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MONDAY, JANUARY 19-JANUARY 25, 2026
LA County board seeks ‘ICE-free zones’
By Joe Taglieri joet@beaconmedianews.com
The Board of Supervisors onTuesdaydirected attorneys to draft a law thatestablishes“ICE-Free Zones” to prevent Los Angeles County facilities from serving as staging areas or processing centers for federal immigration enforcement activity.
According to the motion approved with a 5-0 vote and authored by Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Hilda Solis, the forthcoming ordinance is based on an executive order in October by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. The Chicago law was in response to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement commandeering several school and city-owned parking lots.
The LA County board’s approved motion noted an Oct. 8 ICE raid in San Pedro at the county’s Deane Dana Friendship Park and Nature Center.
“The agents arrested three people and threatened to arrest staff from the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation who responded to the scene,” according to the motion. “Because of this raid, county residents avoided the park, were unable to access it and use it for recreation as intended, and county staff were diverted from their regular duties.”
In response to federal immigration law enforcement becoming part of everyday life in the region, supervisors decided “it is imperative the County of Los Angeles take action to protect our spaces so that they can be accessed by the public and used for their intended county purposes, and to prohibit county property from being used as staging areas for these raids, or other operations, which may result in unlawful actions such as detaining U.S. citizens and denying due process to County residents of all immigration statuses.”
The motion directs county attorneys to develop a draft ordinance within 30 days that prohibits all county property “from being used for other than county purposes” and “as a staging area, processing location or operations base for unauthorized civil law enforcement actions, including civil immigration enforcement.”
The ordinance would also require posted signs at county facilities indicating the property is county-owned and can’t be used for noncounty operations. Signs should also say the law “does not restrict or interfere with the execution of lawful judicial warrants or the enforcement of criminal law, nor does it limit the rights of any person or entity under state or federal law,” according to the motion.
During the board meeting Tuesday, Horvath referred to the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis by an immigration enforcement agent, the shooting of two
other men by ICE agents in Portland and the fatal shooting of Keith Porter Jr. in the San Fernando Valley on New Year’s Eve.
“Our federal government is killing its own citizens,” Horvath said. “Let that sink in, our federal government is freely, without cause, murdering its own citizens in broad daylight in front of witnesses and cameras. ... People have been shot. People have been killed. Families have been shattered.”
Although the county has no control over the actions of federal agencies, “we do control our own property, and we have the responsibility to act when lives are at stake,” Horvath added.
Solis said the main thrust of the proposed ordinance is that “you don’t have the right to come in and harass people without a federal warrant. And if you use our property
to stage, you need to show us documentation as to why — you need to have a warrant to back that up.”
Supervisor Janice Hahn said the county “cannot allow our county property to be a tool for the work (federal agents) are doing.”
She added, “What they’re doing is not making us safer, it is putting residents, citizens, children in danger.”
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli for the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles County, criticized the county’s action in an X post.
“Local jurisdictions cannot target and exclude federal agents from public spaces,” Essayli wrote. “We will use any public spaces necessary to enforce federal law. Anyone who attempts to impede our agents will be arrested and charged, including county employees. We have already
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LA regional homeless count to begin this week
By City News Service
Withtheannual Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count set to begin this week, officials are seeking more volunteers to help with the three-day operation, which they say will be made smoother due to several improvements.
The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority will conduct its point-in-time count Jan. 20-22. While the agency has nearly 3,000 volunteers registered so far, the goal is to have about 4,200 volunteers. Anyone who is interested in volunteering can sign up at theycountwillyou. org.
The count will begin Tuesday in the San Fernando Valley and the metro Los Angeles area. Volunteers in the San Gabriel Valley and East Los Angeles will count on Wednesday. Finally, the count will wrap up Thursday in the Antelope Valley, West and South Los Angeles, and the South Bay/Harbor region.
The cities of Glendale, Long Beach and Pasadena conduct their own counts through their respective health departments.
The count allows local governments to satisfy the Housing and Urban Development Department’s regulations. It also serves as an annual assessment of how many people are living on the streets.
“It takes our entire community to solve homelessness. We need our friends, families, and colleagues to join us in counting next week,” said Gita O’Neill, interim LAHSA CEO. “We are especially looking for additional volunteers in the San Gabriel Valley, East LA County, and the South Bay region. The count provides critical insights about our unhoused neighbors. With everyone’s combined efforts, LAHSA can help
direct services where they will be most effective to address homelessness in Los Angeles.”
Ahead of the count, LAHSA officials said they are enacting several improvements for the operation.
Thehomelessness agency will be using an app-based data collection process for the fourth year in a row and improved maps, assigning more staff to provide technical support and help with supply distribution at deployment sites, and to ensure volunteers collect their materials to get the count done quickly and efficiently.
LAHSAalsosimplified training materials to improve the volunteer experience, according to officials. Training materials were updated for deployed site coordinators and logistics specialists to ensure consistency in process across Los Angeles County.
LAHSA is coordinating with the county’s Department of Health Services and Emergency Centralized Response Center for additional outreach staff support. This improvement is expected to aid in “special consideration” census tracts and areas, and more rugged locations such as basins, creeks and deserts that are too dangerous, hard-toreach or inaccessible for community volunteers.
Lastly, the processes for the Housing Inventory (sheltered) and Youth counts have been overhauled to improve response rates and generate bigger samples.
The Youth Count will be conducted over nine additional days for those aged 10 to 19. In a similar fashion, the Housing Inventory Count will begin earlier to optimize data review and make it easier to validate responses.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents operate June 12 in Los Angeles. | Photo courtesy of Tia Dufour/U.S. Department of Homeland Security