The following is an AZPM original production.

The search for Nancy Guthrie continues.

Law enforcement following up on all sorts of tips, tips that influencers are spinning and spinning out of control.

We'll talk about the social media coverage of this investigation.

Plus, is an ICE detention center coming to you?

What the government has planned for Southern Arizona.

We've got a great panel of journalists to discuss these and other topics.

I'm David Lee, The Press Room starts now.

(upbeat music) Welcome to The Press Room.

I'm AZPM News Director, David Lee, and joining us here at the table, we have Alisa Reznick of KJZZ.

John Washington, a familiar face, but with a new organization.

John, with Lookout, tell me a little bit about that.

Lookout is an accountability nonprofit news outlet.

We focus on LGBTQ issues, and there I will be covering the State House and immigration.

We have a weekly newsletter.

I'll be doing roundups of what happened last week in the Capitol.

All right.

Also with us, Melissa del Bosque of The Border Chronicle, and joining us for the very first time, Angela Gervasi, who is the new AZPM Border Reporter.

And Angela, share a little bit about your background.

So I first began coming to the Border region in college.

I fell in love with Nogales.

I spent a few years working at the Nogales International newspaper, went back to the East Coast to do some immigration work with This American Life, and now I'm back here, and I'm really happy about that.

Well, welcome and welcome to The Press Room.

We're gonna start things off as of this taping Thursday, February 19th.

It's been nearly a month since the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Savannah Guthrie.

We don't have a firm suspect.

The investigation continues, but the media spotlight also continues to grow and grow.

John, have you ever seen a situation like that here in Tucson?

No, I can't say that I have.

Yeah, and you talk about that growing spotlight.

I think it's a little bit of a double-edged sword.

I mean, in some way, it could be useful.

People keeping eyes out, keeping vigilant, and hopefully giving substantive leads by which the law enforcement can follow up and hopefully resolve the case.

But also, and this has become part of the complaints wielded by Sheriff Chris Nanos just this week and others that actually, they're blocking parts of the investigation.

There's too many leads.

There are non-substantive leads, and they're getting in the way and actually causing a bit of a headache for law enforcement.

John, I've actually been out there a couple of times covering this whole thing as well, and I am just amazed, maybe alarmed a little bit about how many social media influencers are out there.

How do they get their job done, I guess, the Sheriff's Department and the FBI?

It's hard.

I mean, I think the army of sheriff's sleuths are in fact getting in the way, as I was saying.

I think that they're turning this into a spectacle, and actually the family itself, themselves have said that they would like a little bit more space and not some of these speculative and fabricated conspiracy theories about naming family members as suspects and things like that.

It's actually become offensive to them as well.

Yeah, Melissa, I will play a little devil's advocate here.

Without cell phones in some of this video that folks are taking and streaming, you probably don't have stuff from George Floyd, Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and for some of a certain age taking it all the way back to video-wise, Rodney King.

Is this helpful at all?

Well, I think it's two different situations.

I think the recording, the monitoring is super important that people do that, especially with the lack of transparency with this administration.

I mean, we've seen how important the video footage of the shootings, the fatal shootings of Pretti and Good, but with Nancy Guthrie's case, it's a different kind of scenario.

It's a investigation, it's heartbreaking, and you have this sort of carnival-like atmosphere outside Nancy Guthrie's home with people who are just there to get clicks, basically, and get more viewers on their YouTube channels or whatever for monetary gain.

So it's kind of a different situation, I think.

Alisa, what is it like?

You mean, you're out there, you're covering it, and somebody from YouTube or TikTok is next to you.

The Sheriff's Department is getting a completely new taste of what press conferences mean and what it's like in this Nancy Guthrie case.

Even a couple of weeks ago, the Sheriff's Department, or a couple last week, maybe the Sheriff's Department put out something on Twitter or X that said, "Hey, we appreciate the public's attention to this case, but we have received far too many call-ins about expressing worry or concern or even good thoughts for the Guthrie family.

It's overwhelming our systems that are traditionally used for tips and things like that."

So yeah, it's just that the spotlight is so big that it's a very valid question whether to what end that's going to serve.

Switching topics now, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was here a couple of times in Arizona most recently, up in Phoenix.

Earlier in the month, with the border.

And Angela, you covered that, you were there when Noem made the visit, and then spent the day with Noem.

And then afterwards, spent some time looking back at what she actually said and did a pretty interesting piece on the breakdown of her border visits from political candidates, from politicians, from policymakers are really nothing new in that area.

They're often treated a little bit like photo ops.

But what was really interesting about Noem's visit was of course the timing.

Nobody was really talking about the border in the same sense that people were talking about what was going on in Minneapolis, the shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

But Noem did not discuss Minneapolis.

She did not talk about backlash to ICE raids.

She struck a really celebratory tone.

And it was interesting to fact check some of her remarks because you had these sort of half truths.

And one that I found particularl interesting was that Noem talked about violent crime being down in the United States.

And that seems to be accurate in some metrics.

The Council on Criminal Justice released a pretty widely cited report saying that homicide rates have been on the decline since 2022.

So crime started declining before Trump's term in office.

This has been an ongoing trend basically since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But where the inaccuracy starts is that Noem attributed these declining crime rates to Trump's border policy.

And there's really an abundance of data that shows that the folks being detained under this administration largely lack a criminal record.

So that was one of the claims that really stuck out to me.

Alisa, what stood out for you?

Well, I also loved Angela's breakdown kind of of fact versus fiction or half truth that happened at the border.

Media was taken out to that location without a lot of knowledge of what we were gonna be doing.

We found out about an hour before the event was to start that we would not have the opportunity to ask any questions of the secretary or anybody that was there.

I think kind of seeing the bunting decorations and all the white chairs being set up should have kind of set off some suspicion as to whether we would get that time or not.

But yeah, it had a very celebratory tone.

It felt a little bit like a campaign rally.

And media had no opportunity to address or to ask any questions about anything that was said there.

And I think one of the things that she talked to me as well as kind of numbers about the half truths, border numbers are down.

The number of arrests at the border are the lowest levels that they've been in decades.

But the number of arrests and the number of people making it to seek asylum in the US was already far lower than it had been in the peaks in 2023 and early 2024 due to Biden era crackdowns on asylum.

So yeah, I just think that data is kind of a tricky thing because you can put out a number and not give any context and it's kind of true, but also kind of not, given that there's other things involved.

The other thing that was there is that this is in Santa Cruz County, which is a pretty blue county.

And there were no local officials from Santa Cruz County that were invited.

In fact, they were not told anything about it despite there kind of being this battle cry about how this was a collaboration with local law enforcement and federal authorities.

Okay, Melissa, do you think because of the blowback or the takeaway from Minneapolis and the ICE agents being removed there that they're gonna just essentially relocate to the Southern Arizona border?

Well, I think Kristi Noem is at the border because of what happened in Minneapolis and other places.

I mean, it's wild to me that she's talking about a lower crime rate when her agency has killed several people and we've all seen it.

So the roving commander, Greg Bovino, the border patrol, he was sent back to El Centro.

He was El Centro sector chief for border patrol.

So he's been sent away because of the killings, Alex Pretti and Good.

And so I think Kristi Noem, during the first Trump administration, they went through at least four or five different DHS secretaries.

And so a lot of reporting is coming out now saying that she's probably on the outs.

And I think this was an attempt for her to sort of divert the attention to the border.

Like, look at these great things I'm doing down here.

Don't look at what happened up there because now she's on the flat foot there and Bovino's been sent back to the border.

But those agents that did the fatal shootings are not taken off the force.

They're typically sent back here to the border.

So they remain out there patrolling.

John, Noem also made another visit.

And one of the things she really dug in there was talking a little bit about voter security and proof of citizenship.

Can you talk a little bit about her visit and in terms of what it means to the state legislature in particular and what their direct response may be?

Yeah, let me just address a little bit of your last question as well.

So, you know, we don't know where they're gonna go next.

They have had all these named operations where there's been huge deployments of lots of agents going to Chicago, LA before that, Minneapolis.

I don't think anyone would have guessed Maine would be on that list, but that happened to be the case.

So it could surprise us.

It could come to Arizona.

There was reporting earlier the year that that was planned.

We haven't seen a huge ramp up yet.

But the fact is that they have almost twice as many agents as a year ago if their reporting is to be believed.

They have a lot more money.

They've spent 700% more on small arms ordinance right now.

So they have the tools.

And I think it's just inevitable that they're gonna go somewhere next, possibly here.

Yeah, I'm not saying that they're gonna be deployed in one of those things at the border.

I'm just saying that these agents came from the border.

That's where they trained.

And then they typically will come back here because this is where they live.

They live at the border, either the northern or the southern border.

How are people feeling down on the border?

It's one thing to hear from Noem or people reporting on it, but people on the ground, Alisa?

I mean, I think that we've talked about this a lot before.

Now border patrols, tactics and use of force incidents are really in the national spotlight, but they are not new here in Southern Arizona, nor is even the question of body cameras.

I mean, under Biden, we saw a fairly short lived at this point, accountability and transparency project that had edited body camera videos being posted after use of force incidents.

There's not really a lot of clarity on where that program went.

We're learning a little bit about whether and how many ICE agents and border patrol agents have body cameras, but measures like that kind of were born out of use of force incidents that happened here in Arizona and calls from community members and families of victims to have some sort of transparency I don't think that many would say that that transparency has happened.

I mean, we still haven't seen prosecutions of violent incidents or deaths resulting from shootings and other use of force, but yeah, it's just kind of one of those conversations, I think that gets lost in this larger conversation nationally with regard to Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Okay, one of the things I wonder about now is, I want you guys to picture this, you save up your money, you buy a home, you're all excited about moving in and then you find out there's a possibility of an ICE detention center moving right next to you.

Angela, it's a real possibility in Marana, at least they're talking about it, how are things going?

Yeah, so I moved back here about a month ago and I went to my first Marana Town Council meeting on Tuesday night and it's really, it's a contentious situation.

I mean, you have a lot of folks advocating against this detention center, talking about human rights abuses that are pretty well documented in these centers and the Marana Town Council is continuing to tell constituents that their hands are tied.

One town council member, Patrick Cavanaugh, actually sort of admitted he doesn't want a detention center but he also added that a resolution wouldn't really do much in his opinion and he even said he was crossing his fingers that maybe MTC, which is the organization that owns the area where this detention center might be, he said, I hope they're watching, maybe they're watching our meetings and maybe they'll change course, that's basically what he said.

But I think in Surprise further north, it seems to be a more imminent situation with the detention center taking hold.

What is that situation in Surprise and maybe overall with the state?

Yeah, so I was up in Surprise earlier this week talking to residents.

There is a warehouse that is about a mile from a high school and middle school.

There's a cheer academy that is a few blocks away and there is a housing development that is practically across the street, a couple hundred yards away is the opening to the housing development.

And I went and knocked on doors and talked to some of the people who live there and a lot of people were nervous and didn't wanna talk and a few people who did open their doors and chat with me, admitted that they were thinking about moving away.

This detention center would house maybe 1,500 people.

DHS bought it just last month for $73 million.

They gave no warning to the town of Surprise that any of the elected officials there or even the state.

And we see that some of the officials are looking for basic answers to some questions like, why didn't you tell us?

What's your plan?

How is it gonna accord with local laws?

What's the contribution of the local government is gonna look like?

And as far as we know, they haven't really answered yet.

They spit out a sort of a boilerplate press release saying that it's going to employ this many people.

It's gonna be $150 more million to get it up to be outfitted to actually be holding people.

I think in the broader context, it's important to think about the very rapidly ballooning numbers of people who are being detained.

Last month, we hit an unpreceden 70,000 people in immigration detention.

As Angela pointed out, the conditions inside are torturous and deadly.

Last year was also the deadliest year ever in ICE detention.

And we are seeing both a huge ramp up of efforts to detain more people and also local pushback.

As you mentioned in Marana, people have been fighting it for months at this point, filling out town council meetings, making a stink, making, pushing elected officials against the wall.

The same thing happened in Surprise, the first town council meeting after it was announced, a thousand people showed up.

And we see across the nation actually, there are a number of even conservative districts outside of Dallas in Georgia, a city manager in a small town, conservative small town in Georgia, said that he wouldn't turn on the water for a detention center to come into town.

And so there seems to be some pushback, some successful pushback in different jurisdictions.

So far in Arizona, local officials haven't really met and actually stopped any of these, at least these two examples so far.

Yeah, and Melissa, maybe just quickly, it's one thing to have a detention center, one thing to house folks, but who's listening to their cases?

What's happening?

People, it just seems like people are not getting any kind of response, they're just being put in these places and not getting their cases heard.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of people who are in the pipeline actually to get legal residency are being picked up before they can have their final appointments or who had protected status or were seeking asylum are being picked up to reach the sort of quota that the administration has set out.

I think they wanted to deport a million people a year.

So they're just picking up everybody in these huge drag nets and then they're putting them in a detention facility and then they're moving them from one facility to the next before they can find a lawyer.

Their families don't know where they are.

It's actually quite terrifying.

And this whole thing of buying warehouses is just so incredibly disturbing.

And it's last year at the border security expo in Phoenix, the acting ICE director, Todd Lyons said, "We need to get better at treating this like a business."

Talking about their mass deportation, "We're gonna treat it like Amazon Prime, but with human beings."

So they laid this out last year.

So these warehouses is their fulfillment of running this like Amazon, which is just incredibly disturbing.

Yeah, Alisa, just a few seconds here.

One of the things that you did some reporting on was ICE maybe starting to work with local authorities and more of what that may look like.

Yeah, well, ICE and local authorities have long been working together through a federal program called 287(g).

These are agreements of different tiers of involvement for local law enforcement.

And the task force model, which was kind of previously retired under the Obama administration.

In fact, after lawsuits like the ones that stemmed from SB 1070 and the 287(g) agreement in Maricopa County under Sheriff Joe Arpaio, have been resurrected under the Trump administration and in fact, supercharged with funding and the promises of bonuses and full salary payments.

I say promises because it's not necessarily clear if those payments are coming through.

It's a little bit like what we've seen with some of the promises made to incoming ICE agents.

But essentially, 287(g) has been supercharged under the Trump administration, especially under the task force model, which allows local officers, whether they're sheriff's deputies or police, to engage in questioning arrests and traffic stops that are immigration related.

So that's pretty significant.

And there's been as many as 15,800 local officers sort of deputized in this way, which actually a little bit surpasses the 12,000 new ICE agents proper that we've seen.

Okay, a huge week in the civil rights movement.

The people's choice!

(sirens blaring) Jesse!

We must stop the flow of cocaine, crack, heroin, PCP, accumulation of drugs, and ease access to guns jeopardizes us all.

We must say down with dope and up with hope.

It's the right thing to do, my friends.

(audience applauding) He realize our quality of life in America as we have always known as our heritage has declined.

And this is what he wants to improve.

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson passed away this week at the age of 84.

He spent some time here in Tucson when he was running for president.

John, when you look at that clip and some of the things that he was talking about then, you could probably apply them right now.

Certainly, yeah.

I mean, we are facing a lot of the same issues that he was trying to organize around.

And I think one thing that really sticks out as well is the oratory.

I mean, what an inspiring speaker.

And you almost could be won over just by the cadence of his speech sometimes.

And that is something that perhaps is a little bit of a lost art.

And it's nice to hear that clip and be moved again.

Angela, do you feel like younger folks are still engaged with the civil rights movement?

I definitely think so.

I think Gen Z sometimes gets flack for a lot of things.

But I think, and I'm not Gen Z, I'm right on the cusp.

So this isn't self-advocating.

But recently one of my cousins who is Gen Z, the younger cousin reached out and started asking me questions about border crossing numbers because she wanted to be able to talk to her friends in a way that made her feel informed.

Then five days later, she texted me again and said, "I'm talking to somebody about statehood in Puerto Rico.

What do you know about that?"

And I was like, "I'm not an expert."

But those kinds of conversations do give you some hope because people are trying to be informed and trying to be engaged with each other.

Each week we now have viewer questions submitted online.

You can send them to azpm.org slash press room.

You can also comment on our YouTube channel or Facebook.

And today's question comes from our Facebook group, a commenter writing regarding a news article that Angela actually wrote on the state Senate passing a bill requiring hospitals to ask patients about their citizenship status.

Kurt Rex Cooper asks, "Then do they have to store and report the data?

Sounds like a waste of time and outside of the requirements of the Hippocratic Oath."

Opening up to you guys, thoughts?

Oh, you wrote the article.

(all laughing) We do briefly touch on it in the article.

One thing Senator Wendy Rogers, the sponsor of the bill, did mention was that the question would be voluntary and she kind of used this on the Senate floor to defend the bill.

The legislation also says that, it seems to indicate that the bill would require hospitals to submit a report each quarter to the legislature saying X amount of patients were citizens, X amount were non-citizens, X amount didn't want to answer the question.

So that's a little bit more about the legislation itself, but Democratic senators on the floor really argued that, despite all of these caveats that Rogers had listed, this would essentially stop people from even seeking healthcare in the first place.

And one Senator, I believe it was Senator Miranda, argued that this could lead to people putting off treatments, going to the hospital only when it's an emergency and costing more money down the line.

Alisa Reznick, John Washington, Melissa del Bosque and Angela Gervasi, thank you all for your time today and thank you all for your time, the viewers and listeners.

I'm David Lee.

This is The Press Room, we'll see you next week.

(upbeat music) [MUSIC]