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| 'Extraordinary father' dies in ICE custody. His family seeks answers | | A Honduran man who lived and worked in the U.S. for 26 years died after being held at a California immigration detention facility for more than a month, and his family is calling for an investigation, saying he complained of deteriorating health conditions before his death.
Luis Beltrán Yanez-Cruz, 68, died on Jan. 6 at 1:18 a.m. at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital in Indio after suffering from heart-related health issues, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. He was being held at the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico before he was transferred to the hospital.
Federal officials said Yanez-Cruz was “encountered” during a Nov. 16 enforcement operation in Newark, N.J., but he was not the target of the operation, his daughter said. He was put into removal proceedings, which were pending at the time of his death.
His daughter, Josselyn Yanez, blames ICE for not taking his health concerns seriously and not providing medical attention as his health deteriorated. In a statement, ICE said Yanez-Cruz was put in the detention facility’s medical unit for chest pains before being sent to El Centro Regional Medical Center. He was then transported by helicopter to Indio.
“There needs to be an investigation because this is not normal,” Yanez said. “He started having symptoms weeks ago; they could have done something.”
In response to the family’s claims, a Homeland Security official said in a statement, “ICE has higher detention standards than most US prisons that hold actual US citizens. All detainees are provided with 3 meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, and toiletries, and have access to phones to communicate with their family members and lawyers.” [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Times. 2026-01-20 | | | | New 211 LA partnerships expand disaster relief in the county – Daily News | | 211 LA County is creating a group of nonprofits and companies that will band together with 211 in response to disasters, to provide relief and support for victims, inspired by 211’s work in the wake of the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, the group announced Tuesday, Jan. 20. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2026-01-20 | | | | ‘It’s unforgiving’: California park officials grapple with recent deaths on Mount Baldy | California | The Guardian | | The peak is just there in the distance, hovering above Los Angeles, snow-capped and tantalizing to the city-bound.
About an hour from the sands of the Pacific coast, Mount Baldy and the surrounding Angeles national forest have long been a wilderness playground to millions who call the greater Los Angeles area home.
But the mountain, which rises to 10,000ft above sea level, has also become a treacherous landmark. Between 2016 and 2025, 23 people died on Mount Baldy. And at the end of December, another tragedy: a 19-year-old hiker plunged 500ft off a trail known as the Devil’s Backbone. [Article] | | by , . 2026-01-20 | | | | California agency tasked with scrutinizing jail deaths hasn’t completed a single review – Daily News | | A state office created in 2024 to scrutinize local investigations into jail deaths has yet to complete a single review of the more than 150 people who have died in custody in California’s county jails over the past year-and-a-half.
That’s because it hasn’t received the records needed to fully analyze the deaths, according to the Board of State and Community Corrections, a regulatory body appointed by the governor to oversee the state’s jails and juvenile halls. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2026-01-20 | | | | California’s government broadband gamble will cost taxpayers – Press Telegram | | Golden State Fiber is the latest example of California governments gambling with taxpayer money: forty counties, $111 million in bond financing, and a government-run broadband network. History suggests this bet will end the same way most do—over budget, underperforming, and on the public’s dime.
The Golden State Connect Authority (GSCA) intends to deploy open-access fiber throughout rural areas of the state, north of Sacramento and through the Eastern Sierra Nevada down to the southeastern border near Mexico. The just-announced bond financing will enable GSCA to build broadband infrastructure in Alpine, Amador, Glenn, Imperial, Mono, and Tehama counties, as well as the Town of Mammoth Lakes.
GSCA is a supervising agency made up of 40 members elected from each of the counties of the Rural County Representatives of California. The authority will finance, build, own, operate, and maintain the networks, with hopes that multiple internet service providers will compete for these rural customers. As the non-partisan Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) has reported, such government-owned networks (GONs) often struggle to recruit sufficient providers, as many already own and maintain their own broadband infrastructure. [Article] | | by , Long Beach Press Telegram. 2026-01-20 | | | | Los Angeles County kicks off 2026 homeless count amid funding uncertainty – Daily News | | Thousands of volunteers will fan out across Los Angeles County Tuesday night, Jan. 20, to conduct the nation’s largest count of people living unsheltered.
The annual snapshot comes at a particularly complicated moment, shaped by heightened uncertainty over immigration enforcement, friction between state and local governments and the federal government, and renewed scrutiny over how homeless data is collected and used. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2026-01-20 | | | | Cláudia Nunes: How CEQA is freezing AI competition at the infrastructure level – Daily News | | California is the engine of global AI. It’s the ecosystem where the companies and technologies driving today’s AI revolution were born. But an environmental law passed in the 1970s for a radically different industrial economy, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), is now threatening to stall that engine.
By subjecting virtually every large data center project, as well as the critical electric grid infrastructure needed to power them, to lengthy environmental reviews, public hearings, and extensive exposure to litigation, CEQA is creating regulatory uncertainty and delays at the heart of AI: data centers. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2026-01-20 | | | | Humboldt County health insurance rates jump $182 per month | | Health insurance rates have spiked for many Californians this month following the expiration of Affordable Care Act credits. With some Humboldt County residents expected to drop their insurance or switch to thinner coverage, health care organizations are concerned about the ripple effects.
Residents who use Covered California are seeing an average increase of $182 per month in Humboldt County. Middle-income people are seeing an increase of around $500 a month statewide, according to Covered California data.
Covered California Executive Director Jessica Altman said the jump in price is causing shock and dismay as some see their insurance premiums double.
“The most common question that I get is, ‘What am I supposed to do? ’” said Altman.
People who buy insurance through the state’s marketplace — including small business owners, gig workers, independent contractors, people whose employers don’t offer them health insurance, those who are too young or make too much to qualify for Medi-Cal — are now facing sticker shock during the open enrollment process.
The subsidies came amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The federal government began offering more tax credits for low-income people and new subsidies for middle-income earners who get insurance through state marketplaces like Covered California. But the credits expired Dec. 31.
About 7,500 people purchase insurance through Covered California in Humboldt County. So far, Covered California’s enrollment is about the same as last year in Northern California, but new sign-ups are down 30%, according to the agency.
Altman said now, people can move to enroll in a higher-deductible health plan, forgo health insurance altogether, or face tough life decisions about insurance coverage. [Article] | | by , Eureka Times-Standard. 2026-01-20 | | | | LA County launches new homelessness department: ‘The buck is going to stop with us’ | LAist | | Los Angeles officials gathered Tuesday for a media event to launch the county’s newest department. The new entity faces a daunting mandate: solve the region’s deeply entrenched homelessness crisis.
The new L.A. County Homeless Services and Housing department takes the mantle from the embattled regional L.A. Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA, which until now has overseen the funding and administration of homeless services across a county where more than 72,000 people experience homelessness on any given night. [Article] | | by , . 2026-01-20 | | | | The state cut a program that supports people with disabilities in disasters. Advocates are alarmed | LAist | | State regulators quietly cut funding late last year for a program that supports people with disabilities during disasters in Southern California.
The cuts came about a year after the most devastating fires in L.A. County history leveled thousands of homes and killed at least 31 people, most of whom were older and had access and functional needs. [Article] | | by , . 2026-01-20 | | | | Home prices dip in 88% of California – Daily News | | Here’s some modest relief for California house hunters: values were falling in 88% of the state as 2025 ended.
To get a local sense of where prices are going, my trusty spreadsheet reviewed home value data from Zillow for 125 of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas, including 16 from California.
In the 12 months ended in December, values were down in 14 of the 16 California metros. But savings were meek, with the largest dip found in Stockton, off only 4% last year vs up 2% in 2024 and 36% over the previous four years. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2026-01-20 | | | | Ground is broken for new Rosamond shopping center | News | avpress.com | | ROSAMOND — Rosamond community and business leaders helped break ground on a new shopping center Friday morning on the corner of Rosamond Boulevard and 30th Street West.
The large shopping center, called Golden City Plaza, will feature a Bartz-Altadonna Community Health Center, a 76 Gas Station, a Dairy Queen, a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and a Tesla charging station. There are also 10 additional 1,000-foot retail spaces that are being negotiated that can accommodate local or national retailers. [Article] | | by , . 2026-01-20 | | | | On eve of homeless count, LA County unveils new county homeless department, service call center – Daily News | | The staff of Los Angeles County’s newly created Department of Homeless Services and Housing and its many partners worked in cubicles Tuesday morning in a one-stop services call center on the seventh floor of the Hall of Records in Downtown Los Angeles.
The Emergency Centralized Response Center (ECRC) was touted by county officials as a coordinated, faster approach, directed by the 20-day-old county department tasked with battling homelessness in a smarter, more efficient way than when the much-criticized Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) was in charge. [Article] | | by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2026-01-20 | | | | What CA Democrats Padilla, Schiff saw at new ICE detention center - CalMatters | | Democratic U.S. Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff today conducted an oversight visit at the state’s newest and largest immigrant detention center, located in California City, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles.
In remarks to reporters, both highlighted what they described as inadequate medical care at the site.
“The most frequent feedback we got was the inadequacy of the medical care they are receiving,” said Schiff. He described meeting a diabetic detainee who he said has not received treatment for her condition in two months. “That’s frightening,” he said. [Article] | | by , CalMatters. 2026-01-20 | | | | Where Did All the American-Born Roofers Go? - The New York Times | | In 1976, Matthew Moore marched into the roofers’ union hall in Orange County, Calif., signed his card and, at 19, found his calling. Within hours, he put on a pair of hot boots, climbed a ladder and became one of the many union men laying the roofs of tract homes spreading out across Southern California.
Only two years later, Mr. Moore, a native of the state who never went to college, bought a three-bedroom house of his own in Whittier.
“That kind of work suited me right down to my soul,” said Mr. Moore, now 68 and retired. “I worked outside in the sun every day. Nothing better.”
It was also the kind of well-paying blue-collar job that once helped drive a strong middle-class economy, and has largely vanished. It’s work that many Americans want to see restored.
In the decades since Mr. Moore walked into that union hall, an enormous demographic shift has transformed his industry. In the 1970s and 1980s, the share of foreign-born workers in construction was the same as in other industries. But that quickly changed. Today that share is nearly twice as high as in other jobs.
An oft-repeated explanation for this sea change is that immigrants took jobs from Americans while, somewhat paradoxically, Americans no longer wanted to do the backbreaking work required to build a house. But a review of data and historical records, as well as interviews with many people who work in or study construction, tell a different story: First, construction jobs became less desirable, as eroding wages and working conditions diminished the quality and job security of the profession. Only then did immigrants, with the encouragement of the political and business class, fill a gap that was already opening.
Most of those foreign-born workers are not naturalized citizens, and many are undocumented. That leaves an industry of 6.8 million workers particularly vulnerable to President Trump’s mass deportation effort: Builders are reporting labor shortages as some workers are detained or deported and others stay home amid immigration raids.
And without workers, an already strained housing market will only grow more so, driving up historically high home prices and slowing the production of new homes. [Article] | | by , . 2026-01-20 | | | | LA County rallies protest Trump administration policies at ‘Free America’ walkouts – Press Telegram | | Hundreds joined more than a dozen protests in Los Angeles County on Tuesday, joining nationwide “Free America Walkouts” to decry what organizers call the Trump administration’s authoritarian policies and violence.
More than 160 people gathered at Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena at 2 p.m. Jan. 20, the time synchronized with other local protests held in Bellflower, Brea, Burbank, Claremont, Long Beach, Lynwood, Orange, San Pedro, Santa Clarita, Santa Monica, Sierra Madre, Torrance and Venice.
Grace Park organized a four-hour walkout for students at Cal State Los Angeles attended by about 30 protesters. The stakes are real, she said, saying everyone should stand up to injustice and cruelty being meted out by the Trump administration to immigrants and communities. [Article] | | by , Long Beach Press Telegram. 2026-01-20 | | | | Some detainees were arrested at routine immigration appointments, Padilla and Schiff say after oversight tour | LA Local | | Overcrowded cells, moldy food and lack of medical care are some of the issues plaguing a California detention center amid the recent onslaught of immigration raids by the Trump administration, according to Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, who on Tuesday toured the facility in Kern County. [Article] | | by , . 2026-01-20 | | | | LA County Approves Budget Process Reforms for Transparency | | he Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved sweeping reforms this month aimed at making the county's budget process more transparent and accessible to residents.
The changes, recommended by the Governance Reform Task Force, will affect budget hearings beginning with the fiscal year 2026-27 cycle. The task force unanimously approved the recommendations Dec. 10. [Article] | | by , . 2026-01-20 | | | | California homeowners could qualify for grants for new roofs and fire safety | | Some homeowners in areas of California with high wildfire risk could eventually get money for new roofs or to build fire-resistant zones around their properties under a new state law that went into effect Jan. 1. [Article] | | by , . 2026-01-20 | | | | Free Vending Carts: County, city partner to help vendors operate safely and legally | News | ladowntownnews.com | | The Los Angeles County Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO), in partnership with the City of Los Angeles Economic and Workforce Development Department (EWDD), has launched the Sidewalk Vending Cart Program, which invests $2.8 million in more than 280 free, health-code-compliant food vending carts for eligible sidewalk vendors across LA. The program is designed to help vendors meet new legal requirements, overcome financial barriers to formalization and operate safely and legally in their communities. [Article] | | by , . 2026-01-20 | | |
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