The following is an original production of AZPM News.

The detention of a DACA recipient strikes a chord in the community, a future of utility rate hikes seems closer for Tucson residents, and university graduates make a statement against artificial intelligence.

All that and more on The Press Room, and it starts now.

[Music] Hello and welcome to The Press Room.

I'm Tony Perkins, and this is our panel of journalists ready to discuss the week's top stories.

Angela Gervasi from AZPM News.

Paul Ingram writes for the Tucson Sentinel, and Joe Ferguson with the Tucson Agenda.

Thanks a lot, and welcome again to The Press Room.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

Let's start off with immigration and the detention of a DACA recipient by Immigration and Customs Enforcement tops our news review this week.

Angela, you've covered this story for us at AZPM as of this recording on Thursday.

What has happened with Karla Toledo?

Who is she, and what's the latest on this case?

So, Karla Toledo is a 31-year-old Tucson resident.

She's a DACA recipient, and just as a quick refresher, DACA: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals is a federal policy that sort of offers legal protections for certain folks who arrived in the United States as children.

Just to give some perspective, Karla's mother said she arrived in the United States when she was a one-year-old baby, so she has spent the vast majority of her life here in the United States.

ICE agents detained Karla Monday morning at her home.

Her family has shared a video of the incident, and since her detainment, there has been a pretty significant community outcry.

You know, her mother has spoken to the press, her family members, her friends, and there's sort of two narratives happening here.

So, ICE released a statement two days after detaining Karla, saying that she had illegally entered the country in 2024.

But now Karla's lawyer is saying that Karla used a legal process known as Advanced Parole, which allows DACA recipients to leave and reenter the country with legal authorization.

As of yesterday, she is detained at Eloy.

Joe, this was bound to be an issue in the immigration frame for quite a while, but Karla Toledo's case puts a face to this issue and this debate.

How important is that?

Well, I think we're now looking at fractional offenses of the law being used as a pretense to put people into detention centers.

And we've been worried, and officials have been gearing up for this fight, and I think we are at the precipice of something new happening where we're going to see more Karla Toledos being put in jail than the hardcore criminals that we were promised that were going to be part of the ICE sweeps when President Trump took office in 2025.

And I think one thing that's really really important about DACA recipients is this was a program that was created by Obama in 2012, which was really to sort of save what they called DREAMers, which are people who had been in the country and had been here for a long time.

Again, came here as babies, as small children, and have been here 20, 30, sometimes 40 years.

The program was created to protect them because in part, Congress hadn't done anything about the DREAMers, and there were multiple laws that went through, and it all failed and went through.

And this has always been a group that is sort of, you know, everyone really likes.

It's the idea that these are people who have grown up in the United States who have become effectively US citizens, but really have no pathway to citizenship.

There's no way for them to get citizenship.

There's no way for them to get legal permanent residency.

And so they're always been sort of stuck in limbo.

The thing that's important about Karla Toledo especially is what ICE is saying is essentially that she violated the law by violating Advanced Parole.

But Advanced Parole is a documen that she has to request from a different agency that specifically allows her to travel.

And that's not only a document that you have to have approved by an agency.

You have to pay for it.

There's a fee that's up to $1,000 now.

That's something that you do.

And it's not clear that, I mean, actually, looking at the documents, it doesn't say that there's no sense that she actually did violate the law.

They just seem to have made up this idea out of whole cloth.

Paul, Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva visited Toledo and came out with a statement.

And that sort of took this from a local or regional news story to getting national attention.

How significant was that?

I think it's really significant.

I mean, one thing about Adelita Grijalva is she's done a very good job in kind of platforming immigration in Arizona.

She's gone to multiple ICE facilities and visited with people.

There was one woman that was elderly that she actually was able to kind of get her released from an ICE detention facility in Eloy.

And so she's been really effecti in doing this.

I think also for DACA, I mean, DACA is one of those big programs that's been kind of kicked around by Congress.

There hasn't been moved.

I mean, and multiple people have said that they would protect the Dreamers, including Donald Trump, who said that he would protect the Dreamers.

And Juan Ciscomani also, for example, said he would protect the Dreamers.

And now that when a Dreamer is in trouble, all of a sudden a lot of people that said they would help aren't there.

I also think it's worth noting that the day Karla was detained, there was an emergency rally outside of the Tucson ICE field office.

Congresswoman Grijalva arrived and it actually took her some time to actually even get approval to enter the facility.

And when she came out, she actually commented to reporters that Karla had apparently told the Congresswoman, I knew you would come because the Congresswoman has been making these sort of unannounced visits to detention facilities to try engage what their conditions are like.

And, Joe, the attention to this case kicks up the public protests, too, about immigration.

Yeah.

And so one of the things that I noted at this very small impromptu rally was the heavy police presence by TPD, who had put themselves in between the protesters, which number probably in a few dozen, and the ICE detention facility, which is hardened and has razor wire on top of it.

Yet we had nearly a dozen cops there, quote unquote, protecting the police.

I've reached out to the city and they are now reviewing their guidelines for this kind of response and whether it was appropriate on Monday.

I think in fairness to TPD, I mean, that's actually in part probably a response to what happened last year in June when there was a good number of protesters who actually, you know, protested in front of But they also, you know, there were paint and other objects thrown at local security guards.

There was some graffiti.

They broke— people broke some windows.

So TPD, I think, in part is sensitive about protecting, wanting to protect this facility or wanting to keep the crowd away.

All right.

Now, more about immigration.

Let's talk about a pepper spraying incident at a traffic stop.

It happened in South Tucson last month.

A Tucson Rapid Response volunteer was sprayed by someone who didn't say who he was, but it was at a traffic stop that was run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

[ SIRENS ] - You're hurting my son.

- Go, go, go.

Back up.

Joe, this brings up issues again about who can monitor ICE activity and how and how to keep the agency accountable.

I think we have a large swath of Tucsonans who are interested in this and have volunteered to become rapid responders.

And they have gone through training.

They have been touted on what to do, what not to do.

And, you know, they respond when they hear about this.

They break out their cameras and they stay a distance away.

For the most part, I have been to dozens of these events now over the last year.

And what I've seen and what I've witnessed is those responders are there and they have a set purpose and it is just a document.

And that is their only responsibility there.

And, you know, we've seen how they've been weaponized and turned into so-called protesters and mixed in with other people who are doing things that are different than just being observers.

Paul, it took a while for South Tucson police to respond to the victim's complaint.

Almost two weeks went by.

Right.

Yeah.

So a man's name is Steven Davis.

And so he went to South Tucson Police and he said, 'hey, I have a complaint.

I was assaulted,' arguing that.

And he, you know, asked for South Tucson to investigate.

And South Tucson really didn't do anything.

Steven Davis returned.

And then finally they took the complaint.

But there's this sort of reticence to really investigate.

And South Tucson, I think, in part has said, look, we don't have the resources to investigate this.

But I also think there's sort of a tension about whether or not they can even investigate a federal agent.

You know, there's a question about whether or not this person is ICE.

I mean, ICE identified him as an ICE agent.

So I think we can say he was an ICE agent.

But that means that how do you, how do local, how do local police investigate federal agents if they commit crimes and they're not doing it under their the color of law under the protections that they have.

And there's a big open question.

Now, one thing to keep in mind is that Minnesota, Minnesota, prosecutor in Minnesota has actually prosecuted two ICE agents specifically for violating state law.

And so now the issue is whether or not that Tucson or Pima County will do the same.

Angela, Rapid Response teams and volunteers, they're trained to know what to do and how to do it.

They seem to know their limitations.

You can't say the same thing for local law enforcement.

They still seem to be learning as they go.

Yeah, it seems like it really depends on what jurisdiction you're looking at.

There's like such a variety of responses right now.

What Paul just brought up with Minnesota is a very different response than the response we've seen from the South Tucson Police Department.

I was there.

I got to hang out at the department a little bit the day Steven Davis submitted his you know, made his second attempt to submit a police report.

And from what I recall, he had to wait at least like an hour or so to even see if the report could be accepted.

So it felt like sort of just all these unknowns floating around.

One interesting point made by the South Tucson mayor earlier this week is that, you know, she acknowledged that South Tucson Police is a small department with limited resources, but is looking toward the county attorney, Pima County Attorney Laura Conover, and also even the state attorney general, Kris Mayes, to see if there's a more robust response they can get from those jurisdictions.

All right.

Now let's move over to utility rates under discussion this week.

Joe, the Tucson Electric Power wants customers to understand that a new system that they're pushing might bring utility rates lower.

What have you found out about this and can you explain it?

I'd love to try.

So there's a new utility rate system in place that the ACC approved, although they didn't go through the formal process.

So that's in court.

But these formula rates are designed to allow them to increase rates incrementally, as they said.

But they've also argued against a cap on what that incremental rate would be.

So TEP wants to be able to raise your rates every year based on demand, supply, how much you're using, those kind of things.

And so rather than these 14 percent increases that they've asked for, or the 10 percent the one they asked for three years ago, they would be smaller ones, they argue.

But it's hard to say.

I mean, the proof is going to be in the pudding a year from now, two years from now, on what they do.

Without a cap, you know, it could be 14 percent every year, for all we know.

And so I think that there's a lot of groups.

There's only two groups that are supporting this, and that's TEP and the ACC.

Everybody else thinks this is a bad idea.

The state of Illinois did this for a decade and decided it wasn't serving residents.

So they got rid of it.

And so we'll see what happens next.

But it's a big unknown, and it looks like a Maricopa County Superior Court is going to decide whether it's legal or not.

Paul, getting some public support for this idea is a big, big deal.

It's as significant as it seems.

I think it's really hard.

I mean, we think about when we go back to the 14 percent rate increase hike.

I mean, that was something that, you know, it was very acrimonious.

I mean, there was lots of people And TPD, excuse me, TEP said that this was part of paying for investments that they already made, that they had already put a lot of work into building up the utility systems, battery storage, solar panels, et cetera.

But still, like suddenly having your rate increase by 14 percent starts to turn into real money pretty quickly for people, especially as cost of everything else also really increases.

So for TEP, then go and say, well, we're going to gradually increase your rates.

And the other thing, of course, is that people are linking these rate increases not to big investments in the utility system, but also to things like data centers and connecting those two things together.

So TEP continues to constantly ask for rate increases as new data centers and other facilities come in.

People are going to connect those things and are going to be, I think, frustrated about that, about having to pay more each month.

Well, I mean, I'll add that that 14 percent increase almost killed the Project Blue deal.

So one of the supporters of Project Blue, Matt Heinz, said, you know, I approve of this.

Then the rate increase came out the same day and he tried to claw it back.

But then the TEP kind of let that under the radar until after the Project Blue decision was there.

He was unable to wind it back, but he definitely tried to kill the deal because that was a bridge too far.

Let's move on to now a story about the war in the Middle East that connects to our local community.

Raytheon, a big Tucson employer, a big southern Arizona employer, is under a spotlight regarding what we're hearing is a munitions shortage.

And, Joe, that's inspired some soul searching among those who are wondering about either supporting the war in Iran or disagreeing on what's going on in the spotlight again on Raytheon because they supply so many weapons.

There's a lot of people that work at Raytheon and a lot of elected officials are supporting one of our biggest private employers.

I think it's a lot harder when those missiles are being aimed and used on a regular basis.

It's one thing when we're at peace and we're just building up a military stockpile.

People don't think about the consequences of the missiles that are being built here and where they're going to land tomorrow.

And now that that's happened and there's seemingly no end in sight in terms of this conflict, I think there's a lot of soul searching going on about how much Tucson supports Raytheon and what's going on here because that's our only way to civically act in terms of this war at this moment.

Raytheon's not the, or Tucson rather, not the only community in the United States, but that has contributions to the war effort.

Other cities do as well.

Our city has Davis-Monthan Air Force Base as well.

Paul, it doesn't seem to have as much of a spotlight on them as on Raytheon.

I think maybe there's an expectation that the military does what the military does, but that the manufacture of weapons is especially, there's been two, I think when we talk about Iran is one thing, but also there's been frustration about Raytheon because of what's happening in Israel and the Gaza Strip.

Specifically, there was a protest outside of Raytheon a few years ago that was aimed at Raytheon as well.

And also, that's been aimed at some of the other manufacturers.

We all really focus on Raytheon, of course, but there's also lots of other manufacturers that build all sorts of parts and pieces as well as surveillance devices, et cetera.

But, I mean, the focus hasn't really fallen on Davis-Monthan, and I also think of Fort Huachuca as also doesn't really get protested at all.

Fort Huachuca is actually in some ways, right now, more important than Davis-Monthan.

But we don't have a lot of forces deployed over Davis-Monthan, but also a lot of the things that we do have deployed are not doing strikes.

They're surveillance platforms, they're rescue platforms, et cetera.

So maybe that's part of it, but I think once it comes down to it, it's just that people expect the military to go do what the military does.

All right.

I'll switch to technology, and this is an interesting one.

A big story at college commencem ceremonies at different campuses around the country, but here at the University of Arizona, here in Tucson, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt started talking about the benefits of artificial intelligence, and it didn't go down so well.

Angela, AI is a development that college graduates especially seem to be rather passionate about.

Yeah.

I mean, I graduated college a while ago, eight years ago, but I can still definitely see why a college graduate would be pretty frightened about AI.

I was reading an Associated Press story that talked about the U of A students doing Eric Schmidt, and one student told the AP that she felt like they were getting mixed messages about AI, and I thought that was such a succinct way of saying it, that these young people are being told AI is the future, but they're also being discouraged from using it as college students.

And I think for a lot of people, it's really hard to wrap your head around it, and for someone entering the workforce, it's a really scary and threatening thing, particularly if you're working in writing or interpreting.

And what you can point out too, that Eric and Wendy Schmidt are also big on philanthropy.

They are donors to public broadcasting in particular.

Joe, the speakers, like Eric Schmidt and others, seem to be genuinely shocked at the reaction to what they were saying about artificial intelligence.

I think there's a generational wealth divide that's really important from the perspective of the students versus the speaker.

One has made their money, and the other has their entire future ahead of them, likely loaded down with student loans, and they can't afford houses, and now they're being told the AI is coming for their jobs.

And so I think that those kind of pressures on an individual student and seeing a guy touting it while he lives in luxury probably is not their future.

And so I would assume that they feel threatened by it.

I know I am, and I'm in the middle of my career.

I mean, I think one of the things that comes down to it is like, never expect a man to know something he's getting paid not to know.

And for people who are heavily invested in AI, who are expecting to make a lot of money for AI, of course, AI looks like a great thing.

But if you're somebody who's about to enter the workforce and who realizes that the job you may have been, that you wanted to do is suddenly not going to exist because it's all going to be done by software, it's really problematic.

And it doesn't seem to be a good, really good solution for what AI is going to do.

I mean, when we think about how AI is being used, it's being used on things that makes the most money, but doesn't necessarily do the best thing for society.

I mean, there's public polling that shows people want AI to be used for medical things, look for, like, a hunt for cancer cells.

But that's not what it's being doing.

It's being done to replace artists.

It's being done to replace photographers.

It's being done to replace everyone who makes movies.

You know, those are all the things and writers, you know, of course, the rest of us, we're all going to be replaced by AI chatbots.

And that I think there's lots of students who are coming out of this and are realizing that maybe they don't have a future and they're not going to suddenly make a billion dollars on the stock because they don't have stock in OpenAI or one of the other companies.

And, you know, there's public polling that shows, like, a Quinnipiac Poll shows that, like, 70 percent of Gen Z's don't like it, don't trust AI and don't believe in it.

And, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

If you're somebody who's doing well and doesn't worry about and is about to retire, you're not so worried about this.

And maybe it's kind of a neat tool.

I think part of this is just that the way that AI is being promoted is inherently problematic and it's just not showing that it can do something good for our society.

The link to this issue and the economy pretty much guarantees that it's going to come in front of the news headlines again.

Joe— I think that we're going to see it over and over again.

I wait with baited anticipation to see if Project Blue gets built, if Project Blue 2.0 gets built, if Project 3.0, Project Blue gets announced.

I think that, you know, there is a bubble coming and we're going to see that some of these data centers are not going to happen.

We've already seen large companies announce that they are cutting back on investments in AI, including the capital company that is funding Project Blue.

They've divested a lot of their holdings at this point.

So I think that the bubble is ahead of us and it's going to change how we look at AI five years from now.

All right.

Let's get quickly to a science-related story that has happened earlier in the week.

An asteroid about the size of a basketball court went past the Earth at a distance of 55,000 miles.

That's closer to the Earth than the moon orbits the Earth.

And it made news in this area because it was discovered by astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey up on Mount Lemmon.

Paul, how big is the deal that, you know, it was first found by astronomers in our area and how this is going to be maybe a recurring story as more of these space rocks are found?

I mean, I think what it comes down to is like the University of Arizona has a great astronomy program.

And we also forget about the Vatican also has its own observatory up on Mount Lemmon as well.

It's always been a region of looking for things in space, of doing sky analysis, sky surveys, et cetera.

But also, I mean, you know, we also need to probably think about how we look at, you know, these kind of objects that sort of appear and, you know, could strike the Earth.

I always think there's like, what do we do about it even if we discover it?

But at least we have an idea.

So, you know, ultimately, I think it's just really interesting.

And it's really important to think about, like, how much, you know, is done at the U of A and how much are done at these certain telescopes.

They do a lot of really interesting, important work.

All right.

Now, let's take a look ahead at some of the stories you've got your eye on in the coming weeks.

Angela, what is on your radar?

One story that I kind of stumbled into that has been like getting a lot of attention is this potential cell phone tower project in the city of South Tucson.

It would be a 70 foot tall cell phone, which having grown up in a large city, I didn't think about how tall that was until somebody showed me a little diagram about, you know, the way that would contrast with the local homes.

It would be built in a very residential area.

But what's interesting about the cell phone tower is that residents are pretty up in arms about the process that sort of brought this to the forefront.

They're demanding a lot of transparency.

The city of South Tucson is actually investigating a recent change in its zoning code just to be safe.

So I'm excited to keep following that one.

- All right.

Paul, - We're—the Tucson Sentinel is working on a long-term project.

We're going to spend a lot of time looking at homelessness in Tucson and really looking at what are solutions to do about about helping people who are homeless, helping people who are addicted to drugs who really need help.

And what does that process look like?

What can be done and really thinking about this in terms of solutions?

Because we got another hot summer coming ahead.

We've had some cool temperatures over the past month or so.

But homelessness and heat - are going to be an issue.

- That's exactly— That's one of the things we just have a story - specifically about that.

- All right.

Joe— We had the Arizona Agenda and the Tucson Agenda partnered with Clean Elections.

So we're doing debates.

I'll be doing a Legislative 21 debate next week.

So I'll be talking to all the Democrats running for the seat ahead of the primary.

So I'm getting prepped for that.

Angela, we talked a little bit about Karla Toledo's case at the beginning of the show.

What's next in her situation?

Yes, that's a really important point.

Her attorney, Mo Goldman, told reporters yesterday that they're looking into requesting a bond hearing.

And I think it's really important to note that under this administration, accessing bond, even for folks who are in detention centers who don't have a criminal record, accessing bond has become drastically more difficult.

So as of yesterday, he said he's still looking at options for relief for Karla Toledo and that he plans to visit her later this week.

- visit her later this week.

- All right.

And politics continues to get a lot of attention in the months leading up to the primary election at the end of July.

Paul, do you have any stories that are coming up that focus on what people will be talking about regarding the issues as it gets closer?

Well, I think there's lots of issues that are going to come to bear.

I mean, we have to— again, we have to—Adelita Grijalva, we mentioned earlier, of course, is going to have to get to go for reelection again.

We're probably going to, again, go up against Daniel Butierez, who is, in a lot of ways, is talking a lot about actually homelessness and about those specific issues.

But also, I think when we get down to it, it's going to be economic issues that are really going to drive a lot of what we think about in terms of the election.

All right, Joe, any election news that you imagine making some headlines?

I think we're going to spend a lot of time getting to know CD6 candidate JoAnna Mendoza.

I think that that's the race that's going to be national here in Arizona.

There's going to be a lot of groups getting involved with it, and I think that that's going to take up a lot of my bandwidth over the summer.

All right.

Thanks again for all of you here joining us at The Press Room.

That'll do it for our show today.

Our guests were Angela Gervasi with AZPM News, Paul Ingram with the Tucson Sentinel, and Joe Ferguson with Tucson Agenda.

For all the staff and crew with us at The Press Room, thanks for being with us, and we'll see you next week.

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