What Happened at L.A. Taco

So L.A. Taco, my former employer, publicly called me out, writing, “Memo, you’ve always said you stand for the truth. Then tell it.” Well, ok then. I’ll tell it.

I was not going to say anything. I was going to move forward, leave L.A. Taco behind, and rebuild my reporting on ICE raids on my own. But you’ve seen their behavior this past week. While I remained silent, only announcing my departure, several allegations and nefarious falsehoods have been made not only against me, but against someone else too. Not only has there been a smear campaign on my name, my work, my ethics, and my integrity, but there have been false allegations against a woman that I briefly dated. Elements of our private life were weaponized against her and me in a shameful attempt to combat the backlash L.A. Taco received as they were losing subscribers and falling out of favor with the community.

So let me address the allegations here and now, and hopefully put an end to this, because we are at the height of this ICE surge; it’s worse than it’s ever been, and real work needs to get done that can’t wait as midterms approach.

L.A. Taco wrote, “Everyone makes mistakes. What Matters is taking responsibility.” Sources close to L.A. Taco also told L.A. Material that I refused to take accountability. That’s a complete lie. They can smear my name all they want, but to drag California State Senator Sasha Renee Perez as well is completely unfair to her.

I’ll tell you exactly what happened.

My main focus has always been reporting on everything related to ICE. As part of that work, I have spoken and worked closely with a number of public officials, including Senator Perez. We became friends, and we briefly dated in early 2026.

This was not a secret relationship. Both Alex Bloomingdale, owner and co-founder, and Javier Cabral, Editor-in-Chief, were well aware of the relationship from the beginning. To avoid any appearance of impropriety. L.A. Taco reviewed my stories to ensure I was not favoring Senator Perez in my coverage. As L.A. Taco’s owner and co-founder, Alex Bloomingdale, advised me in writing, “we did an internal investigation and found that nothing inappropriate happened, no coverage was altered, etc.”

Throughout the time we worked together, including the brief period that we dated, I followed the appropriate journalistic practice of asking Senator Perez for comment, as is the case with all sources, and to review certain statements for factual accuracy. However, at NO time did Senator Perez write any article under my byline, nor did she ever have access to edit, submit or publish any of my articles or Daily Memos.

Now I’d like to address the serious problems at L.A. Taco, including the fact that editorial support was almost non-existent. I repeatedly asked for editorial support. Even Alex Bloomingdale brought up the deficiencies within the support network for the volume that was being produced for our ICE coverage. Javier Cabral, the Editor-in-Chief, edited no more than maybe a handful of the 150-plus Daily Memos I wrote. I worked 14-hour days, non-stop. I was left to publish the Daily Memos every night on my own. The editorial team would say they would edit them in the morning; that also rarely, if ever, happened.

Despite conducting an internal investigation which found that I had done “nothing inappropriate,” I felt that Alex and Javier turned on me. Javier, surprisingly, went so far as to deny to Alex Bloomingdale that he knew about the relationship, presumably to protect his own interests. Alex suspended me for three weeks, without pay, demoted me, put me on probation, and if not for me advocating to save my pay, it would have been cut by twenty percent.

This suspension was a mandate for me to continue to work at L.A. Taco. I did offer to take a course in journalistic ethics. Admittedly, I did not; there was not a process in place as they claimed in their statement. In fact, I had forgotten about that part of my suspension until it came up in a recent article about me. I was severely burned out at that time. My focus, after I returned from suspension, was to get back to work on reporting. Please know that I have no problem taking a course in ethics or any other type of course that would make me a better journalist.

During this mandated suspension, I asked whether Javier Cabral had taken any responsibility and whether he would be held accountable for failing in his duties as the Editor-in-Chief. Alex Bloomingdale said he brought it up to Javier, but I never knew if he was held accountable for his part in this, or lack thereof.

Beyond this issue, following my return from my suspension, L.A. Taco and I agreed to put the incident behind us and move forward. We did. While I anticipated some change when I returned, what I had not expected was that the newsroom would become corporate and rigid. Despite what they say to the public, they absolutely wanted to lessen ICE reporting, something I actively voiced I was not happy about.

In my protest of this shift in focus, I emphasized how our community needs this reporting and looks to us for real-time and honest reporting. I pointed out to them that thousands of people were paying memberships; we’re receiving thousands in donations, funding, and support specifically for the ICE coverage. We can’t scale back.

At the next team meeting, as a counterargument, Alex Bloomingdale, presented a report using AI analytics to argue that something like only 20% of either our new members or funding came because of ICE and that the Daily Memos and ICE reports were doing just average numbers, not the big numbers like they used to. Bloomingdale wanted to focus on the larger percentage of why folks came to the publication based on his AI analytics. Javier Cabral argued that having 3 of their 8 reporters on one beat made no sense and was not sustainable. I was encouraged to write stories about food again.

They wanted to change the Daily Memo. I was told to stop tracking and reporting the raids. They told me they didn’t want recaps. They wanted deeper, longer pieces instead. They wanted me to just make single-subject videos and call them the Daily Memo. But the new video process sometimes took days, going back and forth to execute one. The Daily Memo essentially died on June 11th of this year. Coincidentally, L.A. Taco filed to trademark Daily Memo in July.

For my part, I still kept track of the raids by starting a channel on my personal Instagram page. I just wasn’t allowed to document it for L.A. Taco. A couple of months later, after constantly insisting, L.A. Taco finally gave in to reporting the raids again, but to do it as a newsletter. The ICE Watch newsletter was born, and it started to feel like a different Daily Memo. Only about 500 people saw it a week, which was a drastic shift from its previous form of hundreds of thousands on their multimedia platforms.

The reporting process changed completely, which stifled our ICE coverage. I would want to write a story about one subject, and they’d change it into a completely different type of story. If I pushed them enough, they would approve a social media post only on their smaller, lesser-known LATACONEWS channel on Instagram instead. Leadership and managers questioned me on every single thing I wanted to report on and why we needed to, why it was relevant, and whether they thought the audience would care or click on it.

One example was my ICE Burnout story about conversations I was having with people, responders, rapid response groups, and immigration orgs, and how I voiced the general sense of burnout everyone in L.A. was feeling from the raids. It’s one of my proudest pieces I’ve written. Well, they turned it down at first. After fighting them, they agreed to publish it, but changed it to a newsletter announcement. I strongly disagreed with that direction, and although I let my objections be known to the editors, it was what Javier said to me when he came into my office that truly stunned me

He shared with me what editors told him when he was at L.A. Weekly: “We’re paying you for a product, and we’ll do whatever we want with that product and that’s just how it is.” I eventually posted the original version on my Instagram as I intended, and it went viral proving that the community needed and wanted that story.

Remarks about the stories we wanted to cover also demonstrated a repeated theme and change in attitude towards the ICE coverage. Recently, a team member wanted to report on the most recent death at Adelanto, and Javier responded, “If [it’s] just another death caused by ICE, that’s why we have the deathtracker.” For reporters who have been fully invested in these atrocities, every person we’ve spoken to, every story we’ve told, and every story we keep private, the insensitivity of this and other remarks was becoming too common a theme. It was demoralizing.

Regardless, I proceeded to share information on my own social media pages, something that upset L.A. Taco over and over again. This was the basis of some of their accusations that they fired me “for repeated violations of our policies and our basic journalistic standards. That’s it. That’s the reason.” They also state that “the split followed an internal investigation and repeated conversations over nearly five months.” Or that “tensions reportedly came to a head this month after management confronted Torres over a significant journalistic error and his alleged refusal to accept responsibility, prompting the final break.” So which of these three versions is it?

The implication that I was fired over something that was settled and put behind us earlier in the year, but dragged out, is absolutely false. If it were true, why didn’t they fire me then?

Up until the day I was fired, I only had the one incident which formed the basis for my suspension. It’s the only write-up. I was told we had put it behind us. Despite this, it seemed like every day leadership and managers looked for something new to reprimand me in front of the entire staff on Discord, or a new argument would arise about how to report something, or what to report. I had started giving up. They had placed so many obstacles and continued to change their rules; I didn’t know if I could effectively keep reporting with their ever-evolving rules, standards, and expectations. Mind you, before this incident, I can’t remember if they had any standards or rules in writing.

For example, when I took some time off to travel for a conference in mid-July shortly after returning from my suspension, I reported ICE updates on my personal Instagram when possible. Suddenly, that too was a violation of their standards. When I asked leadership about those standards, they said they would write them and have them ready the next week. It took a bit longer, but everyone was forced to sign their new “Personal Social Media & Outside Publishing Policy.” I signed it on August 19th.

They took over and controlled what I could and couldn’t post on my own pages. They also stopped me from making appearances or speaking at panels without their permission.

I don’t believe they wanted to stop ICE coverage completely. It was just clear, however, that the newsroom didn’t prioritize it anymore and was making it difficult and discouraging. L.A. Taco was starting to feel more like a corporate business, relying on analytics interpreted by AI to make decisions on the direction of their reporting. Documenting the ICE raids was no longer important and was not performing well enough according to them.

Most recently, when I was away on the East Coast at Harvard, new video evidence came to light that changed the narrative that was understood at the time in the last video I had posted. When I learned about this evidence, I took the video down. I think that’s what they may be referring to as prompting the final break? I don’t know, but their claim that “tensions reportedly came to a head this month after management confronted Torres over a significant journalistic error and his alleged refusal to accept responsibility” is false. I was never confronted. Instead, on my first day back to work after I returned from Harvard, they just fired me. It felt like they were waiting for me to make one mistake so they could fire me. No confrontation or refusal to take responsibility, instead they made me a severance offer.

Which brings me back to their statement regarding my firing. I find it bold of L.A. Taco to write. “Our integrity is everything to us.” A subtle jab and attempt to smear my integrity. Well, how’s this for integrity?

That “Generous Severance Package” L.A. Taco claims they offered to support my future endeavor- in reality, it was a $30,000 (paid over six months) offer to not only buy my silence, but for me to promote a false narrative that they prepared. The lie they wanted me to promote is that I wasn’t fired; I agreed to leave of my own accord. I was to still stand and encourage everyone to keep supporting L.A. Taco. I didn’t take the money; I didn’t sign the paperwork. For $30,000, they wanted me to waive all my legal rights and agree to “not disparage the Company, its officers . . . .in any manner likely to be harmful to its or their business.”

So, yes, while I may be broke, I’m free to tell all the truth. How’s that for integrity?

I want to be clear. I take no pleasure in seeing something I gave 7 years of my life to help build destroy itself. I worked for free for the first two years to grow their membership program, eventually got a stipend, and then, years later, finally got on the payroll. I was okay with it. I had a landscape business that sustained me, which I later sold when Alex Bloomingdale asked me to come on board full-time, promising things that never came to fruition. I helped L.A. Taco through its financial crises. I believed L.A. Taco could be the publication and voice that this city needs and deserves. I gave L.A. Taco everything, and I did it for this city.

I will repeat myself and say I was not planning on sharing any of this because, to me, it was internal beef, not public gossip. I was going to move on and let them carry it forward. I had said nothing other than I was shocked to be let go, because the truth is, I was. I wasn’t ready to leave something I loved that quickly. And while I had talked about leaving in the future, I never expected them to fire me. So yes. I was shocked by that. But the most shocking part is how they treated me afterward.

If L.A. Taco is losing subscribers, if it’s going down, I am not the one to blame. This is a culmination of bad leadership, mismanagement, lack of internal processes, and being out of touch with your community’s needs and expectations. L.A. Taco asked me to tell the truth. Well, they got what they asked for. The way I have been attacked is in no way what I intend to do here, but rather to give my community the full understanding of what led me to this point and for the community and L.A. Taco’s audience to decide what comes of it.

I always thought that it would be ICE or Trump’s regime that would try to take me down. I never expected it would be the leaders of the newsroom I helped build up.

I wish them good luck and only ask that they please leave me and anybody else around me alone. Let’s move on. Thank you.

Stay safe and stay vigilant.

~ Memo Torres