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Fighting border wall construction on Southern Arizona tribal land.

U.S.

immigrants deported, but not to their home countries.

And Governor Katie Hobbs chooses a running mate for the November election.

It's all on The Press Room, coming up next.

Hello and welcome to The Press Room.

I'm Tony Perkins.

With our panel of journalists this week, Alisa Reznick from KJZZ News.

Paul Ingram from the Tucson Sentinel.

Rafael Carranza with Arizona Luminaria.

And Emily Bregel writes for the Arizona Daily Star.

Thanks for being with us on The Press Room.

Let's start off with an interesting incident we learned this week about a different way to block border wall construction.

Paul, it comes from the Tohono O'odham Nation.

Yeah, so a few months ago, the nation learned that Customs and Border Protection wants to start building about 62 miles of wall, specifically along their part of the U.S.-Mexico border.

And the tribe has immediately responded with a lawsuit.

They went in court just a few weeks ago and they're really challenging it.

At the same time they've said that border wall contractors are not allowed to come onto the nation and start the kind of pre-emptive work that they usually start to do.

So it's really setting up kind of a little bit of a standoff between the nation and between CBP's contractors.

Emily, putting up signs seems to be mostly symbolic, but the real power to stop border wall construction seems to come from the courts.

Yes, and they, I know, recently had a preliminary hearing on this, they're seeking a preliminary injunction to try to stop this construction before they're actually coming onto Tohono O'odham land.

And when I talked to Chairman Verlon Jose, this was a couple months ago, he framed it really as a betrayal of the tribe in a lot of ways.

They see it as we've cooperated with Border Patrol over the years.

We've allowed agents onto our lands, we've allowed for construction and surveillance technology, and yet now we're just, our sovereignty is being violated by these plans.

Rafael, sovereignty is one of the main key topics and phrases regarding this issue.

What do you think is next in this case?

Well, I think it's also interesting to keep in mind the geography of the Tohono O'odham Nation, I think because you have construction that is essentially pincering on both sides of the nation.

You're gonna have now secondary barriers, it's already primary barriers on either side of the Tohono O'odham Nation.

And so this is the only stretch where you have limited barriers in addition to the tower infrastructure that Emily was mentioning.

And I think what's interesting here as well is that you have two mountain ranges that form the eastern and western boundaries of the nation along the border.

And so this kind of trespassing sign, I think, makes it clear that for any constructor or any construction crews in order to access the border on the Tohono O'odham Nation, they have to go through a lot of the populated areas or community areas of the nation.

So I think that in itself sets up again, that sort of standoff, but there's no way, I think for constructors to kind of get on the nation without the officials knowing because of the geography of this space.

And I think that obviously sets up those questions about sovereignty and how much power does the tribe has to enforce these laws within their tribe versus the federal claims of having exclusive domain over immigration matters.

It's probably really important to note, like in some of the court documents, they actually showed that they sent a letter to the contractor specifically saying, "We do not consent to this."

And they really sort of hinted at the idea that, excuse me, that TOPD, their police agency, would specifically come and make sure that contractors are either removed from the territory or maybe even face some kind of legal sanctions as well.

I mean, one thing is, sovereignty is really important to the nation.

I mean, you really can't just enter the nation and go wherever you want as anyone.

I mean, you kind of have to permission.

I mean, as journalists, we've gone and gone to the San Miguel Gate, which is an unofficial crossing, and you really have to have somebody who's a member of the nation to be with you or other, some other relationship or permission to go there, where Border Patrol has been allowed to go there because the Nation has allowed them to do this.

So it really sets up the sovereignty.

And the other thing too important to note is there is a barrier.

It's a vehicle barrier.

It's been there for a couple of decades, and it's something that the Nation had agreed to.

And part of the federal government's argument is essentially, since you allowed this, now we should be able to build this larger barrier.

And the Nation's saying, "Hey, wait a minute.

"We did that permission.

"We didn't give you carte blanche "to do whatever you want."

I also think it's worth noting that just how different this is from even past eras of ramped up border wall construction in 2020, or around 2020, the Cocopah tribe wrote a similar letter to CBP when there was a one mile or so stretch of land along their Colorado River stretch inside of their tribal land that was going to be walled off with this 30 foot steel bollard wall.

That did not end up going through.

And back then it was another sovereignty issue.

Basically the Cocopah Tribe said, "Well, we have allowed CBP to build roads here.

"We've allowed for the surveillance of this land.

"We've allowed trucks to go up and down that road.

"We do not want this to be "encroaching upon our land "even further, and it would "block our access to the river, "which is important to us."

That was one mile.

And now we're talking about 62 miles.

So it really is unprecedented in a lot of ways.

And I think one other question, one other factor about that is the fact that you have enrolled members on both sides of the border.

And I think that I think is something that the current chairman, he used to be the governor for the Tohono O'odham in Mexico.

And so I think he's uniquely positioned because having occupied that position and now as chairman of the Tohono O'odham Nation, to look out for the interests on both sides of the border.

And I think creating this physical barrier, would disrupt that flow back and forth.

And already there's been a lot of complications about the ability of members to be able to cross through the gate there.

And I think that this could definitely make that more challenging having this infrastructure in place.

I also spoke to chairman Jose, and he mentioned too that, I mean, I asked kind of for people who are unfamiliar with this area, what makes this 62 miles so different all of the other mileage that's been walled off along the border.

And he said, look, the Tohono O'odham ancestral land spreads far and wide, deep into the state of Sonora, as well as the state of Arizona.

And so much of that has already been crouched upon by border infrastructure.

He said, this is the last strip of land that we're trying to hold on to in our, this vast ancestral land that we have already lost to a lot of border infrastructure.

The other thing too is, I mean, there's border wall construction isn't just about building the wall.

It's also about all the activity that's around it.

They tear up the desert landscaping, they're removing saguaros out past Quitobaquito.

There's all sorts of activity.

And they're also, when they were working in Organ Pipe, I mean, one of the things that they did was at Monument Hill, they used explosives to break up that part of the mountain.

And that was land that the O'odham also considered sacred as for places where maybe there was graveyards.

And so having the agency tear through that and this new construction is going to include some of the mountain ranges.

And they're going to chop into those mountain ranges to make these new roads and to build the wall.

All right, and let's get more into that subject.

For a border wall to work, it's gotta get from point A to point B. And more and more often we're seeing that issue come up where the border wall is getting into these locations, these areas that people who live there or go there find are known to be sacred, important land for them.

Alisa, how is the wall getting into more of these significant areas for Southern Arizona residents?

I mean, we're seeing that in a lot of different ways around the Arizona border.

One of them is what Paul just mentioned, Quitobaquito.

It's an ancient spring that's been around for thousands of years, more than 10,000 years.

And it was inhabited at one point by the Hia C-ed O'odham.

This is a tribe that's not federally recognized that is related to the Tohono O'odham.

It's basically a spring that's fresh water in the middle of the Sonoran Desert.

And it already has a 30 foot steel bollard wall that was installed there in 2020, despite massive protests that blocked construction and a rest that resulted in, tribal members' arrests, I should say that resulted in a court case that lasted well into the Biden administration.

It just is, it was such a flash point in 2020.

It already has a wall now.

And I should say, Quitobaquito is a spring that drains into a human made pond.

And inside that pond, there's also species that are not found anywhere else anymore.

Tiny little species like the mud turtle, this tiny little turtle that used to be in Mexico and the US, now it kind of only lives at Quitobaquito So there's a lot of concern now because construction is heading back to that area.

And that's because the Trump administration is wanting to build a smart wall across, essentially huge swaths, or even they hope to build across most of the US Mexico border.

And in portions, including at Quitobaquito, that would mean a double border wall.

So two steel bollard walls, essentially right next to each other, running parallel to each other to create this sort of buffer zone in between with added surveillance inside of the buffer zone, lights, roads, that kind of thing.

So Quitobaquito is essentially in the crosshairs again.

And that's also happening in other areas like the tiny little border town of Lochiel, where right now, protestors are staging a tree sit-in in a cottonwood tree that is estimated to be 250 years old or even older.

- Right, Paul.

- And one of the things you're seeing, and you hit it right, it's like the Trump administration in 2020 built this huge wall through a long Organ Pipe.

It was part of a large-scale construction that they built across almost all the federal land in Arizona has a border wall right now.

And most of it now is they're adding a double wall.

So in Quitobaquito, there's gonna be a double wall.

In the Coronado National Forest, they're right now building a double wall near Kino Springs, which is outside of Nogales.

They're also gonna do the same thing near Lochiel.

And one of the things that's important is, like Lochiel, it's an old ghost town.

It used to have an informal port.

It's mostly private land, and the agency is in the middle of building not only a primary wall, but also going to build a secondary wall right through, right past not only the old port house, but also the graveyard that holds most of the residents who lived there for the last century or two.

And these are all these important areas.

And then the tree sit-in is really about protecting the cottonwoods.

These are these centuries-old cottonwoods that they tore down three of four.

The fourth one is being protected.

But I think it's really a highlight of that.

The agency has gone and is taking all the money that's gotten from Congress over the last five years and immediately spending as much as it can to build as much wall as fast as it can without really thinking about what communities, environmentalists, they're all the kind of things, normally with a federal project you would see, they're just bypassing all of those ideas and really just building as much wall as they possibly can, sometimes expanding really far into federal land.

We're gonna get to a few other immigration topics right now about the children of migrants and how the federal government is failing to help them.

The Trump administration was told to release $65 million in funds it was holding up.

Alisa, the administration said it was keeping the money and demanding sensitive information about the children and their families.

Yes, this is a long running court case and just a long running issue.

The Trump administration, just to back up a little bit, tried to cancel this program that is about two decades old, nearly two decades old, it was established by Congress and is funded with money allocated by Congress, essentially to provide legal aid to children who are alone in the US, unaccompanied immigrant children.

So in, let's say the spring of last year, the Trump administration slashed most of that funding and children went from most likely having an attorney by their side in court to potentially having Know Your Rights presentations while they're in government custody.

So that was a significant change and basically things have been kind of deteriorating since then.

The groups now say that despite a judge's order to restart the program and refund it, the Trump administration had not paid them since November of last year.

So that means for all of this year, their services to these children, including the Florence Project and the Florence Refugee Rights Project here in Arizona was completely unfunded.

That total was $65 million.

So they were asking a judge essentially to find the government in contempt of court and restore the money.

Laws for the Trump administration in court.

Rafael, this was a successful pushback against a part of the Trump administration policy.

And again, going through the courts to find that there is government overreach and also, of course, denying assistance to migrant families.

And I think one of the concerns here is that there is just such a large number of children between 20 and 25,000 that depend on these services.

And the previous provider, the Acacia Center, they had subcontractors, which the Florence Project was one of them.

And so they had this network of over 100 legal aid groups that distributed throughout the entire country were able to provide that assistance to unaccompanied children in court.

And now as we're seeing that contract went away, and so as they're moving to this new contract, there's a lot of questions about and how the new contract providers will be able to provide services for all of these children, especially if they have limited to no experience in immigration matters as well.

That's a big question that we still don't have an answer to yet.

It's probably important, I think, for viewers and for folks to know that in the civil immigration system is built as a civil system, which means that people don't get an attorney.

If you're being prosecuted for committing drunk driving, you can get an attorney that's somebody that's paid for by the state.

Same thing with the federal court system.

And in even family courts, there's someone, an advocate who's brought to you that's given to you by and paid for by the state.

The immigration system is not that way.

This was built to protect immigrant kids who are especially unaccompanied.

This means children who, I mean, I've seen children as young as three go in the courtroom, and they don't have anybody who's there sponsoring them.

They essentially have someone who's a translator who's trying to help.

So this program was built specifically to give them some kind of advocacy.

So the Trump administration taking that away means that either people have to do a pro bono for free, which is a lot of work to do because immigration cases are complicated, or it means that these kids won't have someone actually representing their interest in the case.

Emily, let's take a bigger look at this issue.

And throughout the whole immigration reform debate in the second Trump administration, there's so many cases, instances have come up where the administration is making a statement, but it is not above the demands of the court and the philosophy of basic fairness, especially when it comes to these kids.

Yes, well, one thing that I've been noticing, I'm actually kind of curious what you guys have been seeing in terms of DHS and ICE responses to the public and the reliability of those responses, because we're finding once a lot of these cases goes go to court and ICE or DHS is supposed to be defending the claims they've made in public, those are often found to be false, whether intentionally or not.

And I've been finding lately that the responses to my inquiries as a reporter to a lot of these issues do not appear to be good faith efforts to share accurate information.

And that's something I was kind of interested if you all are hearing as well, things such as accusing people of assaulting ICE officers, when those things make it to court, those cases often fall apart.

I think one thing that's keeping in mind is like when lawyers who are attorneys from the Justice Department go to the court, they have to act as officers of the court, which means they have to have evidence, they have to have facts, they have to have proof to make an argument, where, I mean, unfortunately, in kind of the public sphere, sometimes people just can make arguments that just aren't, that don't really matter if they're true because they're trying to make a rhetorical argument.

And, I think that's not just DHS or ICE, although they seem to be doing a lot, but also other agencies, even like court cases, sometimes even the people that we're talking to, defense lawyers for attorneys, will go and make an argument in the rhetoric.

But then when it comes to actually in front of a judge, all of a sudden, everyone kind of tamps themselves down a little bit, tries to be more responsible for that.

But certainly, this is a problem, and this is going to be, I think a continuous problem, when people have to talk to a judge and realize that they may be put in contempt of court, all of a sudden, this rule changes.

But you still see the Trump administration really trying to push this as hard as they can towards judges not only having to make single orders, but having to make repeated orders.

I think of the lawsuit over the man who was sent to El Salvador to CECOT.

The judge has made repeated statements of, you are violating my orders.

And the question is, is at some point, does somebody get put in contempt of court?

That's a hard question, and that hasn't happened yet, and maybe it will at some point.

Federal judges, I think, are getting very frustrated with some of these cases.

Let's take a look at another case, which has put Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a bad light.

ICE deported an immigrant who has lived in Arizona since he was a child.

Ahmed Soliman is 30 years old now.

The Arizona Daily Star says ICE sent him to Equatorial Guinea in Africa.

He didn't get any warning, and now he's stuck living in poor conditions.

Emily, it's another case where policy shortcomings are pretty apparent.

That's right.

This is part of the Trump administration's focus on third country removals.

And so these are a way that the Trump administration has found to send people that they can't deport to their home country, maybe because, as in Ahmed's case, he has protection against being deported back to Egypt, or where he's from.

A judge agreed he would be at risk of torture or death if he was sent back to Egypt.

So the Trump administration is in a little bind in this type of case.

So they're trying to find any country that are willing to accept people they can't deport, but the conditions that deportees from the US are being held in in those countries is really concerned.

And that's what Ahmed and two other deportees from the US who were sent to, they're being imprisoned in a decommissioned hotel in Equatorial Guinea.

None of them have ties to that country.

All of them were, actually all of them were in the middle of a habeas corpus petition in federal court when they were deported and all have protection from deportation to their home country.

They are supposed to be supposed to get enough notice so that if they express fear of return to a country such as Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, that they can get a fear screening.

That has not been happening.

Ahmed and two other women, all of whom were very insistent about using their names, despite the risks of speaking out, the risks of retaliation from the government there, the risks of retaliation by the armed men guarding them at this hotel.

They were really insistent about speaking out about these injustices in the hope that someone will help them when the public knows about this.

So none of them had the opportunity to express fear of going to a place where they say their lives are now at risk.

And in fact, Ahmed, when he tried to follow his lawyer's advice and just sit down a form of passive resistance to say, I'm not getting on this flight, ICE officials picked him up and carried him on the flight.

The two women I spoke with, both from Jamaica, both who had protection against return there, they said that when they tried to request a fear screening, the moment they found out they were being sent to Africa, which was moments before getting put on the flight, the ICE officer said, in that case, we will handcuff you, put you in a full body straight jacket, and you will stay in that straight jacket for the 18 hour flight to Africa, and you will, using words that I can't repeat on television, they said you will urinate and defecate on yourself for those entire 18 hours.

And so the women finally did agree in the face of that threat.

So the inhumane treatment, both at the hands of ICE and in this hotel in Equatorial Guinea, where no one is taking responsibility for their treatment, that's what these deportees are concerned about.

Go ahead.

I just, I was so struck by your stories because, you know, it's, you know, we're seeing this play out, this trend that I have heard from immigration attorneys and activists who visit people who are in detention in Arizona for months now, you know, I mean, there's so many different factors that are sort of crashing into each other, this rise in habeas corpus cases being the only way to get out of detention and this third country removal process.

It reminds me even of a story a lot of us covered earlier, this, or I guess last year with the Syrian man, Kamel, who was in detention in Eloy, he had the same protection from going back to Syria.

A judge had already determined that he was at risk of being tortured or killed if he returned.

They sent him to Venezuela, if you remember, and he was actually returned because Venezuelan officials looked at him and said, "You're not supposed to be here, "and we didn't agree to this, you're going back to the US."

That's the only reason that he was sent back to the US and has now been released.

All right, let's move over to politics right now and Governor Katie Hobbs' reelection campaign took a big step this week.

Democratic Governor Hobbs has chosen as her running mate for the November election, John Giles.

He's a former Republican and mayor of Mesa.

Now he's a candidate for lieutenant governor of Arizona.

Paul, what does this pick bring to the Hobbs campaign?

Well, I think one of the things it shows that she's trying to say that, "look, "yes, I'm a Democrat, but I'm "also important for the state, "I'm a bipartisan.

"I can do the kind of work that you want me to do in working with Republicans."

And Giles is kind of a sign of this.

And also the idea of that the state is more than just, we tend to think about Democrats and Republicans, or we talk about it in terms of red states versus blue states, but that Arizona is a complex, purple state, there's lots of Democrats, but there's also a huge number of independents, roughly a third of the electorate are independents.

And so this is a symbol of saying, hey, I'm not just a Democrat, I want to bring Republicans in, I want to bring independents in.

And especially like McCain Republicans, who've been really kind of pushed out of the Republican party in the last several years.

So it's a way of showing that she can do that and have somebody who can kind of help her, help her get elected again.

Now, let's contrast that with Andy Biggs' campaign, the Republican who has picked Sine Kerr, a conservative state senator from Arizona, doesn't have necessarily a crossover appeal that Hobbs is talking about with her pick.

Yeah, and I think something that for them, and I also just want to mention briefly that I think picking John Giles, I think was kind of a bit of a jab at the Republican party as well.

And I don't think that that decision should be a surprise.

He was a speaker at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 2024.

But in terms of Republicans, the challenge I think for the Biggs' campaign is that these are two individuals now with Governor, Lieutenant Governor, who come from very conservative, reliably Republican districts.

And so they haven't had to campaign in a race where they've had to ask or try to get independent and Democratic voters because they had to rely essentially on the Republican base.

I think this will be a test for them to try to reach out to other voters outside of that energetic base, and that'll come head to head in that election in November.

Is there gonna be a close race?

Yeah, I think John Giles, the pick of John Giles is just reminding me that there have been crossover issues here in Arizona with sort of the McCain type Republicans thinking about even Prop 314, was it, in-state tuition for Dreamers, you had a lot of Republicans that were campaigning on the side of that, I guess we can say, campaigning for that proposition.

And John Giles was among them.

He has also sort of been a voice defending DACA recipients and pushing for protection for some Dreamers in Arizona.

So I think Paul's right in that it's maybe not as surprising of a pick as Rafael mentioned.

All right, fascinating development and we'll see how it develops in the next few weeks and months ahead.

And that'll do it for The Press Room for today.

Thanks to our guests.

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

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.