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A Tucson arrest brings new attention to immigration issues in the city.

Controversies over border wall construction are back in Arizona and people in Nogales face flooding and repair costs during the monsoon.

The Press Room starts now.

(upbeat music) Hello and welcome to The Press Room.

I'm Tony Perkins.

In our panel of journalists, Angela Gervasi from AZPM News, Alessandra De Zubeldia from Nogales International, and Melissa Del Bosque from The Border Chronicle.

Let's start off by talking about a long time Tucson resident who was detained by ICE outside the Pima County Courthouse downtown on Tuesday.

Now she was a mother of three children, 45 years old.

According to the Arizona Daily Star, she lived in the United States since she was four and originally from Mexico.

Angela, masked ICE agents lurking, waiting to grab people, going to a hearing at the courthouse.

It's not a new story, but it's happened in Tucson now and it's happened in other places around the country.

Yeah, just to rewind a little bit, on Tuesday, whispers sort of began circulating on social media and elsewhere that somebody had been detained either on city/ county property or outside city/county property.

And this raised a lot of alarms for a few reasons.

Both the city of Tucson and Pima County have passed ordinances effectively barring ICE from city and county property.

And then the other thing that raised alarms for a lot of people is the idea of courthouse arrest happening in Tucson.

So earlier today, I spoke with Luis Campos.

He's a local immigration attorney.

He's not representing the woman who was detained, but he is attorney advisor to her family.

And he told me this was the first time he had heard of an instance like this happening in Tucson.

So while it is a story that's been happening for a while around the United States, it does seem relatively new here.

Now, ICE said in a statement that this woman was detained not on county property.

Luis also said it seems like she was detained outside of a courthouse, but it's sort of the same effect.

If you're showing up to a court hearing, whether it's to talk about a noise violation or a parking ticket, you're still going to have to leave the building at some point.

And it creates a sense of uncertainty for those who are going downtown to do business at the courthouse or anywhere where there's ICE officers present.

Yeah, I mean, a big question is how did ICE know that she was there at the courthouse?

So it makes you wonder what kind of databases is ICE accessing and how are city police or the sheriff's department, are they sharing databases and I think the answer is probably yes.

So the city and county can say, no, you're not allowed on our property, but they still obviously have a lot of access to what's happening.

Now ordinances have been passed by both the county and the city, saying that ICE can't do this kind of operation so close to the courthouse building.

What happened to that and is there legal jeopardy for immigration and customs enforcement right now?

I mean, we're seeing this all around the country and in border communities, we've seen it for years.

A city or county can pass an ordinance or resolution.

Of course, an ordinance has more legs, but when it's the federal government, sometimes there's only so much you can do.

So the county attorney, if ICE were to enter a courthouse, yes, the county attorney could prosecute it, but when you're up against federal government, it's a whole different game.

And immigration comes through the fore in the political discussion when something like this happens.

The mayor of Tucson, Regina Romero, came up with a statement regarding this, so did Congresswoman Grijalva.

Is this something that is now gonna be a point of debate for the candidates who are running for Congress and other offices going into the general election?

Yeah, I mean, that's a good question.

I mean, like Angela was saying, this has been a debate in border communities for a really long time about federal agents having this kind of access.

And there's always been pushback from local police because this is now gonna prevent people from going to the courthouse.

People aren't going to report crimes.

I mean, we've been down this road before and law enforcement has come out against this because it actually makes communities less safe.

So we're now debating this all over again.

It's like Groundhog Day, basically, yeah.

Now, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been seeing trouble in other cities this month.

There are two shootings, both fatal incidents that started as traffic stops and ended with someone ICE wasn't initially trying to target, being killed, losing his life.

As in previous instances, looks as if the federal agents were acting without discipline and wound up with terrible results.

Here in Tucson, we haven't had fatal shootings, but we have had instances where there's a lot of concern about what's happening to detainees in ICE facilities.

Angela, first, tell me about the case that you had been working on doing stories about regarding a Russian immigrant who wound up being deported back from some uncertain future in his country.

Yeah, so Vlad was detained about a month ago and in a matter of weeks, so many things happened for this man who is 23 years old.

And he was detained.

There was a measles outbreak in the facility of Florence where he was detained.

He was sick.

There was some confusion as to whether he had measles, just sick from being in a congregate setting, like a detention center.

During that period, he was transferred a couple of times.

Ultimately, he was deported.

And so I think that just goes to show how quickly conditions can change for you.

This was somebody who was working in a local Walmart, working overnight shifts, and is suddenly in a setting where there's a measles outbreak, yeah.

There's been a call for and requests for changes in how ICE does its work.

For example, in these two killings, there's a call to end traffic stops.

And President Trump said, "No, we don't wanna do that."

ICE has been told to get body cameras.

Body cameras haven't been issued to the ICE officers.

Again, Melissa, it's a lot of uncertainty to what the policy really is and what's gonna be done about it.

Yeah, I mean, again, we've been down this road before with the Department of Homeland Security, which is the agency that oversees ICE and Border Patrol with the body cameras.

And there was funding for Border Patrol, for instance, to have body cameras.

And they spent quite a lot of money on reports saying that they should have body cameras.

And then they tested them, I guess, but now they're not wearing them.

Same with ICE, so there's been this pushback for many, many years against wearing body cameras despite their own reports and saying that they should have them like most law enforcement does.

I mean, they're the largest law enforcement agency in the country, but they have less oversight than your average city police department.

And it's been that way since Department of Homeland Security was created after 9-11.

Let's switch over to border wall construction in southern Arizona.

And we hear a term that's called secondary border wall construction.

And there's plenty of pictures that come from the border that show some of the construction work that's going on.

But Melissa, describe to me what secondary construction is and how it's supposed to work.

Yeah, so a lot of people probably've not heard about a secondary wall, right?

You've heard about the primary wall, which we've been talking about for a long time.

So if you go to California, if you go to San Diego, you will see two walls.

And this is where the secondary wall project began, was in San Diego.

And what it looks like is two 30-foot walls with surveillance towers.

And there's about 150 feet in between the two walls.

And then there are Border Patrol parked outside.

It looks like, and what it was used for actually during the Biden administration was to hold migrants in between in a sort of open air detention type atmosphere.

So they hold people in there.

And so the plan for the administration is to have a secondary wall along the entire US-Mexico border.

So that's 1,954 miles.

In Texas, where the Rio Grande, the river is the border, that's going to be a more than 500-mile long buoy barrier that will be considered the second wall.

So I don't think people realize that we're not just talking one wall, but we're talking two walls with essentially what is like an open air detention type thing going on in between the two walls that is used by Border Patrol in between the two walls.

In Santa Cruz County, Angela, you went there to do a story about how the cottonwood trees were in the way of some border wall construction.

I don't know if secondary walls had a part to do with what was going on there, but what did you see happening there with these trees, which has been a point of concern for environmentalists and those who live in that area generally?

Yeah, well, to answer your first question, yes, that area is slated to have two border walls, 150 feet in between.

And actually when I was driving down there, I went through Kino Springs east of Nogales and I could see some of the beginnings of the double wall in the distance.

And I mean, it's a pretty like striking thing to say.

I've never seen anything like that before, but I got out to Lochiel.

There is a grove of cottonwood trees there.

And I have to say, when I first heard about the cottonwood trees, thinking of the trees I saw growing up in Philadelphia that were 20 feet high, I mean, these things are massive.

They're, as Sierra Club estimates, they're 200 years old.

You can like feel the effect of walking into this grove, the temperature drops.

It's a really interesting thing to witness.

And three of these trees were razed on Monday to make way for the primary and secondary wall construction.

And yeah, residents and conservation groups have been really outraged over this.

Did you see actual construction work happening?

Were trees going down there and what's next?

By the time I got there, the three trees had already been demolished.

So you could see construction workers sort of tossing branches into a pile and there was one tree still standing.

So, you know, earlier this week, people organized a sit-in in the tree and Alessandra was down there too and got to see some of that.

Yeah, I was down there on July 29th.

So those trees had already gone down and they are still there uprooted.

They are absolutely massive to walk by.

And there is the one remaining, what they call a grandmother tree.

So they have a sign on it, "borders kill."

And they're sitting in hopefully to, or for them hopefully to keep the tree upright.

And a lot of their qualms are around the different processes that the Trump administration is environmental impact statements, and the biodiversity that lives within those trees that wasn't accounted for.

And one other thing to note is, at least from what I saw it seemed that all the trees that were taken down so far and the one that they're planning to take down would have all been in the way of the second border wall, not the first wall.

So the first wall that is to replace a current fence wouldn't have required taking down those trees.

It's the latest in a number of issues about where border wall construction can happen and where it should not happen.

The Trump administration was sued by the Tohono O'odham Nation this week, took them to court.

And the question is whether the administration has the authority to build border wall construction across tribal land.

This is happening in the second Trump administration, but it was talked, it's been talked about since the first one and now they're just now getting around to it.

There are question about whether or not there's serious legal standing for the administration to fight against or to try to go ahead and build there.

I mean, the issue is that more than 700 miles has already been built.

So the miles that have not been built are because they're sovereign native land, they're very difficult areas like the Big Bend, where there are high cliffs, where it just makes no sense to actually build a wall structure there.

So what they're doing now is just challenging all of these sensitive locations and places like the Tohono O'odham Nation, which is sovereign territory, to try and build a structure there.

And I mean, the federal government really doesn't have any ground there, but they're gonna try anyway.

(Tony) All right.

We've been talking about border and border wall issues in Arizona, but of course the border extends all the way across from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.

Melissa, tell me a little bit about what you've been learning regarding the border and these issues that are popping up in Texas.

Yeah, I mean, since at the Border Chronicle, we do region-wide coverage, so we look at the entire US-Mexico border.

Over the last week, we've had a lot of flooding in different parts of the border.

We had it here in Nogales.

And quite a lot of flooding in Texas, around Eagle Pass and the city of Laredo.

And I mentioned earlier about the second border wall.

So what the administration is planning to do in Texas on the Rio Grande is about 536 miles of buoys on the river.

So basically it'd make the river look like the world's largest swim lane.

And people think, oh, there are these little buoys, right, little orange buoys, but these are massive buoys.

Each buoy weighs a ton and they're about five feet tall and they are from eight to 15 feet long.

And they're going to be connected by a chain and they're gonna go down the entire middle of the Rio Grande, in direct violation of the Binational Water Treaty with Mexico.

And as we mentioned earlier, all the federal laws regarding the environment, Native American burial sites, everything has been waived.

And that's been the case since the Patriot Act after 9-11, that DHS can do this to build or to put in these buoy barriers.

So what happened is there was a massive flooding event and these buoys were staged on the US side of the river.

They were washed into the river, the individual buoys, all started going downstream towards the Gulf of Mexico.

Some of these buoys were already chained together so they wrapped themselves around the pillars of the World Trade Bridge in Laredo, which is the largest commercial land port in the United States.

I think the mayor of Laredo told me they make $1.3 million a minute in commerce.

So they had to shut down the bridge because each buoy weighs a ton and they weren't sure what was gonna happen when it hit the pillars of the bridge, if it was gonna damage the bridge and make it unsafe.

So it was this whole guinea pig experiment where Eagle Pass had to shut down its international bridges, Laredo had to shut down.

And this is because there's been no studies, there's been no community impact, there's been nothing.

And there's also, they're not saying what they're made out of, and it's the sole source of drinking water, for many, many border communities.

So they're not sure what kind of impact it's having on the drinking water quality or the environment.

They look like they're made out of foam and painted orange and then the center of them are aluminum.

And you can already see paint and stuff coming off.

A great article on that story in The Border Chronicle.

Yeah, thank you.

Returning to Arizona and the border at Nogales.

And people in Nogales saw plans for expansion of the DeConcini Port of Entry.

Alessandra, what did they see at a public hearing, public forum, very informal, but there was a lot of displays that were there and a lot of people came to see what was going on.

The General Services Administration, which owns the ports of entry across the United States, they put on this public scoping meeting and it was fairly informal, no presentation, but what community members could see were different posters with the footprint, information about why the project was being pursued, potential designs moving forward, and as well as GSA representatives there to answer questions.

So more of a conversational spot.

There was a very big turnout.

There were lines outside of the Nogales Recreation Center, which is where it was hosted.

So Nogalians were definitely very, I think, invested and they're interested in knowing how this is going to impact their day-to-day lives, especially since the footprint has expanded since the last piece of news that people received.

Do you have any read on how they feel about it?

Yeah, I would say it's a mixed bag.

I would say on one side, a lot of the people I've spoken to are open to improvements, to modernizing things.

However, there are a lot of people that are very worried about the long-term impact this will have, especially on the already struggling historic downtown.

Is this going to divert traffic for a long time?

Is this going to make business even more difficult?

And a lot of people are also worried about the proposed footprint, which includes the first block of Morley Avenue and historic businesses in that area, though the only thing that the federal government considers historic are those on the national list of historic places.

So even if it's locally considered historic or statewide, that doesn't affect.

And one last piece of feedback from people is that the current staffing models don't seem to be adequate for the ports of entry.

So there are currently eight lanes at DeConcini.

However, most people say that only two are ever open.

So they worry that expanding to 17 to 22 lanes won't really have an impact if they aren't staffed properly.

And Angela, so that port of entry is due for some changes.

Yes, that's a really great point.

I mean, I can remember so many times either DeConcini on foot and just seeing a couple agents and a bunch of empty kiosks and waiting.

But yeah, I think a really important point, Alessandra mentioned about the first block of Morley, just having lived there for a few years, it is still a very sort of quiet area of downtown Nogales, but it has built up a lot of revitalization efforts in the past few years.

There's a few art and performance spaces on that block.

On those first two blocks, there is a new charter school.

There's a restaurant that wasn't there before.

And so it seems like, you know, slowly but surely a lot of progress has been made in revitalizing that once very empty downtown corridor.

And so I would definitely understand any concerns from residents about how that area could be affected among others.

Now, there was some political news that happened in Nogales as well.

Let's get to that really quickly.

Alessandra, there's a primary election result and it looks like it's gonna be a runoff between the incumbent mayor Jorge Maldonado and David Ruiz.

However, there's not the end of the story just yet.

Give us an update.

(Alessandra) Correct.

So that'd be Ruiz who has never run for, you know, city council or mayor.

I believe he ran for Santa Cruz County sheriff a while back.

But he got the lead.

And in second place came Jorge Maldonado, which is the current mayor of Nogales.

However, it was only by three votes.

So Arturo Garino is the third person running and he is a two-time mayor.

He's also been public works director.

He's been a council member, definitely a political figure in Nogales.

So under Arizona statute, there's gonna have to be a recount and there's a whole process for that.

But within the next couple of weeks, we will know officially who will be going up against David Ruiz in the general election.

All right.

Let's get to some of the stories that are on your radar upcoming.

Angela, let's start with you.

What stories are you looking ahead to?

Well, about one week ago, I attended a gun violence prevention event here in Tucson.

Former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was there, a lot of local officials.

And everyone's been talking about, what are the solutions after the mass shooting that unfolded downtown?

And there's been a bit of a sort of debate over that, but talking to residents there, I ended up finding this one mother, Daisy Warren, spoke very candidly with me about the loss of her own son to gun violence about nine months before this.

So I'm really looking forward to working on a story about her and her son.

And just as these sort of a little bit charged debates are going on in Tucson about the mass shooting, I think it's really important to focus on the community members who are most affected.

Melissa.

Yeah, I mean, as an outlet that looks at the whole border, we talked today about the secondary wall, the buoy barriers, what we're hearing from communities up and down the border is that they often don't know construction is coming to their town until they see the surveyors show up in their backyard.

So we're creating, we're launching a new project called WallWatch next week, which is gonna be a community source interactive map where people can upload the geo coordinates and photos of construction surveying, things that are happening in their community to an interactive map so that we have more of a real time understanding border wide of what is happening where, because it seems like a real need for communities right now because the government is just not being transparent or really communicating with border communities about the construction.

(Tony) Alessandra.

That definitely is a need, I think.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

I would say I'm definitely interested in keeping up with Deconcini, there's gonna be a lot of steps in the NEPA process and continuing to hear from Nogales people and I also am gonna be going to Nogales, Sonora next week.

They definitely were hit the hardest from the recent floods.

Nogales, Arizona did have some impact to infrastructure, impact to their wash.

However, I wanna see how things are going on the other side and donations that are coming also from the Arizona side.

All right, thank you very much.

That'll do it for The Press Room for this week.

Thanks to our guests and for all the staff and crew here at The Press Room.

Thanks for being with us.

We'll see you next week.

(upbeat music) (dramatic music) Support comes from Banner Health, a nonprofit healthcare system with an integrative health plan committed to giving back to Arizona.

Last year, Banner reinvested $1.1 billion into the Arizona community.

Learn more at bannerhealth.com.

This has been an original production of AZPM News.