Arizona pushes the federal government for border security money, mudslinging in the contest for Congressional District six, and the impact of year round construction in Tucson.

The press room is next.

Hello and welcome to the Press Room.

I'm Tony Perkins, joined by Joe Ferguson from the Tucson Agenda.

Tim Steller with the Arizona Daily Star and Eric Fink from KVOA news four Tucson.

Thanks for being with us on the press room.

We're going to start off talking about the state of Arizona winning almost $1 billion in border security funding from the federal government.

The state says it spent that much on the security measures that the federal government wanted them to take.

Eric, Congress allocated the money for reimbursement to the border states.

And will Arizona see any of that money?

Well, the goal, Tony, for Arizona is to see that money.

At least a portion of that funding come back sometime in the fall.

Arizona is asking for more than $900 million from the federal government.

This is this was allocated by Congress in H.R.

one, or more commonly known as the Big Beautiful Bill last last summer.

And we're going back five years.

So Governor Katie Hobbs on Monday held a round table with Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels and Sierra Vista, along with lots of local law enforcement, police chiefs and others, those also from the Department of Public Safety.

They're all on the same page.

They really believe that Arizona stepped up.

And now, because they say the border is a federal responsibility, they need to see that money back.

And the governor, when I asked her whether or not she's hopeful she'll see it, she says, well, I hope it's I hope the money is not ultimately politicized.

She doesn't want to be having a conversation with Washington a couple of months down the road.

And there's no money in state coffers from this increased border security, whether it was for walls or personnel, it was going to be a costly proposition from the start.

It will.

But, I mean, we've seen the other governors ask the federal government for money in the past before.

This is a song I've heard.

It's just a new person singing.

At this point, I'm hopeful that H.R.

one means something.

But again, we'll see.

What if it's Pelosi does or not?

As the election date gets closer, the interesting thing about this is that if you go back to some of the expenses that they're looking to get reimbursed for, it includes like that container wall.

Do you remember that from about 3 or 4 years ago?

It cost Doug Ducey was governor at the time, and he put up a wall.

It was funded by our state legislature, a wall made out of containers stacked too high in Cochise County cost 170 billion to put it up and take it down, as ordered by the federal government.

I mean, some of these things are not things that the federal government necessarily wanted.

So I, I would be shocked if they say, yeah, you know, you did a thing that we didn't want, but we're going to pay you for it anyway.

What's the political impact for Republicans in Arizona?

I mean, you know, this is an issue that they've run on year after year for decades.

So obviously, I mean, I guess it could cut both ways.

On the one hand, they certainly would want the money from the Trump administration to reimburse Arizona for its its efforts along these lines.

On the other hand, they don't want to get into a fight with them either, I don't think.

And, you know, it's interesting, I'm closely watching how immigration is going to impact the governor's race here.

As Governor Hobbs looks for a second term.

Andy Biggs, the East Valley congressman, very conservative.

And if you if you look back two years ago, immigration, such a key issue to help President Trump in in, you know, southwestern states like Nevada and here in Arizona, very, very key border security.

We saw really Arizona independents swing towards the president two years ago.

What will happen now?

All right.

Let's talk about some of the midterm election issues.

And it's getting serious in the Congressional District six race.

That's the one with Joanna Mendoza challenging the two term Republican Congressman Juan Eskamani.

Joe.

Somehow, Tucson Mayor Regina Romero got roped into all of this.

Yeah, I think that the Cisco team found a way to find one of Mendoza's very many, you know, endorsers and politicize it to the point of talking about the serious issues of homelessness and drug addiction in Tucson and suggesting that a comment that Mendoza made shortly after the George Floyd murder, you know, was indicative that she didn't support the police.

And so it's a bit of a stretch.

We didn't necessarily rate how many Pinocchios it was, but certainly they tried hard to paint her with a broad brush.

And I expect a lot more of these same kind of attacks as we get closer to it.

It's a national race.

And, you know, the Democrats are counting on CD six as part of their strategy to flip the House.

So was the idea.

This is an ad, right?

A Cisco ad, and was the idea that to link Mendoza with with Romero and say that like, if you want things to be like they are in Tucson, that's what Joe Mendoza will bring is that though I think she's saying that more of the same, you'll get out of Mendoza if you elect somebody that's friends with Romero.

It's interesting because it says a lot about what they think will sell to the voters in CD six.

And obviously they think criticizing Regina Romero, the mayor of Tucson and Tucson, generally would sell to voters in this district, half of which is in Tucson.

But a lot of it isn't.

And it kind of shows that people outside of Tucson look at this.

They think people outside of Tucson look at the city and say, we don't want anything to be anything like that.

But he represents half of Tucson.

So isn't the homeless problem and the fentanyl problem also problem at the end of the day, is it a reflection of his last four years?

You could put it that way, I suppose.

It's so interesting that this is the swing district here in southern Arizona and has been for over a decade here.

It's going back to to when Gabby Giffords won her seat.

Even potentially even before that.

Eskamani is now looking for a third term.

He won in 2022 by about 6000 votes.

He won two years ago by about 11,000.

And as Joe said, this is a national race.

We're we're going to see a lot of money over the next couple of months, really laser focused on this southern Arizona district here.

And you look at this, you know, opposition research, and it's been going on for a long time, the time honored strategy in political campaigns, getting people to vote against someone instead of voting for someone praising the negatives.

Yes, that's that's half the game these days.

And plus the money that's going into it are going to see more and more of this, or we're going to expect to see another 1 in 2 weeks.

Another ad like this, oh, there is going to be another 1 in 2 weeks.

Is that what you're saying?

Yeah.

Well yeah.

Yeah.

There's one all the time.

Yeah.

All right.

Let's move over to more election news.

And Arizona voters will not have a chance to cast a decision for or against the state school voucher program.

Now, the back story on this is proposition 212.

It would have added reforms that would go to the Empowerment scholarship program.

Proposition 145 would, I guess, counteract 212 and would have blocked 212 in future reform efforts.

A judge in Phoenix said this week that 212 did not have enough petition signatures to go on the November ballot.

Tim, it was a big disappointment for reform supporters and a story that's been in the headlines for several months.

Yeah, I mean, for as since the s a kind of revolution took place under Doug Ducey, it's use the use of the program has grown and it's been quite liberal, not in the political sense, but in the looseness sense, in how money, money has been allocated to families for expenses, expenses related to education.

And so for years.

And so the cost of the program has ballooned over $1 billion and has taken up a lot of the state budget.

And so now people are trying to get people who oppose the program, especially, are trying to get a handle on that and saying, hey, we need to reform it.

And people who support the program and the legislature are trying to block it.

And outside the legislature also are trying to block those reforms.

I mean, this piece would have this ballot issue, would have limited the the program to people under a certain income.

It would have required tutors to to have certain qualifications.

It would have banned people from using essay money for expenses such as vacations and lingerie.

I yeah, lingerie was specified and, and other things, but it would have put in some guidelines that don't exist quite as firmly yet.

Okay, it's not going to go on the ballot.

How do you get reform now?

That's the big question going forward.

Governor Hobbs has has advocated for this, and every one of her state of the state's going into a legislative session for the last four years.

And the the Republicans in the legislature have have ultimately really blocked any kind of reform.

And then ultimately, at the end of the day, the state budget is turned in, the governor signs it and we see s a stay the same.

It's going to be interesting, but but take a look at the superintendent race this fall.

Kimberly Yee, who was recruited by some conservative lawmakers and some some s a advocates actually beat current superintendent the incumbent Tom Horne.

So and she's going up against a longtime public school teacher.

And Terry Ruiz, who has advocated for some guardrails for some reforms.

Interesting.

Now, to see this wrinkle without voters getting a chance to weigh in in November on S. S how will that ultimately play out in the state superintendent race this fall?

I think that the voters are going to get a chance to weigh in on this.

They're going to get a chance to weigh in on all three seats in their legislative district, and they can choose who they want on based on essays.

I do think it's going to be part of the conversation.

I do think it's going to be a choice for them.

Democrats are hopeful that if they can flip the House, they can very at least have a floor conversation about reforms and essays.

And, you know, it's going to be a very competitive year in legislative races across the state.

Yeah.

And I think that essay issue itself is a tool, a lever that Democrats are hoping to use to flip certain seats so that they can get a majority and then take these actions.

Tucson City Council member Nikki Lee says she's not going to seek another term.

She's represented Ward four on the southeast side and served two terms.

Mostly, it's a confirmation of what she said a couple of years ago.

First question is why did she decide not to run again?

She's young.

She's done eight years on the council, and I think she said in her statement that she's looking forward to new things by saying yes to the council, was saying no to other opportunities.

And so I think she's moving on.

I don't know if this will be the last time we'll see her in a political race, but for now, I think she's focusing on, you know, what's next after her Term ends next at the end of next year.

It wasn't that big of a surprise, so I would figure that there are some people who want to step up and take her place.

Any names out there?

I can't list any, but it's, you know, it's on the east side, southeast side and the races until next year.

Correct.

So yeah, there's plenty of time for people to pop and there's other individuals in, of course, in Tucson City Council who have and have not said that they're going to continue.

Reina Romero has not said anything about another term as well.

Is this the season where we're going to hear some some words from our local elected representatives about what their futures are going to be.

I think they're going to do it quietly.

I think the first thing that all of these people are going to do is send in paperwork, and that portal for the city is going to open soon.

And I'll be I'll be keeping an eye on, I'm sure, to see who is going to run for office.

But I do expect, you know, some announcements before November because I think this race is happening now quietly, as people are building coalitions and and list of endorsements.

All right.

Let's turn now to the economy.

And it's a different kind of summer for Tucson businesses and major construction zones.

The interchange project on I-10 and Country Club Road is making it hard for customers to get to shops and stores.

Eric, the business owners didn't ask for this, of course.

That's right.

And Adot says it's going to last until 2028.

And that's huge.

It is.

Boy there's a lot of construction going on around town.

Oh yeah.

I mean, it's just just just constant.

And I think it's it's a it's a real it can it can be a real deterrent for businesses.

You know, Adot did say a spokesman for Adot said, well, well, there are there are signs up for drivers.

There are entrance areas.

But a lot of times when we're coming down the roads, we don't see those particular particular areas.

And I think it's I think it's really difficult.

I spoke to one business owner a couple of weeks ago in the Speedway Country Club area.

He was really counting on this time right now to see those U of A students come back to get a boost in business.

But but construction right now is just it's it's, it's a real, real consistent thing here in the city of Tucson.

I spent some time on East Grant road a few weeks ago.

And that's also, of course, a long standing construction area.

And it's gotten worse for people there because you can't cross grant from one side to another to the other, except in very limited spots.

And so it's hard to get to businesses.

And of course, Grant and Alvernon is already a hard area because there's a lot of people living on the streets there, a lot of drug addiction.

And of course, there's the summer doldrums too.

Like this is something we deal with every year.

So the thing is that these road construction projects always are an issue for businesses where they occur.

But then when you add on top of that, the usual summer slump, and then in some of these areas, depressed or deteriorated social conditions, it becomes impossible for them to sustain a business, especially the the simple single site, local, locally owned businesses.

I hate to say this, though, that a lot of us asked for this.

A lot of us voted for this, a lot of us supported this.

So some of the things that we are complaining about and have headaches about are things that we've been demanding out of our elected officials to get done.

Yeah.

26th Street Bridge has been a ask for 20 years.

Yeah.

We want to have our cake and eat it too, I guess.

And our and our to next.

Just just it passed earlier this year and they they had a they had a ceremony just a few days ago launching the next phase, the next 20 year phase of the improvements to our regional transportation system.

And it passed by a wide margin.

There are those who will say that, just hold out and it'll get better.

You know, the purpose of these improvements is to bring a better economy to Tucson.

How disappointed, how disappointing is it going to be if that doesn't happen?

Yeah.

Well and right.

I mean there will be some losses in the meantime, hopefully.

I mean, if you look at Broadway, for example, that's a place where East Broadway, the Sunshine Mile, just east of downtown, is an area where they were awaiting reconstruction for decades or certainly years.

And so businesses cleared out.

And it took a long time, but finally it got rebuilt.

It got widened, it looks good.

And now business is returning.

So hopefully that will happen in these other stretches as well.

But didn't we have a developer that fell out of that program that had to be replaced because he waited for years and never did the work, and over by.

I can't think of that one.

I'm thinking the block by Safeway, you know, that's been empty for years.

I believe the developer had to change over because it just took so long.

Yeah, that does happen.

Let's move over to Joe, there's a Raytheon deal that's coming up, city and county expansion.

You'll be looking at that in the Tucson agenda on Thursday.

And there's a new contract.

Yeah.

So the city has had a longstanding contract with Raytheon dating back 30 years.

And in that agreement was a buffer zone to make sure that there wasn't encroachment on, you know, a very important part of the Tucson economy.

And Raytheon recently asked for that to be expanded and to be able to build inside of that buffer zone.

It required the city to give Raytheon about 200 acres.

And so a lot of council members were really surprised.

They their personal values don't necessarily align with what's going on in Iran.

And so they had a real hard time with the that a previous council essentially tied their hands in terms of giving that land over.

And what we learned on Tuesday night is that the city doesn't actually know what Raytheon is going to do with those 200 acres.

All right, let's go around the table and talk about what you guys have are looking ahead to in the weeks ahead.

Eric, let's start with you.

Yeah, I'm really looking at whether or not we'll see that debate in CD six.

We are there.

There is a scheduled debate coming up in September between Representative Cisco Monte and his challenger, Joanna Mendoza.

I don't know if in fact, Cisco Mani has I think his team is talking about whether or not they're working out the details.

Interesting to see if that or interested to see, rather to see if that actually happens.

And the two meet on a debate stage next month.

Tim, what do you have coming up?

Well, I'm writing a piece right now about a very relatively small contract that has caused a big fuss at Pima County.

And it kind of reflects a lot about our local politics and, and the season we've come out of and the season we're going into also looking into some stuff related to transit and, and the transit safety meetings that went on recently here in Tucson.

Joe.

We are working with clean elections on a number of debates.

And the legislative 17 debate is coming up.

That's a big one, where Democrats are hoping to flip some seats in there.

So that'll be a good debate to have coming up in a couple of weeks.

All right.

Terrific.

Thanks for being with us on the press room.

Joe Ferguson, Tim Steller and Eric Fink.

Coming up next, a profile of detention camps and how some people are trying to stop them from locating in their communities.

That's right after this Love this program?

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And thank you.

The Trump administration's crackdown on immigration has placed more than 60,000 people in custody.

It's bringing a sharp focus on detention camps and how the federal government is dealing with that issue.

Our frequent Press Room contributor, John Washington, writes for Lookout.

He's authored a new book called "How to Close a Camp: Dispatches from the Fight Against Immigrant Detention."

John, thanks for being with us.

Yeah, good to be back, Tony.

In the introduction, you wrote about how people held in these camps are held within the scope of the law, but also are mocked by the law.

What's that mean exactly, and how does that apply to the definition of a camp?

That's right.

So I think the first thing to mention here just how bad the conditions are inside these detention camps.

So people inside have been dying at a higher rate than ever before.

Right now in 2026, approximately every eight days, someone has died inside an immigration detention camp in the United States.

There have been at least 54 deaths inside these facilities since the second Trump administration came back into office.

People have very little or sometimes no access to attorneys to talk to their families.

There's very little programming.

They often don't get any sunlight.

The food is godawful.

And they're really bad.

People have been subject to solitary confinement for extended periods.

So more legally speaking, the way that they're mocked by the law, you have to kind of go back and pick apart how the immigration system works.

So immigration violations are civil, not criminal in nature.

And that should mean that immigration detention camps are not punitive.

And legally speaking, that's true, but we know, as I was just saying, that they are very punishing.

They also are afforded less due process rights because of the civil nature of immigration very punishing.

They don't have guaranteed access to an attorney.

There's no trial by jury.

The way that immigration courts work is that the judges, which are not technically actually judges, work actually for the Department of Justice, not for the Judiciary Branch.

So when you're in an immigration court, if you're defending yourself and trying to stay in the country, you have a prosecutor on the other side who is working for the same boss effectively as the judge, the so-called judge.

So there are a host of reasons, including lack of oversight, that just make this really, as I say, people inside and subject to this are really rather mocked by the law.

Camps can't happen unless certain conditions are met, political conditions especially.

People can fight against camps in different ways by changing those conditions.

That's right.

So it is a challenge, and the government has a lot of money to try to push forward with extending the camp system.

And so the way that that has played out over the past years, they bought a whole number of warehouses, spending billions of dollars, including here in Arizona.

Surprise, Arizona is one example of this.

And the community stepped up almost immediately.

They were caught unawares when DHS spent $70 million to buy an empty warehouse.

And the community showed up.

They pushed back in all sorts of ways.

They wrote to their local council members.

They wrote to DHS.

They made a huge stink.

They were able to get Attorney General Kris Mayes to file a lawsuit.

They actually developed a petition to disincorporate the city because they were not happy with how their local elected officials were responding.

And they have at least temporarily won.

They've written about the camps and the cities and the communities, but you've also written about people, about individuals.

There's a man named Juan Castillo, and he was a detainee for five years in Alabama.

That's right.

I sigh because it's a tragic story.

And I talked to Juan today from a prison in Nevada.

He has been picked up again.

He won his case to give him some protections from being deported back to El Salvador, where he's originally from.

He came when he was 12 years old.

He's now in his mid-40s.

He spent five years in an ICE camp in Alabama, a notoriously abusive and awful place.

He finally won.

He incredibly has been very well-adjusted, got a job, got a girlfriend, is raising a stepdaughter, has been complying with all orders for ICE, showed up for a work reauthorization just two weeks ago, and they detained him.

And this is something that we're seeing across the country, is the administrati is going to capture anybody and everybody and including, especially maybe, what some are calling the low-hanging fruit.

The people are complying with orders and are availing themselves of the legal process to follow the law, to abide by their conditions of being free, and yet the administration is taking advantage of that contact with them to arrest and detain them.

Well, what if there's a change in administration?

Is the genie too far out of the bottle to turn it around?

Once the infrastructure is built, it is hard to shut down.

And wins we have seen in the past, I described where Juan Castillo was held in Etowah, Alabama.

During the Biden administration, they decided to shut that facility down, at least the immigration wing.

And now it's open back up.

So, there are wins and then there are losses, and there are only temporary wins.

A lot of people maybe see a potential way out of this as winning the next election, whether it's the midterms of the 2028 presidential election.

But we should remember that this is a bipartisan issue, that a lot of the infrastructure was built up and set in place, both legally and just physically, by the Clinton and Obama administrations.

And they are very much complicit in what we are seeing today.

All right.

Well, John, thank you very much.

John Washington from Lookout, he's written a new book called How to Close a Camp: Dispatches from the Fight Against Immigrant Detention.

- Appreciate it, John.

- Thanks so much, Tony.

And you can hear this full interview with John coming up on the next episode of Arizona Spotlight, Thursday at 8.30 a.m.

and 6 p.m.

on NPR 89.1 or at azpm.org.

And that'll do it for The Press Room.

Thanks from all the staff and crew.

I'm Tony Perkins.

We'll see you next week.

Support comes from Banner Health, a nonprofit health care system with an integrative health plan committed to giving back to Arizona.

Last year, Banner reinvested $1.1 billion into the Arizona community.

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This has been an original production of AZPM News.