The following is an AZPM original production.

[upbeat music] (Steve) Welcome to this latest edition of the Press Room from the radio studios of AZPM.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

Coming up on the program, ICE officials make surprising arrests in immigration court in Phoenix and other cities and congressional candidate Daniel Hernandez releases his first ad.

With me to talk about these and other topics are John Washington of AZ Luminaria, Alisa Reznick of KJZZ Radio, Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Sentinel, and Katya Mendoza of AZPM News.

Thank you all for being here today.

John, let's start off with this story about what's going on in immigration courts.

Phoenix was the example that I saw, obviously happened in other cities as well.

People coming in for asylum hearings, cases being dismissed, and then some of these people being taken into custody afterwards.

This seems like a confusing mishmash of things.

(John) It is confusing on a number of levels.

I think a little bit of background is kind of helpful to understand it.

So these people are folks who were paroled in, predominantly paroled in under the Biden administration.

And the authority to parole someone is discretionary.

So they were, instead of being entered into expedited removal proceedings, which could basically get them out of the country very quickly without a court hearing, they were discretionarily entered into standard court proceedings.

And now that same discretion is being wielded by the Trump administration to petition the courts to dismiss the cases.

And we know that in many cases throughout the country, including in Phoenix, the judges have complied, and they have dismissed the cases, putting them back into the expedited removal, and waiting conveniently at the courthouses in a number of cases are ICE officials who are arresting them.

I think the biggest problem that a lot of critics are pointing out here is that these are people who are literally following the law, who are trying to access and go through due process proceedings, and they are being potentially punished for it, or being at least scared away from continuing to show up at court and follow the law as they've been instructed to do.

(Steve) Yeah, Alisa, you've been a border reporter for a while.

I'm not sure how often you cover courts, but does this strike you as something where clearly, this is an example, as John points out, the administration, it's like whiplash so often with these things, and people going in thinking that they have played the game the right way and then finding out minutes later that they didn't.

(Alisa) Yeah, I mean, I think this is the most recent example, and maybe the most striking, because some of the videos shared from yesterday up in Phoenix just shows masked, armed law enforcement officers, sometimes plain clothed, waiting outside of the courthouse, and kind of taking families away, whether they're just adults or adults with small children.

So questions kind of remain about what happens after that stage.

ICE has said, as John mentioned, that they are arresting people who are eligible for expedited removal, which is a fast-tracked kind of removal process that has existed long before the Trump administration, of course, and has been used by the Biden administration and in other capacities, but from the information I've heard so far, this is different in one capacity, in that it's in the interior of the US.

You are able to use expedited removal with people who have been here for two years or less, but it's different to see this happening in this way.

It's not that the process of expedited removal is new or unprecedented, but the way that it's happening right now is different.

(Steve) Yeah, and Jim, your colleague Paul Ingram wrote a piece in the Sentinel about this.

One of the things stood out to me is we're hearing so much about Venezuelan migrants and sending them back and this sort of thing, and one of the people that Paul spoke to was an attorney who was representing someone from Venezuela who went through it.

What are your general thoughts about how this is going down?

The idea of, yes, there are masked officials, yes, there are people who are expecting different things from their hearings.

Again, it just seems like a chilling situation again, which I think I say every week on this program now.

(Jim) Yeah, Mo Goldman, one of the immigration attorneys that Paul spoke to pointed out, look, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

If you ignore your court hearings, you're in trouble, but now if you go to court, you're in trouble.

So the folks who are in these legal predicaments are really in a bad situation.

And many, there's this whole claim that they're getting rid of all the dirt bags in this country, the whole notion that they're going after the really bad guys, but what it really seems like is they're going after low-hanging fruit to take people who pose no threat to anybody and send them back to circumstances where their lives may be in danger.

(Steve) Yeah, Katya, anything stand out in particular for you on this?

(Katya) Yeah, I guess the fashion of the expedited removal process, I mean, the ICE agents that are waiting outside either in hallways at these courts or even outside, they're getting updates on whether or not a court has been dismissed in real time.

So they are aware of the individual's names.

They know what they look like, et cetera.

Also the fact that I think it was a DHS attorney was quoted saying that it is no longer in the country's best interest to litigate these cases.

(John) I think also it's worth remembering where these are taking place at courtrooms.

So in prior administrations, both under Biden and then Obama, there were different forms of a sensitive locations memo where the presumption was that there would not be enforcement at schools, at hospitals, and at courts.

And the Trump administration has thrown that out the window and is obviously going after people at courts and going after them in a very ostentatious manner too.

I mean, if you look at the photos from that, there are people who are out of uniform wearing like the balaclava style masks.

One guy was wearing skeleton gloves, just like really trying to obviously intimidate people who are there.

And the next step in this too is not only there's this arrest, but a lot of these people are going to be probably in mandatory detention.

So they're going to be, as their case proceeds, if they can kind of push forward on some form of asylum claim, they're gonna be stuck in detention meanwhile.

(Steve) What about communication with their families?

Is that gonna make that impossible or very difficult?

(John) Well, not quite impossible, but yes, very difficult.

I mean, it is very difficult to get in or out information from these facilities.

And that's where a lot of these people are gonna end up with the clear intention.

I mean, the Trump administration has said this, but this is a deterrent measure, that they are trying to make it difficult so that people give up their cases.

(Alisa) This does come like what, less than, well, about a month after CBP sent out those emails to often people who had been paroled in the same way, saying that they had a week to leave the country.

That caused just a host of different issues for people receiving them because some, like people we've seen yesterday have active immigration cases, pending asylum claims that they are trying to litigate in court.

And it's not a guarantee that the immigration courts are even aware that these letters have been sent out or what they mean in a legal context.

And as we know, also here in Tucson, even US citizens received these letters.

They were, in some cases, receiving something the next day that says, oh, this was a mistake, sorry about that, disregard.

But it just shows you sort of this sheer magnitude of what's happening here.

And they're kind of throwing what they can to help.

(Steve) Katya, go ahead.

(Katya) Yeah, I just wanted to add to what John was saying.

So again, in the coverage that's been reported so far, these individuals are now becoming afraid to show up to their court dates.

An immigration attorney also was quoted saying that this is unusual.

So now, going back to what John was saying, where are these ICE agents going to be showing up?

(Steve) Yeah.

Jim, let's move on to Washington, DC.

There was a Senate hearing sort of related to all these things we're talking about.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem testified there and was asked, obviously, Democratic senators were happy to tee off on her.

And this was an example, but she did not answer a question properly, which stood out.

She was pressed to define habeas corpus.

And her answer was, quote, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country, end quote.

That is not actually what habeas corpus is.

And I think some people were concerned, does that mean that she doesn't really know what's going on or that she's been convinced by the practices of the Trump administration, this is what it means.

What stood out for you about that, other than the fact that here's a cabinet secretary who one would think should know these things?

(Jim) Well, one would think they'd know these things, but for all we know, the White House got out there sharpie and redefined habeas corpus in all the dictionaries at that point.

You just don't know.

I think it is definitely disturbing that the fundamental legal concepts was beyond the knowledge of the Secretary of Homeland Security.

And it sort of boggles the mind.

(Steve) It was a gotcha question, but a very fair one.

(John) Yeah, it was a fair one.

I mean, anyone who's spent any time reporting or being in the world of immigration politics or policy knows what habeas corpus is.

It is a commonly used strategy to get people out of long-term detention.

It is also, as you said, a foundational principle of modern governance.

It goes back to the Magna Carta, there shall be a body.

If someone can challenge their indefinite detention or long-term detention.

And I think what we're seeing here is that, obviously there's been a lot of talk about people kind of blowing past guardrails, but is this a case of not even realizing that guardrails are in place if you don't even know what you're kind of blowing past?

(Steve) I don't wanna make this a broader political question, but yeah, I think this, when people think about the first Trump administration, critics would say they did not like the policy, but at least they had some confidence that the people carrying out the policy for good or ill knew what they were carrying out.

Alisa, anything else stand out for you about this, because it was just such a very meme-able moment in a bad way for many people.

(Alisa)Yeah, I mean, I think Kristi Noem has this habit of just talking through questions and not answering kind of yes or no questions.

And she did attempt to do that with this habeas corpus question.

She kind of rolled back after being told, actually that's incorrect, that saying that she, well, that the president can repeal this, and former presidents have repealed this, when that's not exactly correct.

It's never happened without congressional approval.

And it is truly a bedrock within the legal system, because the fear, realistically, without habeas corpus, of course, we do hear about it constantly in immigration settings, but in the broader picture, if that doesn't exist, then theoretically anybody, including U.S. citizens, could be arrested and not see a courtroom and just be detained until further notice.

And that's a really scary concept that if you break it down that way.

(John) Yeah, I think this calls to mind a little bit on what it seems probably at this point, ancient news last week's Gallego's proposal for comprehensive immigration reform is, I think a lot of people who I've spoken to, especially for immigrant rights, were a little bit unimpressed without acknowledging, without the acknowledgement of the context that we're in right now.

That was a policy that was, you know, it seemed effectively cribbed from previous attempts at comprehensive immigration reform, and not calling out all of these really frightening policies that are being put in place, and have communities really worried.

And it's not politics, as usual, and DHS Secretary can't name one of these fundamental principles.

(Steve) Yeah, I think his hope is that there's gonna be bipartisanship on the Senate side, which will overcome the administration.

But Katya, any thoughts?

(Katya) No, I think Alisa took the words I was gonna say right out of my mouth, but I will say, A Professor of Law was quoted saying that, you know, Kristi Noem's comments are just a part of a larger series of misstatements made by federal officials.

So I mean, they're changing the definitions.

(Steve) Yeah, no, it was very striking for a lot of us.

John, let's go to some of your reporting for a few minutes on the Pima County Sheriff's Office, also related to immigration policy.

I thought it was interesting that they were keeping track of law enforcement contact with immigration authorities until midway through 2023, and then it just sort of stopped.

Do we know why it stopped?

Was there a policy change, official policy change?

(John) There was not an official policy change, which I think is part of the concern.

So beginning in 2018, there has been an official policy on the books for the Sheriff's Department to keep track of every time they call federal immigration officials.

And they're also instructed to only call them on, well, unless they're extenuating circumstances, only call them on official channels, through official channels.

And every month, the communicati department should make a synopsis of all of those calls.

When I found that in the rules and regulations of the Sheriff's Department, I said, "Oh, this is a great record to request."

So I requested a series of, a number of years of these synopses.

And I was told that they stopped collecting them in 2023, June of 2023.

I went backwards a little bit and I got 18 months of these records and saw that the Sheriff's Department had called, I think eight times, resulting in 16 people being turned over to border patrol.

And I got no explanation at all about why they stopped tracking these.

Some people are saying that they maybe still are tracking them, but they're not giving them up.

This comes again, the context right now is that there have been a number of community members who are part of rapid response groups responding to the sightings of border patrol or ICE officials who are going and they're filming these encounters.

And there was one traffic stop where a Pima County deputy said that he called border patrol as backup for a traffic violation.

And so at this point right now, if somebody has an encounter with border patrol, the consequences can be rapid deportation, potentially even to a country that they're not from.

So there's a lot of concern.

(Steve) So let me pick at your reporting a little bit because I'm really curious about when Sheriff Nanos, when refused to be on a committee that Governor Hobbs had put together.

He was saying things like, my deputies are not hired to be federal immigration agents.

So is it possible there's a contradiction here?

(John) That's what it seems like.

And that's what a lot of people are concerned about.

There is a possible contradiction and there's also a lack of transparency.

And those are the two principle concerns.

It's like the community wants to know what the Sheriff's Department is doing in regards to immigration enforcement.

They say, and they've said publicly this year multiple times that they're not going to be policing immigration violations.

And yet if they're calling border patrol as backup, I mean, what's exactly the difference?

(Steve) And policy is, yeah.

(John) As of a couple of days ago, last I checked that policy is still in effect.

So our headline was that they're not following their own rules and regulations.

(Steve) And Pima County Sheriff's Office is handling this differently than Tucson Police Department, for example.

(John) So I wasn't able to find anything in Tucson Police Department's rules saying that they should track these records.

I did make a request.

I haven't received it back yet, but we'll see.

(Steve) Good reporting, thank you.

Wanna spend a couple of minutes Alisa on a piece you did for KJZZ.

Looking back at the two year anniversary of Tohono O'odham tribal member Raymond Mattia, who was killed in seemingly strange circumstances as well.

Can I ask you first why this was such an important story for you to go back to a couple of years later?

(Alisa) Yeah, well, locally it has definitely been something that, I think as media we followed because this of course is not the first time that someone has been killed during a border patrol interaction.

But this was different for a couple of reasons.

The first is that, well, it was on camera.

It came after the Biden administration rolled out a pilot program and then an executive order that required some border patrol agents to wear body cameras and then for that footage to be released after serious incidents.

So it did give us sort of a window in a different way into how this happened.

This is an edited video, but it shows a side that we don't always see.

If you, people who have covered this region for a long time will remember the 2012 shooting of Jose Antonio in Nogales through the border fence by a border patrol agent, Border Patrol Agent Lonnie Swartz.

That's been a long, so community members have long been looking at what accountability measures that they are in place for the border patrol.

But this, also this happened on tribal land.

It happened right outside of Raymond Mattia's store.

And a lot of questions remain about why they were there, how they approached him, and you can see on the video that they shout multiple commands at him, tell him to put his hands up, take his hands out of his pockets, get on his face and start shooting multiple rounds one second after giving him those commands and one second after he takes his hands out of his pockets.

Now he was unarmed when he was killed.

He does surrender like a sheathed knife at the very beginning of the video.

But yeah, so again, this is not the first time that somebody has been killed during a border patrol incident but it was caught on camera and it raised questions about what will happen with regard to accountability.

(Steve) Government oversight in essence.

Is it gonna be the lesson from where it was a few years ago?

(Alisa) Sure, so in this sense, government prosecutors still did not choose to pursue criminal charges for any of the agents who shot him, but his family has filed a legal challenge, a civil suit that does name border patrol agents that were involved in the shooting.

So that is ongoing.

It's another process that is a familiar one for border residents and people who are familiar with these types of shootings.

But yeah, it raises questions about what happens next under the Trump administration because this is all taking place at the same time as accountability offices that are long established are closing kind of without any fanfare under the Trump administration.

One of those is the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Office that was established in 2002 with the Homeland Security Act.

It's written, Congress approved this kind of far reaching investigative authority to this body and in March, they just started alerting people that they were going to be shuttering the office.

And so this has gotten really one of the only ways that the public has to lodge complaints of any kind, anything from not getting medication or detention to larger use of force questions like perhaps the Raymond Mattia case.

(Steve) Also, great reporting, very compelling audio.

John, any thoughts on this?

Someone to cover this kind of?

(John) Yeah, I mean, this is something that is not new.

Unfortunately, I mean, you mentioned Jose Antonio's case.

Six years later, I think the agent was exculpated and there was a retrial and a mistrial and nothing ever happened.

There was no eventual prosecution or conviction.

The border patrol has long had a history of lack of accountability.

And so per capita, it has one of the highest incidence rates of violence and shootings.

And there have been attempts over the years for going back decades to try to fix that, but we're really not seeing any movement in it.

(Alisa) Absolutely, and I think from the family's perspective, it's like going out to Menager's Dam, that's where he was from and where he was killed.

It's a tiny village.

They are very used to seeing border patrol agents there right along the border.

And it's kind of this continued trauma, right?

To continually see the same law enforcement agency outside of your door that was involved in this incident.

For that story, I spoke with Annette Mattia, who is Raymond, was Raymond's, is Raymond's sister.

And she was on the phone with him just moments before he died and heard all these gunshots because she lived next door to him.

So I think, yeah, it's important, I guess, though it's not new and we are still seeing these different measures and don't know what the future is, these families are still searching for justice, including Jose Antonio's family years and years later.

(John) And the future as well of increased law enforcement, increased military presence, increased no-go zones.

I mean, in New Mexico right now, the entire border line is basically inaccessible, legally inaccessible from anyone, including US citizens.

So what sort of incidents like this are we gonna continue to see?

(Steve) We're gonna go to a much lighter story, Jim.

That's why we're here, no.

Let's talk about this CD7 ad that Daniel Hernandez released.

Family values, and it was funny, he decides to even call out his loud Mexican family.

What did you make of this ad?

(Jim) Well, this is the congressional race to fill-- Raul Grijalva's seat And it's coming up fast.

It's elections in mid-July.

There are five candidates in the race, three of whom are seriously campaigning for the seat.

And those three are Adelita Grijalva the congressman's daughter, Daniel Hernandez, the former state lawmaker in Deja Foxx, who's a 25-year-old influencer for Gen Z who'd worked on Kamala Harris's campaign and is an up-and-coming politician for sure, although she's jumping into the major leagues right off the bat, barely old enough to serve in Congress.

But, so I think everyone is jockeying for position.

Adelita probably is the favorite because this race is a sprint.

Early voting's gonna start in mid-June, and Daniel needs to build up his profile, and he's trying to do that.

All of them are out knocking doors and things like that, but Daniel's the first one who's actually gotten himself on the air in an effort to introduce himself to the voters across CD7, and we will see how fast the others follow.

(Steve) But in this 30-second ad, he tries, he's in a kitchen, and at the same time he's saying he's a MAGA fighter, and he's against President Trump.

I mean, it was interesting, but the juxtaposition struck me as, okay, you have this kind of light, funny guy rolling your eyes at your family, but also you're gonna fight MAGA.

So it's interesting to try to jam all that in 30 seconds.

(Jim) I think it's one of these introductory bio ads to try to give a sense of who Daniel is and say, introduce him, basically, to the voters, because state lawmakers don't have a huge profile, and this is much larger than his district was, and he hasn't been in the legislature for a number of years.

So he's either introducing or reintroducing himself, and it's kind of a funny, charming ad to try to, I think, lighthearted in this approach.

(Steve) Yeah, anybody else have any thoughts on that?

(John) Yeah, I think the first ad is a positive one, it's not an attack ad, setting the tone a little bit.

We'll see if the other candidates follow suit.

I think charming is right.

There's a little bit of cheekiness and a little eye roll or something with Alma, who is his sister, tasting his soup or something like that.

And I'm in talks with the campaign right now, as I'm sure we all are, to try to just get some interviews in.

And they're saying that the feedback has already been quite positive.

And I think it's also interesting what issues he mentions.

He says gun rights and abortion rights.

Those are the two first things out of his mouth, which maybe not everyone was expecting.

(Jim) And I think it's gonna be challenging for voters to see a lot of difference in the policy positions of any of these candidates.

I think they're all gonna be, we're gonna fight against the Trump administration.

So it's more about style and who they are than I think they're gonna be trying to hit the voters with.

(Steve) Katya, any thoughts on this?

That was interesting, also there was English and Spanish in it, which was interesting to me.

(Katya) Yeah, I did appreciate how his mom only spoke Spanish in the ad, so I thought that was nice considering the location we are.

(Steve) Just a couple minutes left, I'm gonna put you on the spot with a story you did about firefighters, frontline workers, being affected more by PFAS, this class of manmade chemicals.

A study was done.

So what's the most important stuff for us to know about this?

(Katya) Well, I think it's not common knowledge maybe to everyone, but it's already known that firefighters have more exposure to PFAS considering aqueous firefighting foams, firefighting as well as suits, as well as occupational exposures such as smoke.

The latest research that has come out has, again, reiterated that fact that firefighters do have elevated levels of PFAS in their blood, but also frontline healthcare workers, which is really interesting.

(Steve) That seemed new to me, that seemed like something.

(Katya) Yeah, so researchers have found that perhaps the masks that they wear, other materials that they wear, can elevate their levels of PFAS.

So the next step I will say is with firefighter research, for example, Jeff Burgess is one of the co-authors on this study, as well as many.

He's the director of the U of A Firefighter Cancer Research Center.

So he is doing this work.

So what's already being explored is how to mitigate that.

So we know that PFAS levels are elevated, but what can be done next to reduce their cancer.

And so that's the next step for frontline healthcare workers.

(Steve) Right, Jim, we've got like 30 seconds left.

I'm gonna force you to a totally different topic.

Regina Romero in Qatar, just a few days after President Trump gets this jet from Qatar, does that look not great?

(Jim) Well, the Tucson Police Department did want a plane during the Prop 414 campaign, and this could be a way that the mayor is perhaps trying to angle to get them that plane.

(Steve) Apparently that jet's gonna be made into Air Force One, which would be interesting to, I don't think Mayor Romero is gonna be one of the first people to ride on it.

(Jim) That's probably true.

(Steve) Anyway, thank you guys all for the great discussion.

John Washington of AZ Luminaria, Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Sentinel, Alisa Reznick of KJZZ, and Katya Mendoza of AZPM News.

Thank you all for being here.

Thank you all for watching this edition of the Press Room.

We'll be back next week with another edition.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

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