By ED WHITE

Twenty-one children are in the custody of a California child-welfare agency while authorities investigate a Los Angeles-area couple and whether they misled surrogate mothers around the country.

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Fifteen children were removed from the couple’s opulent home in Arcadia after an abuse allegation in May, and another six living elsewhere were also located, Arcadia police Lt. Kollin Cieadlo said. They range in age from 2 months to 13 years, with most between 1 and 3.

“We believe one or two were born biologically to the mother,” he said. “There are some surrogates who have come forward and said they were surrogates for the children.”

Silvia Zhang, 38, and Guojun Xuan, 65, are believed to be the legal parents, Cieadlo said.

They were arrested in May after a hospital reported that their 2-month-old infant had a traumatic head injury, the result of a nanny at the home violently shaking the baby, Arcadia police said. The child was not taken to the hospital for another two days.

Cieadlo said neglect charges were not formally pursued in order for an investigation to continue. The couple told police that they “wanted a large family,” the lieutenant said.

Zhang produced what appeared to be legitimate birth certificates, including some from outside California, that list her as the mother of the children, Cieadlo said.

He said the FBI is also part of the investigation. A spokesperson declined to comment when reached Wednesday by The Associated Press.

“I’m not familiar with how the surrogacy laws work,” Cieadlo said. “We need to do a much deeper dive.”

TV stations in Los Angeles quoted women who said they were surrogate mothers for the couple but that they didn’t realize so many other surrogates were also involved.

It wasn’t immediately clear if Zhang and Xuan had a lawyer who could speak on their behalf. Zhang did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

An aerial view shows the home of Silvia Zhang and Guojun Xuan on Wednesday, July 16, 2025, in Arcadia, Calif., where a number of children were removed from the couple’s home after a child abuse allegation in May, according to Arcadia police. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Business records with the California Secretary of State show a company called Mark Surrogacy Investment LLC was previously registered at the couple’s address. The most recent filing shows the business license was terminated in June.

Kallie Fell, director of The Center for Bioethics and Culture, which believes surrogacy exploits women, posted a recent YouTube video of her interview with a Texas woman, Kayla Elliott, who gave birth last spring.

“She was lied to. She was told this couple had one other child and they wanted one more child to complete a family,” Fell told The Associated Press. “She didn’t know they were the owners of the surrogacy agency. They operate with zero oversight.”

Elliott didn’t return a request for comment. But she is trying to raise money to seek to have the child placed with her.

“I am prepared and deeply committed to providing that for her, but the legal process to secure placement is complex and costly,” Elliott said in her appeal on the fundraising site GoFundMe.

The Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, which removed the couple’s children, said it could not talk about its actions in a specific case.

“Without access to nutritious food, New Yorkers are at risk of rising rates of obesity, diabetes, and other preventable illnesses—and, our city’s children are affected the most. Their academic performance, mental health, and longterm well-being are all at risk.”

A box of groceries at a food distribution event.

Parents shouldn’t have to choose between feeding their kids food that’s affordable and food that’s healthy—but it’s a choice that countless New York City parents are forced to make every day.

At Children’s Aid we see this struggle play out across the city, where families are forced to stretch their grocery budgets, skip meals, or settle for the cheapest calories they can find because healthier options are out of reach.

That’s why from April through November we run our Food Box program every week in Harlem, the Bronx, Staten Island, and Washington Heights—to deliver farm-fresh, affordable produce directly to communities that need it most. But this vital program is at risk of being eliminated entirely.

The Food Box is funded by SNAP-Ed—a federal program that supports nutrition education and healthy food access for low-income families. Congress’ new federal budget eliminates this funding as of Sept. 30, and now programs like ours may have to shut down altogether.

Every week, our sites distribute boxes packed with nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables, enough to feed a family of four for an entire week. At just $14—or $7 with SNAP EBT—each Food Box helps stretch limited budgets while providing the healthy food kids need to grow strong and healthy.

Across our sites, we distribute thousands of boxes each year, reaching families in neighborhoods where full-service grocery stores are scarce and food costs are soaring. Last year alone, we distributed more than 6,300 food boxes and hosted over 360 nutrition workshops for youth and adults. Over a thousand New Yorkers participated in these programs during the year.

But numbers only tell part of the story. The real power of the Food Box program lives in what we hear from families. One mother of two young children recently shared that the program not only helped convert her sons from fast food to nutritious meals—it also made it financially possible for her to support her elderly mom and dad.

Another told us that the program helped her eat healthier and reverse her prediabetes. We’ve heard across the board that the availability of fresh food via Food Box has helped the community to eat better and sparked a deeper interest in cooking and wellness. 

In too many New York City neighborhoods, especially those historically underserved, access to fresh food is still a daily challenge. Communities on Staten Island, where one of our Food Box programs operates, experience food deserts, especially on the North Shore. High prices, limited grocery options, and long-standing health inequities all compound to make nutritious food the exception rather than the norm—in fact, more than 1.2 million New Yorkers face food insecurity, and one in four can’t afford essentials as costs continue to rise.

Without access to nutritious food, New Yorkers are at risk of rising rates of obesity, diabetes, and other preventable illnesses—and, our city’s children are affected the most. Their academic performance, mental health, and longterm well-being are all at risk.

The Food Box program is part of the solution. It meets people where they are: at their local schools, community centers, and after-school programs. Whether it’s supporting older adults on a fixed income, youth in our after-school program, or busy working parents, the Food Box program helps remove the barriers that make healthy eating harder than it should be. It’s not a luxury. It’s a necessary part of a healthy city.

Now, with SNAP-Ed funding eliminated, we risk undoing years of progress toward a healthier, more equitable New York. Skeptics have called SNAP-Ed duplicative. It isn’t. In fact, SNAP-Ed is the only federal nutrition education program focused specifically on low-income families and delivered in community settings. 

That’s why we need leaders who will step up and prioritize food security programs like these—with federal support disappearing, it’s never been more important. Now is not the time to take food off the table. It’s time to double down on what’s working and fight for continued investment in programs that nourish our families, support public health, and strengthen communities across our city.

New York City’s families deserve better than empty shelves and empty promises. They deserve fresh, affordable food—and a government that makes it possible.

Taisy Conk is the director of food and nutrition programs at Children’s Aid.

The post Opinion: Congress Eliminated SNAP-Ed. Here’s What it Will Mean for New Yorkers.  appeared first on City Limits.

As part of a federal investigation into a “massive scheme to defraud” Minnesota’s Housing Stabilization Services Program, law enforcement carried out search warrants in the Twin Cities on Wednesday.

Eight locations were listed in the search warrant affidavit, including in St. Paul, Roseville and Little Canada. No one was under arrest as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota.

The Housing Stabilization Program is a new Minnesota Medical Assistance benefit intended to help seniors and people with disabilities — including mental illness and substance use disorders — find and maintain housing, said the affidavit by a special agent in the FBI’s Minneapolis office.

“The program has proved to be extremely vulnerable to fraud,” the agent wrote. “Since Minnesota became the first state to offer Medicaid coverage for Housing Stabilization Services, dozens of new companies have been created and enrolled in the program. These companies, and the individuals who run them, have taken advantage of the housing crisis and the drug addiction crisis in Minnesota to prey on individuals who need help getting back on their feet as they recover from drug addiction.”

The agent said the companies do this by contacting people in halfway houses and residential drug treatment facilities who are eligible for Medicaid and offering to help them find housing. After registering them to receive housing stabilization services, “the companies fraudulently claim to provide dozens of program service hours to their new ‘clients,’” the affidavit continued. “In reality, client after client has reported that they received little or no actual services or assistance from these companies.

“But the companies engaged in this scheme have received millions of dollars in Medicaid funds for housing stabilization services they did not actually provide,” the affidavit continues.

DHS responds

The search warrants are “the result of the critical partnerships” between the Minnesota Department of Human Services, which oversees the state’s Housing Stabilization Services Program, and other agencies and are “an important example of our shared commitment to work together to ensure Medicaid program integrity,” said Shireen Gandhi, DHS temporary commissioner, in a statement.

DHS’ Office of Inspector General “regularly provides investigative data and information about Medicaid provider targets to our law enforcement partners so they can build actionable cases to hold bad actors accountable,” Gandhi said.

“When credible signs of fraud were seen with these providers the DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) immediately briefed law enforcement officials on the situation,” the statement said. “DHS has open investigations into all of the five providers targeted today by our law enforcement partners, and DHS previously stopped payments to three of the providers.

“Fraud in public programs hurts the people we are working to help,” Gandhi continued. “By coordinating the administrative oversight of DHS with the legal enforcement activity of our law enforcement partners, Minnesota is able to bring those committing Medicaid fraud to justice and, often, able to facilitate monetary recovery.”

She said DHS will continue to work with law enforcement and “thanks to legislative action this past session, DHS has additional tools, including the discretion to disclose when a stop payment is issued, effective July 1, 2025. These enhancements will help prevent fraud from happening on the front end as well as enable DHS to take swift public action when credible evidence of fraud is found on the back end.”

Facilities searched

The locations that were listed in the search warrant affidavit to be searched were:

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• Brilliant Minds Services in an office building on University Avenue near Fairview Avenue in St. Paul.

• Pristine Health LLC on Grand Avenue near Oxford Street in St. Paul.

• Liberty Plus LLC on Minnesota 36 in Roseville.

• Faladcare Inc. offices on Middle Street in Little Canada and Hudson Road in Woodbury.

• Leo Human Services in a building on Northland Circle in Brooklyn Park.

• Two houses, one on Stewart Avenue between West Seventh Street and Shepard Road in St. Paul, and the other on 127th Avenue Northeast in Blaine.

No one answered the phones at the businesses. The number for Brilliant Minds Services was disconnected when the Pioneer Press tried calling Wednesday.

By MARTHA BELLISLE

A group immigrants and legal advocates filed a class-action lawsuit Wednesday that seeks to stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers from arresting migrants who appear at immigration courts for previously scheduled hearings and placing them on a fast-track to deportation.

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The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the Department of Homeland Security, Justice Department and ICE says the arrests of thousands of people at court have stripped them of rights afforded to them under U.S. immigration law and the Fifth Amendment.

The large-scale immigration court arrests that began in May have unleashed fear among asylum-seekers and immigrants. In what has become a familiar scene, a judge will grant a government lawyer’s request to dismiss deportation proceedings against an immigrant while ICE officers wait in the hallway to take them into custody.

Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit, said the Trump administration is “weaponizing” immigration courts and chilling participation in the legal process.

”People seeking refuge, safety, or relief should not be arrested, detained, and deported without a chance to be heard and given due process,” Perryman said in a statement.

Federal agents talk to each other outside immigration court at the Jacob K. Javits federal building on Thursday, July 3, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Messages seeking comment from ICE, Homeland Security and the Justice Department were not immediately returned. The Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the courts, declined to comment.

President Donald Trump has pledged to deport the most dangerous criminals in the largest deportation program in American history to protect law-abiding citizens, but government data on the detentions show that the majority of people detained by ICE have no criminal convictions.

The lawsuit represents 12 people who have been arrested at court hearings, along with the Immigrant Advocates Response Collaborative and American Gateways, which provide legal services to people who face potential arrest and deportation when they comply with their immigration proceedings by attending a court hearing.

Some of the immigrants have lived in the United States for years and were separated from family members, some who were U.S. citizens, without notice, the lawsuit said. Others fled persecution in their home countries and requested asylum. But those requests were quashed when the government lawyer dismissed their case.

Priyanka Gandhi-Abriano, interim CEO for Immigrant Advocates Response Collaborative, said the arrests are a deliberate attempt to intimidate people.

“Our friends, neighbors, and families are told to ‘do it the right way’ — to follow the legal process,” Gandhi-Abriano said in a statement. “They’re doing just that — showing up to court, complying with the law. Despite this, they’re being arrested and detained.”

Federal agents stand outside immigration court at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, Wednesday, July 16, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Homeland Security officials have defended the practice, saying the Trump administration is implementing the rule of law after former President Joe Biden’s “catch and release policy that allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens to be let loose on American streets.”

They said if a person has a credible fear claim, they can continue in the immigration proceedings, but if not claim is found, they’ll be subject to swift deportation.

Keren Zwick, director of litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center said, “We are witnessing an authoritarian takeover of the U.S. immigration court system by the Trump administration.”

The people attending the hearings to seek permission to stay in the U.S., but they’re being rounded up and “abruptly ripped from their families, homes and livelihoods.”

“Meanwhile, the administration is issuing directives telling immigration judges to violate those same immigration laws and strip people of fundamental due process rights,” Zwick said. “We must continue fighting to overcome the administration’s escalating attacks on the U.S. Constitution and rule of law.”