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MONDAY, JANUARY 12-JANUARY 18, 2026
NO. 258
VOL. 15,
Riverside County Sheriff Bianco campaigns for governor on LA’s Skid Row
Thousands of immigrant students flee LA Unified schools after ‘chilling effect’ of ICE raids
By Joe Taglieri
By Ben Chapman for The 74 via Stacker
joet@beaconmedianews.com
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iverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco made a gubernatorial campaign stop Tuesday on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, where he said Democrats’ policies have led to a crisis of homelessness and lawlessness. Bianco, a Republican who according to recent polls is leading the field of declared candidates, and veterans advocate Kate Monroe toured areas of downtown Los Angeles where for decades encampments have lined the streets and people experience unsheltered homelessness daily. “We have complete lawlessness down here, it is complete lawlessness uninterrupted that we are seeing,” Bianco said in a video posted to social media. “We have laws that prevent this, and we have politics that enable it. And that all has to change.” The candidate, Monroe and reporters walked a section of Skid Row near the Los Angeles Police Department’s Sixth Street station. Monroe and Bianco spoke with several individuals in the area about their experiences living without shelter. Bianco, who was elected Riverside County sheriff in 2018 and reelected four years later, called for “compassion for these people that need our help instead of money for campaigns.” He has criticized Gov. Gavin Newsom’s policies as ineffective and possibly corrupt. “We keep calling it homelessness,” Bianco told USA Today. “It has nothing to do with homeless here. We walked around building after building after building of homes — the people are still living in tents. This is not about homes. This is about drug addiction, alcohol addiction,
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco speaks with an unidentified Angeleno during his tour through homeless encampments on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles. | Photo courtesy of Chad Bianco/ Facebook
mental health care and the complete failure of us to address human beings in a compassionate manner to get them the help that they need.” In an interview with KTLA in September, the sheriff said law enforcement know-how is the key to solving the homelessness crisis and accused Newsom and the State Legislature of not effectively addressing the issue because it’s a “money grab” and a “money laundering scheme to NGOs and nonprofits.” According to the governor’s office, the Newsom administration has provided over $27 billion to local communities to address homelessness.
Last spring Newsom, who is termed out and has served as governor since 2019, released a model ordinance for local governments statewide to use as a guideline for enacting their own policies for removing homeless encampments. The legal framework outlines activities that are prohibited regarding encampments and ways to approach enforcement. However, last year the California State Auditor found that California “must do more to assess the costeffectiveness of its homelessness programs.” Auditors noted that three of five state programs to address homelessness they reviewed could not be assessed for
cost-effectiveness because of a lack of sufficient data. According to the 2025 Greater Los Angeles Homeless County, 3,400 people were homeless on a single night last February on Skid Row, with more than half living unsheltered. Skid Row is four square miles of downtown Los Angeles, near the Arts District and Little Tokyo. Bianco and Monroe, the CEO of VetComm which helps veterans with VA disability claims, suggested a “base camp” model to address homelessness. The idea is for people seeking a path off the the streets to live at a temporary site where they can receive services they need, including addiction rehabilitation, learning a trade and, if they find a job, live in something akin to a group home, Monroe told USA Today. “From the law enforcement perspective, I’m watching hand-to-hand exchanges of drugs, I’m seeing needles. It’s an issue, it’s a major issue,” Bianco said in a video posted to social media. “From a human perspective, from a non-law enforcement civilian perspective, you’re seeing faces and you’re hearing voices, they’re real people. You’re hearing story after story of the same thing — they all know what’s broken, they all know this is broken, they all know that government is not helping.” Data from the 2025 homeless count showed over 72,000 people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles County, with over 43,000 in the city of LA. The county’s population totals nearly 10 million. Last year nearly 4,000 Riverside County residents experienced homelessness. The county’s population is around 2.5 million people.
| Image courtesy of The 74/Los Angeles Unified School District
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os Angeles schools have lost thousands of immigrant students for years because of the city’s rising prices and falling birth rates — and now that trend has intensified after the “chilling effect” of this year’s federal immigration raids, district officials said. This school year, the Los Angeles school district has lost more than 13,000 immigrant students, mostly Hispanic, school officials said, with students fleeing in the months since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stepped up activity in Los Angeles in March. The nation’s secondlargest district now enrolls about 62,000 English learners, according to new figures obtained by The 74, down from more than 75,000 immigrant students in the 2024-25 academic year. “Some children are just choosing not to go back to school, especially those who are immigrants,” said Evelyn Aleman, founder of Our Voice, a parents’ group that advocates for LA’s Spanishspeaking and low-income families. “That’s because they know that immigrant children have been arrested or detained by ICE.”
In the 2018-19 academic year, the district enrolled more than 157,000 English learners. The downward trend of these students represents a stunning turnaround for a district that in 2003 was nearly half immigrant kids. It comes amid a districtwide decline in enrollment. LA is not the only city seeing declines in immigrant enrollment since ICE cracked down. Denver, Miami and San Diego have also reported such losses. Since January, school officials, municipal leaders and state lawmakers have sought to present a brave face against the immigration crackdowns promised by President Donald Trump. Even before the ICE raids began, they issued guidance, rolled out tools and policies and proposed legislation to limit federal immigration enforcement. But the fear of ICE became real for many families, Aleman said, after federal agents in April showed up at two LAUSD schools seeking “access” to young students. The federal agents’ school visits — with as many as four appearing at one time, looking for information on children in grades one through six
See Immigrant students Page 19