Topline:
Britt Allcroft, creator of the beloved Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends children's TV series, has died.
Details: The British-born producer died last week in Santa Monica, Calif., at 81.
Her legacy: Thomas started out as a character in a series of books dating back to the 1940s by Rev. Wilbert Awdry, an English Anglican minister and train enthusiast. But Allcroft made Thomas an international sensation, starting in the mid-1980s with her TV adaptation narrated by Ringo Starr.
Britt Allcroft, creator of the beloved Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends children's TV series, has died.
The British-born producer died last week in Santa Monica at 81.
The death was confirmed by Brannon Carty, the creator of a documentary about Thomas fandom and a friend of the TV producer's. No cause of death was given.
Thomas started out as a character in a series of books dating back to the 1940s by Rev. Wilbert Awdry, an English Anglican minister and train enthusiast. Awdry's The Railway Series revolved around a cast of anthropomorphic trains, including Thomas and his friends Gordon, James and Percy, all chuffing along on the imaginary island of Sodor.
But Allcroft made Thomas an international sensation, starting in the mid-1980s with her TV adaptation narrated by Ringo Starr.
The series, which was later renamed Thomas & Friends, ran for more than three decades and featured other famous narrators such as George Carlin and Alec Baldwin. It has spawned TV spin-offs, movies, stage productions and a ton of merch.
And the appeal goes beyond kids. The 2023 documentary An Unlikely Fandom is about grownups' passion for the little blue locomotive.
Filmmaker Brannon Carty — a lifelong Thomas fan — said he got to know Allcroft in her final years.
"She was just an incredible woman who was still a child at heart," Carty said in an interview with NPR. "But she was a businesswoman at the same time. So, she understood what children wanted, and also knew how to sell it."
Allcroft was born in 1943 in Worthing, a town on England's south coast.
Beyond Thomas, her 1990s animated series Magic Adventures of Mumfie, about a sweet little gray elephant and his friends, was a particular hit.
"I wanted to do something very different from Thomas that would be very magical and epic and hopefully have lots of music in it, and would, in the same way as Thomas, help give children love, and security, and inspiration, and comfort, and fun," Allcroft told NPR in a 2013 interview.
Allcroft also said she aimed to create shows that gave children an antidote to hectic modern life.
"Children, they're multidimensional," she said. "And they still like that time where they can be with their stories, be with their characters, and feel that they're not being pushed."
Copyright 2025 NPR
Topline:
With proposals to tax the rich, Gavin Newsom is playing to a 2028 national audience anxious about artificial intelligence. As governor, he’s walked a fine line on taxes for years.
Why now: Newsom’s populist appeals come as he prepares to leave office and looks toward an expected 2028 presidential campaign in which widespread anxiety about wealth inequality and the effects of AI on the economy will feature prominently.
The backstory: The posture is new territory for Newsom, who is not a natural populist and who maintains his longstanding relationships with wealthy tech donors who have railed against the proposed billionaire tax, Proposition 40.
Read on... for more on Newsom.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is in his populism era.
He started the year vowing to stop corporate investors from buying up large tracts of single-family homes, a desire shared by both socialists and President Donald Trump.
Last month, after he was unable to keep a proposal to tax California billionaires from appearing on voters’ ballots, he tried to get ahead of the debate by pitching nationwide higher taxes on the wealthy.
Last week, he spoke to a crowd of national Latino policymakers about the need to “democratize our economy” in the face of artificial intelligence-driven job losses.
Newsom’s populist appeals come as he prepares to leave office and looks toward an expected 2028 presidential campaign in which widespread anxiety about wealth inequality and the effects of AI on the economy will feature prominently.
“The old bargain is dead, and AI is going to finish it off,” he said last week in Los Angeles, of the concept that Americans could support families with working-class jobs. “We need to wake up to that foundational reality.”
The posture is new territory for Newsom, who is not a natural populist and who maintains his longstanding relationships with wealthy tech donors who have railed against the proposed billionaire tax, Proposition 40.
As governor, he’s kept his image as a liberal who favors progressive income taxes and expanding the social safety net without teetering too far into the overtly redistributive politics of democratic socialists. He eschewed most new tax proposals and stood by several state corporate tax benefits that progressives have longed to scrap.
By focusing on AI-driven inequality now, Newsom is choosing a popular issue to define his expected 2028 run. But it’s not yet clear whether voters will buy his solution.
“Newsom is balancing two pressures,” said Kevin Liao, a Democratic strategist who worked on billionaire Tom Steyer’s “tax the rich” gubernatorial campaign this year. “There’s a desire to meet the demands of his constituents and the current appetite to be against billionaires, and to address the massive wealth inequality in the state and the country, with the cold political reality that much of his career and presumably his future ambitions have also been built on the financial support from a lot of wealthy folks in Silicon Valley.”
Even as he adopts a more progressive posture while appearing in other states, Newsom is walking a fine line back home, where his vocal opposition to California’s billionaire tax proposal could confuse voters staring at multiple tax measures on the November ballot.
Proposition 3, sponsored by the California Teachers Association, is also a tax on the rich: It would make permanent the state’s higher income tax rates for the top 2% of earners. That money goes into the state general fund, 40% of which pays for schools.
Voters approved those rates temporarily in 2012 at the behest of then-Gov. Jerry Brown, and extended them again in 2016. If they expire as planned in 2030, the state stands to lose between $5 and $15 billion a year in revenue.
Early polling shows that measure is popular, but CTA President David Goldberg acknowledged it will be tricky to campaign in favor of it with another tax on the ballot. The union opposes the billionaire tax because it would not send the same proportion of its revenues to schools, instead prioritizing healthcare.
Voters will also be asked to weigh in on three other tax-related ballot measures: two backed by tech billionaires designed to undercut the billionaire tax, and one by an anti-tax advocacy group that would make it harder for cities to raise local taxes.
“It’s always hard when you have a bunch of things” on the ballot, Goldberg said. “It is going to mean that we have to really go out there and make the case for this.”
Asked whether his opposition to Prop. 40 could hinder public support for Prop. 3, Newsom told reporters recently: “I hope that’s not the case. … It’s a legitimate question.”
For years, Newsom has defended California on Fox News and on social media against a national reputation that it is over taxed, often arguing that lower- and middle-income families pay more in taxes to live in states like Florida and Texas. The basis of his claim is a study from the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that found Florida and Texas rely heavily on property and sales taxes, which effectively take a greater share of those households’ earnings than those of the wealthiest. The states do not tax personal income.
“He taxes low-income workers more than we tax millionaires and billionaires in the state of California,” Newsom said of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, during a 2023 debate hosted by Fox’s Sean Hannity.
Critics say those arguments don’t take into account the lower costs of goods and property in other states.
“California is a high-tax state,” said Jared Walczak, a senior fellow at the right-leaning Tax Foundation. “A state like California can get away with higher rates than some other states because the state has so much to offer. … It doesn’t mean there isn’t a tipping point.”
Now nearing the end of his term, Newsom is touting all the progressive programs California’s tax system has made possible, including universal school meals and subsidized child care.
At the same time, Newsom often chides more left-wing colleagues in the Legislature “not to be profligate” with public spending. He touts that he’s never raised taxes in his eight years as governor, though critics may quibble over limiting businesses’ tax deductions or a law he signed this month raising a tax on health insurance plans.
When Democratic lawmakers pushed to raise new revenue in the face of budget deficits the last three years, he quickly quashed the idea.
“We have among the highest tax rates in the United States of America for high-wage earners, we have among the highest tax rates … for corporate taxes,” he said in 2024. “I feel strongly that we have to live within our means.”
This year, some Democrats insisted on a proposal to tax corporations whose workers earn so little that they qualify for public healthcare; Newsom would agree only for the state to study the idea.
He’s taken a similar stance with the state billionaire tax. Along with a cadre of Democratic allies like Planned Parenthood, he argues that billionaires could easily move their assets to another state — as some, like Google co-founder Sergey Brin, have done with their homes and businesses. Early polling shows a slim majority of Californians support the measure.
Newsom pressured SEIU United Healthcare Workers West to drop the measure in exchange for concessions, but when he didn’t succeed, he pivoted to proposing his own federal billionaire’s tax, taking a page from progressives like Elizabeth Warren.
He’s calling for a minimum tax rate on anyone making more than $100 million, undoing corporate tax cuts that President Trump and Congress approved in 2017, boosting inheritance taxes and closing loopholes used by the wealthy to borrow from unrealized capital gains without paying income taxes.
Without getting into details, he also said he supports the idea of a public fund using AI-derived wealth to support displaced workers.
Rob Stutzman, a Sacramento Republican strategist, said Newsom risks being seen as inauthentic in a primary campaign.
“He’s never banged this drum … he’s a big spender but not a big taxer,” Stutzman said. “This whole jiu-jitsu he has to do to oppose the (billionaire) tax in his state and then support it federally, it doesn’t sound as authentic as others might sound on the soapbox at the Iowa State Fair.”
The call for sharing wealth also opens doors for anti-tax attacks from the right, which is eager to link a wide swath of Democratic policies to communism.
“Most Democrats have the foresight to tie their tax hikes to a far-left policy, but Newsom just wants to take your money because he wants to take your money,” Republican National Committee spokesperson Nicholas Poche said in an emailed statement, criticizing Newsom for trying to “have it both ways with progressives and establishment Democrats.”
But political strategists agree that framing tax proposals as a response to AI anxiety is appealing across the ideological spectrum.
“A wealth tax is more simplistic and falling along ideological lines,” Liao said. “If we’re talking about broad societal change, it is much more than wealth redistribution. It is something that’s going to touch every single person.”
More than half of Americans worry the technology will leave someone in their household jobless; a growing sense of precarity has seized workers from customer service representatives to Silicon Valley’s own elites. Meanwhile, the upcoming public offerings of AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are expected to turbocharge the nation’s already unequal distribution of wealth. The top 10% of the country owns nearly 70% of its wealth, and the bottom half own just 2.5%.
Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, known as a moderate Democrat, is floating more aggressive regulations on the technology as he weighs a run for president and is open to basic income payments for displaced workers. Progressive standard-bearer U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is proposing a national sovereign wealth fund paid for with a 50% tax on AI companies that would directly pay Americans, making the nation essentially a part owner of AI.
Even Vice President J.D. Vance is considering the issue, telling a podcaster last month that his biggest concern about AI is not mass unemployment but the breakup of “social harmony” that comes with increasing inequality.
“If you make rich people way richer, you are going to have significant problems,” he said. “That is one of the consequences that I see from AI.”
He added that Trump is generally supportive of Sanders’ idea, though the president also has developed cozy ties with many tech leaders during his second term.
But many progressives are holding their applause for Newsom for now. Lorena Gonzalez, leader of the California Labor Federation, said she’s pleased he is taking on AI-driven inequality, but unions still want the state to curb AI in workplaces and stop mass displacement of workers. Newsom has been reluctant to back aggressive regulation or bans on the technology.
Flanked by labor leaders in important presidential primary states earlier this year, Gonzalez warned the governor that unions could withhold their political support if Newsom does not rein in use of the technology.
“It’s not enough to say, ‘I feel your pain,’” Gonzalez said. “We don’t think that catastrophic job loss is inevitable.”
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
Topline:
The Trump administration is trying to lock down immigration detention capacity in California despite opposition from the state’s Democratic leaders.
Why it matters: As California officials try to block immigration facilities across the state, the Trump administration is deploying a new strategy to secure detention capacity on the West Coast. It’s buying up the real estate outright. The Department of Homeland Security’s $1.5 billion purchase of the Otay Mesa Detention Center and the California City Detention Facility from the private prison company CoreCivic is a direct response to the state’s political resistance to new and existing ICE detention facilities, government officials said.
The backstory: The conflict dates to the last Trump administration, when California Democrats raced to adopt policies that would counter his first deportation push. Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019 signed a law aiming to phase out all private for-profit prisons and immigration detention centers by 2028. Private prison operator GEO Group and the federal government sued, arguing the law violated the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which bars states from interfering with federal authority. They won, with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2022 striking down the ban on privately run immigration detention facilities.
Read on... for more on Trump's new immigration strategy.
As California officials try to block immigration facilities across the state, the Trump administration is deploying a new strategy to secure detention capacity on the West Coast. It’s buying up the real estate outright.
The Department of Homeland Security’s $1.5 billion purchase of the Otay Mesa Detention Center and the California City Detention Facility from the private prison company CoreCivic is a direct response to the state’s political resistance to new and existing ICE detention facilities, government officials said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Jason Sweeney said in a statement that California detention centers are “crucial to ICE’s detention network on the West Coast.”
“Unlike in states like Florida and Oklahoma, ICE can not rely on local state and county partners for detention space in California,” Sweeney said. “The state’s sanctuary politicians continue to push legislation to outlaw or make private prisons financially infeasible.”
The conflict dates to the last Trump administration, when California Democrats raced to adopt policies that would counter his first deportation push.
Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019 signed a law aiming to phase out all private for-profit prisons and immigration detention centers by 2028. Private prison operator GEO Group and the federal government sued, arguing the law violated the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which bars states from interfering with federal authority. They won, with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2022 striking down the ban on privately run immigration detention facilities.
Since then, California lawmakers have pushed newer measures, such as imposing heavy taxes on private detention centers to make them financially unviable.
The federal government’s purchase of CoreCivic properties comes in the middle of a showdown between California Attorney General Rob Bonta and the Trump administration over the controversial construction of new ICE offices near Gilroy, a former farm town south of San Jose. The city has grown to about 60,000 people and is ringed by garlic fields and vineyards in south Santa Clara County.
The state argues the land has been designated exclusively for agricultural uses since 1967.
“ICE’s plans to construct a facility near Gilroy violate multiple federal laws,” said Bonta, arguing ICE failed to examine the potential environmental consequences before beginning construction.
Federal contracting records show in 2025 the General Services Administration leased the property for 20 years from Beverly Hills-based ECG 6 LLC for a total of $26.5 million.
The federal government agreed in July to pause construction on the 26-acre site while the lawsuit proceeds.
California officials are using another law dating to the first Trump administration to demand entry and inspect detention centers. Bonta sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security in December highlighting “dangerous and inadequate living conditions” at the California City Detention Facility. In San Diego County, local health inspectors are in a legal feud with CoreCivic over inspections of the Otay Mesa center.
Selling the properties to the federal government likely will shield them from California health inspections, said Claire Trickler-McNulty, who was a senior ICE official in the Biden administration.
“It gives them protections from state and local laws, especially from zoning and environmental requirements,” Trickler-McNulty said.
A year ago President Trump signed a spending bill with a huge windfall for immigration enforcement. It gave ICE $45 billion for detention capacity, and the administration had a plan to build new sites all over the country.
The purchases of Otay Mesa and California City mark a significant reversal, according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
That plan, laid out in early 2026 in a document known as the ICE Detention Re-engineering Initiative, centered on converting warehouses into mega-centers designed to hold 7,500 to 10,000 people — each larger than any correctional facility built in the U.S. since Japanese internment during World War II.
Reichlin-Melnick described the system as one that was never thoughtfully planned out. Todd Lyons, then-acting director of ICE, at the 2025 Border Security Expo in Phoenix said he wanted deportations to run “like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.”
“At no point did anyone sit down to intelligently design the ‘Amazon Prime for human beings,” Reichlin-Melnick said.
The Detention Re-engineering Initiative has largely collapsed, undone by lawsuits, an unrealistic timeline, and national shortages of correctional staff and prison healthcare workers, Reichlin-Melnick said.
But that leaves billions of dollars that ICE needs to spend before the money expires.
“We expect them to buy other facilities,” said Reichlin-Melnick.
One former senior Department of Homeland Security official said conditions for immigrant detainees in ICE-owned facilities could be an improvement.
“ICE taking over an actual facility is maybe better than warehouses or putting people in soft-sided facilities or the privately run facilities,” he said.
County assessor records show the federal government paid a premium on the real estate. In San Diego County, the Otay Mesa property’s assessed value for the current tax year is $164.9 million. DHS paid $739.2 million for it, or about 4.5 times the assessed value. In Kern County, the California City facility was assessed at $171.5 million; DHS paid $732.6 million or 4.3 times the figure.
A former senior ICE official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, questioned whether the price tag matches the actual security need. “So, $1.5 billion just for the facilities and how many migrants are ever going to come in and out of there who are national security and public safety threats? The people that we actually do need to keep off the streets,” the former official said.
A spokesperson for Gov. Newsom, Anthony Martinez, called the administration’s deportation agenda a “reckless and cruel misuse of taxpayer money,” and accused the federal government of pouring billions into contractors while avoiding transparency over conditions inside their facilities.
San Diego County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre connected the purchase directly to CoreCivic’s political spending, noting the company’s $500,000 donation to the Trump’s inaugural committee. That preceded what she called a “billion-dollar taxpayer-funded windfall” that will help erase the company’s debt while letting it continue running the facilities. She said the arrangements treat detained immigrants as revenue streams rather than people.
CoreCivic said the “valuations for the facilities were established through the federal government’s required appraisal process, which is designed to determine objective fair market value.”
“CoreCivic has contributed to presidential inaugural events across multiple administrations, including Democratic ones. The federal appraisal process is conducted independently of any political contribution,” said Steven Owen, the vice president of communications for CoreCivic.
He added that under California law, the assessed values of the properties may differ greatly from their market value. He pointed to California’s Proposition 13, which prohibits most property reassessments outside of sales.
“California's Prop. 13 limits annual increases in assessed value, which means assessed values for commercial properties can diverge significantly from current market value over time. The two figures are not directly comparable,” said Owen.
The company also expects to earn $130 million a year to run the California City detention center, according to its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
What’s next? Former ICE official Trickler-McNulty said the abandoned plan to buy 24 warehouses under former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem could hold some hints to the agency’s plan under Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
An internal roadmap obtained last year by the Washington Post reveals at least 10 “turnkey” facilities originally targeted under Noem.
They include the California City facility, but not Otay Mesa. The rest of the facilities are in Texas and Oklahoma.
The purchase of an immigration detention facility eliminates risk for both the private prison companies and the Trump administration’s deportation program, said R. Andrew Free, an immigration lawyer and writer, pointing to divestments California’s two biggest pension funds made from CoreCivic and GEO Group in 2019 that contributed to the companies’ spiraling liquidity crunch and cratering stock prices five years ago.
If private prison investments become politically toxic on a national scale, Free said, federal purchases of the detention facilities safeguard the companies and the detention space itself from divestments and the kind of environmental reviews that have ended similar projects in other states.
“This is a big upfront cash award from the federal government,” Free said.
Local governments and the state will be essentially locked out of the facilities, but will still have some contact with the people inside, Free said.
The detention centers are “still going to need police and fire, they’re still going to need coroners,” Free said, but noted that the majority of traditional inspections from the state are probably over.
Free said there are two ways to look at ICE’s detention expansion. One is, to him, optimistic: They’re simply gifts from a friendly government to their valued contractors. The other is more cynical.
“The cynical view is this definitely will be used to hold people who are not migrants,” Free said. “That it will be used to hold U.S. citizens.”
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
Topline:
For decades, the Los Angeles Metro Board has operated without a member of the public who regularly rides trains and buses among its members. Now, calls to change that are growing. Tomorrow, the Metro Board is set to vote on what the future make-up of the governing body should look like.
Background: In light of the L.A. County voter-approved Measure G, which expands the Board of Supervisors and adds an elected county-level executive, the L.A. Metro Board has been considering how to reconfigure its make-up. Agency staff have recommended maintaining the size and geographic split of the governing body and expanding the pool of people who can be appointed to serve.
Hahn’s motion: While the recommendations would theoretically allow for a transit rider to be appointed to the board, there would be no guarantee. A separate motion from L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn would expand the Metro Board to include a dedicated voter seat. Both items, and a motion that competes with staff’s recommendation, are scheduled for a vote tomorrow.
Read on … for more information about the composition of Metro’s Board and the diverging perspectives on adding a transit rider seat.
For decades, the Los Angeles Metro Board, which runs the countywide public transit system that sees more than 1 million daily riders, has operated without a member of the public who regularly rides trains and buses among its members.
Now, calls to change that are growing. On Thursday, the Metro Board is set to vote on what the future make-up of the governing body should look like, and there are several options on the table:
Sound complicated? It is. Let’s break it down:
Currently, there are 13 voting members of the Metro Board: the five L.A. County Supervisors, the mayor of L.A. and her three appointees, and four regional representatives from across the county chosen by a selection committee.
There’s no requirement that they have transit expertise or public ridership experience.
At the beginning of this year, the Metro Board formed a committee that convened monthly to discuss how the Metro Board could be reformatted in light of Measure G. That’s the measure L.A. County voters passed in 2024, which expands the Board of Supervisors from five to nine members by 2032 and adds an elected countywide executive.
The make-up of the Metro Board is codified in the state’s public utilities code, so any proposed changes approved on Thursday will need another vote by legislators in Sacramento before they go into effect.
Based on feedback from committee deliberations, public input and a review of peer agencies across the country, Metro officials in June proposed maintaining the size and geographic split of the Board.
Under that proposal, they also recommended expanding the pool of people who could serve on the Metro Board to include riders and experts in relevant subjects, like engineering or finance. If ultimately approved, these members could be chosen by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, the mayor of L.A. or the city selection committee.
In its recommendation, Metro officials notably shied away from adding a seat to the board, saying an extra person would impose “administrative and financial burdens on the agency.”
According to the rules for the Board, members are paid $150 per day they attend “to the business” of Metro up to $600 per month.
Metro’s media relations office did not answer a request for more information on what additional administrative and financial burdens the addition of a board member would impose on the agency.
A competing motion introduced by Bass would not allow the L.A. County Board of Supervisors or the committee that selects the four regional representatives to appoint a transit rider or subject matter expert.
Instead, it would designate one of the mayor’s four seats for a for a transit advocate or rider, and it would add a 14th voting member of the board who would also be a rider.
Hahn’s motion does not directly conflict with staff’s recommendation, and similar to Bass’ motion, would add a transit rider to the Metro Board.
Hahn said a dedicated seat for a transit rider would be more powerful than an appointed one.
“I worry that if [the rider] was just an appointed position by an elected official … [the rider] would feel loyalty to the appointing elected official as opposed to loyalty to their fellow riders,” she said in an interview with LAist.
She said it’s clear that there’s a community desire for a guaranteed rider seat on the Board.
During a public outreach period between February and May, Metro gathered input from 1,300 people. The clearest and most consistent piece of feedback was that the public wants to see a “formal rider voice on the Metro Board,” according to a Metro report.
While the staff recommendation to expand who can sit on the Metro Board would theoretically allow for the appointment of a transit rider, if not several transit riders, some officials have questioned whether elected officials would voluntarily cede political power to a member of the public if that option moves forward.
L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath characterized a future under Metro staff’s recommendation as a “political game of chicken.”
“ Who's going to take the responsibility and give up the power that they hold?” Horvath told LAist.
Michael Schneider, the head of the influential transportation advocacy group Streets for All, warned that reserving a seat for a transit rider on the Metro Board could backfire.
He said adding a seat for a rider, or any interest group, risks creating a situation where Metro Board members defer leadership to the representative.
“The rider experience should be top of mind for all board members,” Schneider said. “If there’s a specific seat for a rider, then board members may decide to not pay as much attention to the rider experience.”
Schneider argues Metro Board members should all be mandated to use Metro at least once a week. It’s a metric that could be tracked using TAP cards, he suggested.
“It’s hard to improve a system that you don’t have experience with,” Schneider said. “Experience is not sitting in a chair in a boardroom. It’s on a train or on a bus or using Metro bike share.”
The debate over a dedicated transit rider on the Metro Board is just one of several thorny questions, some politically charged, that officials are weighing as they decide what the Metro Board should look like.
Here’s what else will likely be discussed on the topic on Thursday:
Metro's Board meeting starts at 10 a.m. Thursday.
Topline: The aftermath of last summer’s militarized deportation campaign still reverberates in many of L.A. County’s Latino business corridors, this according to a UCLA report published on Wednesday.
Why it matters: The report, rooted in quantitative data and conversations with entrepreneurs countywide, was conducted by UCLA’s nonpartisan Latino Policy and Politics Institute and Inclusive Action for the City, a nonprofit based in Boyle Heights.
What were some of the findings: It found that many entrepreneurs are still struggling to keep their businesses open, and that some have taken on debt and made other sacrifices to stay afloat.
The backstory: In the summer of 2025, L.A. County became the focal point of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. Federal immigration agents, backed by the Marines and the National Guard, carried out large-scale operations at commercial corridors that serve as important economic hubs for Latino communities, as well as in residential areas and public spaces.
Go deeper: Federal immigration raids in LA started a year ago. They left a permanent mark on many
Disclosure: Julia Barajas is a part-time graduate student at UCLA Law.
The aftermath of last summer’s militarized mass deportation campaign still reverberates in many of L.A. County’s Latino business corridors, this according to a UCLA report published on Wednesday.
The report, rooted in quantitative data and conversations with entrepreneurs countywide, was conducted by UCLA’s nonpartisan Latino Policy and Politics Institute and Inclusive Action for the City, a nonprofit based in Boyle Heights.
The participants include people who run restaurants, bakeries, hair salons, childcare centers, auto repair shops, furniture stores and other brick-and-mortar businesses. Most are located in neighborhoods that were most targeted by federal immigration agents.
In the summer of 2025, L.A. County became the focal point of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. Federal immigration agents carried out operations at commercial corridors that serve as important economic hubs for Latino communities, as well as in residential areas and public spaces. Amid roving patrols and large-scale raids, the federal government deployed thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines to support these efforts, further militarizing the region.
The institute's report found that, since then, many entrepreneurs are still struggling to keep their businesses open. Some have taken on debt and made other sacrifices to stay afloat.
Amada Armenta, one of the lead researchers and director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute, underscored that the consequences of the raids go beyond economics.
In April, she and her colleagues conducted a series of focus groups for the report. And, “without fail,” Armenta added, at least one participant would end up in tears.
The entrepreneurs cried about the effects the raids had on their businesses, she said. They also cried about the toll they took on their health and on their families.
First, the researchers identified nine places that were subject to enforcement actions, with the goal of sampling a wide breadth of neighborhoods across L.A. County. Ultimately, they landed on businesses in:
The researchers identified 989 businesses within that half a mile by measuring cellphone data near raids.
After that, “we looked to see how many cell phones visited those businesses in the two weeks after a raid happened, compared to the two weeks before,” Armenta told LAist.
That’s how the researchers determined that, after last summer’s raids, the businesses had 46,000 fewer visits. Then, the researchers estimated the lost revenue. In the two weeks after the raids, they calculated a loss of $3.16 million.
To learn more about how businesses in those areas have fared since last summer, the research team conducted surveys and focus groups with 75 entrepreneurs.
The participants, Armenta said, shared “stories of tremendous hardship,” describing chronic fear and psychological distress.
In the surveys, the entrepreneurs repeatedly described a sustained sense of fear, anxiety, depression and hypervigilance. The entrepreneurs continue to limit their movement outside work and home; carry identification documents when they leave the house; monitor community reports of federal agent activity; and develop contingency plans for themselves, their families and their employees.
For many, dreams of expansion are gone. The entrepreneurs described having to lay off some of their employees, taking on more hours themselves and consolidating locales.
The stress of mounting bills has also taken a physical toll on the participants. One store owner described relapsing into alcohol use after maintaining sobriety. She attributed the relapse to prolonged feelings of helplessness and loss of control. Another business owner said the stress of seeing her family’s savings dry up caused her so much stress her face became paralyzed.
“We thought this was an important part of the story,” Armenta said. “There's been a couple of other reports that have come out about the way that the raids impact L.A.'s economy or businesses, but none of it has documented [their] effect on entrepreneurs.”
“And when we think about Latinos, particularly, they didn't just experience this as an attack on their businesses,” she added. “They experienced it as an attack on their communities, on their families, on themselves.”
Disclosure: Julia Barajas is a part-time graduate student at UCLA Law.
