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A standoff in the San Rafael Valley: how opposing sides are responding to a new challenge at the border.

Forecasting a summer of economic uncertainty for Tucson and surveying the future for Pride Month in Southern Arizona.

The Press Room starts now.

(upbeat music) Hello and welcome to The Press Room.

I'm Tony Perkins and I'm joined in the studio by our panel of journalists: independent journalist, Susan Barnett, Hannah Cree with the Arizona Daily Star and Paul Ingram with the Tucson Sentinel.

Thank you very much for being here and joining us at The Press Room.

There's a new challenge to the federal government's border security policy.

The Tohono O'odham Nation is filing suit to stop border wall construction on tribal land.

Paul, the suit says the government moved forward with its plan without the tribe's consent.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

So in December, Customs and Border Protection and DHS put out a plan that they were gonna build 222 miles of border wall in Arizona.

And it's part of a larger plan to really build border barriers across the entire United States-Mexico border.

But in Arizona specifically, 222 miles and that includes the nation's land.

Now the thing to keep in mind is like the nation is a sovereign space.

It was given its land grant by an act of Congress a century, more than a century ago.

And their issue really is, is not just that they're gonna build a border wall, but that they're gonna build a border wall and then a second layer of border wall as part of what they call a smart wall plan, which includes patrol roads, sensors, all sorts of stuff.

And you really see it out towards Kino Springs, what it's gonna look like.

And what it looks like now is basically like a moonscape between two really high pieces of the border wall.

So for the nation, this is saying like, not only do they not want one wall, but they don't want to lose ground and lose access to their land by this construction.

So they're suing.

Susan, Markwayne Mullin is the new Department of Homeland Security Chief.

He is also a member of the Cherokee Nation from Oklahoma.

Does that matter?

Does that make a difference?

Has that changed anything?

Well, I think that the lawsuit from the Tohono O'odham says that it doesn't matter as much as the statement that DHS provided.

It is tribal land, as Paul has said, and it is 62 miles, I believe, is on the tribal land.

And they've mentioned, in the lawsuit they mentioned that in the they've been open, opened their lands for them to enforce the border.

And DHS has not said much on the matter other than they're gonna keep open communication and they're going to try to minimize harm.

But overall, I don't think that that matters too much to the Tohono O'odham as much as the fact that there is a wall that's going to be built on their land and it's going to separate two communities that have shared that border wall for long before it even existed.

Yeah, I think that really comes to a point.

I mean, for the nation, I mean, they have good relationships with DHS.

They've tried to maintain good relationships with DHS.

They have a program called the Shadow Wolves, which is, are trackers who specifically work for ICE, who are tribal members.

They also allowed for what are called forward operating bases, which allow border patrol agents to sort of be on tribal land and operate from tribal land.

But there's also a sense that, and I think this is true with lots of places all across the nation, all across the United States, who are on this border, is that DHS will kind of say, "Well, we'll listen to you.

"We might mitigate harms."

But when it comes to actual construction and actual plans, they're seizing lands in Texas, they're preparing to build in Big Bend, they're in the midst of kind of working through the San Rafael Valley.

And there really hasn't been a clear sense that if people say, "We don't want a wall here," or "We want something different," that DHS is listening.

So I think at this point, that's why the nation sued.

I think if they thought that they were in reasonable negotiations, they might have held back.

But I think the fact that this lawsuit happens means that since the tribe really put it to an issue in February, that it's pretty clear that DHS has not been listening to them for four months.

Well, sticking with news at the border, the US military presence under the Second Trump Administration has been at the border for more than a year now.

We don't hear that much about the activities down there, but the New York Times this past week did come out with a story saying that the administration's goals, security goals have been met.

But Susan, why are the troops still there?

Well, I think similar to what's happening in DC with the National Guard, there are federal troops being sent to places where they normally weren't being sent to beforehand.

And in the border here, they're doing a lot of border enforcement operations.

And I think the New York Times article also mentions that the people that are in these operations have said that it has been a valuable training experience for them to get that real world experience.

But it's also important to keep in mind that this is happening alongside a big investment into border enforcement.

So the One Big Beautiful Act that was passed, or One Big Beautiful Bill that was passed last July provided $70 billion for border security.

And so that comes not just with the border wall, but that also is for hiring border patrol agents and increasing security and surveillance along the border.

So, you know, there is now two different agencies, federal agencies that are down there.

And it begs the question, do we need both right now?

Hannah, is the border still a politically sensitive place?

Yeah, totally.

I think in Arizona, it's always going to be.

I think we're gonna see the impact of that.

Potentially in the midterms and upcoming 2028 election, it's always gonna be a big issue to Arizona voters.

And one thing I wanted to say about the military is Trump didn't invent the idea of deploying the military to the border.

We can go back to Pershing being on the long by the Mexico border and invading Mexico.

But really even through the Bush era, through Clinton, through the second Bush era, through Obama administration, and then even the Biden administration, the military was deployed along the border in small units.

A lot of times, but what's a little bit different, I think with the Trump administration, is the creation of the national defense areas.

And the way the national defense areas work is if somebody goes into those areas, it's like being on a military base.

So we kind of think about like, if you go to the front gates of Davis-Monthan, you can't get in, and if you try to get in, you're gonna get charged with federal crimes.

Those NDAs operate the same way, except that these NDAs are in the desert, they're in really remote stretches.

And Arizona basically controls two NDAs.

One is outside of Yuma, you're running out through the Marine Air Station, and then the other one is operating out of Fort Huachuca.

And then that one really extends it for really, priority for our ends in Mexico.

So that's really the biggest change.

Now switching to politics, and Arizona U.S.

Senator Ruben Gallego made headlines regarding his use of campaign money for things like family travel and traveling to the Super Bowl.

And what's supposed to happen is that you use your own money for that kind of thing.

However, Gallego was pretty quick and upfront to say what his particular case was.

Yeah, I think the biggest takeaway from this Politico article is that it's kind of shedding renewed light on this conversation of there's a big net for legitimate campaign expenses, and it's kind of reigniting that conversation about whether Congress has the authority or the will to potentially regulate this campaign spending more.

But I mean, it was definitely interesting to see the reaction from him and him trying to get out ahead of it.

And Paul, that again was the case where, like in previous situations, Gallego was pretty quick to get out in front of the story and make a quick response.

How much of a difference did that make?

I think that's a really good question.

I mean, there's definitely, Gallego has been kind of a front runner in a lot of ways.

He's a pretty popular Senator.

He's been very critical of lots of issues, and he's really obvious about his criticism, and even kind of profane about it.

But I also think there's a sense that like he, maybe somebody that's gonna run for president, there's been sort of noise about him running for president.

So I think at this point, there's one side that maybe trying to cut his legs out from underneath him, kind of already find something wrong with him.

And then the other side of kind of looking at like, what could be a problem and getting out ahead of those to make sure those stories are passed by the time he maybe starts to run for president in two years.

Susan, did he succeed in a strategic sense?

Well, I mean, he did get ahead of it, but I think maybe in the eyes of voters, it may be still something that is, everybody's, we're all going through an affordability crisis right now.

So seeing a Senator spend campaign finances on the Superbowl, on trips to Miami, Disneyland, it might be a little tone deaf in a sense, but like Gallego said, according to FEC, as long as there is, you can't use them for personal use, but as long as there is some form of fundraising involved, Gallego did go ahead and say that that was the purpose for those travels and it's not unique for Senators and legislators to take their families along with them on those trips.

All right, now, Vice President JD Vance was supposed to go to Oro Valley for an appearance last weekend.

It was canceled and Vance instead went to Switzerland to do the negotiations on the Iran war.

Paul, what difference does that make that the Vice President didn't arrive in one of our Tucson area communities, even for a short time, which was scheduled?

I mean, I think there's always a sense that when a Vice President or a President comes, it's exciting, we like it, we like it, we like being noticed, we like having people come, but in terms of like, how does JD Vance showing up and affect politics for local Republicans?

I don't think he matters.

He's not going to help Juan Ciscomani, he's not necessarily gonna help Dan Butierez, he's not gonna help Mark Napier, who's running for mayor in Oro Valley.

These trips are about raising money, these trips are about kind of raising maybe the profile of the local Republicans here.

For them, it's good, so for them, him not to come, but in terms of actual, how are people gonna vote, I'm not convinced that at this point, that stuff matters as much because people were focused on local issues and having JD Vance come and talk about national issues that he's interested in, that's not necessarily gonna work for voters here.

Okay, primary election is still on the way, the countdown continues for the primary next month.

Susan, you've been focused on the choices on the ballot in South Tucson, tell me a little bit about the work that you've been doing, doing the reporting there.

Yeah, so I have covered the South Tucson elections and the unique thing about South Tucson is, if there is no propositions on the ballot, it's only primary elections and the top three candidates are the ones that are going to be voted into office in November, so there are three open seats, it's a four-year term and there are eight people running, three of them are incumbents, one of them is Mayor Roxanna Valenzuela, Council Member Brian Flagg and Council Member Cesar Aguirre are also, they're all running a joint campaign like they did last time and then we have a local business owner Eduardo Baca from Baca Upholstery and we have a couple of other residents and a lot of them have ran on issues of public safety, I think public safety is always the number one concern, especially in South Tucson, they recently voted out their Flock surveillance system, it was the automatic license plate readers and they also actually got a million dollar gift from the Pascua Yaqui tribe for public safety, so public safety is always top of mind when it comes to elections and candidates always say that but what does public safety mean to candidates, that's something that I really wanted to ask them because for some it means investment in the police, for others it means youth prevention programs and so really kind of digging into what is public safety for these candidates and how are they going to address it, especially with South Tucson being such a small, it's a 1.2 square mile city with a lot of concentrated issues in that area, so seeing how these candidates think of public safety is probably a good indicator of what South Tucson voters want and I'm really interested to see how they vote because there is a lot of different opinions about public safety across the board and it'll be interesting.

Let's talk a little bit about the issue of affordability and this is something that is going to come up as a major issue I think in all communities, Paul, what is the affordability issue going to be played out and impact and when are we gonna hear more about it as the weeks come down closer to the election?

I mean I really think it's gonna be a huge issue because affordability just seems like something that's just leaving, everything is becoming less affordable, gas has been really high, electricity rates are increasing, grocery prices have been really high, so all the things that generally affect people are all really high right now and so for politicians to really want to talk about how they're going to help, how they're going to mitigate these problems and how they're gonna create some local initiatives to create aid or programs that help people is gonna be really important.

Obviously they still have to balance their budgets so there's a question about how the money's gonna come from but all those are gonna be, I think are gonna be central to this election is really like what can the government do to help people and can the government be effective in doing that?

All right, now let's switch over to Pima County and a story out of the county's treasurer's office.

Brian Johnson resigned from his job as Pima County Treasurer.

Hannah, he cited personal private reasons but when the treasurer resigns, that's still a big story.

It is, it is definitely.

It's partially related to a low level beef that was happening between the Assessor's Office and the Treasurer's Office.

So and this was, this started when the assessor's office began the process of switching their property valuation software, so how they assess the value of a property.

That's a key responsibility of the assessor's office.

They found that these issues extended back to 2012 where the assessor at the time had basically changed certain valuation data to keep an existing version of the software that they were using at that time going.

And then they didn't really realize that these issues had existed until they started switching software again in 2019 when Suzanne Droubie was in office.

So they found during that process, which takes a number of years, they found that like 630 properties had been overvalued for about four years.

And therefore the property owners had been overpaying on their taxes for a total of about 6 million.

That seems like a big number.

I mean, the assessor emphasized that like this was because it's, you know, tax roll corrections happen all the time but it's a big number because it happened over four years.

So they decided, they came to a very tough decision, she said, to actually cut, to issue these notices of refunds to these property owners.

And then after that happens, it's the treasurer's responsibility to actually cut those checks.

But the former, now former treasurer, Brian Johnson, decided to kind of push back and question the assessor's work.

So in, what I mean by that is he wrote a 27 page memo to the board of supervisors going into extreme detail about these allegations of how she came to this assessment of these properties was actually going against state law.

And so because of that, the refunds were held up until after he resigned.

But the acting deputy treasurer, Jake Martin, did confirm that shortly after he left office, I mean, the county was actually at risk of being sued because they have 90 days to issue poverty tax refunds.

And so the acting treasurer at the time said, we have to issue these as soon as possible or else we'll, we're liable for lawsuit.

So at its core, it was a debate over the actual powers of the treasurer versus the power of the assessor.

What we know now is that those refunds are gonna be issued and it's not really going to have a big impact on the jurisdictions that take in property tax as part of their annual budgets.

That's a concern because sometimes it can impact school districts, flood control, the county itself.

I did talk with the chief financial officer of TUSD this week because they were responsible for about 1.3 million of these property tax refunds.

But because they get revenue from the state and property taxes, they're in a much better position to absorb having to give some of that money back essentially and they're gonna be just fine.

It's not gonna be a big deal.

And the county prefers not to have this happen.

My sources there tell me it's not ideal, but it's also not gonna impact.

Their budget's nearly $2 billion, so.

All right, now, We'll hear more that story as it develops.

Let's go over to Tucson's economy and a new Economic Impact Office was just announced.

Paul, that's a nice sounding name.

Doesn't say a whole lot, but is it something that's gonna make a difference to our community?

I think that's a really good question.

One thing to keep in mind is they're taking what are essentially five units that are operating inside the city and kind of combining them under one office and putting one person in charge of those things.

They put Lane Mandel, who's the chief of staff for the city manager, has been there for a long while, understands how the wheels move inside the city.

So I think in a lot of ways this can be effective.

I mean, there's a lot of things that the city's trying to do.

I mean, they have cultural affairs.

There's also the Prosperity Initiative and Climate Action.

Those are the things that are gonna be now under this single office.

So it's really about, in part, how they work on kind of making more affordable housing, how they do early education, and also how they do the climate resilience programs that our mayor has wanted.

One of those things includes something that's just as simple as they've tried to plant a million trees.

There's an urban forestry kind of component that's now trying to make that really a reality.

So all those things combined, Might can really do a lot for the city.

I mean, we're talking about something like trees seems like it's such a small ball thing, right?

Why do you wanna plant a bunch of trees?

But the heat island effect is a real thing, and it's a real thing that affects real people.

It includes utility costs.

It also means that sometimes people just, I mean, people who live in mobile homes, for example, I mean, for them, a really, really hot day can kill them.

So making sure that the city's maybe a little cooler in the future is really gonna be important.

And the other thing, too, is the city is trying to make themselves carbon neutral by 2030.

All of those things are gonna be included in their office.

So in a lot of ways, Lane Mandel, who's the chief of staff who's now in charge of it, has a lot of things to do.

All those things are really important, and they're gonna be under this one single office.

Oh, great.

June is Pride Month, but it had some, had had some challenges.

Phoenix Pride filed for bankruptcy.

Tucson Pride closed up shop in January.

However, the local LGBTQ community still had activities this month.

Susan, even though there was no parade in Tucson, Pride marches on in other parts of Southern Arizona.

Exactly, there was one in Bisbee recently that Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva attended, and I believe they had about 7,000 people that attended, which is up from 5,000 that they had last year.

And so that just comes to show that, you know, people are willing to travel for these kinds of events because there's, I don't know how big the population of Bisbee is, but I can't imagine that all of the population of Bisbee went there.

So it's showing really that people are traveling for that, and also that there is this want and this need for this celebration of the LGBTQ community.

You know, like you mentioned, in Tucson and in Phoenix, there was disappointment over the fact that they were canceled and that they are having these financial struggles, and part of that is because of a lack of corporate sponsorships, because of, you know, corporations not wanting to call too much attention to themselves under Trump's anti-DEI sentiments.

So, but at the community level, we are seeing that people do want to celebrate, and they do want to be in community, and it's really beautiful that we got to see that in Bisbee this past week.

I did want to ask you a question about a story that you've been following regarding an ICE detainee, and getting a lot of attention in the queer community in Phoenix, tell me a little bit about that.

Yeah, so it's a story about Arabella Yari Rodríguez Márquez.

She is a woman that is being held in Eloy Detention Center, and she was detained in February of last year, crossing a legal port of entry.

She had a green card, and she was taken, and there, being an Eloy, she has become medically disabled because of a brace that they didn't address.

She had a broken arm, was given a brace for a couple of months, it was an address, and so now she is medically disabled, but apart from that, she also has chronic leukemia, and those conditions, her condition has worsened in Eloy Detention Center due to lack of medical care.

Her partner at this vigil that I went to cover had mentioned that guards didn't take her to two of her doctor appointments, and they give Tylenol for pain.

When you have leukemia, I think you need something a little stronger than Tylenol, and also just the hygienic conditions and the lack of nutritious food are really contributing to her deteriorating health, and so Trans Queer Pueblo, which is an organization up in Phoenix, they organized a vigil, not just for Yari, obviously to call attention to what's going on in her circumstance, but also to all the people that are in Eloy Detention Center and detention centers across the country, particularly trans people who are not put in with their gender, but rather the sex that they were born with, and that causes a lot of not just mental, but also physical, and even medical issues of not receiving treatment, and so there's a lot of intersectionalities when we speak about immigration and the LGBTQ community and all of the struggles that they're facing, especially within detention centers, where they have this extra layer of challenges that they have to face, and also one of the things that I wanted to mention was at that vigil, I spoke with Renata, who is a trans woman who was held in Eloy Detention Center alongside Emmanuel Damas, who was the Haitian immigrant that died in Eloy Detention Center because of a toothache, and she told me that she remembers him always being very nice to her, something that's not always very common when you're in those spaces, but also that she remembers that Damas would constantly ask for help for the doctors, and it wasn't until Renata and three other people that were detained blocked the cell and demanded that he be taken to the hospital, that that was when action was finally taken, so it's very interesting to see and hear all of these really, really haunting stories about what's going on in these detention centers and all those added layers that the LGBT community faces in them.

Before we go, I did want to ask you a question about the Democratic Party, maybe going a little bit further left.

By the time the election cycle reaches Tucson, we'll be talking about something else.

Paul, what do you think we'll be talking about when the primary comes here?

I think broadly speaking, we're talking about the same issues.

One of the things I think is really interesting about seeing Mayor Mamdani in New York is that he's sort of showing that he can not only, he's not a leftist candidate, he's somebody who's showing that government can run and be run well, and I think there's really a push for people asking for the government to do the things that it says they're gonna do and to help them, and the people who say we can do that are the people who are winning these elections, and so for here, it's really gonna be about people who are, who if they're incumbent, they're gonna have to show how they were effective, and if they're somebody incoming who's new, they're really gonna have to make the arguments that they're going to do things All right, we'll be following that story as the weeks continue and develop.

That'll do it for right now on The Press Room.

Our thanks to our journalists, Hannah Cree, with the Arizona Daily Star, independent journalist, Susan Barnett, and Paul Ingram with the Tucson Sentinel.

That'll do it for now.

Thank you very much again from our staff and crew here at The Press Room.

Thanks for being with us, and we'll see you next week.

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(upbeat music) 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.