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Adelita Grijalva represents Arizona's seventh congressional district in the US House.

She's seeking election to a full term in Washington this November.

If you want to hear her take on the battle over what immigration enforcement should really look like, and how she intends to help the next Congress of the United States repair a reputation for public service, we'll ask those questions on The Press Room, starting now.

♪ UPBEAT JINGLE ♪ Hello and welcome to The Press Room.

I'm Tony Perkins.

When Representative Adelita Grijalva was sworn in to Congress in the fall of 2025, she spoke about government accountability and promised to bring issues related to public schools, the environment, and the immigrant community to the forefront.

She joins us in the studio now as she seeks election to what would be her first full term.

Adelita Grijalva, thanks for joining us again on The Press Room.

Thanks for having me.

It's an honor to be here.

Now election results tend to turn on economic issues.

And although the federal government claims the economy is doing fine, the reality for some Arizona families is quite different.

If given the chance, what could the Congress do to make everyday life more affordable for citizens?

(Grijalva) Well, I literally just came from an affordability forum, like a town hall with a nonprofit organization and our city of Tucson mayor, talking about what are the issues that we need support from.

And so much of what the city of Tucson is doing or Pima County is doing, any other local municipality is doing that with federal funds.

And so when you look at the cuts that are coming, that are proposed for the next budget year, $3.8 billion out of HUD, that's affordable housing, Section 8 housing, assistance with down payments for first time home buyers.

When that's gone, it leaves our local communities in a really significant bind.

And when you look at the cost of everything, I mean, the average family in Southern Arizona is paying $3,300 more this year than they did last year when it comes to the basics.

Like what I believe is like a right, you should be able to feed your family, you should be able to have a home and roof over your head, you should be able to pay for your utility bills without going broke, you should be able to go to the doctor and not worry about some of the other, whether you're gonna put food on the table or pay that doctor bill.

Those are the things that our families are going through right now.

I just went to put gas in my car and it was $81.

Not a lot of people can absorb that and couple that with childcare costs, which are about almost $16,000 a year here in Southern Arizona.

It's hard for people to make ends meet.

So some of the inroads that we've done, like the 21st century housing bill that passed bipartisan, bicameral and sat on Trump's desk for 10 days because he refused to sign it because it was a big yawn and that was a quote.

It passed and while it doesn't go as far as I would like to see it go, at least we're helping some people and that is a step in the right direction, but we can do more once we have more balance in Congress.

Let's take a look at one specific instance.

Say a trip to the grocery store, how much is that different now than it was when you won the special?

Well, I just know, I have three kids.

I have three teenagers and so they will eat us out of house and home if we let them.

But two little bags of groceries easily cost $100.

You get a pasta, a salad, a carb and a protein and maybe a drink or two or some fruit and you're easily at $100.

And so many people were kicked off food assistance and SNAP.

We had 400,000 families that don't have access to healthcare anymore.

Those are the costs and those costs are real.

When right now in Arizona, AC is not a luxury.

It's a necessity.

Too many people are like having heat related illness so you need to run that AC unit at an average cost of about $300 more a month or $300 a month, depending on the size.

That gets very expensive and out of reach for a lot of families.

When we were talking about COVID-19, it seems like a lifetime ago now and even the doge cuts seem to be so far in the past.

What is the aspect of the Southern Arizona workforce that you can help to sort of regenerate the economy for those folks?

The biggest issue for me is those doge cuts were federal jobs that were unilaterally, didn't have any rhyme or reason.

I think they looked at like the VA, for example, and said, "Oh, that's a big chunk of money.

Let's go ahead and cut that."

A lot of those people that worked at the VA are veterans.

A lot of those federal jobs were veterans.

So when I get frustrated at the hypocrisy sometimes where we say, "We're all American and we believe in our people and if you risk your life for this country, you deserve benefits."

But it is literally the Republican Party that touts that the most and is quickest to make those cuts.

So I feel like one of the things we can do is look at those doge cuts and reverse them.

And if people say, "Where's that money gonna come from?"

Well, right now, right now, we are paying a billion dollars a day in a war that was not authorized by Congress in a military kind of maneuver that has never been fully called a war, but we're paying a billion dollars a day.

So if we can find the funds for that, we can find the funds to house people, get people healthcare and bring down the costs of everyday groceries.

And one of the bills that I co-sponsored was a price gouge, stopping price gouging, especially for those necessary items.

Now let's switch gears and talk about the environment.

Last March, you helped launch a first ever congressional caucus focused on environmental justice.

And your family, of course, carries a lot of weight when it comes to environmental issues and conservation, protection of public lands in Arizona.

In the current debate on data centers and their effect on the environment, where should they be built?

And how can Arizona balance the benefit of technology and the economy, with the facilities that they can bring to the state?

This is where federal guardrails are really gonna be critical.

I've talked to some of my colleagues across the aisle and in their communities, the data centers that were built created their own source of energy that was off the grid, created so it doesn't impact the cost for everyone else, but also had to create their own water purifying and water treatment in order to be able to show the minimal amount of water that's used.

That's something that's happening in individual communities, not something that's happening across the board.

And this is where I believe the federal government needs to put those guardrails in for data centers and AI.

When we look at the impact here locally, I mean, look at Lake Mead and Lake Powell.

People are talking about how low it is.

Those are real life consequences to living in a desert and still putting up data centers.

There are some communities where it's easier to do, maybe they have more water, but I'm remembering very clearly our family's history with water contamination and the sunny side plume that both my mom and dad grew up And that literally I have cancers on both sides of my family as I believe is a direct result of being poisoned for a decade.

Those are the things that we have to safeguard for future generations and for the people that are living here.

And AI has been built into nearly everything.

Every search engine, every app, it's sort of, it's part of a default process.

And we have let this technology get ahead of any federal regulation to make sure that we're safeguarding our community members.

And now we're doing backpedaling and trying to create programs and supports when the cat has sort of been out of the bag, so to speak.

Let me ask you a couple of questions about immigration and that's been a contentious issue throughout there.

Your first year in office, of course you conducted a visit to a detention facility, including personal (Grijalva) Five of them.

visits with Karla Toledo.

(Grijalva) Yes.

And although her case was dismissed, but she was temporarily detained.

What should immigration enforcement really look like?

Well, for Karla Toledo specifically, they dismissed it short term and then brought charges back again.

So she has a court hearing coming up here shortly.

I think that this immigration policy right now is built on cruelty, treating people inhumanely and not honoring what they have done for this country.

I'm the proud granddaughter of a Bracero, a man who came to this country from Mexico to work and build a better life.

And my Nana and him raised a member of Congress, a nurse and a social worker.

All of them have higher degrees.

That is the American dream.

And when you're cutting off access and changing the rules for people, that's the problem.

Right now, even if you have the money to pay an incredible amount of money to have your own private attorney, there is still no rhyme or reason for why people are getting picked up.

And ICE detention has exploded.

We have 60,000 people in ICE custody.

We have 76 people who have died in ICE custody or shortly after leaving the detention facility.

That has to be investigated.

And when you look at the sweetheart deals that people like CoreCivic, for example, the company that's running a lot of the detention facilities, has had and look at, follow the money where they have given money to Trump or given money to Freedom 250, like to Trump's inauguration.

I mean, there's connections there.

And so I believe we need comprehensive immigration reform, period.

We need to make sure that our DACA recipients have a pathway to citizenship.

Those that have temporary protected status need to have a pathway to citizenship and protection.

And we need to make it easier and not so expensive for people to go through a process.

And we need to fully fund our immigration courts, our judges and attorneys.

That's something we have to do.

And we put in a bill, it's the Veterans Visa and Protection Act to protect our veterans from being deported because many of them have been deported and also to protect sensitive locations.

So our classrooms, our doctor's offices, our medical facilities, our churches, those are sensitive locations that people should be able to go to those spaces without fear of being detained by ICE.

The case for some immigrants who are trying to keep their paperwork in compliance.

There needs to be some clarity apparently with what's going on and there's a lot of confusion.

Can anything be done in those cases?

(Grijalva) Oh, absolutely.

We need to set a standard and keep to it.

Right now it keeps changing.

So before DACA, having DACA like active status was a way for you to stay in this country.

And now it's not.

I mean, and that changes from day to day.

And when I've gone to the five different visits that I've had, oversight visits to detention facilities, I've talked to people who are like, I really truly don't know why I'm here.

A professor, I don't know why I'm here.

I've not committed a crime.

All of my paperwork was in order.

And it is the scapegoating and targeting of our immigrant communities.

And really anyone that does not, is an other.

And this administration has done a very good job of villainizing our immigrant communities to the detriment, I believe, of every single one of our neighborhoods.

Let's turn to the ongoing construction at the border wall.

The Tohono O'odham Nation recently faced off with DHS about wall construction.

You've put yourself at the forefront of speaking on behalf of tribal sovereignty.

So what should we do to maintain a safe and secure border?

Well, we need to modernize our ports of entry.

We have the technology, we don't have the staffing in order to make sure that we're expediting things safely through those spaces, all of our ports of entry.

We have the funding that was set aside and then that was swept by this administration.

And where I am thinking of specifically in Quitobaquito Springs, where there is a natural spring in the middle of the desert that is sacred to the Tohono O'odham and other tribes it's not establishing a singular wall.

They're establishing a second border wall.

It's almost like they have so much money, they don't know what to do with it, so they're doing this and causing an incredible amount of destruction in their wake and things that are irreplaceable.

There's some news about public safety most recently in Tucson.

It's been a couple of shootings that were major items in the news, two high profile acts of gun violence.

And there was a mass shooting in the heart of downtown and other shooting that is being investigated as a hate crime against the LGBTQ community.

In both instances, Democrats have called for tighter gun legislation.

So my question is this, what are the chances, first of all, in the new Congress that we'll see anything happening?

You know, I have to be optimistic.

We have 53 new members of Congress coming in with very diverse ideas of what gun reform looks like.

We have to have common sense gun reform.

I mean, that is a no brainer.

Our gun lobby cannot hold members of Congress hostage.

And when we have members of Congress that are voting in favor of a gun lobby to the detriment of their communities, they have to be called out.

And that's where we have to push back as communities to demand of our elected officials that they do common sense background checks, common sense like gun safety.

At this point, the last number that I heard was that there are enough guns proliferating our communities as it stands, that every individual could have 10 guns.

So for my family of five, that would be 50 guns that are allocated to our family.

I don't, we don't need that many guns.

We don't need assault rifles accessible to anyone.

We don't need to know any hunter that picks up an AK as their first gun of choice.

So there are certain things that we have to do that fundamentally make sense.

And we have to push those reforms through because our communities and our law enforcement are literally outgunned in some cases.

But in the ongoing argument about this, there are the people on the other side will say, we've already got enough laws about guns.

We're not enforcing them.

People can't turn them in.

We at the county tried to have like a, we'll buy back your gun or turn in your gun.

We couldn't even collect them.

So they're, every community is trying to do their part and at every turn are being stopped by our federal government or our state governments.

All right, let's switch gears to another case in Washington earlier this year.

And you'll remember this, you addressed a Supreme Court ruling on Mahmoud vs.

Taylor.

This was a case where the majority said parents can remove their kids from a diverse educational plan in the name of protecting religious liberty and freedom.

Where should a parent's power lie in regard to this issue about how schools should teach their children?

Our public schools should abide by in all of the schools that in Tucson Unified where I was a school board member for 20 years, a separation of church and state.

What that is, is an ideological fight.

You don't like me talking about like science in front of your child.

So they're calling that religious freedom.

You don't like perhaps the fact that your child is exposed to children from throughout the community.

Maybe you want to isolate them to only talk to people that are other like minds.

Well, there are parochial schools to do that.

And you can feel free to put your child in whatever educational environment that makes sense.

But do not take my public tax dollars to fund your private school.

And that's where I am.

And that's why I have such an, I'm opposed to ESA vouchers, any other voucher system, whether it be a state run or a federal, I'm opposed to those because those dollars belong in our public schools.

And when you see what's happening as a result of the chronic underfunding in our schools, that's why we have closures.

And the other concern that I have is when you have these private educational institutions that do not have to prove that they are successful, they don't have to take the same standardized test that public schools do.

And if you're going to compare apples to apples, then make sure that all of the rules apply to both.

(Tony) Yeah, I watched that hearing and listened to you speak then.

And even now you seem to be very, very strong about an opinion on this.

(Adelita) Yeah, oh no, I'm passionate about it because education is the pathway to success for everyone.

And so those families that cannot afford to put their child in a private school, they shouldn't have to.

They should have a quality education around the corner.

And for my family and many other families from immigrant backgrounds, education was their pathway to a career.

And I believe that this is a systemic attack on people that are living, that are sort of at the lower socioeconomic status.

And education is that next generation's opportunity to do better.

That's what everyone wants.

And I believe very strongly that this is the generation, unfortunately, where I'm looking at the opportunities that my children have and find that there are less opportunities for them than there were for me.

And that's not the way our country should be run.

All right, let's switch gears to healthcare.

And we've already talked about affordability in general.

How can healthcare be made more affordable for Southern Arizona?

So I signed on to Medicare for all, which is basically giving quality healthcare to everyone.

Right now we have huge corporations that are not paying their fair share.

And I would say a larger percentage of those companies that don't pay, their employees are on Medicaid or Medicare versus being funded by those corporations that are making money hand over fist.

So there is an opportunity for the federal government to regulate and mandate that quality healthcare at affordable price is a requirement of big corporations and make it easier for smaller corporations to be able, and businesses to be able to offer healthcare.

And that's where the ACA premiums are so important.

But those cuts are, we've already seen some cuts to Medicaid.

We're going to see more.

And we're going to have, like 300,000 Arizonans are at risk of losing Medicaid in January because of the cuts that are still coming.

The ACA premiums that are gonna be cut that will impact families about 700 bucks a month.

I don't know a lot of people that can do that.

And right now, one in five children in Arizona are at risk of not having their Medicaid insurance coverage.

All right.

The Trump administration has spent the last two weeks attacking the system of mail-in ballots in the election.

It's gone to the Supreme Court asking the justices to uphold restrictions and the effect could be decreasing people's confidence in the system.

Now, my question to you is, first of all, what impact do you think this is gonna have immediately on the midterm elections?

Well, I believe Trump can see the writing on the wall.

And well, he mailed in his ballot from Florida.

Apparently it works for him, but not for us.

So for me, but not for thee kind of situation.

In this case, it is the executive orders and the pushback there that is very frightening to me because I believe Trump knows that if he follows the rules the way they are established now, the Republicans will lose the House of Representatives because they are losing a lot of races in historically areas where Republicans have won handily.

There are frontline districts now that weren't frontline before.

And we're doing everything we can to create more balance in Congress.

And I believe that when Democrat that we have to do something with it very decisively because we need to be able to show that we're not going to sit around in sort of hem and haw that we have policies ready to go to help our families.

In the debate over this, there's some people who are saying that it's almost already too late.

Whenever the results come in in November, there's gonna be a substantial number of people who are not going to believe the truth.

Well, that's the case.

Trump created that narrative when he said he lost an election, he won an election that he clearly lost and has continued to talk about the stealing of an election.

That's undermining.

And I believe very strongly that we have an amazing system here in Arizona, specifically Pima County, Maricopa County, where about 80% of voters vote early.

And that is a convenience and a safety.

And when I think about some of the other things that this administration might do to try to discourage people from voting, like having some sort of military presence or ICE presence at our voting centers, I know locally we're gonna push back on that.

I know that at the state level, we're gonna push against that.

But I'm going to encourage everyone I know to vote early and vote by mail and just make sure that your vote is counted.

(Tony) All right.

We've already talked or already heard about the long delay in getting your seat in Congress.

That was super big.

(Grijalva) We broke a record.

In the history of Congress, 50 days is the record and there's my face.

Now, once you were sworn in, and we'll write about this, you wound up participating in wh the least productive Congress in US history.

A Gallup poll only showed that, it showed only 17% of Americans have trust or confidence in lawmakers to do their job.

My question is, what can be done to change a system that seems consistently deadlocked?

Well, it is right now in this Congress that it's deadlocked because Trump is running the House of Representatives.

Mike Johnson might be the speaker, but Trump is literally the puppet master.

And so it is because of his day-to-day involvement, calling in members of Congress from his own party into the Situation Room to try to influence their vote and push back on things like the release of the Epstein files.

Those, once that is gone, and especially when we get into this next in January where Trump will be a lame duck kind of president, I hope that we're able to show the American people that we are going to honor their vote and their confidence in us by doing something because they are correct.

This is the most partisan.

Our hearings are attacking university presidents.

I mean, those are the, talking about tromping all over tribal sovereignty.

Like when you talk to people, the average person believes in our public education that we should have it.

They believe in healthcare.

They believe that we should have a better immigration policy.

And we just have to bring forward policies that people are going to be able to see a change right away.

All right.

U.S.

Representative Adelita Grijalva, thanks for being with us.

I know you got a busy schedule, but I appreciate you taking time to join us in The Press Room.

No, it's my pleasure.

Thanks for having me.

It was great.

And that'll do it for the press room this week.

I'm Tony Perkins, thanks for being with us.

We'll see you next time.

♪ UPBEAT AMBIENT SONG ♪ ♪ UPBEAT JINGLE ♪ 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.