California
Crisis in California: A $6,500 cartel ticket and a dream of driving for DoorDash
JACUMBA HOT SPRINGS, Calif. – Around three dozen people, all but four of them men, stood in a line in an empty hiking trail parking lot. They held passports open for inspection. Clean duffle bags and backpacks sat at their feet, tagged with identical white labels from the Border Patrol agents processing them.
All appeared to be in their 20s or 30s, a demographic seen often in videos from the southern border in recent months.
“Right now it is definitely all military-aged males,” said Brett Christenson with Border Vets, a group of veterans on a mission to patch holes in the fence separating California from Mexico.
Approximately 30 migrants lined up in an empty parking lot near Jacumba Hot Springs, California, on March 27, 2024. (Hannah Ray Lambert/Fox News Digital)
CRISIS IN CALIFORNIA: MIGRANTS OVERWHELMING STATE WITH ‘NO END IN SIGHT,’ LOCAL OFFICIALS WARN
As the group patiently waited within eyesight of Interstate 8, a man pulled into the cracked-dirt parking lot on a ramshackle motorcycle, flames and a jagged smile painted on its sidecar.
His outfit looked curated from an Area 51 thrift store — sunglasses shaped like Martian eyes perched atop the bridge of his nose, and his shirt featured an alien relaxing on a beach. His gray beard pointed to the right, windswept as he raised his phone to photograph the scene.
“I have compassion for these refugees,” the man said in a slow drawl. “But they’ve got to do it the right way.”
TURKISH CITIZEN: I PAID A CARTEL $6,500 TO GET TO CALIFORNIA BORDER:
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A mile or so up a rough dirt road, six more people stood next to their suitcases and backpacks. They debated walking to where the others were already being processed or continuing to wait for Customs and Border Protection agents to pick them up.
Everyone in the group was young and had traveled from Turkey or Uzbekistan.
“USA don’t give us visa, and we come here illegally,” Ugur, a 33-year-old from Istanbul, told Fox News.
He used to work as a store manager, but said life — and the economy — has gotten worse every year in Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“He is dictator,” Ugur said of Erdogan. “I hate him.”
Ugur paid a cartel $6,500 to drop him off at the border and expected to spend a day or two in custody before flying to Los Angeles. He hopes to live in Santa Monica and drive for DoorDash to make money, an idea that seemed to have been shared with him by friends who have already settled in America.
“If U.S. government let me work, I can work,” he said, adding that asylum seekers must wait 180 days for work authorization.
Last September, the New York Post reported that migrants in New York City were delivering food for app companies — including DoorDash — despite not being authorized by the government to work. Some migrants said they paid registered account holders to use their account.
A DoorDash spokesperson told the Post the app “has a rigorous, multi-layered identity verification system,” but acknowledged that it might not be 100% effective at stopping account sharing.
Ugur, 33, said he paid a cartel $6,500 to drop him off near the California-Mexico border. He plans to drive for DoorDash to make money when he reaches Santa Monica. (Hannah Ray Lambert/Fox News Digital)
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Ugur and the other migrants were among the approximately 1,000 people encountered by border patrol agents on any given day in the San Diego sector alone. Agents there encountered more than 230,000 during fiscal year 2023, a record 2024 is on track to shatter.
“This is a massive problem,” Marine Corps veteran, CEO and self-described “ringleader” of Border Vets Kate Monroe said. “Infrastructurally, economically we cannot support this for generations.”
Like Christenson, Monroe is disturbed by the high proportion of young men illegally migrating from countries with “ill will” toward the U.S. But as a mother, she feels some sympathy for the families that cross the border.
“I can understand being somewhere else and being poor, not being safe, being hungry and looking here and thinking, ‘This is a good idea.’ I can see how I would try to get here,” she said. “But the way in which we force people to come is broken.”
Someone used a wooden pallet to wind up and pull aside the razor wire Monroe and Christenson had strung across one gap between a rocky hill and the end of the metal border fence. Plastic garbage and discarded clothes littered the other side of the barrier. Ripped up passports were shoved in the gaps between boulders.
Monroe said she has collected shredded passports from all across the world near the fence.
“Finding tons and tons of passports from Pakistan, Ethiopia, Ecuador, China just crudely tossed on the other side so that they could claim asylum, that was surprising to me,” she said.
Kate Monroe pulls the torn remnants of passports out from between boulders near the California-Mexico border on March 27, 2024. (Hannah Ray Lambert/Fox News Digital)
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While many migrants face life-threatening perils on their journey, Christenson said the coordination and ease of some people’s travel surprised him when he started visiting the border.
“It’s not this arduous trek they make across Mexico, up and down valleys and rivers and everything. It’s very much just through the cartels,” he said. “They come with their roller bags as if they’re going through TSA. They meet border patrol at designated camps, gaps in the wall, and they’re processed to move on from there.”
“It’s a very easy process for the right amount of money,” he added.
California
Republican governor candidate Chad Bianco says he’s the ‘antithesis to California state government’
We are counting down to the California governor’s race. Chad Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County, is one of the two biggest names running on the Republican ticket.
In a one-on-one interview with Eyewitness News political reporter Josh Haskell, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said, “I am the antithesis to California state government because I am going to take a nuclear bomb into that building and absolutely destroy everything that they do to us behind closed doors.”
Although he’s been elected by the voters twice, Bianco says he’s not a politician — which is why he believes his campaign for California governor is resonating, as reflected in the polls.
“President Trump, in one year, from 2025 when he took over, until now, did absolutely nothing to harm California. What’s harming California is 30 years of Democrat one-party rule that have created an environment here that no one can live in anymore. They’ve only been successful here in California because we vote D no matter what. You vote D or die. I mean, that’s it. Charles Manson would be elected in California if he was the only Democrat on the ballot,” Bianco said.
Bianco isn’t the only conservative Republican running for governor, and according to polling, he’s neck-and-neck with former Fox News host Steve Hilton.
SEE ALSO: CA governor candidate Steve Hilton says ‘everybody supports’ Trump’s immigration policies
Leading in some polls in the wide-open California Governor’s race as the June primary creeps closer is Republican and former Fox News host Steve Hilton.
“Steve has no chance of winning in November. The Democrats know that I’m going to win in November, and so they have to do everything they can to keep me out of that,” Bianco said.
When asked about the affordability crisis in the state, Bianco said, “Almost the entire issue of affordability in California is because of regulation, excessive regulation imposed by government. Every single regulation can be signed away with the governor’s signature.”
“It is a drug and alcohol addiction problem that, and a mental health problem,” he said about the homelessness crisis. “Every single bit of money that is going to these nonprofits that say ‘homeless,’ zero money. You’re getting absolutely nothing. I can’t tell you that we would end what we see in the homeless situation within a year, but I guarantee you we would never see it again after two years.”
When challenged on that prediction, pointing to how the state doesn’t have the facilities to treat the number of people living on our streets, Bianco responded, “We have been conditioned to believe that buildings take five years to build. It takes 90 days or less to build a house, but in California, it takes three to five years because the government won’t allow it. The regulations that are destroying this state are going to be removed with me as the governor.”
Bianco also said California jails shouldn’t have to play the role of treatment facilities.
Although he says he supports the Trump administration and wants the president’s endorsement, Bianco has been traveling the state — meeting not just with Republicans, but Democrats and independents as well. He says all of our state government officials have failed.
The primary election is June 2.
No clear front-runner in race for California governor, new poll shows
A new poll shows there’s still no clear front-runner in the race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Copyright © 2026 KABC Television, LLC. All rights reserved.
California
PlayOn Sports fined $1.1 million by California watchdog over student data violations
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (FOX26) — California’s privacy watchdog has ordered PlayOn Sports to pay a $1.10 million fine and change how it handles consumer data after finding the company’s practices violated state law in ways that affected students and schools in the state.
The California Privacy Protection Agency Board issued the decision following a settlement reached by CalPrivacy’s Enforcement Division.
The decision is the first by the board to address privacy violations involving students and California schools.
Schools across the country use PlayOn Sports’ GoFan platform to sell digital tickets to high school sporting events, theater performances, and homecoming and prom dances, with attendees presenting tickets at the door on their mobile phones.
Schools also use PlayOn Sports’ platforms for other sports-related activities, including attending games, streaming them online, and looking up statistics about teams and players.
In California, about 1,400 schools contract with PlayOn Sports for these services.
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GoFan is also the official ticketing platform for the California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body for high school sports.
According to the board’s decision, PlayOn Sports used tracking technologies to collect personal information and deliver targeted advertisements to ticketholders and others using its services.
The company allegedly required Californians to click “agree” to tracking technologies before they could use their tickets or view PlayOn Sports websites, without providing a sufficient opt-out option.
“Students trying to go to prom or a high school football game shouldn’t have to leave their privacy rights at the door,” said Michael Macko, CalPrivacy’s head of enforcement. “You couldn’t attend these events without showing your ticket, and you couldn’t show your ticket without being tracked for advertising. California’s privacy law does not work that way. Businesses must ensure they offer lawful ways for Californians to opt-out, particularly with captive audiences.”
The decision also describes students as a uniquely vulnerable population and warns that targeted advertising systems can subject students to profiling that can follow them for years, expose them to manipulative or harmful content, and develop sensitive inferences about their lives.
Instead of providing its own opt-out method, PlayOn Sports directed students and other users to opt out through the Network Advertising Initiative and the Digital Advertising Alliance, which the decision said violated the company’s responsibility to provide its own way for consumers to opt out. The company also allegedly failed to recognize opt-out preference signals and did not provide Californians with sufficient notice of its privacy practices.
“We are committed to making it as easy as possible for all Californians — from high school students to older adults, and everyone in between — to make the choice of whether they want to be tracked or not,” said Tom Kemp, CalPrivacy’s executive director. “Californians can opt-out with covered businesses, and they can sign up for the newly launched DROP system to request that data brokers delete their personal information.”
Beyond the $1.10 million fine, the board’s order requires PlayOn Sports to conduct risk assessments, provide disclosures that are easy to read and understand, and implement proper opt-out methods.
The order also requires the company to comply with California’s privacy law prohibiting the selling or sharing of personal information of consumers between 13 and 16 without their affirmative opt-in consent.
California
California bill to bar police from taking second job with ICE advances in state Assembly
Wednesday, March 4, 2026 4:43AM
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KABC) — A bill that would prevent police officers from moonlighting with federal immigration enforcement agencies, such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is advancing through the California State Assembly.
AB 1537 passed the State Assembly’s committee on public safety on Tuesday.
The bill also requires that officers report any offers for secondary employment related to immigration enforcement to their place of work.
Those failing to comply could face decertification as a peace officer in California.
The bill was introduced by Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, whose district includes Mar Vista, Ladera Heights, Mid-Wilshire and parts of South Los Angeles.
Copyright © 2026 KABC Television, LLC. All rights reserved.
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