Anthony Kuo, Irvine City Council District 5 candidate, 2025 special election questionnaire

• March 21, 2025

Ahead of the special election for the Irvine City Council District 5 seat, the Orange County Register compiled a list of questions to pose to the candidates who wish to represent you. You can find the full questionnaire below. Questionnaires have been edited for spelling, grammar, length and, in some instances, to remove hate speech and offensive language.

Name: Anthony Kuo

Other political positions held: Irvine City Council (at-large, 2018-2022)

City where you reside: Irvine

Also read: As voting begins for Irvine’s Fifth District election, here’s where the candidates stand on issues

In your opinion, what are the biggest issues facing Irvine? And, what do you plan to do about them? 

One of the major driving forces of Irvine’s success and vibrancy as a community is our Master Plan. The idea that neighborhoods can have access to their own schools, recreation, shopping and trails that connect them all is unique and adds to the charm and sense of community in each of our villages. Protecting the Master Plan, especially our open spaces, must be a key priority of the City Council that is balanced against the health of Irvine’s local economy and often overreaching mandates of the state. And, to further enhance neighborhood aesthetics and bolster our commitment to the environment, I support the mayor’s efforts to develop an urban forestation plan and to plant more trees throughout Irvine.

Whether local, state or federal, government’s first responsibility is to keep our residents safe. I’m proud to have partnered with local law enforcement to develop and implement new ideas and seek out resources to curb the rise of crime, including Irvine’s involvement in task forces to stop street racing, halt human trafficking and address property crimes like package and catalytic converter theft. My focus on these issues has earned me the endorsements of Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes and the Irvine Police Association.

What is your vision for the city as undeveloped land becomes scarcer but its population continues to grow?

While there are many neighborhoods throughout our community that are already at “build-out,” there are opportunities to bring housing options in areas of our city that don’t impact the traffic, schools and quality of life of existing residents. When new communities get built, more neighbors move in, but the impacts must be mitigated through road improvements, investment in our infrastructure, partnerships with local schools, expansion and improvement to our parks system and more. As new development occurs, we must be smarter about how Irvine executes and lives up to our Master Plan.

There are those who want to move to Irvine and enjoy a more urban lifestyle. I hope that we can work with property owners to address their needs in areas that don’t change the quality of life for those who chose Irvine for its quieter and more subdued villages.

What do you think the city should do to address homelessness? Are you in support of building and operating a city-run shelter?

In 2018, the county of Orange announced a plan to move thousands of homeless individuals living in tents along the Santa Ana Riverbed next to Angel Stadium to the Great Park. I worked with the local neighbors, city staff and county leaders to push back. Together, plans were developed that addressed the real needs of the homeless rather than moving their “tent city” from place to place. Since then, I’ve worked with local food banks, social services non-profits, affordable housing advocates, veterans organizations and others to tackle the greater issues causing homelessness.

I support building a city-managed homeless shelter with services and opportunities to put clients on a pathway. The question is and will always be “where?” and “how?” We must locate the shelter convenient enough for clients to be able to seek out much-needed resources and humanely delivered services, but also not impacting neighborhoods, schools and parks.

Irvine set a goal to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030, but staff said last year the city won’t hit that target in time. What are your ideas to make Irvine more energy-efficient and greener?

I fully support efforts to explore reducing Irvine’s carbon footprint. Discussions are already underway to establish a city-supported solar rooftop and battery storage program for residents. We must also continue working with local homeowners, businesses and property owners to incentivize investments that reduce their carbon footprints, as well as through new construction methods, better window efficiency and newer and more energy-efficient appliances. These ideas were the driving force behind what is now the “One Irvine” program, providing loan and grant incentives to local homeowners.

As technologies in building, automotive and other uses continue to develop (many of which are developed right here in Irvine), we can quickly adopt innovative ways of being an energy-efficient city.

What makes you a good leader, and how would you represent the diverse communities of your district and city?

I often tell people that I credit my very being to Irvine. Having grown up in Irvine and the newly-drawn District 5, I’ve been a direct beneficiary of Irvine’s excellent public schools and amenities that encourage a healthy lifestyle and safe communities. My immigrant grandmother, who helped raise me, took advantage of the walkable community and a community that showed kindness to her despite language barriers. That’s why I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to give back to Irvine.

I’ve contributed my time and talents, and even a few checks, to local PTAs and the Irvine Junior Games to enhance the lives of Irvine’s youth, Irvine’s 2/11 Marine Adoption Committee to honor our service members, and both the Exchange Club of Irvine and Rotary Club of Orange County / LA to find local and international service projects to bring to reality.

What I’m trying to say is that I live and breathe District 5. It’s where I grew up, it’s where I attended public schools, it’s where I worship at church, and where you’ll see me walking my dog. District 5 is where I can take my diverse background and upbringing to have fruitful conversations with my neighbors about keeping Irvine the incredibly special place it’s always been.

​ Orange County Register 

Dana Cornelius, Irvine City Council District 5 candidate, 2025 special election questionnaire

• March 21, 2025

Ahead of the special election for the Irvine City Council District 5 seat, the Orange County Register compiled a list of questions to pose to the candidates who wish to represent you. You can find the full questionnaire below. Questionnaires have been edited for spelling, grammar, length and, in some instances, to remove hate speech and offensive language.

Name: Dana Cornelius

Other political positions held: HOA board member

City where you reside: Irvine

Also read: As voting begins for Irvine’s Fifth District election, here’s where the candidates stand on issues

In your opinion, what are the biggest issues facing Irvine? And, what do you plan to do about them?

Based on information collected from canvassing over the last several weeks, the No. 1 concern for the residents in District 5 can be summed up in one word: Cars. Folks are complaining about gridlock and parking issues.

A few ways to mitigate this issue:

• More Irvine Connect bus routes. E.g. Michelson from Jeffrey to Jamboree.

• Seek a moratorium on ADUs in Planned Unit Developments (PUDs) District 5 is already maxed out.

• Require a parking permit for households with more cars that can fit into their garage or designated parking space(s)

• To encourage bike use, lower speed limits, improve bike lane barriers or create separate bike lanes that aren’t shared with cars traveling at highway speeds.

No. 2 concern: E-bikes. Education, management and enforcement needs to be re-evaluated so this type of transportation doesn’t continue to scare pedestrians. If it has two wheels and a motor, then it’s a “motorcycle.” Irvine ought to require a license or permit to make it visible to law enforcement and those directly impacted by errant e-bike behaviors. A course and testing, similar to that which is required for a motorcycle license, ought to be required, as well as periodic testing. What the city is doing is good, but it’s not enough. We need better ordinances.

What is your vision for the city as undeveloped land becomes scarcer but its population continues to grow?

Preserving the Master Plan created by the visionaries back in the ’60s and ’70s is one of my top priorities. It’s what attracted me here in 1991 and what keeps me here. We ought to explore ways to convert unused, hard-to-lease office buildings into dwellings for those not yet in the financial place to buy a home. Irvine was designed for the family unit. Each village is equipped with shopping center(s), so restocking the refrigerator is easy and quick. District 5 has the most private parks than any other district. We love to recreate. I shall help protect the retention of these good health-promoting activities.

What do you think the city should do to address homelessness? Are you in support of building and operating a city-run shelter?

I consider it a cruel measure to leave someone out in the hard elements: rain, wind, cold or blazing hot sun. Who in their right mind wants to live without a roof over their heads, food in their stomach or sleep on a comfortable mattress at night? “When I grow up, I want to be homeless,” said no child ever.

I believe in tough love. My idea of tough love will likely involve a combination of explicit and implicit acts of compassion, including both immediate assistance with basic needs and encouragement for independence and motivation to help them rebuild their lives. My approach is designed to support homeless individuals in regaining self-worth and confidence rather than simply removing them from the streets. Everyone wins.

Irvine’s design was made for housing. I.e. four walls and a roof, not for camping.

Irvine was designed for learning. It’s home to one of the most prestigious public institutions in the world, UC Irvine. Irvine is a city of intellect. We love to learn, grow, share and teach.

Irvine was also designed for families to enjoy their children and aging parents. Having a homeless shelter within city limits would have to be decided by the nearby homeowners — not by a panel of seven on the dais, but by the majority of those directly or indirectly impacted. I support sharing the cost to fund them.

Also, having volunteered as a C.A.S.A., I saw first-hand how valuable foster parenting is to displaced youth and society. We ought to explore a similar program for our city’s “disenfranchised.” Get these folks fully vetted and prepared to transition into a temporary home. Give a stipend and a full spectrum of support to the volunteer foster family. This program would surely have a degree of success right out of the starting gate.

To quote Oprah, “Give a leg up, not a handout.”

Irvine set a goal to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030, but staff said last year the city won’t hit that target in time. What are your ideas to make Irvine more energy-efficient and greener? 

Increase Irvine Connect bus routes. I’d love to use it but would take me 20 minutes just to walk to the closest bus stop. Make riding a bus fun again — take the stigma out of it. Having grown up near Chicago where there were two train lines and an intricate system of bus routes, everyone rode public transit! It’s where you met new friends or decompressed after a long day. I say, make riding public transit fun again. Hire musicians or the like to entertain passengers — get folks to ride the bus and keep their cars at home.

And build more bridges between villages — also make it fun to walk again.

What makes you a good leader, and how would you represent the diverse communities of your district and city?

Good leadership requires a calm, clear decisive mind that is willing to speak directly to the constituents in solution-based, compassionate, non-partisan ways. I have that. Over the past few years, there’s been too much emotion in the council chambers and on the dais. Sometimes, when I observed council meetings in person, I felt like part of a live audience at a Hollywood sit-com taping.

Good leadership means keeping things in control and swiftly extinguishing behaviors that could erupt in violence.

I’ve a diverse professional background spanning over 35 years as described in my candidate statement found on the city of Irvine’s Website. Executive management, my last position before retiring seven years ago, will surely serve very well my endeavors to meet the needs of my constituents. My 13-year, 24/7 care-giving duties to my late father, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, carved out a special place in my heart for our aging population. Enjoyed many a conversation with patients at the Irvine Medical Center while I pushed them around in wheelchairs. I graduated from Irvine’s Community Police Academy and Community Emergency Responder course (FEMA’s C.E.R.T.). I was trained as a Court-Appointed Special Advocate who routinely delivered in-person reports to the judge at Lamoreaux Justice Center. And now (hopefully) a grand juror (application in process). I’ve been finger-printed and back-ground checked more often than anyone I know!

I enjoy diversity, too. I grew up in East Wilmette, Illinois by two Yale-trained attorneys in a 4,200-square-foot home near Lake Michigan. Chicago was considered then to be America’s melting pot. My mother loved learning about world religions, but due to family obligations had to put her dream of traveling the world on the back burner. So she brought the world to her through foreign exchange students. Learning about Venezuela, Kuwait, China, France, Chile, Mexico, Mongolia, and Canada directly from a native enriched my childhood. And it wasn’t uncommon to see both a Menorah and a Crucifix in our dining room. Didn’t confuse us at all — quite the contrary.

​ Orange County Register 

Why ‘Star Trek’ star LeVar Burton is coming to the Altadena library after the Eaton fire

• March 21, 2025

When LeVar Burton was a child in Sacramento, the library showed up for him. And now, the actor, author and “Reading Rainbow” icon is returning the favor.

“My foundational relationship with libraries was the bookmobile. My mother was a single parent and worked 9-to-5, so the bookmobile came around. My mom didn’t have to take us to the library – the library came to us! And that’s when I fell in love with the library, because of access, because they were there for me,” says Burton, recalling how later the stacks at USC’s Doheny Library became a favorite haunt when he was in college.

“Libraries are hallowed places for me,” he says.

The star of “Roots” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation” is headlining an all-ages celebration at the Altadena Main Library on Saturday, March 22, from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. The event is to welcome the community back to the library, which reopened on March 4. 

“In the aftermath of the fires, I knew we had something that could be of value in this moment, and we went to William Morris Endeavor, my agents, and asked if they could help us be of service and they got immediately involved,” he says. “Saturday’s event is the outcome.”

Along with readings, arts & crafts, games, music and more, Burton, who was the 2022 Rose Parade grand marshall and awarded a National Endowment of Humanities Medal in 2023, will be reading from his children’s book, “The Rhino Who Swallowed a Storm.”

The idea for a picture book, which he created with collaborators Susan Schaefer Bernardo and Courtenay Fletcher, came to him during a dark time. He’d been working on material for the Reading Rainbow app when he heard that there’d been a mass shooting in another state. 

“I thought if Fred Rogers were here, he would be addressing this in an age-appropriate manner with kids,” he says, referring to the late host of “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” “Fred was gone, and I thought, You know what? I’m going to take a shot at this because I think it’s something that we need to do. We need to give our kids and their families this kind of resource.”  

When asked about the challenges libraries currently face, from book bans to slashed funding, Burton sounds uncharacteristically downbeat. 

“To me, it’s evidence of a civilization in decline. And it’s sad. It saddens me,” he says. “Libraries used to be upheld – and in some circles and for some folks, they still are upheld – as these bastions, repositories of all that’s good about humanity and all that’s possible for us as human beings and to have that goodness and possibility accessible to everyone.

“The attacks on libraries, the attacks on librarians, the attacks on literature, the attacks on the truth and the attacks on our history as a nation are fundamentally, in my eyes, evidence of the decline of this empire, the American empire,” he says. 

As he considered the ways in which he could continue to support libraries and literature, the former seminary student returned to a word he used often: “service.”

“I’m going to continue to be who I am and do what it is I do because, at the end of the day, I believe that I am here to be of service.”

He says a friend helped him during a recent news cycle.

“It was the day when Black Lives Matter Plaza was dismantled, and it hit me hard,” he says, referring to the removal of the Washington D.C. mural and installation earlier this month. “She said, ‘Well, we just have to find the joy.’

“I couldn’t, in that moment, access my joy,” he says.

So he looked for and found something else. “What I realized is that it’s my purpose in life that brings me joy,” he says. 

“I’m a firm believer in doing what we can from where we stand. I’m taking comfort and inspiration from knowing that I am in my purpose, and I’m going to continue to do exactly that as long and as loudly as I can.”

As a parent and grandfather, he sees leaving the world a better place as part of our duty.

“Our forebears did that on our behalf – for us, right? – and to not recognize our duty to continue that cycle makes no sense to me. It’s why we’re here,” he says. “Every generation owes a debt to the one that follows.”

That desire to think about the future led to one of his lasting achievements – more than 23 years as host of the Peabody Award-winning “Reading Rainbow.” The series, like the bookmobile that had provided access to books in his youth, aimed to help kids continue reading during the summer months.

“We were a summer show,” says Burton. “Our goal was to take a child who could read and turn them into a reader for life, and our first mission was to do that and to address what teachers now refer to as the ‘summer slide’” – the period when kids’ reading skill deteriorate during their time out of school. 

“In the ’80s, we knew where kids were hanging out. If they weren’t outside, they were sitting in front of a television,” he says, laughing at the idea of promoting reading on television. “That was the brilliance, I think, of ‘Reading Rainbow.’ And of course, we were on long enough to be on year-round on most PBS stations that carried the show, but we were initially designed and developed as a summer program.”

Then as today, that philosophy of encouraging reading remains the same – whether on TV, a phone app or an appearance at a library that miraculously survived a wildfire.

“You gotta meet them where they are,” he says, “before you can take them where you want them to go.”

For more information, go to the Altadena Public Library website

​ Orange County Register 

As voting begins for Irvine’s Fifth District election, here’s where the candidates stand on issues

• March 21, 2025

Voters in Irvine’s Fifth District have been receiving ballots this week they can vote by mail or later at ballot boxes to decide who will represent them on the City Council. 

In-person polling centers will open in April, and voting will close on the evening of April 15. 

Irvine’s Fifth District includes Woodbridge, University Park and other neighborhoods straddling the 405 Freeway.

The special election will decide who fills the newly expanded Irvine City Council’s seventh seat through 2026. 

The position is open because Mayor Larry Agran vacated his citywide council seat after winning his election for mayor in November. 

The unusual process to switch — midterm — a citywide council seat to a district-elected seat was approved by Irvine voters in 2024 in a ballot measure that laid out how the city would transition from a five-member council with citywide elections to a seven-member council with by-district elections. (The mayor is still elected citywide.)

The race to fill the seat took another unusual turn after former councilmember Tammy Kim dropped out in February amid a lawsuit challenging her residency in the district. 

Now, three candidates remain in the running: HOA board member Dana Cornelius, small business owner Betty Martinez Franco and former councilmember/businessman Anthony Kuo.

The Orange County Register reached out to all three with a questionnaire for its voter guide, asking about development, leadership and other issues facing the city. This story pulls from their answers.

Kuo previously served on the nonpartisan City Council from 2018 through 2022. He ran for state assembly last year as a Republican and, since 2017, has also worked in the Orange County Auditor-Controller’s office.

Kuo said public safety and protecting Irvine’s master plan are top of mind for him in a potential return to the dais. 

He promised to work with the Irvine Police Department to crack down on retail crime, catalytic converter theft and porch pirating. 

On his campaign website, he also promises to “take a fine-toothed comb to Irvine’s finances to root out fraud, waste and abuse.” 

Martinez Franco said she sees traffic congestion, public safety, small business support and cost of living as the biggest issues facing Irvine. 

“As a small business owner myself, I understand the challenges entrepreneurs face,” she said. “That is why I will push for business-friendly policies, streamline permit processes and create more incentives for local businesses to set up shop in Irvine.”

Martinez Franco runs a boutique public affairs firm. She holds a master’s degree in public administration from USC. 

“Through my multicultural public relations agency, I help industries authentically connect with diverse communities,” she said. “My job is to find solutions, bring people together and amplify the often overlooked voices. I will bring this same approach to the Irvine City Council, ensuring every resident has a seat at the table, regardless of background.”

Cornelius agreed that traffic congestion is a major issue facing Irvine. 

To combat gridlock, she proposes expanding Irvine Connect bus routes and improving Irvine’s bike lanes.

While she supports a moratorium on accessory dwelling units in District 5, she encourages a novel way to add housing — turning office space into homes.

“We ought to explore ways to convert unused, hard-to-lease office buildings into dwellings for those not yet in the financial place to buy a home,” she said.

On the issue of homelessness, the City Council has recently equivocated about whether and where to open a bridge housing shelter. 

Kuo says he supports a city-managed shelter. 

Martinez Franco says a city-run shelter could be part of Irvine’s solution to address the issue. 

Cornelius, meanwhile, said she’d like to see the decision to have a shelter within city limits decided by nearby homeowners — not by the City Council. 

Irvine has also grappled recently with how to become a greener city after staff announced last year the city will not meet its target to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030.

Kuo and Martinez Franco both mentioned priorities that align with Mayor Agran’s platform to establish a city-supported solar rooftop and battery storage program for residents and his reforestation plan to plant 200,000 trees in the city. 

Cornelius restated her preference for more bus routes. 

Ultimately, when asked about their connections to Irvine and what makes them a good leader, each candidate had a different story to tell. Kuo and Martinez Franco emphasized their previous city leadership roles, while Cornelius positioned herself as an outsider who’d shake things up. 

Aside from discussing his previous council term, Kuo touted his lifelong connection to Irvine. 

“I live and breathe District 5,” Kuo said. “It’s where I grew up, it’s where I attended public schools, it’s where I worship at church and where you’ll see me walking my dog.”

Martinez Franco focused on her professional bona fides and commitment to inclusivity. 

“As a longtime Irvine resident, I have spent years working to uplift diverse communities,” she said. “I served on Irvine’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee for nearly three years, collaborating with city leaders to ensure all residents feel heard and valued.”

And, Cornelius said she’d bring a decisive attitude to the dais.

“Over the past few years, there’s been too much emotion in the council chambers and on the dais,” she said. “Sometimes, when I observed council meetings in person, I felt like part of a live audience at a Hollywood sitcom taping.”

A vote center will open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily starting April 5, and 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. through April 14, at Irvine City Hall; another center will open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily starting April 12 at University Park Community Center. Both will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.  on Election Day, April 15. Ballot drop boxes have also opened, get more information on locations at ocvote.gov/votecenter.

​ Orange County Register 

Deportees from the US in Panama go embassy to embassy in desperate scramble to seek asylum

• March 21, 2025

By MATÍAS DELACROIX and MEGAN JANETSKY

PANAMA CITY (AP) — Migrants from Afghanistan, Russia, Iran and China deported from the United States and dropped into limbo in Panama hopped door-to-door at embassies and consulates this week in a desperate attempt to seek asylum in any country that would accept them.

The focus of international humanitarian concern just weeks before, the deportees now say they’re increasingly worried that with little legal and humanitarian assistance and no clear pathway forward offered by authorities, they may be forgotten.

“After this, we don’t know what we’ll do,” said 29-year-old Hayatullah Omagh, who fled Afghanistan in 2022 after the Taliban takeover.

In February, the United States deported nearly 300 people from mostly Asian nations to Panama. The Central American ally was supposed to be a stopover for migrants from countries that were more challenging for the U.S. to deport to as the Trump administration tried to accelerate deportations. Some agreed to voluntarily return to their countries from Panama, but others refused out of fear of persecution and were sent to a remote camp in the Darien jungle for weeks.

Earlier this month, Panama released those remaining migrants from the camp, giving them one month to leave Panama. The government said they had declined assistance from international organizations, instead choosing to make their own arrangements. But with limited money, no familiarity with Panama and little to no Spanish, the migrants have struggled.

Seeking asylum door-to-door

On Tuesday, about a dozen migrants began visiting foreign missions in Panama’s capital, including the Canadian and British embassies, and the Swiss and Australian consulates with the hope of starting the process to seek refuge in those countries. They were either turned away or told that they would need to call or reach out to embassies by email. Messages were met with no response or a generic response saying embassies couldn’t help.

In one email, Omagh detailed why he had to flee his country, writing “please don’t let me be sent back to Afghanistan, a place where there is no way for me to survive.”

“The Embassy of Canada in Panama does not offer visa or immigration services, not either services for refugee. Nor are we allowed to answer any questions in regards to visa or immigration,” the response read.

At the British Embassy, a security guard handed asylum-seekers a pamphlet reading “Emergency Help for British People.” The Swiss consulate told the group they would have to reach out to the embassy in Costa Rica, and handed the migrants a piece of paper with general phone lines and emails printed from the embassy’s website.

Canadian, British and Australian diplomats in Panama did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. The Swiss consulate denied that they turned away the asylum-seekers.

Panama limbo

The migrants had travelled halfway across the globe, reached the U.S. border where they sought asylum and instead found themselves in Panama, a country some had traversed months earlier on their way to the U.S.

Many of the deportees said they would be open to seeking asylum in Panama, but had been told both by international aid groups and Panamanian authorities that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to be granted refuge in the Central American nation.

Álvaro Botero, among those advocating for the migrants at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, said he wasn’t surprised that they were turned away from embassies, as such help is often only offered in extreme cases of political persecution, and that other governments may fear tensions with the Trump administration.

“It’s crucial that these people are not forgotten,” Botero said. “They never asked to be sent to Panama, and now they’re in Panama with no idea what to do, without knowing what their future will be and unable to return to their countries.”

The Trump administration has simultaneously closed legal pathways to the U.S. at its southern border, ramped up its deportation program, suspended its refugee resettlement program, as well as funding for organizations that could potentially aid the migrants now stuck in Panama.

Over the weekend, the Trump administration sent more than 200 Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador to be held in a maximum-security gang prison, alleging that those expelled were part the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang without providing evidence.

Limited options remain

On Thursday, the migrants visited the Panama offices of the U.N. refugee agency. Omagh said they were told that the agency could not help them seek asylum in other countries due to restrictions by the Panamanian government. A U.N. official told them they could help start the asylum process in Panama, but warned that it was very unlikely that Panama’s government would accept their claim, Omagh said.

The U.N.’s International Organization for Migration and the refugee agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment by the AP.

The same day, Filippo Grandi, head of the U.N. refugee agency, warned that aid cuts by the U.S. government would hurt refugee services around the world.

“We appeal to member States to honor their commitments to displaced people. Now is the time for solidarity, not retreat,” Grandi said in a statement.

Deportees including Omagh worried that foreign governments and aid organizations were washing their hands of them.

Omagh said that as an atheist and member of an ethnic minority group in Afghanistan known as the Hazara, returning home under the rule of the Taliban would mean death. He only went to the U.S. after trying for years to live in Pakistan, Iran and other countries but being denied visas.

Russian Aleksandr Surgin, also among the group seeking help at the embassies, said he left his country because he openly opposed the war in Ukraine on social media, and was told by government officials he could either be jailed or fight with Russian troops in Ukraine.

When asked Thursday what he would do next, he responded simply: “I don’t hope for anything anymore.”

Janetsky reported from Mexico City.

​ Orange County Register 

Ocean dumping – or a climate solution? A growing industry bets on the ocean to capture carbon

• March 21, 2025

By HELEN WIEFFERING

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia (AP) — From the grounds of a gas-fired power plant on the eastern shores of Canada, a little-known company is pumping a slurry of minerals into the ocean in the name of stopping climate change.

Whether it’s pollution or a silver bullet that will save the planet may depend on whom you ask.

From shore, a pipe releases a mixture of water and magnesium oxide — a powdery white mineral used in everything from construction to heartburn pills that Planetary Technologies, based in Nova Scotia, is betting will absorb more planet-warming gases into the sea.

“Restore the climate. Heal the ocean,” reads the motto stamped on a shipping container nearby.

Planetary is part of a growing industry racing to engineer a solution to global warming using the absorbent power of the oceans. It is backed by $1 million from Elon Musk’s foundation and competing for a prize of $50 million more.

Dozens of other companies and academic groups are pitching the same theory: that sinking rocks, nutrients, crop waste or seaweed in the ocean could lock away climate-warming carbon dioxide for centuries or more. Nearly 50 field trials have taken place in the past four years, with startups raising hundreds of millions in early funds.

But the field remains rife with debate over the consequences for the oceans if the strategies are deployed at large scale, and over the exact benefits for the climate. Critics say the efforts are moving too quickly and with too few guardrails.

“It’s like the Wild West. Everybody is on the bandwagon, everybody wants to do something,” said Adina Paytan, who teaches earth and ocean science at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Planetary, like most of the ocean startups, is financing its work by selling carbon credits — or tokens representing one metric ton of carbon dioxide removed from the air. Largely unregulated and widely debated, carbon credits have become popular this century as a way for companies to purchase offsets rather than reduce emissions themselves. Most credits are priced at several hundred dollars apiece.

The industry sold more than 340,000 marine carbon credits last year, up from just 2,000 credits four years ago, according to the tracking site CDR.fyi. But that amount of carbon removal is a tiny fraction of what scientists say will be required to keep the planet livable for centuries to come.

Those leading the efforts, including Will Burt, Planetary’s chief ocean scientist, acknowledge they’re entering uncharted territory — but say the bigger danger for the planet and the oceans is not moving quickly enough.

“We need to understand if it’s going to work or not. The faster we do, the better.”

Vacuuming carbon into the sea

Efforts to capture carbon dioxide have exploded in recent years.

Most climate models now show that cutting emissions won’t be enough to curb global warming, according to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The world needs to actively remove heat-trapping gases, as well — and the ocean could be a logical place to capture them.

Money has already poured into different strategies on land — among them, pumping carbon dioxide from the air, developing sites to store carbon underground and replanting forests, which naturally store CO2. But many of those projects are limited by space and could impact nearby communities. The ocean already regulates Earth’s climate by absorbing heat and carbon, and by comparison, it seems limitless.

“Is that huge surface area an option to help us deal with and mitigate the worst effects of climate change?” asked Adam Subhas, who is leading a carbon removal project with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, based on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

On a Tuesday afternoon along the edge of Halifax Harbour, Burt stashed his bike helmet and donned a hard hat to give two engineering students a tour of Planetary’s site.

A detached truck trailer sat in a clearing, storing massive bags of magnesium oxide mined in Spain and shipped across the Atlantic to Canada.

Most companies looking offshore for climate solutions are trying to reduce or transform the carbon dioxide stored in the ocean. If they can achieve that, Burt said, the oceans will act “like a vacuum” to absorb more gases from the air.

Planetary is using magnesium oxide to create that vacuum. When dissolved into seawater, it transforms carbon dioxide from a gas to stable molecules that won’t interact with the atmosphere for thousands of years. Limestone, olivine and other alkaline rocks have the same effect.

Other companies are focused on growing seaweed and algae to capture the gas. These marine organisms act like plants on land, absorbing carbon dioxide from the ocean just as trees do from the air. The company Gigablue, for instance, has begun pouring nutrients in New Zealand waters to grow tiny organisms known as phytoplankton where they otherwise couldn’t survive.

Still others view the deepest parts of the ocean as a place to store organic material that would emit greenhouse gases if left on land.

Companies have sunk wood chips off the coast of Iceland and are planning to sink Sargassum, a yellowish-brown seaweed, to extreme depths. The startup Carboniferous is preparing a federal permit to place sugarcane pulp at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, also referred to as the Gulf of America as declared by President Donald Trump.

Though Planetary’s work can sound like some “scary science experiment,” Burt said, the company’s testing so far suggests that magnesium oxide poses minimal risks to marine ecosystems, plankton or fish. The mineral has long been used at water treatment plants and industrial facilities to de-acidify water.

Halifax Harbour is just one location where Planetary hopes to operate. The company has set up another site at a wastewater treatment plant in coastal Virginia and plans to begin testing in Vancouver later this year.

According to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the industry needs to remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide per year by mid-century to meet climate goals set nearly a decade ago during the Paris climate agreement.

“The whole point here is to mitigate against a rapidly accelerating climate crisis,” Burt said. “We have to act with safety and integrity, but we also have to act fast.”

‘Twisted in knots’

While there’s broad enthusiasm in the industry, coastal communities aren’t always quick to jump on board.

In North Carolina, a request to dump shiploads of olivine near the beachside town of Duck prompted questions that downsized the project by more than half.

The company Vesta, formed in 2021, promotes the greenish-hued mineral as a tool to draw down carbon into the ocean and create mounds that buffer coastal towns from storm surges and waves.

During the permitting process, officials at the state Wildlife Resources Commission, Division of Marine Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service raised a long list of concerns.

“As proposed, the project is a short term study with the potential for long term impacts and no remediation plans,” a field supervisor for the Fish and Wildlife Service wrote. The agencies said olivine could smother the seafloor ecosystem and threaten a hotspot for sea turtles and Atlantic sturgeon.

Vesta CEO Tom Green said the company never expected its original application to be approved as written. “It’s more the start of a dialogue with regulators and the community,” he said.

The project went forward last summer with a much smaller scope, a restoration plan, and more detailed requirements to monitor deep-water species. Eight thousand metric tons of olivine shipped from Norway are now submerged beneath North Carolina’s waves.

Green said he understands why people are skeptical, and that he tries to remind them Vesta’s goal is to save the environment, not to harm it. It’s the company’s job, he says, “to show up in local communities, physically show up, and listen and share our data and build trust that way.”

Fishing communities have opposed another climate project led by Subhas of the Woods Hole research center that has generated 10 months of conversation and debate.

The project as proposed last spring would have poured 66,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide solution into ocean waters near Cape Cod. Woods Hole later proposed downsizing the project to use less than 17,000 gallons of the chemical, with federal approval still pending.

In two separate reviews, the Environmental Protection Agency said it believes the project’s scientific merit outweighs the environmental risks, and noted it doesn’t foresee “unacceptable impacts” on water quality or fishing.

But fifth-generation fisherman Jerry Leeman III wants to know what will happen to the lobster, pollock and flounder eggs that float in the water column and on the ocean surface if they are suddenly doused with the harsh chemical.

“Are you telling all the fishermen not to fish in this area while you’re doing this project? And who compensates these individuals for displacing everybody?” he said.

Subhas’ team expects the chemical’s most potent concentrations to last for less than two minutes in the ocean before it’s diluted. They’ve also agreed to delay or relocate the project if schools of fish or patches of fish eggs are visible in the surrounding waters.

Sarah Schumann, who fishes commercially for bluefish in Rhode Island and leads a campaign for “fishery friendly” climate action, said after attending four listening sessions she’s still unsure how to balance her support for the research with the apprehension she hears in the fishing community.

“If I was actually trying to decide where I land on this issue, I’d be twisted in knots,” she said.

And Planetary, which has seen little pushback from locals along Halifax Harbour, faced a series of protests against a climate project it proposed in Cornwall, England.

In April last year, more than a hundred people marched along a beach carrying signs that read “Keep our sea chemical free.”

Sue Sayer, who runs a research group studying seals, said she realized in discussions with Planetary that “they had no idea about what animals or plants or species live in St. Ives Bay.” The company’s initial release of magnesium hydroxide into the bay, she said, fired up a community that is “massively, scientifically passionate about the sea.”

David Santillo, a senior scientist with Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter, took issue with how Planetary proposed tracking the impact of its work. According to a recorded presentation viewed by AP, the company’s baseline measurements in Cornwall were drawn from just a few days.

“If you don’t have a baseline over a number of years and seasons,” Santillo said, “you don’t know whether you would even be able to detect any of your effects.”

An audit commissioned by the United Kingdom’s Environment Agency found that Planetary’s experiments posed a “very low” risk to marine life, and a potential for significant carbon removal.

Still, the company put its proposal to pump another 200 metric tons of minerals on pause. Following a government recommendation, Planetary said it would search for a source of magnesium hydroxide closer to the Cornwall site, rather than shipping it from China. It also assured locals that it wouldn’t sell carbon credits from its past chemical release.

Sara Nawaz, research director at American University’s Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal, said she understood why scientists sometimes struggle to connect with communities and gain their support. Early research shows the public is reluctant to the idea of “engineering” the climate.

Many people have a strong emotional connection to the ocean, she added. There’s a fear that once you put something in the ocean, “you can’t take it back.”

The great unknowns

It’s not just locals who have questions about whether these technologies will work. Scientists, too, have acknowledged major unknowns. But some of the principles behind the technologies have been studied for decades by now, and the laboratory can only simulate so much.

During a recent EPA listening session about the Woods Hole project, a chorus of oceanographers and industry supporters said it’s time for ocean-scale tests.

“There’s an urgency to move ahead and conduct this work,” said Ken Buesseler, another Woods Hole scientist who studies the carbon captured by algae.

Even so, the ocean is a dynamic, challenging landscape to work in. Scientists are still uncovering new details about how it absorbs and recycles carbon, and any materials they add to seawater are liable to sink, become diluted or wash away to other locations, challenging efforts to track how the ocean responds.

“It’s so hard to get the ocean to do what you want it to,” said Sarah Cooley, a carbon cycle scientist who has worked for the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy and the federal government.

Katja Fennel, chair of the oceanography department at Dalhousie University, works on modeling how much carbon Planetary has captured in Halifax Harbour— a number that comes with some uncertainty.

She co-leads a group of academics that monitors the company’s project using water samples, sensors and sediment cores taken from locations around the bay. Some days, her team adds a red dye to the pipes to watch how the minerals dissolve and flow out to sea.

The models are necessary to simulate what would happen if Planetary did nothing, Fennel said. They’re also necessary because the ocean is so large and deep it’s impossible to collect enough data to give a complete picture of it.

“We can’t measure everywhere all the time,” she said.

Questions also linger about how long the carbon capture will last.

It’s a point especially important to companies working with algae, wood chips, or other organic materials, because depending on where they decompose, they could release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.

The deeper the plants and algae sink, the longer the carbon stays locked away. But that’s no easy feat to ensure. Running Tide, a now-shuttered company that sank nearly 20,000 metric tons of wood chips in Icelandic waters, said carbon could be sequestered for as long as three millennia or as little as 50 years.

Even if these solutions do work long term, most companies are operating on too small of a scale to influence the climate. Expanding to meet current climate goals will take massive amounts of resources, energy and money.

“The question is, what happens when you scale it up to billions of tons every year?” said David Ho, co-founder and chief science officer of the nonprofit (C)Worthy, which works on verifying the impact of ocean-based carbon removal. “And that’s still to be determined.”

Planetary’s Burt imagines a future in which minerals are pumped out through power plants and water treatment facilities on every major coastline in the world. But that would require a large, steady volume of magnesium oxide or similar minerals, along with the energy to mine and transport them.

Seaweed and algae growth would need to expand exponentially. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has estimated that nearly two-thirds of the world’s coastline would need to be encircled by kelp to even begin to make a dent in global warming. The company Seafields, which is running tests in the Caribbean, says it envisions building a Sargassum farm between Brazil and West Africa more than 200 miles wide.

There’s the risk that these expansions exacerbate environmental harm that isn’t detectable in small trials, and because of global water circulation, could be felt around the world.

But the alternative to never trying, Ho said, is unabated climate change.

Running out of time

Late last year, Planetary announced that its Nova Scotia project successfully captured 138 metric tons of carbon – allowing it to deliver exactly 138 carbon credits to two of the company’s early investors, Shopify and Stripe.

Monetizing the work is uncomfortable for many who study the ocean.

“On one hand, it’s encouraging more research and more science, which is good. On the other hand, it’s opening doors for abuse of the system,” said Paytan, the Santa Cruz professor, who has been contacted by several startups asking to collaborate.

She pointed to companies that are accused of drastically overestimating the carbon they sequestered, though they bragged of restoring rainforests in Peru and replacing smoke-producing stoves in Africa.

But absent more government-funded research, several companies told AP there’s little way for the field to advance without selling credits.

“Unfortunately, that’s the way we’ve set things up now, is that we put it in the hands of these startups to develop the techniques,” said Ho.

Back in his shipping container office along Halifax Harbour, Burt said he understood the unease around selling credits, and said Planetary takes seriously the need to operate openly, responsibly and cautiously. But he also says there’s a need for startups that can move at a faster pace than academia.

“We cannot study this solution at the same rate that we’ve been studying the problems,” he said. He says there’s not enough time.

Last year marked the hottest year in Earth’s history, even as global carbon emissions are projected to reach another all-time high.

“We need to reduce emissions urgently, drastically,” said Fennel, the researcher studying Planetary’s project. “Any removal of CO2 from the atmosphere is much more difficult and costly than avoiding CO2 emissions to begin with.”

The industry continues to push forward. Planetary said in February that it had sequestered a total of 1,000 metric tons of carbon in the ocean, and Carboniferous completed its first test of sinking sugarcane to the seafloor. Early this year, Gigablue signed a deal for 200,000 carbon credits for dispersing nutrient-filled particles in the ocean.

A growing number of companies are also using electricity to alter seawater molecules, with the same goal of prompting the ocean to absorb more carbon dioxide. The startup Ebb Carbon recently struck a deal with Microsoft to provide up to 350,000 carbon credits, and Captura, which is funded in part by investors affiliated with oil and gas production, expanded its operations from California to Hawaii.

It’s unclear whether the U.S. government will stall or support ocean climate work going forward. The policy landscape continues to shift as the Trump administration seeks to roll back a wide range of environmental regulations and reconsider the scientific finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health.

Though White House adviser Musk has downplayed some of his past statements about global warming, four years ago his foundation committed $100 million to fund a competition for the best solution for carbon capture, of which Planetary is in the running for the top prize.

The winner will be announced April 23 — the day after Earth Day.

This story was supported by funding from the Walton Family Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Contact AP’s global investigative team at [email protected] or https://www.ap.org/tips/

​ Orange County Register 

LAFC takes advantage of time to regroup ahead of Kansas City trip

• March 21, 2025

Nkosi Tafari was acquired by the Los Angeles Football Club on Jan. 23. Two months later, the lanky central defender and his new team have gotten in just three weeks of uninterrupted training.

For the first time since the start of LAFC’s competitive calendar, which was congested with midweek matches after opening in Colorado on Feb. 18, the group had a moment to rest, decompress and practice in earnest following their eighth game in 26 days, a 1-0 loss last weekend at home to Austin FC.

“For us it’s great to have some training sessions to get back into better habits and this week has been excellent,” LAFC head coach Steve Cherundolo said before the Black & Gold battle with Sporting Kansas City at Children’s Mercy Park on Saturday.

“When you’re playing game to game the training sessions and the actual time you can load between games is maybe 40 minutes tops,” he noted, “it’s really difficult to work on your deficiencies and create a match plan for the up and coming opponent that changes every three days.”

Without the burden of a midweek match until CONCACAF Champions Cup returns with a quarterfinal series on April 2 and April 9 versus Inter Miami CF, LAFC has eight full training sessions to work in detail and hammer out players’ questions or concerns coming off the mad-dash start to the year.

Leading up to the match against Sporting, which lost both legs in Round 1 of the Champions Cup to Miami and is 0-3-1 in MLS play so far, LAFC “is making the right steps,” Tafari said.

Still, there remains a need to find chemistry on the field, a sort of unspoken understanding as Tafari sees it. The 27-year-old native of New York City said he and his teammates are working to develop a “real, deal fluidity” that can’t be forced and has thus far eluded them in 2025.

“I think right now we do look a little bit discombobulated,” Tafari suggested. “It looks like there’s a little bit of friction, which is fine — we have a lot of new moving pieces so it complicates things.”

Adding to the challenge in Kansas City, Denis Bouanga is on international duty in Africa as Gabon participates in World Cup qualifiers. LAFC’s leading scorer the past two seasons connected on a pair of goals in a win for his country on Thursday over Seychelles. Gabon plays Sunday in Nairobi against Kenya, but Bouanga should return in time for LAFC’s first-ever match at San Diego FC on the 29th.

Nathan Ordaz, called up by El Salvador for a friendly against the Houston Dynamo, will be available to play SKC.

As Olivier Giroud nurses a minor leg injury and visits Paris to be honored by the French national team on Sunday, Jeremy Ebobisse should feature in the middle of an attack that’s producing a little more than a goal a game.

“When you look at some of our results they’ve been tight games and as an attacker — I know my fellow attackers feel the same way — we want to be doing more to provide some cushions for the team,” said Ebobisse, who has a goal and an assist in seven appearances with LAFC. “All things we hope will be ironed out this weekend and beyond.”

Acknowledging that mental lapses in the early part of the season undercut how they want to play, Ebobisse shared that LAFC (2-2-0) huddled up as a group this week “to get back to what we think makes us best.”

Said Tafari: “I think Jeremy hit the nail on the head with that.”

LAFC AT SPORTING KANSAS CITY

When: Saturday, 5:39 p.m.

Where: Children’s Mercy Park, Kansas City

TV/Radio: Apple TV – MLS Season Pass/710 AM, 980 AM

​ Orange County Register 

Spring Breakers beware: Thieves are sending your stolen phone to China. Here’s how you can prevent it

• March 21, 2025

Collin McMinn stood in a dense crowd at III Points music festival in Miami when two large men shoved through his group of friends. His iPhone 13 was gone within seconds, swiped from his pocket in the chaos.

“I hate that I’m so connected to my phone, like most of society, but that immediate anxiety and scared feeling was very prominent,” McMinn said.

Police officers stationed around the festival told McMinn that he was about the 30th person to report a stolen phone — and there was nothing they could do.

When he returned to his hotel, his fiancée received an unexpected call from the stolen phone. “Apparently some kid tackled the dude that had my phone,” McMinn said.

Jacob Jomarron had wrapped his arm around the thief’s neck, tripping the man with his foot and slamming him to the concrete. He frantically patted the pickpocket’s clothes, lifting up the thief’s shirt to reveal a bodysuit — and 25 phones, strapped to the criminal’s chest, arms and back.

The thief then vanished into the crowd, Jomarron and McMinn’s iPhones clattering on the ground as he ran.

“We waited, stayed up and (Jomarron) walked to the hotel, brought (my phone) to me,” McMinn said. “I gave him 50 bucks because he’s such a champ for that. And I made a friend out of it.”

Jomarron and McMinn’s story is just one example of a nationwide phone theft crisis that has taken hold in South Florida. Thieves are trained in elaborate pickpocketing techniques, distracting victims by shoving them or pretending to flirt with them. They grab phones from purses and pockets at nightclubs and music festivals, sending smartphones overseas to be stripped for parts, and putting the owners’ critical information at risk as they pillage financial institutions and saved passwords.

Most victims are women, tourists, or young people, groups who consistently take out their phone and are followed by pickpockets. In Fort Lauderdale, the number of phone theft reports skyrockets during Spring Break, usually between the hours of midnight to 4 a.m.

How thefts happen

Walking through a dance floor can be dangerous. While clubbers are enjoying a song and holding their hands in the air during a beat drop, thieves take advantage of the moment.

“Crowds would be an effective choice (for thieves) too; you have to be able to move through them relatively quickly and get out,” Michigan State criminal justice professor Tom Holt said. “Any kind of space where it’s dark, you’re not necessarily paying a ton of attention. You might be more inclined to put it down on a seat or a table and you take a drink.”

Some criminals may sell a phone to a local vendor, similar to jewelry being swiped and sold at a pawn shop. Other thieves are part of sophisticated groups, putting phones in airplane mode and inside electromagnetic blocking Faraday bags so the phones cannot be detected with tracking features.

“Normally it’s not one person, it’s one, two, or three people distracting and one actually handling the phone and either taking off or giving it to somebody else. Even in a nightclub there has to be somebody on watch,” said Mehran Basiratmand, director of programs and innovation at Florida Atlantic University. He previously spent 22 years as the chief technology officer for the university.

When multiple phones are reported as stolen at Club Space in Miami, security waves people with handheld metal detectors as they exit the nightclub.

“If they have multiple phones on them, we will make them unlock the phone,” former Club Space and Factory Town bouncer Zarrian White said.

Factory Town, a multi-stage music venue in Hialeah, had 18 larceny reports in 2022 but leaped to 90 reports in 2024. Despite the number of theft reports, the venue is open only a select few nights of the year for special events like New Year’s Eve.

Fort Lauderdale Police received 1,282 cellphone theft reports in 2023 and 1,050 reports in 2024. The locations with the most thefts include Dicey Riley’s Irish Pub, Sway, Munchie’s, Cafe Ibiza, and Rock Bar.

“There’s certain (phone stealing) crews. We have quite a few South American crews, Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba coming up,” said Patrick O’Brien, a Fort Lauderdale sergeant in charge of larceny. “These are the groups that infiltrate Tortuga Music Festival, but they don’t just infiltrate Tortuga; they’re looking for nationwide music festivals, things like Mardi Gras, looking for large crowds that are going to be people really squeezed together.”

The business of stealing phones

The rise of phone thieves can be linked to the increased cost of cellphones. Due to the high turnover rates as new models of phones are released, there is always a resale market for used smartphones. Apple’s newest model, the iPhone 16 Pro Max, currently sells for $1,199. Replacing a cracked iPhone screen could cost $400.

“If vendors can get the screens cheaply from stolen phones, they’ll take them apart and sell the parts. If you’re a third-party vendor that fixes phones, if you can get the screen for example, you get a great discount, you can then make a larger profit, and fix the phones,” said Thomas Hyslip, assistant professor of instruction at the University of South Florida’s cybercrime program. Hyslip spent 23 years in federal law enforcement for cybercrime investigations and digital forensics.

Although iPhones are targeted for their large user base and high resale prices, older models of all phone brands still contain pieces that can be refurbished by experts. In addition to screens, there is a high demand for modem chips that allow devices to connect to the internet.

Cameras and phone cases are resold as well. Because components such as the screen are needed to make the device functional, there is nothing that can be done to lower a phone’s value to thieves.

“I’m assuming they’re getting hundreds of dollars for each one. So if they go out and get five phones in a night, they pay $1,000. It’s a pretty good night for those people,” Hyslip said.

In July 2023, Cody Szymanski left his phone in an Uber in Wilton Manors. It traveled to Miami before being tracked to China three months later. After almost a year and a half of no updates, it pinged for the final time in January 2025. The phone had landed in Shenzhen, a high-tech city known as the Silicon Valley of China.

“It was in that area where everybody’s phone ends up. It’s like they go back to the motherland,” Szymanski said.

Shenzhen, China: The motherland of stolen phones

China is the world’s largest market for both new and used smartphones, according to Adam Minter, an author of two books on secondhand industries who lived in China for 12 years as a recycling and reuse correspondent. Hong Kong is on the border of Shenzhen, and due to the concentration of market demand, the cities have become global hubs for the resale and distribution of secondhand phones.

“You have hundreds of thousands of people who have grown up working, learning within the smartphone industry. They’ve worked the lines, they’ve worked in the labs, and they know intricately how to refurbish a used phone so that it looks new,” Minter said. “They have access to a massive parts ecosystem. Remember, most of the world’s phones are made in the Pearl River Delta, which comprises Shenzhen and Hong Kong.”

People who work at legitimate warehouses manufacturing phones may spend their nights or their weekends taking apart stolen phones at third-party factories, according to Hyslip.

“Probably the person who stole your phone in Miami has no real connection to Shenzhen other than maybe they make a drop shipment of 10 phones a month into Hong Kong or Shenzhen,” Minter said. “But that’s not a vast criminal enterprise. That’s something much harder to crack.”

When Sgt. O’Brien began investigating the phone theft problem in Fort Lauderdale, he contacted the FBI. They told him they have a liaison in China working on the case.

Although a phone’s location may ping for the last time in Shenzhen, the parts stripped from a device can be sent all over the world, to places such as West Africa or the Middle East.

Because a majority of stolen phones are shipped to China, there is little the United States can do besides taking extreme legal action, such as economic sanctions, against the country, according to Holt. While the U.S. could engage in small-scale takedowns of pickpockets, it would do little to halt the sweeping network that supports the thefts.

“We could do more, but it’s very hard to do anything that has real teeth given the problem is domestically within China with fingers out to different local groups that are scoring the broader items in different countries,” Holt said.

Personal data at risk

If a phone is locked with a passcode, personal data remains safe. Apple allows for a remote data wipe of stolen phones through the Find My tracking feature.

“The best stuff you can get on an encrypted phone is you might be able to get any phone number, the model, the manufacturer, the self service provider. But you’re not going to get any personal data, no text messages, no pictures, nothing like that without advanced techniques that law enforcement uses,” Hyslip said.

If the device is unlocked, the risk is far greater. Although it is useful to have usernames and passwords stored inside the phone, safety is sacrificed for convenience. The multifactor authentication that is used to log into everything from banking apps to homework portals involves a code being sent to the phone number, blocking people from accessing important information on their computers.

“(Criminals) get into the financial institution, get credit card information, buy items on the credit card. If people have their Apple Pay or Google Pay configured on their phone, it could be an authorized use of the device,” Basiratmand said.

Not every theft occurs at a music festival or a nightclub. Amy Alvarez had her Samsung Galaxy phone and her wallet swiped at a HomeGoods store in Sunrise in 2024. While one man distracted her by holding up pillows, the other went inside her purse. She chased the thief outside the building and asked an officer to help her. The officer said that they weren’t assigned to Sunrise and that Alvarez would have to wait for other police to arrive.

“How do I call the places to cancel my credit cards? (Police officers said to) go home and use your husband’s phone,” Alvarez said. “I don’t have a husband. I don’t have children. I don’t have anybody; where am I supposed to go to call to cancel my credit cards?”

Alvarez’s phone and wallet were returned when a shopper found them hidden between racks of pillows. Similarly, Brittany Lawerence found her stolen iPhone 15 inside a plastic planter on the street in Wynwood in Miami. She used Apple’s Find My feature to track it after it was swiped from a table at Coyo Taco.

“Sometimes they’ll shut it off and they don’t want to walk around with stolen property for fear of possibly being stopped by the police, so what they’ll do is they’ll drop them off somewhere,” O’Brien said. “Two years ago we found a bag of stolen phones from downtown in a plastic bag on the side of the road and some bushes.”

The perils of losing a phone

Having a phone stolen can quickly put people in a dangerous situation. Phone numbers of friends and family members are not always memorized, and Generation Z relies on Apple Pay without carrying credit cards or cash.

“It turns into a safety issue, not only is this person’s personal information potentially going with the phone, so is their ability to contact their friends or to contact an Uber to get them back to their safe place,” Fort Lauderdale Police Department spokesperson Casey Liening said.

A lost phone offers an especially difficult challenge for tourists, who often have airline tickets, hotel check-in information and itinerary details stored digitally. If they are traveling solo, the tourist is trapped in a foreign country, possibly in a place where no one speaks English, navigating the process of transferring their phone number without a way to communicate.

While many have a contingency plan for lost luggage, stashing underwear and toothpaste in a carry-on, that same level of care is not applied to packing an additional cheap smartphone.

“Normally when I travel overseas, I always have a second phone with me just in case something happens,” Basiratmand said. “I have literally two numbers. Call me paranoid, but one is normally in the hotel and the other one’s with me. In case something happens, I can easily block the other number and make sure nobody can get to my phone.”

Losing a phone results in the stress of transferring a phone number, redownloading data, remembering the passwords for apps, and verifying security questions for financial institutions. According to Basiratmand, people use their phones for over four hours a day as an entertainment, educational, and productivity tool.

“People take (phones) for granted. I notice most people, unless they lose it, they don’t appreciate how much hassle it is to kind of get to the point where they could actually fully utilize their device,” Basiratmand said.

Although people take precautions while carrying a luxury handbag, the same attitude is not applied to cellphones. It is common to misplace a phone, asking a friend to call it as couch cushions are overturned.

“We wouldn’t wave a thousand dollars in cash around publicly, but we do that with our phone all the time,” Holt said.

Police involvement

Even if a phone can be tracked to an exact address, police will not raid the home.

“We need a lot of evidence; you would need a positive identification on a suspect that walked in there,” O’Brien said. “iPhones, although the GPS is pretty accurate, a judge really won’t sign off on a search warrant unless you have more than just the phone pinging at that address, because in the past, it’s been shown that the pinging is not accurate. It could be the house next door.”

Victims can apply for a search warrant, which could take three to five days, according to Hyslip. By that time, the phone may be enroute to China, and many search warrant requests do not get approved at all.

“The police have limited resources and it’s a thousand dollars; it’s a lot of work for them to get that search warrant. It’s a low-value loss. You go look for someone’s car or you go look for a stolen phone,” Hyslip said.

Fort Lauderdale has been cracking down on phone thefts, keeping track of stolen phone statistics instead of generalizing thefts under the broad category of larceny. Undercover cops populate downtown bars and music festivals, and public awareness campaigns about pickpockets have been implemented. The police made an effort to halt phone thefts at Tortuga after they caught 23 stolen phones in 2022. Only eight phones were reported as stolen in 2024 as opposed to 204 phones in 2022.

“If you know you’re going to be in a heavily crowded area like a bar or a music festival, we just want you to be hyper-aware that there are also people there to specifically target stealing cellphones,” Liening said.

How to prevent a phone theft

• Never keep your phone in your pocket.
• Don’t wear a low-hanging bag. Ensure that the zipper is protected by your armpit. Anti-theft hydration backpacks are a good choice for music festivals.
• Wear a fanny pack.
• No matter what kind of bag you have, protect the zipper with your hand when navigating through extremely crowded areas.
• Hide your phone in a flip belt underneath your clothes.
• Utilize a phone wrist strap or a bag tether.
• Bring cash or credit cards instead of relying on Apple Pay.
• Never keep your credit card or ID inside your phone case.
• Memorize reliable phone numbers to call if your phone is stolen.
• Take out your phone as little as possible.
• Purchase phone theft insurance.
• Password-protect your phone lockscreen.
• Never auto-save passwords to financial institutions.
• Regularly back up photos, messages and other data.
• When changing locations, ensure that you have your phone and that your bag is zipped closed.

Once your phone is stolen

• Notify venue security or nearby police officers.
• Check the location of the phone using tracking features.
• Remotely erase the phone to protect personal data.
• Cancel credit cards and notify financial institutions.
• Do not send the password to unlock it even if you receive threatening text messages–your data will be stolen.
• Transfer phone number to a new device and download recovered data.

​ Orange County Register