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LA County supervisors approve aid plan for immigrant families after raids PG 02
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A Beacon Media, Inc. Publication
MONDAY, JULY 14-JULY 20, 2025
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VOL. 14,
NO. 232
Trump’s FEMA proposals and feud with Gavin Newsom LA County, city, Pasadena and others sue to stop immigration raids
could devastate California’s disaster response
By Joe Taglieri By Jeremy Lindenfeld, Capital & Main, ProPublica This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
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n January, Katie Clark’s one-bedroom rental of more than 15 years, and nearly everything inside, was incinerated by Los Angeles County’s Eaton fire, one of the most destructive wildfires in California history. For her troubles, she received a one-time payment of $770 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which she used to replace clothes, food and a crate for her dog. While it was only a fraction of what she needed, the money was at least available while she waited for other funding. As an organizer with the Altadena Tenants Union who has been helping renters with their FEMA applications, Clark knows just how common her experience has been for fire survivors. She believes federal and local agencies severely underestimated the need and cost of housing for the 150,000 people displaced by the fires, leaving many still struggling to recover. A FEMA spokesperson denied the accusation, saying the agency’s “ongoing assessments indicate that the current Rental Assistance program is effectively meeting the housing needs of survivors eligible for FEMA assistance.” The disaster response “has been so shockingly bad,” Clark said, but she recognizes that without FEMA’s help in responding to fires that killed at least 30 people and destroyed more than 16,000 structures, “it could have been so, so, so much worse.” “We would have seen a whole lot more people left to their own devices.
Eaton Fire damage. | Photo courtesy of Cal Fire CC BY-NC 2.0
And what that would mean is homelessness. It would mean people just abandoned,” Clark said. Even before President Donald Trump and Gov. Gavin Newsom squared off over Trump’s decision to send National Guard troops to quell immigration protests, before Newsom likened Trump to a dictator and Trump endorsed the idea of arresting the governor, the question of how much California could continue to rely on FEMA was front and center. It’s a critical question in a state — with its earthquakes, wildfires, floods, drought and extreme heat — that frequently suffers some of the costliest disasters in the country. Since Trump’s inauguration, his administration has floated sweeping propos-
als that would slash FEMA dollars and make disasters harder to declare. This has left both blue and red states wrestling with scenarios in which they must pay for what FEMA will not. States have long counted on FEMA to cover at least 75% of declared major disaster response and recovery costs. In just the past few months, FEMA has denied federal assistance for devastating floods in West Virginia and a destructive windstorm in Washington. The agency approved such funding for deadly tornadoes in Arkansas after Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders appealed an initial denial and personally begged the president for help. Last month, ProPublica See Disaster response Page 03
reported that FEMA missed a May deadline to open the application process for many grants, including funding that states rely on to pay for basic emergency management operations. The delay, which the agency has not explained, appears to have little precedent. In California, Trump has cast doubt on whether he will approve the $40 billion Newsom has requested to help pay for recovery costs associated with the fires, including $16.8 billion from FEMA to rebuild property, infrastructure and remove debris. That’s on top of the almost $140 million the agency has already provided to individual survivors. The president told reporters last month that
joet@beaconmedianews.com
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os Angeles County and several cities in the region on Tuesday took legal action to try to stop federal immigration enforcement operations that have continued for over a month. The county and city of LA along with Pasadena, Monterey Park, Montebello, Pico Rivera, Santa Monica, Culver City and West Hollywood filed a motion to intervene in the Vasquez Perdomo et al. v. Noem et al. lawsuit. Brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the proposed classaction “seeks to stop the federal government from engaging in aggressive and dangerous immigration enforcement practices in ... the Los Angeles area,” according to a statement from the city of Pasadena. The ACLU suit against the federal government is on behalf of people who claim federal agents illegally stopped or detained them. According to the lawsuit’s complaint document filed with the federal court in California’s Central District, federal agencies including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection have conducted unconstitutional, unlawful immigration raids by targeting people based on their perceived race or ethnicity to choose who to stop and conducting stops without probable cause, warrantless home raids and illegal worksite raids. Mayor Karen Bass said the Trump administration “is treating Los Angeles as a test case for how far it can go in driving its political agenda forward while pushing the Constitution aside. The city of Los Angeles, along with the county, cities, organizations and Angelenos across LA, is taking the administration to court to stop its clear violation of the United States Constitution and federal law. “We will not be intimidated — we are making Los Angeles the example of how people who believe in American values will stand together and stand united,” Bass said in a statement Tuesday. “The federal government has concentrated thousands of armed immigration agents, many of whom lack visible identification, and military troops in our communities, conducting unconstitutional raids, roundups and anonymous detentions, sowing fear and chaos among our residents,” LA City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto said in a statement. “Today’s motion to intervene shows we will not stand by and allow these raids to continue or to become the standard operating procedure in our communities.” The Department of Homeland Security has denied the lawsuit’s allegations. “Claims that individuals have been ‘targeted’ by law enforcement because of their skin color are disgusting and categorically FALSE,” according to an agency social media post. “DHS enforcement operations are highly targeted, and officers do their due diligence.” DHS previously stated, “ICE detention facilities have higher standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens. These types of smears are designed to demonize and villainize our brave ICE law enforcement. This garbage has directly led to a nearly 700 percent increase in the assaults on ICE law enforcement officers.” See Immigration raids Page 27