The following is an AZPM original production.

From the radio studios of AZPM, welcome to the latest edition of The Press Room.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

Coming up, federal raids in Tucson result in arrests and the pepper spraying of Representative Adelita Grijalva.

Plus, a vital deadline for Project Blue is around the corner.

What could happen over the next two weeks?

A panel of journalists joins me to discuss those and other stories next on The Press Room.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) Welcome to The Press Room.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

Our panel of journalists joining me today are Paul Ingram of the Tucson Sentinel, Prerana Sannappanavar of the Arizona Daily Star, Joe Ferguson of the Tucson Agenda, and Danyelle Khmara of AZPM News.

Paul, I will not make light of what happened because what happened to you and others about a week ago was gross, not acceptable.

So it started at a Tucson restaurant when it was raided by at least a dozen ICE, HSI agents.

Situation got out of hand.

From where you were, which was right there.

Why did it happen in the way that it did?

Why did it play out this way?

Well, it played out, so ICE agents mostly were with HSI, or Homeland Security Investigations, along with CBP, did a raid at this restaurant on Grande.

One of the tricks of this is that they kind of put themselves in the parking lot, which is walled in, which meant that they were sort of sealed in, for lack of a better term, and the crowd started forming around them.

At one point, the crowd said, we're not gonna let you leave because we're afraid that you have one of our neighbors in the car, we don't want you to go with them, we don't want you to kidnap them, which has been kind of the conversation about how ICE operates.

And of course, the ICE agents were saying, well, if you let us leave, then we'll be out of your hair, and so there was this moment where no one knew what to do.

At some point, HSI started asking for aid, so they called their SRT, or their Special Response Team, and Special Response Teams, or throughout DHS, they are, for lack of a better term, their sort of SWAT team.

And so they came in in a couple of vehicles, and they started throwing tear gas and pepper balls and pepper spray and waded into the crowd, essentially to clear the road so that the HSI officers could retreat.

Was there a feeling in the midst of that, because looking back at it, it certainly seems like major overreaction, did it feel like that in the moment?

Did it feel like they had a reason to act the way they did in any sense?

No, I mean, I think it was very clear that the crowd was yelling at them and making jokes.

People were making fun of them to a point.

People were telling them that they should quit their job, but they weren't being threatening.

They weren't actively moving towards them.

They weren't throwing objects.

There was nothing except for a few harsh words.

And the ICE agents had time.

They were making on their phones.

Some of the ICE agents were kind of even at one point laughing at some of the things that people were saying.

They kind of appreciated the humor that people were making, the jabs that people were making.

But they really stayed.

And then you could tell though that they were making calls, but it wasn't until SRT showed up that the situation went from a little bit of a protest to all of a sudden a full-blown chaotic situation.

And that was really caused by SRT and their arrival.

Danyelle, what did you see?

You reported on this.

Yeah, so it was kind of interesting actually because I had showed up there, I don't know, about 45 minutes or so before sort of everything went down and there were agents there.

Like Paul said, the restaurant was blocked off, the parking lot was blocked off.

And you saw agents just like taking out boxes and putting boxes into cars.

People were already kind of talking about, there may have been some arrests of employees at their houses, which later we found out that 46 people, not just who worked at that Taco Giro, but I believe that worked at Taco Giros in other parts of Southern Arizona as well, had been arrested that day.

Some of them hadn't even made it to work that day.

And the crowd that was starting to form, they were doing chants and sort of typical things that you see at peaceful protests.

And interestingly enough, I actually missed the action because I headed over to one of the other raids that was going on.

So at the Taco Giro at Valencia, it was a similar scene, blocked off, HSI agents putting boxes in cars, but at that one, there was no sort of opposition, if you will, so nothing escalated.

Paul, what did an ICE spokesman have to say about why they were there in the first place?

I suppose it's somewhat obvious, but were they-- They're doing a larger investigation.

They're doing an investigation about the way that the business operates.

It seems in part that the business was sort of operating where they brought people into the country and then they forced them to continue to work for them and as a way to pay off their immigration, kind of a peonage process.

We don't know a lot.

There's only a few things we know, but we have a sense that there was more going on.

The other thing we sort of missed, haven't talked about yet, is that the IRS was also involved in this investigation.

So there's a much larger investigation.

One thing too that's clear is this is an investigation that started under the Biden administration.

That's something that's been ongoing long-term.

And it's worth thinking about, was it across the Arizona?

They went to, they served 16 warrants.

They went to several restaurants, even the one in Sierra Vista.

So it's a large-scope investigation.

We know in the fact that the wheels came off at the place in Tucson is because of in part, I think the way that they decided to respond to how the crowd was protesting.

Prerana, in addition to Paul getting pepper sprayed, unfortunately, Representative Adelita Grijalva, it's not been a great start for her.

Had the longest wait in history to become a member of Congress and now this.

What did that say to you about the circumstance and what happened?

I think just reading about it and hearing all of the stories, even our newsroom photographers were there, reporters were there.

And I think what stood out to me and what is important to note is that someone who is in power or who has a little more power and agency than just a local person walking down the street like Grijalva, she showed up at the scene, she identified herself as a Congresswoman, was recently sworn in.

So just the fact that even that did not change the escalation of the situation and Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, she also put out a post saying that TPD officers were great on the scene, they were making sure the rest of the community was safe but even that officers in uniform or a Congresswoman showing up at the scene and identifying themselves does not change how the situation plays out, I think is very important to kind of note.

And it is a little scary for the average person walking down the street if they don't even have that much privilege and protection that these officers in uniform do.

And one thing I think is probably important is I was walking with Adelita Grijalva when I got sprayed in the face.

I was close to her-- Was that a humble brag right there?

Yeah, okay, sure.

(laughing) I was walking with he sort of in parallel to her because I wanted to see in part how they responded to her to photograph that, to report on that and that's when the HSI or SRT agent blindsided me by spraying me in the face.

After that of course I didn't see what happened because I was blinded, I literally couldn't see.

But it's very clear that that same officer who sprayed me also went to spray Adelita Grijalva again and then later sprayed another journalist in the face and also sprayed his camera and that's on footage too.

I think there's been a big conversation about whether or not Adelita was sprayed in the face or not.

Part of that, it doesn't matter.

The fact is is that the agent tried to and really I think by luck didn't manage to actually fully hit her in the face largely because she was protected by one of her aides, Patrick Robles, who turned and then started yelling at the agents reminding them that she was a congresswoman and at that point they sort of backed off but they still fired pepper balls at her feet, they still reacted to this.

So I think it's important to really talk about that when the agents started to really move against people they went after credentialed journalists like myself and another gentleman and also after a congresswoman because they didn't seem to understand how to organize themselves and control the scene and they didn't wait for TPD.

TPD was there several minutes later and formed up and calmed the crowd down and managed to really change the dynamics of the situation while the SRT agents retreated.

Danyelle, before I go to more with you I'll make sure Joe weighs in on this.

Joe, you've been a reporter in this town for a very long time.

What did you observe either from afar or close up?

I went to another protest later in the day and that was in front of the ICE facility off of Valencia.

Small group of peaceful protestors, a little bit of music, a little bit of shouting.

The ICE agents were behind a 10-foot steel door and so the protestors went up to that door at one point.

They got pepper sprayed.

There was no danger for any of them and they just put their hands through the gate and pepper sprayed two different people.

One was down for quite a while and so it almost seems indiscriminate.

It doesn't matter what you're doing or what you're saying or whether or not you pose an imminent risk which should be probably the line that we're talking about here and it's happening.

I've covered protests for years here in town.

I can't remember the last time tear gas or pepper spray was deployed like this.

Yeah, so Danyelle, just because I think it's important, obviously, I think most of our viewers, most of our audience probably knows the restaurant has been there at least to one of their locations.

Is it a really important part of the community and did that make it even rise to a higher level for folks?

Yeah, I think so.

I mean, a lot of people are used to going there on a weekly or a daily basis.

I mean, I spoke with Adelita Grijalva that day after it happened and she told me that she had been on her way there to get lunch.

So, it's a coincidence that she ended up there and she did hear when she was on her way there that something was going on.

But even though there is a number of these restaurants in town, people keep calling it a 'mom and pop' business because that's the way they think of it.

And are all of the restaurants currently closed because of the raids or no?

No, not all of them are closed.

There's a few that are closed.

They're saying indefinitely because they don't have enough staff to staff them.

But I just went to the other day, I went back to the one on Valencia and I did see that one was open and I know there are other ones that are open as well.

Yeah, the one on Grande has been closed but the one in Sierra Vista is open, was open right the very next day.

Yeah, okay, well let's continue sort of in this vein.

Earlier this week, we had a federal raid at a trucking company on Miracle Mile.

Danyelle, you reported and had a photo of some damage that occurred.

Paul, why was this business targeted, for the same reasons as what happened on Friday or different reasons?

Totally different reasons.

So what they've said is that this is over cabotage, which is a sort of unique word.

What it simply means is that it's the rules that constrain what drivers can move trucks.

So currently in the US, if you're a Mexican driver, you can drive to the warehouses in Nogales.

You have to get a special visa to continue on and that is really set up to protect US drivers.

But what's been happening, and I wrote about this several years ago as well, is that sometimes companies will hire the drivers to continue on and the reason they do that is because it's cheaper.

They can pay the drivers less than the American drivers.

So for the last few weeks, there's been a bigger investigation about how this is operating and it looks like this trucking company is sort of focused on about whether or not they're actually using cabotage to use the wrong kinds of drivers.

So they pulled logs, a bunch of other materials and then piled that up into boxes and headed out with that on Wednesday So Danyelle, there wasn't any violence per se, but there was a lot of property damage that you were able to see.

Yeah, so it was interesting because I was just kind of talking to a couple men that were standing there that they didn't seem like they were people that were interested in observing and seeing what happens, but they seemed really invested in what was gonna happen.

And so I just asked them like, oh, do you guys work here?

And they said that they were contractors with the business, that they were drivers.

And then once it was over, they like invited me to come onto the property and showed me that there were a bunch of broken windows in trucks and personal trucks, including one of the men said, pointed out one of the pickup trucks and said, this is my truck.

And he was waiting to go to work and the window was clearly had just been broken out.

Now, I mean, I should say that ICE, they didn't respond to my questions about the windows.

So we can only assume what might've happened, but yeah, there was, I don't know, seven, I believe windows broken on trucks.

Yeah, Joe calling in for general observations again.

Just, should we expect more of this to be happening, considering major things on Friday and earlier this week?

It's hard to tell.

I mean, these are not your typical ICE raids that we're seeing in democratic cities.

And so it's hard to know why the crackdowns are happening right this second.

And if it's a precept for more, I've been told that most politicians are expecting more in January.

Okay, well, and it's interesting to me too, we talked obviously about Representative Grijalva and then at this particular situation, Pima County Supervisor Jen Allen, Tucson Councilman Kevin Dahl were on site as well.

Did they have anything particula interesting or relevant to say?

Yeah, I mean, I'll just say that Jen Allen, I spoke to her about it and she said that she hopes this isn't a sign that there's gonna be more of an influx of rates like this, but she's concerned that possibly that is what's gonna happen.

But it's striking how little elected officials know, not that much more than the public.

She kind of found out as we were all finding out that it was going on.

Yeah, hopefully.

And one thing, I mean, with this investigation is it's relying on sealed warrants.

I mean, even, so there's, only the investigators and the judge knows exactly what this investigation is about.

One thing I think is worth talking about is like we've had sort of ICE operations all throughout the year, but they've been very specifical targeted.

They're really going after onesies and twosies.

A few businesses have been raided to a point for violations, especially of I-9, which is the document that people use to show that they have employment in the United States.

But I think there's an important question.

Is this an acceleration?

We don't know because in part, HSI and these other investigators have been doing big investigations.

In some ways, stopped doing big investigations because they were so busy doing small ball, low-hanging fruit kinds of investigations where they're picking up onesies and twosies.

And also to a point, a lot of these guys were actually deployed in other cities.

And so now some of these cities have stopped having these big operations.

These guys are back and it's very clear that they're moving on doing their cases again.

What I read though is that this was an all hands on deck kind of moment on Friday where all federal officers were asked to participate.

So that's highly unusual to have that kind of cooperation on something that is likely just to be kind of a civil raid at the end of the day.

But there are more than just two agencies is what I've been told.

Well, what intrigues me too, and again, this is just speculative, but Joe, you talked a little bit about, we'll call them other blue cities or Democrat-leaning cities.

And I do wonder, Tucson's a little bit smaller than some of the other cities we've seen, but is very much a democratic city and is run by Democrats.

So would we be surprised if Tucson becomes more of a target?

Well, we have this moment where there's this distinction between sanctuary cities.

And Tucson says it's not, and we had a referendum on this a couple of years back.

And so I think that the list of sanctuary cities, Tucson's not on it.

As that definition grows and it continues to evolve from the Trump administration, I think it's a matter of time, but I can't tell you if it's next week, next month, or two years from now.

Yeah.

Okay, Prerana, we're gonna completely change topics now, but it's still something that's been affected by the Trump administration.

Your report on the U of A Provost Patricia Prelock, I love to say that name, adding elements to a plan to invest in a bridge funding program to support certain students.

First of all, which students are gonna be receiving the funding and how much money is possible?

Because the number in your reporting $200,000 doesn't feel like much of an impact when you're losing tens and hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government.

So what should we know about this?

So I think first of all, it's important to note that this is a one-time, one-semester bridge funding program.

It's for spring 2026.

And this is in addition to the $1 million bridge funding program, which came out of the Office of Research and Partnerships this spring, in spring 2025.

So I think what I'm trying to see, what I'm seeing at the U of A is kind of like a pattern of, okay, we're gonna go semester by semester, and we're gonna see how much money we can invest each semester.

But the way this program is different from the research, the Office of Research one, is that this is very much focused on students.

So it's going to, it's obviously still going to look at university grants that are being affected by federal research funding, stops or pauses or gaps in funding to fill those holes.

But at the same time, it's going to look at university grants that are very student-facing and support student success and academic advising and mentoring and stuff.

So the $200,000 is going to be used for undergraduate and graduate wages stipends, tuition support, to pay salaries for advisors and mentors.

So it's more about the students, this time is what I see.

So the word bridge is used though.

So is that potentially there is hope for more funding coming from somewhere else?

Yes, because I mean, bridge funds generally, that's like the definition, like you're always bridging to something.

So generally it's going to be for university grants that have phase like pauses or stops, but not necessarily always terminated grants.

So I think there has to be something to bridge to because these are not funds that are going to sustain the programs long-term.

So it's very clearly just for the spring and the funds, they can be used through June 30th, 2026.

So it's very much like a short-term thing.

But what I hear is that the university officials are going to at the end of the spring reevaluate and see if they want to continue this.

And this is like the second bridge funding program that's coming in.

So it kind of feels like a pattern.

We've talked a bit about, and thank you for that word.

So I want to talk to you about a little bit the education compact we've talked about before that apparently President Garimella said no, although there was a lot of, did he say no?

Did he kind of say no?

How does all of this fit into the university's efforts to sort of cope with the loss of federal funding without alienating the president any further than people want to alienate him?

I think that's a very, it's a very, very difficult time for universities.

And specifically, I think the U of A, what I hear all the time is diverse reactions.

So there's, let's talk about the compact.

He did say no to preferential funding, sorry, priority to funding.

But at the same time, he did write back with a statement of principles where he talked about, you know, academic freedom, he talked about international students, and he talked about a bunch of things.

So this was very different from the rest of the universities that said, okay, absolutely not.

And we are not going to participate in this.

And they did not even kind of like put a hand forward, but President Garimella did.

So a lot of people are appreciat of the nuance that he approached the compact with, but at the same time, there's also people who are like, well, did he really say no?

Like did he really, really stand up for our values in a very hard way?

Because I mean, there's so much talk also about the fact that you have to see who you are negotiating with, you know, the Trump administration, or even at the state level, the Republican-controlled legislature, who exactly is it that we are in conversation with?

And is it like, is it actually a negotiation that could go in our favor?

Yeah, okay.

Anybody have any thoughts on that?

I mean, I think one thing in talking about this, like with the compact, is that if you're negotiating, you're also buying yourself time.

You know, the Trump administration sort of signaled that maybe there'd be funding cuts, that it would go after the universities that said no.

And I think by saying like, well, we agree to some principles, there's some negotiation, but also you're buying yourself time.

You're buying yourself time for them to get distracted by something else, or for them to use them trying to use money in some different way.

The bridge funding is really interesting in part because while U of A has often had bridge funding, usually to carry people through like a summer semester from June to July, because of the fiscal changeover, or something like that, now the U of A is kind of finding itself having to kind of pick up more and more research dollars.

And the big question is how much can the U of A really pick up using these kind of small ball grants?

And then what does that mean for the longterm?

Because of course, if they're gonna say, well, we'll bridge you, but you've got to find something else.

If there's nothing else for these students or researchers to get, what does that mean for the U of A?

Danyelle?

Yeah, I mean, just continuing on what you were just saying, like as far as buying time, it's like, this bridge funding really does feel like buying time because I can only imagine that some of these students who know, I'm not gonna get my research done in the next semester, and knowing that they may do all this extra work and then come to the end of that, and not knowing where the next round of funding will come from, I can only imagine how difficult that would be to plan your research accordingly.

Yeah, I think it's just important to also look at numbers, you know, like the U of A, as of this spring, the kind of tally was that they'd lost out on $63 million in unspent federal research money that hadn't been spent, that they were supposed to get, that they were no longer getting.

And in the spring, there was the $1 million bridge funding program, and this time, it's a $200,000, you know, bridge funding program.

So it's just kind of interesting to see how much it is that the university can actually do, and how much gap there is in what needs to be done and what needs to be filled and what they can actually do.

Okay.

Joe would not be an edition to The Press Room if we don't talk about Project Blue a little bit.

There's a deadline coming up for Christmas Eve.

I'm gonna put you on the spot.

Is there any reason to think the three members of the Pima County Board of Supervisors that voted to let this advance, is one of them gonna change their minds?

We've heard threats about, you're gonna get primaried.

We're gonna try to recall you, whatever it may be, based on the political tone, what we've seen at Project Blue, any reason to think that's gonna change?

We have to wait till Tuesday.

Tuesday, there is yet another item on the supervisors' agenda.

This one is holding Beale to some of the statements that they said that they were going to do.

Now they're asking for that to be memorialized before the sale.

And so that could go one of two ways.

Beale's apparently gonna sign it.

I think that will be the last nail in the coffin for Project Blue going forward, at least at the county level.

We've already heard from the 'No Data' people that they intend to sue related to open public meeting law violations that they believe happened during the planning process.

And so I think one way or another, the county is going to be in court over Project Blue, which would likely make sure that no shovels turn any ground anytime soon.

So Paul, is that gonna be worth it for the county to be in court a lot for these kinds of things?

Obviously, I would think Beale's pockets are deeper, I would think.

Yeah, I mean, I think for the county, I mean, this was supposed to be, I mean, initially it was supposed to be a nice boon.

A little bit of tax revenue.

Somebody gets to build something on some land.

I think it was a bit of, they kind of pushed it through without really thinking that it was going to be this fairly significant and consequential deal that's really kind of what dragged over the entire summer, now into the winter.

It's been six months.

It feels like longer than that, too, yes.

Maybe it has been longer or shorter.

It could have been a week, I'm not sure.

But I feel like we've been talking about this for all summer and into the winter now.

So when it comes down to it, I mean, this is supposed to be a boon.

And you really see how, in part, this has come loose because there's all these questions about what Beale is going to do, about what Beale's plan is, about what Project Blue really is, who's operating Project Blue, who's going to make money.

And all these questions are still kind of up in the air.

I mean, right now they're also moving forward in their facility that they're going to build in Marana.

Then there's a third facility that's still a mystery that we don't know anything about.

And of course, this means also the numbers have been changing.

We also see how they've really changed their operations plan, in part because the city of Tucson said that they couldn't have water.

So that's changed the dynamics, too.

So there's, I think, a ton of questions that are up in the air when it comes down to this.

But this was really supposed to be a nice tax revenue for the county and all of a sudden it's become this huge consequential deal.

Yeah, and Joe, the Daily Star reported, of course, that Amazon pulled out, I guess, in part because of what Paul was just saying, that air cooling versus water cooling, but we still don't know who the end user's going to be.

No, we don't.

But the group behind this at the end of the day, the Blue Owl Funding is a $24 billion company.

They can afford to foot the bill for a while before they find a tenant.

So this is like an apartment complex being built before you find people to live inside of it.

And so I think that's why you see Beale pushing so hard is before that bubble bursts, they want to have real estate on the ground.

Yeah, Danyelle, can I get your take on this briefly?

One of the things that struck me is if Tucson, especially, is coming and saying, not every person, but many, many, many people, many of the elected officials would say, we don't want this.

What does this say to Beale saying, we kind of don't care?

Yeah, I mean, it's not surprising to me.

Like, we see this sort of thing happening all over the country.

I mean, there is potentially a lot of money to be made.

So I think that the developers are gonna continue to push, you know?

And ultimately you even see people split in the community.

You see union leaders showing up at, you know, discussions about this, saying this is gonna bring jobs.

This is gonna be good for the community.

And I think it comes down to a question of like, what are the repercussions gonna be long-term to water, to electricity costs?

And what are the benefits long-term to the community of any economic benefits?

So I think these are questions we just don't really have the answers to.

Paul, to your point, briefly please, but the last six months, these are the same questions that keep coming up.

Are there gonna be enough jobs?

Is it gonna hurt the environment?

And I think that's really, that's really what it comes down to.

I mean, one thing to keep in mind is like, they're promising not to use any water for their cooling, but they're gonna use a lot more electricity.

But to produce electricity, you have to use a lot of water.

It's the way that these things are interrelated are really complicated and hard to get a handle on sometimes.

But there's this idea that they're not going to use water.

They're going to use water.

They're just going to use, say, New Mexico's water, which are used, watered for cooling stations there.

There's always these trade-offs.

And the other question of course is like, ultimately, how many jobs is it gonna be?

It's gonna be about 500 jobs.

Very quickly, Joe.

Well, I mean, at the end of the day, the amount they're doing for Project Blue itself is 75 jobs.

We just said that 46 people are no longer with Taco Giro.

I mean, those are just a couple of restaurant jobs.

They almost are scaled up to what Project Blue is required to provide.

So not a lot of jobs in the long term.

Okay, everybody.

Thank you for the conversation.

Great Edition of The Press Room.

Thank you for joining us as well.

I'm Steve Goldstein, back next week.

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