Pima County supervisors moved Tuesday to draw a line in the sand over immigration enforcement on county property — approving first-step resolutions aimed at limiting where ICE operations can take place and whether they can mask up.
The supervisors, with the exception of Republican Steve Christy, approved a resolution that would ban the use of county-owned buildings, parks, parking lots and libraries for civil immigration enforcement operations.
The key word is “resolution” — a non-binding agreement that, at least for now, carries no legal enforcement power.
Next month, they’re expected to consider follow-up ordinances designed to give the policy teeth, including one that would formally restrict federal immigration activity on county land and another that would bar ICE, Border Patrol and other law enforcement agents from wearing masks.
The proposals are a response to federal immigration operations that local leaders say have intensified over the past year, including in Los Angeles, Chicago and most recently Minneapolis.
A new group, Pima Resists ICE, has become a fixture at local events and is encouraging elected officials to take a stand against immigration raids.
Officials in cities and towns across the country have taken notice and are bracing for similar raids. Last month, City of Tucson officials put up a know-your-rights website and Mayor Regina Romero (and Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva) participated in an online webinar talking about those policies. The city council is preparing to sign off on a similar ordinance banning ICE et al from using city-owned land to perform immigration raids.
On Tuesday, the four Democratic supervisors said the resolutions were the first concrete step to send a message to federal officials that they would stand up to protect everyone who lives in Pima County, but Christy complained that Tuesday’s discussion was nothing more than partisan posturing.
“There must be some legal ramification here because, when it becomes a resolution, all it is is a toothless, meaningless resolution. There's no enforcement,” Christy said before voting against both resolutions.
While there were groans in the audience as he pushed for answers, Christy didn’t back down and pressed Supervisor Jennifer Allen to directly respond to his allegations.
“So in effect, this really, Madam Chair, was an ineffective, worthless exercise,” Christy asked.
Allen responded that she disagreed, saying enforceable ordinances would come back to the board next month for a formal vote.
Supervisor Jennifer Allen, who put both ordinances on the agenda, talks about ICE in the community on her Instagram page.
So why a two-step process? County officials needed more time for public notification before they could schedule a formal vote on the two proposed ordinances.
To emphasize his point, Christy asked who would respond if — hypothetically — ICE ignored the county ordinances and went onto county properties. How would the Pima County Sheriff’s Department respond?
Supervisor Rex Scott pushed back, saying he wouldn’t discuss hypotheticals.
While his question remains unanswered, the same issue would exist for the City of Tucson, which is expected to have a similar ordinance soon. It is unclear how the Tucson Police Department would respond if ICE attempted to raid a public park, for example.
One possibility might lie with Pima County Attorney Laura Conover, who joined a nationwide initiative that seeks to hold federal officials accountable for their actions. The group, called Project for the Fight Against Federal Overreach (FAFO), will pool resources to prosecute federal agents if they break the law.
Scott explained that the goal of the ordinance is to keep residents safe from broad immigration sweeps seen in other parts of the country, which he said have exclusively targeted minorities.
“If somebody with an enforceable warrant comes in wanting to deal with what we've heard are the worst of the worst, they're going to be able to do that,” Scott said. “But it's these sweeps that we've been seeing around the country, warrantless sweeps where people are being picked up based often purely on race or ethnicity, that we're not going to allow on county property.”
While he lost both votes, Supervisor Steve Christy didn’t back down on Tuesday.
When the conversation turned to masks, Christy was quick to blame “agitators and rioters” for making federal law enforcement agents feel unsafe. He blamed these groups for doxxing agents, forcing them to wear masks.
“When people are identified by facial appearance and then looked up on the internet and all their information put out there and then are targeted, including their families, enforcement agents feel compelled to protect themselves,” Christy said.
He suggested that if the new ordinance contained some “teeth” to prevent agents’ personal information from being made public, then ICE/DHS and others might be willing to remove their masks.
Well, except in Minnesota or anywhere else cold.
“Of course you're permitted to wear one when it is 30 degrees below zero, that's a perfectly legitimate reason to wear a mask,” he said.
This could cut both ways, as agents could claim they are wearing the masks in the Old Pueblo this summer to protect themselves from skin cancer.
We’ll again note that federal agents have been wearing masks to cover their face for months, both in the freezing cold of Minneapolis and Chicago, as well as sunny Los Angeles. It seems to be standard issue.
Both items are expected to come back before the Pima County Board of Supervisors in two weeks. And if yesterday was any indication, both are expected to pass.
Call it the elephant in the room: The Tucson City Council is about to spend hours talking about water — because whether it’s Colorado River negotiations, PFAS contamination or the looming specter of water-hungry data centers, the same question keeps popping up: How much water do we really have right now and what will it look like five years from now?
With Colorado River talks entering another tense phase and local officials under pressure to show they’re protecting the aquifer, today’s packed study session feels like a stress test for the city’s long-term water strategy.
On the agenda: potential new guardrails for industrial-scale water users, an update on PFAS-contaminated wells on the city’s south side and a closed-door legal briefing tied to Colorado River negotiations.
If RTA Next fails next month, fewer buses could be running as funding from the RTA specifically for transit dries up. (City of Tucson)
And because no Tucson Council meeting can seem to go without revisiting transit funding drama, councilmembers will get an answer to the question of if voters reject RTA Next ballot measure next month, can leftover Regional Transportation Authority money keep city buses running at their current levels?
The short answer, according to a new legal memo from the RTA’s attorney, is nope.
Under the current RTA plan, millions of dollars have helped sustain regional transit programs, including Tucson’s Sun Tran buses and paratransit services.
The memo says there is no legal authority to extend that funding past the existing program, meaning any remaining dollars would be steered toward unfinished capital projects from the original 2006 RTA plan instead.
Leads and cleared suspicions: As the search for Nancy Guthrie and her kidnapper enters its third week, the Pima County Sheriff’s Office cleared all family members of suspicion, the Arizona Daily Star reports. Sheriff Chris Nanos released a statement pushing back on “media” that were speculating a family member may have kidnapped Nancy. Meanwhile, a pair of gloves found near the residence doesn’t show any DNA markings that matches a criminal database, and the FBI is using technology to locate Guthrie using unique signals from her pacemaker, Arizona’s Family reports. More DNA evidence is also being analyzed, but it’s unclear when the results will come back.
You’ve got mail-in ballots: As Pima County voters prepare for the March 10 election over a 20-year, $2.67 billion transportation plan, they are noticing their mail-in ballots look different, Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Sentinel writes. While some voters are apparently concerned that their signatures and phone numbers will now appear on the outside of the envelope they mail in (the story doesn’t quote any fearful locals), Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly said the new system helps her office count votes more efficiently. A similar approach has long been used in Maricopa County without controversy.
‘They treat us like animals’: A Venezuelan woman who entered the United States legally in 2023 was held unlawfully for 18 days before being released on a habeas corpus petition, Emily Bregel of the Daily Star reports. The woman reported “inhumane” detention conditions and said she was unable to sleep due to her anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder related to her torture at the hands of the Maduro regime and her capture by masked, hooded ICE agents. Her lawyer, Tucson immigration attorney Mo Goldman, said she was his third client to be released in two weeks on a habeas motion.
No teaching for you: After dozens of Tucson schools closed for a day when teachers called out sick en masse to protest ICE and the killings of American citizens, Republicans Sen. Hildy Angius and Rep. Matt Gress are introducing a measure to prohibit work stoppages for teachers, Noor Haghighi of AZPM reports. Critics like Arizona Education Association President Marisol Garcia claim the measure will raise undue suspicions and is also a First Amendment violation. Angius and Gress argue teachers should be expected to be focused on class.
“Parents should not wake up to closed campuses because of organized protests,” Angius said in a statement. “The Tucson closures showed how a coordinated call-in can shut down learning overnight. This legislation restores accountability and stability for families and keeps the focus where it belongs, on students in seats and classrooms open.”
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They have ‘em too: Last week, federal officials shut down the airspace around El Paso, Texas, allegedly because of an incursion by Mexican cartel drones (or maybe it was just a party balloon?). Either way, drug cartels have been embracing new technology and using drones around the southern border with greater frequency for surveillance, attacking rivals and delivering contraband, George Headley of Cronkite News reports. He added that a Customs and Border Protection official told Cronkite that more than 34,000 drone flights were detected within 500 meters of the U.S.-Mexico border last fiscal year.
File this under do not try this at home (or on your street.)
RTA Next critics have found a new use for the massive 283-page Publicity Pamphlet for Propositions 418 and 419 — drop it in your nearest pothole.
We’ve already written about how the massive voter guide (printed in English and Spanish) got so big — the pay-to-be-heard public comments have made this document one of the largest in recent memory. Joe has a stockpile of older voter guides in his office and the 2006 RTA guide was a petite 60 pages long.
We still don’t recommend it. Tucson potholes have swallowed worse things than a 283-page pamphlet — including our faith in cold patch asphalt lasting longer than six months.