The following is an original production of AZPM News.

Coming up today on The Press Room, we'll talk about the Department of Homeland Security and some new work assignments.

Plus, Sheriff Chris Nanos is under fire.

We'll talk about the reasons why with our dynamic group of journalists.

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

[Music] Welcome to The Press Room.

I'm AZPM News Director David Lee.

Joining me today, we have John Washington of Lookout.

We have Jim Nintzel for the Tucson Sentinel, Rafael Carranza from AZ Luminaria, and Angela Gervasi from AZPM News.

Thank you all for being with us.

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos.

He's under fire for his handling of the Nancy Guthrie case, the 84-year-old mother of Today Show host Savannah Guthrie, who is still missing.

There've/b> also been some issues with his resume as well.

Jim, can you set us up with kind of the history and what's been going on?

The Board of Supervisors discussed him earlier this week.

-Yeah, the Arizona Republic recently broke the news that there were some disciplinary issues in his past, in the 1980s when he worked in El Paso.

He left that job, rather than be terminated, and he did not disclose that when he applied for the job here, evidently, and has been working for the Sheriff's Department since the mid-80s here, and eventually was appointed Sheriff and lost a race for reelection to that, came back with a rematch against the Republican who beat him, Mark Napier, won that, and then very narrowly won re-election last year.

And he has just had an ability to kind of blunder through his career here in some ways that has left him facing a lot of criticism from the Board of Supervisors, which is, you know, four out of five are Democrats, just as he is, as well as concerns about a recall election that's brewing right now.

But the recall election seems like a long shot to me.

They have to gather 120,000- signatures in 120 days, and they're just getting off the ground.

So that's a very tall order.

-Yeah, John, talk a little bit about that.

I mean, how likely is a recall gonna happen here?

-Well, we shall see.

But yeah, I think it's a really steep climb to get to that number of signatures.

As Jim pointed out, you know, this man has been chased by controversy like that after a gambler.

He has in recent years faced RICO charges and investiga by the FBI.

He faced lots of claims of lack of accountability when we saw the highest per capita death rate in the local jail.

He was accused of election interference.

He either slow walked or maybe just outright botched investigation into a friend of his who was eventually convicted of a sexual assault against a fellow deputy.

This is just the latest.

Now we know that controv goes back to his very early career in El Paso, and the supervisors this week voted to discuss at the next meeting, it's sort of a long drawn out process, what sort of questions they're going to ask or basically, in so many words, are subpoenaing him to eventually present and answer questions.

And if he doesn't, or for some way, some reason they aren't satisfied with those questions, they could potentially at least remove him from office.

But that's based on a territorial era law, and it's a little bit confusing even for the supervisors at this point.

-Angela, there are a lot of folks who are critical of Nanos, and I know people are very frustrated with him right now.

What are you hearing from some of the people that you report with and hear out there?

-Well, I think one of the most interesting things about this situation is the timing.

You know, there have been so many angles to the Nancy Guthrie story, this tragic story of an elderly woman going missing, and now it's sort of turned into also an accountability story about the county's top law enforcement officer.

And so I think the connection there is really important.

It kind of seems to be the springboard into this investigation.

And definitely, I think the timing can't be ignored.

Rafael, about half his deputies also expressed a vote of no confidence.

I know you just wrote an article about another sheriff, Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County, who's also been in the public eye over several years.

First, tell us a little bit about that story, and then second, bringing it back to Pima County, how does Nanos now lead?

-Yeah, I mean, this is the latest story that I worked on, kind of takes a deeper look at, you know, what's been happening with Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

They're under court reformers mandated, court mandated reformers for racial profiling stemming from a lawsuit when Arpaio was sheriff.

And so his second in command at the time, Jerry Sheridan, he is now the sheriff at Maricopa County.

And so he's tasked with navigating the department through these reformers, but instead he's been pushing to end reforms altogethe But, you know, to bring it back to Nanos, you know, he has claimed, and his department, his office has claimed that even though these deputies, you know, did this vote, that they only, you know, formed a small part of, you know, the total number of employees there.

So, but I think that just kind of, kind of highlights a lot of the challeng ahead for him, especially, you know, trying to, trying to move forward with, you know, some of these investigations.

And I think it just kind of shows, you know, if this is the opposition within the deputies, I think we can only assume that, you know, there might be a similar level in some of the other departments as well.

So that'll definitely be a challenge for him to try to lead the department, even if people feel that he's not doing the job appropriately.

-John, you know, another potential problem for Nanos, you had a story that published Thursday about whether or not Pima County Sheriffs had been cooperating with Border Patrol a few years back.

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

-Yeah, tough week to be the sheriff.

Yeah.

So, you know, not unlike actually the story that Rafael was just describing, there is a difference in the way that the sheriff has been speaking to the public about cooperation with Border Patrol and what his deputies have been doing.

And this is, we learned from a recent filing in a lawsuit brought by ACLU of Arizona against Nanos that he was not turning over records soon enough.

These are records that I've been going after for about a year about their cooperation with Border Patrol.

And not only is ACLU trying to hold them in contempt for not turning over those records, but the records themselves are very revealing.

And we have a number of instances, for example, in which a deputy was called because of presumed potential immigration violation, which they are not engaged, they should not be enforcing.

And they picked up five people because the Border Patrol couldn't respond quickly enough.

And they drove them to a Taco Bell, where they waited for Border Patrol, where they were then handed over to federal immigration law enforcement.

Other cases of stops where there is no suspected criminal activity at all.

And yet, deputies of the sheriff's department are calling Border Patrol because people speaking Spanish.

So the sheriff has repeatedly and insistently said that he does not cooperate with Border Patrol, but we're not able to see clearly enough inside the department to really understand how far the cooperation goes.

We know it goes somewhere because we are now seeing these incidents come to light.

-Meanwhile, it's been a very busy week for the Department of Homeland Security.

There's a new boss in place, Mark Markwayne Mullin sworn in on Tuesday.

Monday, ICE agents started to fill in at some airports for TSA workers.

Angela, as of now, no agents here locally in Tucson, but they are here in Arizona.

-Yes.

So I went to the Tucson International Airport earlier this week just to see how things were looking.

And, you know, things appear to be business as usual.

I spoke to a security guard there who said he hadn't heard anything about ICE coming.

You know, Tucson International is a much smaller airport.

And a spokesperson confirmed with me that ICE would not be present there.

But that's a big contrast to the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, which is really important.

A lot of folks fly out of Tucson and right into Phoenix.

And, you know, it's sort of this larger trend of ICE showing up in places where they didn't use to show up.

About 10 months ago, I started reporting over in New York at 26 Federal Plaza, a courthouse in lower Manhattan.

ICE agents did not used to come into courthouses and they were coming in every day, still are, to detain people who were coming in for their court hearings.

And so under this administration, we're seeing these sort of benchmark situations where ICE agents are coming into areas where it was not precedented for them to do so before.

The Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, you know, released a statement saying that they can't interfere with federal operations and that it's a public use airport so that ICE is free to walk in as they wish.

John, in terms of Phoenix, what are you seeing in terms of your reporting there?

Well, I think there's a bit of a paradox here is that the role of TSA is supposed to keep people safe.

And what we've seen over the past year is that people do not feel safe in ICE's presence.

So when ICE is being deployed to airports, so far not Tucson, people may be hesitant to travel, to want to travel.

And we have already seen a couple of instances of ICE making arrests at the airports.

What they can actually do besides do basic security or I don't know, just stand around leaning against the wall is not really clear.

Tom Homan, the well, former--he's the current Border Czar.

Markwayne Mullin has just taken over as DHS secretary.

He is, Tom Homan, was recently in charge of them.

And he was saying that they will in fact be doing security checks.

Unclear how that is going to continue to play out.

Also with DHS funding still on the line, are we going to get a deal?

And is TSA going to go back to work and actually make money doing that work?

There's a lot of questions up in the air still.

Raphael, I think Markwayne Mullin has officially been on duty about three days.

He's got a lot of new assignment and new things to learn up, you know, quick fast and in a hurry.

What additional challenges do you think Mullin is going to have right away?

Well, I don't know about additional, but I think that we'll probably see a lot of the current policies in place.

There's still continuing scrutiny over that.

And I think he's going to have to face a lot of these issues.

And I think, for example, going back to something that Angela said about ICE making arrests at courthouses now, particularly I think in New York, ICE or the DOJ admitted that ICE may have misled about the authority that they had to make those arrests.

So I think reckoning over that might be something that he'll have to kind of deal with.

You also have the issue, of course, with ICE agents at airports.

You also have TSA agents who are not getting paid, ICE agents are.

And so I think that that kind of tension and also kind of adds to that whole situation there at the airports.

And with ICE, there's already a lot of scrutiny over the training that they have received or may not have received in order to be able to go out into the community and enforce immigration laws, especially amidst this nationwide push to recruit more people.

And so if there are already criticisms about the training that they're receiving to enforce immigration laws, certainly more questions could arise if they are now tasked with also enforcing some of the duties that TSA normally does.

And TSA agents normally undergo six months of training to be able to do that.

And they've only been at the airport for a couple of days.

So I think to expect them to kind of know everything that TSA agents get trained for over the course of six months, very tall order.

But I think some of those things could definitely come up.

And then certainly the number of people in detention that are being held now, we're at record levels.

We also have a very large number of people that are dying, 41 since President Trump started his second term, 12 so far this year.

And so I think that that scrutiny over that will certainly continue and probably grow, especially if we have even more people dying in detention.

Jim, broadening out just a little bit, this is a big political year.

We could see some of those agents at polling places.

And that could be kind of a form of voter intimidation when people go out to actually vote.

I think there is a lot of concern about that?

-We have the majority of people in Arizona vote by mail, whether that will still be legal or not come November is up in the air with the debate in Congress right now over the SAVE Act.

But I think there are definitely people worried about the ICE agents being there.

And in terms of the election, I think the ICE surges have been very unpopular, especially after what we saw happen in Minneapolis.

The TSA thing is a huge problem.

The cost of living affordability continues to go up, gas prices going up.

I think these are all becoming huge political liabilities for the Republican Party.

We've seen special elections all across the country where Democrats are over-performing, including a Democrat winning the Mar-a-Lago district in Florida just this week.

So I think there are definitely concerns among Republicans about the direction this is going as they face the voters this year.

-Another sort of troubling intersection between DHS and voting rights, or the franchise, is during the confirmation hearing of Markwayne Mullin, Senator Gallego from Arizona asked him pointedly a couple of times if he would withdraw the order for HSI agents, which is Homeland Security Investigations, part of ICE, to investigate the 2020 elections in Maricopa County.

And Mullin wouldn't say that he would withdraw that order.

And Gallego ended up being, I believe, the only senator not to cast a vote in that confirmation.

Interesting.

You know, over the last several weeks, there have also been disturbing allegations that surfaced around labor activists and United Farm Workers co-founder Cesar Chavez, including allegations of sexual abuse of women and minors.

Angela, here in Tucson, they scrambled last week to rename the big event here.

Earlier in the week, they took down a statue of him.

How else is the city and the county kind of responding?

Yeah, so when the news first broke, I had a conversation with Eva Carrillo D She's on the co-chair of one of the organizat that puts on a Cesar Chavez march and rally each year.

And she told me point blank that it would have been easier for them to just cancel the event altogether, but they felt a need to continue to hold something to honor labor workers.

And she really emphasized that Cesar Chavez is not the only person in this movement.

So they, as you said, sort of scrambled to hold an event under a different name.

But we're also seeing efforts unfold.

You know, the Pima County Board of Supervisors has moved to figure out a renaming process for Cesar Chavez Day, which is coming up on March 31.

We're also seeing the University of Arizona, you know, they've said they've, they're taking steps or they're assessing next.

They've also said they are assessing next steps.

They weren't able to provide further details.

But meanwhile, the Guerrero Student Council, which is a student led group, actually, you know, they're, they've been hosting conversatio with community members about how to go about renaming the Cesar Chavez building that's on our main campus.

-John, all across the state and other states as well, we're trying to figure out how to deal with this and how to essentially remove his name from a lot of different places.

Up in Phoenix, what's happening?

-Well, I think, you know, there's a lot of talk about taking down the statues.

I biked under this morning in Tucson, in Five Points, they're renaming this avenue there.

And they're going through the same process in Phoenix and on different parts of Arizona.

Arizona was a key state in the movement that Cesar Chavez led.

I think one of the lessons or one of the takeaways of talking to people who are involved in this movement or support this movement is adulatory reverence for figureheads is maybe misguided.

And really, it's the grassroots, grassroots support of communities and the people behind them.

And so when they're thinking about renaming Cesar Chavez day, like, I think people are not opposed.

In fact, people probably want some sort of way to offer gratitude and respect to farm workers who toiled, put food on our tables.

But maybe that is lost, that gratitude to the people who actually do the work is a little bit lost when we're just naming it after single person.

I think that's that's part of the conversation.

I'm here.

Raphael, there's no question about supporting survivors and believing what they're saying.

But how do communities reconcile what Chavez did, in light of everything that's now coming out?

-I mean, that's a very tough conversation that I think many people across the country, particularly in the Southwest are having at this time.

And I think for Arizona Luminaria, we've spoken a number of people who were involved in the movement in one way or another.

And that's something that they've struggled with.

And I think one of the things that we have seen in common, it has been that support for for survivors.

I think it's notable that Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers, that she admitted that she had also been abused by Chavez and that she hesitated to do that out of fear that it could hurt the movement.

And so I think we've seen a number of instances.

And I think here in Tucson, where they've temporarily, at least for this year, decided to rename the holiday in honor of Dolores Huerta.

And I think that that's a push that we've also seen in other places as well.

But it's definitely the conversations that we've had.

That's something that I think that, as John had mentioned, a lot of emphasis on saying that this is a movement that it's not just a single person who is behind that.

And I think that this could also be an opportunity to also kind of highlight some of the other leaders who were pretty instrumental in this movement as well, but kind of did not receive a lot of that recognition at the time.

But a difficult conversation.

But I think the most notable thing is the speed with which things are moving.

And I think that that's a contrast to how we've seen with some of the other accusations against other high profile figures as well.

-Yeah, Jim, I was going to ask in terms of the speed of all of this, have you ever seen anything like this?

I mean, everything just started to unfold last week and then boom, we've got all of what's happening happening.

-It is remarkable to see how quickly this is moving along.

And I think certainly these allegations are of monstrous acts and people are just not having it.

And some of his greatest supporters and people who really idolized him are now stepping up to say, let's erase this guy.

Yeah.

-You know, political activism continues this weekend with the No Kings rally here a number of places across town.

John, are there protests drawing attention to the Trump administration?

Are they even acknowledging No Kings kind of protests across the country?

Is the Trump administration acknowledging No Kings?

I mean, I think that they're certainly aware of it.

They are however embroiled in a number of things right now that may be distracting, including a war in Iran that is spiraling at the moment, trying to negotiate potentially an end to that ongoing issues with immigration, partial federal government shutdown.

I mean, the things that they are probably more focused on compared to No Kings Day, I think is, are a lot.

However, there is a growing movement of, I would say, distaste and opprobrium for the actions of this administration right now.

And I think people are turning out, have consistently turned out.

I can't recall the number of events just in Tucson.

It's four or five different protests that are being scheduled right now.

And people are showing up and really making clear that they don't want anything that whiffs of authoritarianism in this country.

-For the table, the protest in Tucson is being dubbed "eight miles of action from Tucson to Oro Valley."

What's the history of protests like this in Tucson?

-I've never seen the energy against a presidential administration as we are seeing in Tucson right now with the size of these rallies and the way they're going to be running all up and down Oracle Road is remarkable.

And there'll be elsewhere in town as well.

And I just haven't seen people turn out like this ever.

Angela, what kind of reaction are you hearing on the streets?

To be honest, as John mentioned, I've been hearing a lot of reactions to so many things that No Kings has really not come up in my circle.

People have been talking a lot about things like gas prices, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta.

But one thing that sticks out to me is that down in Nogales, which is a town that isn't like my native Philadelphia or Tucson, doesn't have regular protests, that they're going to be holding a protest down there as well, which kind of sparks my interest because that seems remarkable for a smaller community.

Rafael, anything surprising you about the No Kings or just protesting in general here in Tucson?

-Well, I think at the last No Kings march here in Tucson, you had kind of like that long stretch of protests, particularly along Speedway.

And so I think it's notable that historically we see a lot of protests here in Tucson happening around the downtown, particularly around the federal courthouse.

And so that kind of has been historically like the hub where you see a lot of activity.

And so I think it's notable that these protests are kind of moving away from the government centers and more towards, in the case of Speedway or Oracle, these are major thoroughfares in Tucson.

And I think that obviously kind of gives them greater visibility as well because we have a lot more traffic passing through these streets.

And I think that perhaps might have been strategic to kind of boost the support that even if people who are not showing up to protests, a lot of people who are driving by the times that I drove by Speedway during this last one, you couldn't, like the entire time, it was just a lot of car honks.

So I think that maybe that was chosen to kind of boost participation, but I think that was pretty notable that the locations where they're happening, it's moving away from the centers of government and more to where the community kind of congregates or at least kind of passes by more often.

All right, time now for our viewer question.

Each week we open it up for you, the viewer at home, to write us.

You can always reach us at azpm.org slash press room.

You can also put a comment on our YouTube page and then we'll open it up to the table.

And last week we did a panel on water use in southern Arizona.

As we looked at a lot of different comments about it, a couple of things started to come up on a regular basis and I thought I'd kind of extrapolate that and bring it here.

The question though is why not quit watering golf courses?

Now the idea, as I said, came up a lot in some of the comments.

However, how realistic is it because Arizona relies so much on the golf tourism economically?

Jim?

Well, I think a lot of our golf courses are watered with reclaimed water.

The city-owned courses are, and I think that's a good use of the reclaimed water and it also helps pay for the process of treating that water.

I think it would be great if all our golf courses were on that.

However, many of the reason people don't need to use it is because they have water rights and they're allowed to pump water in order to water their golf courses.

It's the same problem we have with agriculture here in southern Arizona, mining in southern Arizona.

Once you have your water rights you can use it.

-Yeah, clearly water is a huge issue here locally and I guess there's just that frustration that people want to type in and say, "We see golf courses, they're all green, why can't they just stop doing that?"

-I think it's hard not to have a visual response driving through Tucson, seeing the cacti in the native desert greenery and then seeing this almost artificial looking golf course.

So I don't, yeah, I'm not surprised that users are expressing frustration.

All right, John Washington, Jim Nintzel, Rafael Carranza and Angela Gervasi, thank you all so much for your time today and you at home, thank you so much for watching and listening.

I'm David Lee, this is tThe Press Room.

We'll see you next week.