutton throwing a shutout. The Cincinnati Reds always “ready to play to the death.” Pittsburgh Pirates slugger Willie Stargell hitting a home run out of Dodger Stadium in 1973 “and all of us just staring above our heads in awe.”
Contreras was such a fan that he took his pregnant wife Mary to watch Valenzuela pitch on the day in 1983 that Conrad was due because they were giving out “I (Heart) Fernando” T-shirts, an anecdote that left their son flabbergasted.
“What happened to the shirt?” Conrad asked his mom in Spanish.
“I threw it away,” replied the 61-year-old Mary.
“They’d cost a lot of money now!” he groaned.
“They were cheap! The color really faded fast.”
Los Angeles Dodgers two-way player Shohei Ohtani hits a two-run home run during the seventh inning of Game 1 of the World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays at Roger Centre on Friday in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Blue Jays won, 11-4.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
The family continued to attend games through Conrad’s teenage years but stopped “when even the birds couldn’t afford to attend,” Mary said. Conrad, 42, thinks the last time he went to a game with his dad was “at least” 20 years ago. But they regularly watched games on television. It was he who administered the CPR a year ago that saved his dad’s life.
“He was walking around the house angry all that game,” Conrad said.
“No, well, Roberto was making me mad,” Conrado replied, his nickname for Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. “But I can’t get mad anymore.”
I asked how he thought this year’s series would go. He mentioned Shohei Ohtani, whom he kept calling el japonés in a respectful tone because, well, his memory can be fuzzy.
“He strikes out too much, but when he hits it, he hits it. If he plays like that, they win the series. But if Toronto hits, forget it.”
One more question before game time, the one too many liberal Latino Dodgers fans are belly-aching over right now: is it ethical to root for the team considering they haven’t been too vocal in opposing Donald Trump’s deportation campaign and owner Mark Walter has investments in companies that are profiting from it?
“Sports shouldn’t get into politics, but all sports owners are with Trompas,” he said, using a nickname I’ve heard more than a few rancho libertarians use for Trump. He shrugged.
“So what’s one to do? They kept la migra out of the stadium,” referring to an unsuccessful June attempt by federal agents to enter the stadium parking lot. “If the team had allowed that, then there’d be a huge problem.”
Mary wasn’t as sympathetic. “Latinos shouldn’t let the Dodgers off so easy. But when Latinos surrender, they surrender.”
It was game time.
Conrad slipped into a gray Dodgers away jersey to match his black team cap. My sister, an Angels follower for some reason, wore a Kiké Hernández T-shirt “because he stands with immigrants.”
“The only good thing about the Dodgers is that they aren’t winning with a gringo,” said Mary, who actually doesn’t care much about baseball because she finds it boring. “It’s someone [Ohtani] who doesn’t want to speak English who’s winning it for them.”
Her husband smiled.
“Let’s see if Mary gets into baseball.”
“That’ll be the real miracle,” she snapped back.
Contreras rubbed his hands in glee as the Dodgers went up 2-0 in the top of the third and merely frowned when the Blue Jays tied it in the bottom of the fourth while we were enjoying takeout from Taco Nazo. “His anger comes in waves, it’s a trip,” Conrad said. “He’s calmer but se enoja.”
“Who?” Conrado deadpanned.
When Dodger starting pitcher Blake Snell left the game with the bases loaded and no one out in the bottom of the sixth, Contreras shook his head in disgust but kept his voice calm.
“This is what gets me mad. They should’ve taken him out long ago, but Roberto didn’t. This is what I was afraid of. When Toronto get on, they get on. They won’t stop until they destroy.”
Sure enough, the Blue Jays erupted for nine runs that inning, including a two-run blast by catcher Alejandro Kirk, who had sparked the Jays’ initial rally a few innings earlier.
Earlier in the game, Alejandrina had told Conrado that Kirk was a Tijuana native. The pride in shared roots, albeit generations apart, took a little bit of sting off his home run, which made the score a humiliating 11-2.
“Thank goodness he’s Mexican,” Conrado told his son, patting his knee. “That’s what’s left for us” to be happy about the game.
An inning later, Contreras began to feel woozy. His sugar level was elevated. Mary took off his jacket to fix his insulin device. My sister’s corgi, Penny, jumped onto the couch and lay on his lap.
“They do know when someone someone’s ill, right?” he said to no one before scratching Penny’s tummy and cooing, “You know I’m ill, right? I’m ill!”
When the “massacre” finally ended, Contreras remained philosophical.
“It’s incredible that I’m able to see this. But I’m still malo. My feet hurt, my memory isn’t what it used to be, my sense of balance isn’t there. But there’s the Dodgers. But they need to win.”
Conrad went to the bedroom to grab his father’s walker.
“Do you want a Toronto shirt now?” he joked.
His dad stared silently. “No, that would give me another heart attack.”
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Football coach Carlos Trujillo completes his 11th marathon
After Contreras’ offensive coordinator, Carlos Trujillo, did his work on Friday night during his team’s 39-14 win over Hollywood, he was picked up by car and whisked off to Los Angeles International Airport to take a red-eye flight to Chicago so he could complete the 11th marathon of his life.
“I will never be crazy enough to do one,” Contreras head coach Manuel Guevara said.
Running 26.2 miles is pretty challenging, but Trujillo has found something he enjoys, and players admire his commitment.
“The entire varsity [team] wished him good luck,” Guevara said. “It teaches the kids that coaches challenge themselves in different ways.”
He’ll be back for practice on Tuesday as Contreras (4-3, 2-0) prepares for a key Central League game against Bernstein on Thursday night.
Trujillo, 43, said he started running marathons when he was head coach at North Hollywood. He has run marathons in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas and New York besides Chicago.
This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].
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Judge blocks Trump policy to detain migrant children turning 18 in adult facilities
A federal judge has temporarily blocked a new Trump administration policy to keep migrant children in detention after they turn 18, moving quickly to stop transfers to adult facilities that advocates said were scheduled for this weekend.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras on Saturday issued a temporary restraining order to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement not to detain any child who came to the country alone and without permission in ICE adult detention facilities after they become an adult.
The Washington, D.C., judge found that such automatic detention violates a court order he issued in 2021 barring such practices.
ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond Saturday to emails seeking comment.
The push to detain new adults is yet another battle over one of the most sensitive issues in President Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda — how to treat children who cross the border unaccompanied by adults.
The Associated Press reported Friday that officials are offering migrant children age 14 and older $2,500 to voluntarily return to their home countries. Last month a separate federal judge blocked attempts to immediately deport Guatemalan migrant children who came to the U.S. alone back to their home country. Some children had been put on board planes in that late-night operation before a judge blocked it.
“All of these are pieces of the same general policy to coerce immigrant youth into giving up their right to seek protection in the United States,” said Michelle Lapointe, a lawyer for the American Immigration Council, one of the groups that asked Contreras to intervene in a filing made early Saturday, just after midnight.
Unaccompanied children are held in shelters run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which isn’t part of ICE. Contreras’ 2021 order instructed federal officials to release minors who turn 18 from those shelters to “the least restrictive setting available.” He ruled that that is what’s required by federal law as long as the minor isn’t a danger to themselves or others and isn’t a flight risk. Minors are often released to the custody of a relative, or maybe into foster care.
But lawyers who represent unaccompanied minors said they began getting word in the last few days that ICE was telling shelters that children who were about to turn 18 — even those who had already-approved release plans — could no longer be released and would instead be taken to detention facilities, possibly as early as Saturday. One email from ICE asserted that the new adults could only be released by ICE under its case-by-case parole authority for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefit.” From March through September, ICE has paroled fewer than 500 people overall.
The plaintiffs argued that “release on parole is all but a dead letter” and that children aging out of shelters would experience lasting harm from unnecessary and inappropriate adult detention” in jails that might be overcrowded or in remote locations. The plaintiffs said that was especially true because some of the clients they cited had been victims of trafficking or had been abused, neglected or abandoned by their parents.
U.S. border authorities have arrested children crossing the border without parents more than 400,000 times since October 2021. A 2008 law requires them to appear before an immigration judge before being returned to their countries.
Children have been spending more time in government-run shelters since the Trump administration put them under closer scrutiny before releasing them to family in the United States to pursue their immigration cases.
The additional scrutiny includes fingerprinting, DNA testing and home visits by immigration officers. Over the summer, immigration officers started showing up and arresting parents.
The average length of stay at government-run shelters for those released in the U.S. was 171 days in July, down from a peak of 217 days in April but well above 37 days in January, when Trump took office.
Amy writes for the Associated Press.
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2025 Hispanic Heritage Awards to air on PBS
Smack-dab in the middle of Hispanic Heritage Month, PBS will air the 38th Hispanic Heritage Awards tonight.
The show took place on Sept. 4 at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., and honored a collection of musicians, artists, actors, journalists and business leaders.
This year’s honorees, selected by the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, included NPR’s “Alt. Latino” journalist Felix Contreras, stoner comic and Chicano art collector Cheech Marin, Puerto Rican pop music visionary Rauw Alejandro, Oscar-nominated actor and dancer Rosie Perez, Rizos Curls Chief Executive Julissa Prado and “Mexican Queen of Pop” Gloria Trevi.
Honoree Felix Contreras accepts the Journalism Award onstage during the 38th Hispanic Heritage Awards in Washington, D.C.
(Paul Morigi / Getty Images for Hispanic Heritage Foundation)
Contreras is one of the few journalists to ever receive the esteemed honor, though he was initially reticent to accept. “We learn early on that [journalists] are not supposed to be the story,” Contreras told The Times earlier this year.
Recently, Marin has moved on from a successful career making stoner comedy films and is now best known for his work as a collector of Chicano art. After being a lifelong gatherer of art, the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum opened to the public in June 2022.
Rauw Alejandro, meanwhile, has innovated the Latin music scene with his experimental albums, such as 2022’s techno-infused psychedelic album, “Saturno”; his beachy follow-up, “Playa Saturno,” in 2023; and his 2024 ode to the 1970s New York City salsa scene, “Cosa Nuestra.”
Cheech Marin accepts the Arts Award onstage during the 38th Hispanic Heritage Awards.
(Paul Morigi / Getty Images for Hispanic Heritage Foundation)
Rosie Perez made a name for herself as a dancer on the TV show “In Living Color” and with starring roles in Spike Lee films before being nominated for an Oscar for 1993‘s “Fearless.”
Gloria Trevi is one of the most successful Latina artists of her time. She has garnered over 30 million sold albums and 7 billion combined streams, along with several top-selling albums and an induction into the Latin Music Songwriters Hall of Fame.
As the Rizos Curls co-founder and CEO, Prado is being honored, per the HHF, for “her personal journey of self-discovery into a nationally celebrated, multi-million-dollar business specializing in textured hair care.”
Gloria Trevi performs onstage at the 38th Hispanic Heritage Awards.
(Paul Morigi / Getty Images for Hispanic Heritage Foundation)
The ceremony was hosted by actor and writer Mayan Lopez, and viewers will be able to take in performances by Trevi, along with artists Daymé Arocena, DannyLux, Lisa Lisa and RaiNao.
The awards show was established in 1988 by the White House to honor cultural visionaries within the Latino community. Previous awardees include Bad Bunny, Anthony Quinn, Sonia Sotomayor, Linda Ronstadt, Los Tigres Del Norte, Gloria Estefan and Tito Puente, among others.
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ICE raids put a chill on L.A. high school football teams
On the day immigration agents swooped through MacArthur Park in armored vehicles, wearing tactical gear and riding on horseback, Contreras Learning Center football coach Manuel Guevara said more than 20 of his players skipped summer practice.
“Kids were messaging me their parents don’t want them to leave their house,” Guevara said.
The fear among families with students attending three downtown Los Angeles high schools minutes apart — Contreras, Roybal and Belmont— is real.
“Everybody’s on edge,” Guevara said.
Players don’t know if their parents will feel safe enough to watch games from the school bleachers this fall.
As official football practice begins on Monday, three downtown Los Angeles head coaches — Guevara, Roybal’s Michael Galvan and Belmont’s Kenneth Daniels — have been in constant communication and united to help their players and parents deal with ICE raids. No one knows when the raids might subside or how the ongoing anxiety might affect teams this fall.
One of the first raids happened outside an elementary school across the street from Contreras. A 17-year-old Contreras cross country and track athlete, Nory Santoy Ramos, was detained and later deported to Guatemala with her mother after showing up for an immigration appointment. Families in the area rely on afterschool programs that are facing budget cuts. Students continue to deal with issues involving homelessness, gangs and drug use at nearby MacArthur Park.
Even though all three coaches said players feel safe on campus, with Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Alberto Carvalho vowing to make schools “safe havens,” coaches are most concerned about students’ commutes to and from school.
Federal immigration agents near MacArthur Park in the Westlake area on July 7.
(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)
“A piece of me worries about them getting home safe,” Roybal’s Galvan said.
Guevara said one Contreras player told him he’s 80% certain his mother is going to leave and take him with her because of ICE fears. He’s had kids message him this summer that they couldn’t come to practices because their parents feared for their safety.
The Times has confirmed U.S. citizens are among those who have been detained during immigration raids in Southern California that have continued for more than six weeks. More than 2,700 people have been arrested during the raids and more than two-thirds of those detained had never previously been convicted of a crime.
“I understand their plight,” Guevara said. “I was brought here when I was 1. I became a citizen when I was 17. It’s not like you can tell anyone in this situation, ‘Suck it up.’ It’s a completely different animal. Our area is targeted.”
Students at Miguel Contreras Learning Complex in downtown Los Angeles continue to be affected by ICE raids.
(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)
Belmont is struggling to field a football team this fall. School enrollment is down to less than 700 after once being a school of more than 6,000 — the largest in the county — until Contreras and Roybal were built. Athletic director Carlos Calderon said four sports that have been practicing on the Belmont campus this summer — cheer, girls volleyball, cross-country and football — have been affected by parental safety concerns.
“We’ve seen a deduction in kids coming to practices and increase communication with parents and having them call us [to say,] ‘We don’t feel comfortable in kids coming to practice,’” he said.
Calderon, who helps coach cross-country, has had athletes train on the school track instead of running the hills at Elysian Park to assuage parental fears.
Daniels said after one summer practice, when he learned an ICE raid was unfolding nearby, he instructed players to leave school from the back entrance instead of the front entrance.
“It’s really affecting us,” he said. “We’re not getting the numbers we need to get the workouts in.”
Belmont has 20 football players signed up, but only about half have been showing up for workouts. The team usually adds players once classes begin Aug. 14. Daniels, a walk-on coach, is already consumed by the challenge of building a new house in Altadena after his burned down during the Eaton fire.
“Nothing has been easy in 2025,” he said.
Galvan said he’s had players miss practices to go shopping for family members who feel they have to stay home. Others had medical appointments delayed because parents didn’t want to leave their homes.
“In all of my 25 years of teaching in the area, I’ve never experienced anything like this,” he said. “You just don’t know. It’s hard to explain. How do we get through one day? … We’re taking it day by day.”
The Garfield-Roosevelt game, known as the East L.A. Classic, draws the largest L.A. high school football attendance each year. It’s scheduled for Oct. 24 at a site to be determined and officials want to make sure fans attending feel safe, so a decision on the site and security arrangements in light of continuing ICE raids are being taken into consideration along with budget.
“We will continue to follow district guidelines to ensure the well-being of our entire school community,” Garfield athletic director Lorenzo Hernandez said in a text message. “Our priority is — and will always be — to keep students and families safe, informed and supported.”
Said Galvan: “We definitely have to approach this season differently and see who we can accommodate and support the kids and balance understanding the situation and keeping them safe. It’s going to be on a weekly basis how we approach each game.”
Skipping summer practices won’t prevent a team from going forward. But if players start missing practices this fall, that will cause problems, because practices are needed to help prevent injuries and get athletes into the proper physical condition to participate.
Guevara still remembers July 7, the day of the MacArthur Park show of force. He addressed players who showed up to practice and were going home.
“Be vigilant, be careful,” he told them.
It’s a message likely to be repeated again and again this fall.
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NPR’s Felix Contreras opened minds to Latin alternative music. He’s finally getting his due
National Public Radio journalist Felix Contreras, best known for chronicling Latino music in his podcast “Alt.Latino,” will be honored this year at the 38th annual Hispanic Heritage Awards.
The Hispanic Heritage Foundation named Contreras as a recipient of the 2025 Hispanic Heritage Award for journalism on Thursday, one of several honors bestowed on notable public figures for their accomplishments and cultural contributions to the Latino communities.
Past awardees at the Hispanic Heritage Awards include Bad Bunny, America Ferrera, Becky G, J Balvin and others; Contreras is one of the few journalists to receive the esteemed honor, one he says is hard for him to accept.
“We learn early on that [journalists] are not supposed to be the story,” explains Contreras in a phone call with The Times. “That’s the largest stumbling block as to why I’m having a difficult time accepting this accolade.”
Known among friends and colleagues as “Tío Felix,” a familial term of endearment, Contreras has been a dedicated reporter for close to 50 years. Born and raised in Sacramento, he began his journalistic career as a TV news photographer for the NBC affiliate station in Fresno until 1998, later transitioning to NBC News in Miami.
“My point has always been to tell our Latino stories through the news, good or bad,” he says.
Contreras began working for NPR in 2001 as a producer and reporter for the news arts desk. In 2010, he co-created the innovative “Alt.Latino” radio program and podcast alongside NPR’s current immigration correspondent Jasmine Garsd. It was a way to fill the dearth of coverage of alternative Latino music — Spanish-language stations gave little airtime to alternative rock groups such as Los Fabulosos Cadillacs or Café Tacvba, says Contreras. Their first guest on the show was a young, then-burgeoning artist from Colombia named Juanes, who appeared just after releasing his debut album, “Fíjate Bien.”
At first, it was an uphill battle to get artists to recognize the podcast’s cultural significance. “ We had to beg people to send us their CDs,” Contreras admits.
Now in its 15th year, “Alt.Latino” has become a go-to hub for Latin music enthusiasts looking to learn more on the rise of musica mexicana, the rumblings of Latin jazz, the transformation of Latin rock and more.
“Independent artists, alternative artists, even some pop artists now consider ‘Alt.Latino’ and NPR as a viable source to get their artist seen or heard,” Contreras says.
To this day, Contreras continues in his role as co-host of “Alt.Latino,” now alongside Tiny Desk producer Anamaria Sayre, who says she cried when she heard Contreras was being recognized.
“ Felix created space for us in the music media landscape in where there wasn’t previously,” says Sayre, who has been working with Contreras since 2023. “He did it with no one telling him that what he was doing was valuable.”
The 38th annual Hispanic Heritage Awards will take place on Sept. 4 at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C.
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