Sign Language Interpreter Will Also Make History During Super Bowl Halftime Show

Here are the morning’s top stories on Friday, February 6, 2026

• This Super Bowl Sunday at Levi’s Stadium, Bad Bunny will make history, headlining the halftime show, and singing entirely in Spanish. It will also be the first time the show includes Puerto Rican sign language. 
• People who say their rights are being trampled at a remote immigration detention facility  in the Mojave Desert get their first day in court on Friday.
• Kern County’s District Attorney is suing an oil and gas producer for alleged environmental violations. This comes as the county’s oil production is ramping up under a new state law.

Bad Bunny’s Sign Language Interpreter Is Ready To Make Super Bowl History

Celimar Rivera Cosme is a huge Bad Bunny fan. So in 2022, she posted a video on Instagram to address the artist directly. “Hi, Benito, Bad Bunny, hope you see this video,” she said in Spanish while signing. “Did you know that there are roughly 100,000 Deaf people in Puerto Rico? The majority like your songs, but they haven’t had the chance to experience a concert with an interpreter.”

A week later, Rivera Cosme was on tour with Bad Bunny as one of his official sign language interpreters. She’ll now join the Puerto Rican star as he headlines the Super Bowl halftime show at Santa Clara’s Levi’s Stadium. It’s first time in the show’s history that it will feature lyrics entirely in Spanish, and the first time Puerto Rican Sign Language will be in the spotlight on one of the country’s biggest stages.

“I’m so excited,” Rivera Cosme told KQED in Puerto Rican Sign Language, or LSPR, during an interview assisted by an interpreter. “And the Deaf people of Puerto Rico are happy that the Super Bowl will be accessible to them in their own sign language.” Rivera Cosme will sign Bad Bunny’s lyrics in LSPR, bouncing on stage with the full-body energy of the music. LSPR is different from American Sign Language, or ASL, and Bad Bunny’s distinctly Puerto Rican slang already figures into its vocabulary.

Rivera Cosme’s Super Bowl halftime performance marks an important shift for Deaf representation. Historically, concerts have featured hearing interpreters, but many Deaf audiences prefer Deaf interpreters who are more fluent in their language and culture. Since she’s partially Deaf, Rivera Cosme spends time ahead of the concert listening to the set list through headphones, reading the lyrics and preparing to give a dynamic show for Deaf Bad Bunny fans who enjoy the bass-heavy reggaeton beats and high-energy salsas through their vibrations. As she looks forward to the Super Bowl, Rivera Cosme says she’s especially proud to interpret songs that spotlight Puerto Rican traditions, like “Cafe Con Ron,” which features the folk ensemble Pleneros de la Cresta. “I grew up in the mountains, in the countryside,” she said. “So I really identify with that song.”

Octavio Cuenca Maldonado, president of the National Hispanic Latino Association of the Deaf, says this Super Bowl halftime show is much more than a performance. Speaking through an interpreter, he says Rivera Cosme is providing crucial representation for Deaf Latinos. “This is about language, culture, identity, and recognition by the world,” he says.

It’s rare for interpreters’ cultural background to reflect the music itself, says AV Vilavong, a Deaf concert interpreter who performs at major music festivals across the country. “The fact that Celimar is Puerto Rican, there are cultural nuances that are already embedded in how she, as a Deaf interpreter, will match the tone, the cultural aspects, the songs, the significance behind the slang for particular vocabulary,” Vilavong says through an interpeter. “It’s embedded in who she is as an individual.”

Immigrants Suing ICE Over Detention Conditions Get Their Day In Court 

A group of detained immigrants who say their rights are being violated at the California City immigration detention facility in the Mojave Desert will get their first day in court on Friday before a federal judge in San Francisco.

Their lawsuit alleges that conditions at the 2,560-bed immigration jail operated by a for-profit contractor are so bad that they violate the Constitution and a law meant to protect people with disabilities. It points to meager medical care, inadequate access to lawyers and an environment so punishing it’s worse than a high-security prison.

The suit comes as a record number of people are being held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention — more than 70,000 as of late January — and a growing number of them are dying. There were 32 deaths in 2025, the highest in two decades, and ICE has reported that six people have died in custody since the start of this year.

The detainees are asking U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney to order ICE to ensure that conditions improve so they comply with the Rehabilitation Act and the 1st and 5th amendments to the Constitution. They’re also asking her to make the case a class action to cover everyone held at the California City facility. Cody Harris, a partner at Keker, Van Nest & Peters, who’s part of a team representing the detainees, said ICE and CoreCivic, the company that owns and operates the former prison in California City, opened it in haste last August, unprepared to handle even routine medical needs, let alone serious ones. “Their staffing was not ready, their training was not ready, the facility itself wasn’t ready,” he said. “They set out to make this the biggest immigration detention facility in the entire state … and they just weren’t ready to do that.” ICE and the Department of Homeland Security dispute the allegations. In court filings, they argue that the law does not require them to treat detainees better than prisoners and say the California City facility has an experienced warden who follows ICE’s detention standards.

Kern County Sues Oil Producer

The District Attorney’s office in Kern County has filed a lawsuit, accusing an oil and gas producer of environmental violations.

DA Cynthia Zimmer filed a criminal and civil complaint against 25 Hill Properties Incorporated and its owner – Ronald Engelberg.  She said the company holds multiple oil and gas leases near the city of Taft,

The company is accused of hundreds of violations that were identified by the state agency overseeing oil and gas operations. The allegations include illegal storage and dumping of toxic waste, as well as illegally spilling oil into state waterways.

Engelberg’s company was previously sued for failing to report spills and illegally disposing of hazardous waste. That case was settled in 2022. But state regulators allege the company continued to commit violations. Engelberg was arraigned on the new charges on Monday.

This case comes as Kern County sees a wave of new oil permits under a state law aiming to boost in-state oil production and lower gas prices.