Forecast calling for ICE and “no”
How long until immigration helicopters hover over Phoenix?… No SNAP for you … And just don't sing the song, Joe.
Happy Monday, readers!
Under the guise of immigration enforcement and cracking down on supposedly crime-ridden cities, President Donald Trump has been sending federal police into cities.
First it was L.A., then Washington, D.C., then Chicago, and so on.
How long until it’s Phoenix or Tucson?
Today, we’re getting you up to speed on how local officials in other states are pushing back. Those stories may become incredibly relevant in Arizona before long.
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After federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter onto an apartment building in Chicago, the mayor created “ICE-free zones” to block those agents from using city-owned property to stage immigration raids.
After agents spilled out of armored trucks to arrest street vendors in New York on Tuesday, the state attorney general launched a reporting tool so people can send in photos, videos and other information about federal actions.
Those are just two of the myriad examples of President Donald Trump’s brute-force deportation program pushing local officials to make choices that normally would be out of bounds.
Before too long, those choices might be the main items on the agendas of city councils in Phoenix and Tucson. They also could end up being the focus of lawsuits from cities and nonprofits, or the centerpiece of political campaigns for governor and attorney general next year.
How should the Phoenix City Council deal with federal agents casually throwing tear gas canisters onto a peaceful street in broad daylight, like federal agents did in Chicago earlier this month?
What should Gov. Katie Hobbs do if the president deploys the National Guard over her objections?
In Arizona, military vehicles are patrolling the border and ICE agents are staking out courthouses, while immigrants face the constant threat of having their families ripped apart by deportations.
As bad as that is, it pales in comparison to what’s happening in cities like Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York, Portland and Memphis, where federal officials are going after what Trump called “the enemy from within,” also known as the people who live in Democratic-run cities.
No city in Arizona has wound up on that list, at least as far as we know. But that list grows longer every day.
And as we saw when Trump’s assault on higher education eventually reached the University of Arizona this month, Trump officials sooner or later turn their attention to Arizona.
Arizona, so far
If you’re wondering why Trump’s mass deportation program didn’t start in a border state like Arizona, it’s likely because so few people are actually crossing the border in Arizona anymore.
Border Patrol arrests are at record lows, which means there aren’t many photos of people lining up next to the border fence or caravans walking through Mexico.
If you want to induce outrage, you gotta have those visuals.
But Arizona has been at the epicenter of immigration crackdowns before.
Local Democratic officials know which levers the federal government likes to pull, and they’ve been trying to safeguard those levers ever since Trump’s inauguration in January.
For their part, Republican officials in Cochise, Yuma, Pinal and Navajo counties are lining up to sign agreements with ICE that allow local police to take on immigration enforcement roles.
But they’re the exceptions for the moment. Most sheriffs and police chiefs in Arizona are turning down those deals, known as 287(g) agreements.
Over at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, they’re still paying for the racial profiling under former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, which prompted Sheriff Jerry Sheridan to say his office’s role on immigration would mostly be alerting ICE when a jail inmate doesn’t have legal status.
Still, immigration-related arrests in Arizona are higher since Trump took office. And the Phoenix City Council nixed reforms proposed by a pro-immigration group that would have made it harder for ICE to pick up people at local jails.
Down in Marana, residents are protesting a proposed ICE detention center and Pima County Supervisor Jen Allen is helping lead the charge against it.
As for Hobbs, she has been trying to beef up her border security credentials as she gets ready for a re-election run. She created a border task force and sent National Guard troops to the border.
But she did veto the Arizona ICE Act this spring, which basically would have required local officials, from police officers to school board members, to fully comply with ICE.
And when ICE agents reportedly posed as utility workers in Tucson, Hobbs called out the agency.
Will Attorney General Kris Mayes sue if ICE agents get wildly out of hand in Arizona? That’s probably going to be a “yes” many times over, considering Mayes already filed dozens of lawsuits against the Trump administration.
Reaching for the toolbox
Democratic officials in the cities targeted by the Trump administration are using every policy tool within their grasp.
As we mentioned earlier, the governors of Illinois, California and Oregon are all suing the Trump administration, after the governors refused to deploy the National Guard and Trump tried to deploy the Guard anyway.
Memphis is the exception. The governor of Tennessee is a Republican and he welcomed Trump’s decision to deploy the Guard.
But most of the choices that city and state officials are making are much smaller-scale, similar to Chicago officials making the “ICE-free zones” or a Cook County judge blocking ICE from making arrests at courthouses.
Mostly, they’re nibbling away at how ICE can operate.
You can already see shades of this in Arizona, like the Pima County Attorney posting signs on the doors of county buildings saying ICE needs a warrant to make arrests.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law blocking ICE agents from wearing face masks, which was met swiftly by a Trump official saying, “We don’t need to abide by this garbage.”
Another big issue that’s coming up is whether local police can arrest ICE agents.
That’s what the San Francisco district attorney wants to do, after seeing federal agents rough up people in other cities. (It’s worth noting that a president can’t pardon people convicted of state crimes.)
And what should local officials do when immigrants in their communities are too afraid to leave their houses to go to work?
In places like Los Angeles and Memphis, officials are declaring emergencies so they can loosen the rules for providing rental and food aid to immigrant families.
And don’t forget that cities always have an ace up their sleeves: zoning ordinances.
Those ordinances are coming into play in Portland. The issue there is the federal government doesn’t own the property that houses ICE’s field office and detention center in Portland. Instead, they’ve been leasing it for the past 14 years.
Last month, city officials notified ICE that the agency had breached the terms of the lease agreement, which stated that nobody could be detained there for more than 12 hours.
Activists outside the detention center said they’ve recorded 25 instances this year of people being detained for longer than 12 hours at the detention center.
“This is so Oregon of us, so Portland of us,” said Elana Pirtle-Guiney, president of the Portland City Council, “to distill a huge federal policy issue that is also a moral issue that is also about the fundamental question of who we are as a country into a land-use problem.”
SNAP to it: On Thursday, state officials announced that people will not receive SNAP benefits in November thanks to the federal shutdown, Manuelita Beck writes for ABC15. That’s a pretty last-minute notice, considering state officials had known about the federal government’s upcoming stop in food assistance for two weeks before telling Arizonans. On Friday, Hobbs was asked why it took so long for the news to become public, to which she said she “thought people knew about this.” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes joined 22 other AGs in signing an angry letter to the USDA asking it to justify the halted SNAP benefits, per AZFamily’s Peter Valencia.
“As Donald Trump demolishes portions of the White House to build his golden ballroom, families all across Arizona are about to go hungry because of the incompetence and failure of leadership in Washington,” Mayes said in a press release.
There’s an old sheriff in town: “60 Days In” star and “America’s Sheriff” Mark Lamb announced he will run for Andy Biggs’ congressional seat in the East Valley’s Congressional District 5, Noah Cullen reports for Pinal Central. Lamb, the former Pinal County sheriff, announced his candidacy on “The Charlie Kirk Show.” He has a history of supporting “America First” border security and has been a longtime supporter of President Donald Trump.
“Like any good cop, I can’t run from a fight. So, I’m announcing today my candidacy for CD5,” Lamb said. “I’m getting in because, listen, I believe in America, I believe in our history, our birthright and I think America has a bright future and I want to be a part of it.”
Failure to alert: Since Arizona launched the Turquoise Alert in July, it’s only been used once — even though hundreds of Indigenous people in the state have gone missing, Chelsea Curtis writes for the Luminaria. Over the last three months, there have been three missing adults and 275 missing children, a Luminaria analysis found. The alert goes out when an investigating agency initiates it — but it’s unclear if requests were submitted or if DPS denied them for not meeting criteria. The Turquoise Alert was established after Emily Pike, a member of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, was reported as a runaway, but was found brutally murdered weeks later.
More collisions with ICE: Immigration and Customs Enforcement claims a Honduran immigrant without legal status hit their vehicle in Avondale, the Mirror’s Gloria Rebecca Gomez reports. The event was recounted differently by William Hernandez and his wife, who say ICE had been following him and purposefully caused the collision. Hernandez called his wife and asked her to open the door so he could quickly enter their home. His wife and mother watched from the front yard and claimed they saw an immigration officer’s vehicle crash into Hernandez’s truck.
Border wall inspired by George Orwell: The government announced a “smart wall” has officially received funding to be built along the U.S.-Mexico border, per Ellis Preston for Capitol Times. The smart wall will include barriers, patrol roads, cameras and detection technology spanning over 230 miles. The sensor technology will be able to detect singular people, groups, ATVs, trucks and heavy-duty trucks.
We would just like to detect some new subscribers.
Joe Arpaio doesn’t just get paid to offer birthday wishes via Cameo. He also does it for free.
The New Times did a roundup of all the celebrities that Arpaio has sent birthday wishes to in the past few years. (Fun fact: Arpaio shares a birthday with President Donald Trump — and he loves to talk about it.) Here are some of the highlights:
Rim Rock Democrats, Diane Greene, has started a statewide petition urging Hobbs and Mayes NOT to cooperate with ICE or National Guard. 602 319 6755 Please cover it so we can get more signatures.
Could Hobbs deploy the Az National Guard for something specific before Trump can get his bloody hands on them? By bloody I mean all the people, human beings, who have died in ICE custody. I don’t believe their numbers. I have a dear friend with kidney disease who is of Mexican decent, born in Sacramento, he has dialysis 3 times a week to keep him alive. Medicare. Stopped by cops. Fortunately let go. He’s just one ICE agent away.