KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond. On this first Friday of 2025, it’s the beginning of a new year. We have a new administration coming in — a very different one, in fact.
To talk about what might be to come on the political horizon in Arizona in 2025 and how some of these big national issues will likely hit home this year, The Show sat down with Stacy Pearson of Lumen Strategies and Chuck Coughlin of HighGround.
Conversation highlights
LAUREN GILGER: I want to start with immigration, obviously a big one on the national front, obviously a big one here in Arizona. We have a promise from the incoming Trump administration of mass deportations to come. We’re not sure what this might look like at this point. But the idea of roundups, of deportations, of maybe workplace raids has a long and kind of storied history in Arizona, which I know you both have been witness to.
Stacy, let’s start with you. What are you expecting to come on this front?
STACY PEARSON: So I think we will see lots of publicity stunts and very little movement in actually removing folks from the country. I think that Homeland Security agents, even local law enforcement trying to comply with the proposition that passed in November will be finding folks that are high-profile people that have committed other crimes — be it DUIs, burglaries, things that will be covered in a way that make it look more impactful than it really is.
GILGER: So Chuck, do you think this will look more like that, or do you think it’ll look more like what we saw under former Sheriff Joe Arpaio?
CHUCK COUGHLIN: Well, I think he’ll start cleaning out the jails of anybody with any type of non-immigration violation that is not here legally.
GILGER: We have Jerry Sheridan coming in as sheriff.
COUGHLIN: Right. And I think that’s what’s going to happen. I think he’s going to do that as a first step. But I’m not so sure that that’s going to be the end of it. I think we will see some industry-based workplace raids based on belief of illegal employment. And I think he’s going to have to do that to fulfill his promise to the constituencies which represented him and create some kind of momentum underneath some type of immigration reform.
I’m that’s where I’m most intrigued by is to see what he says in his State of the Union speech and what he commits to in terms of building hopefully something similar to the bipartisan package that he torpedoed, that he could say “Now this is mine, and this is the right thing to do.”
Because I think we all know if something like that happened, that’d be good for Arizona. That would be a good step forward. But we’ll see. We’ll wait, hold our breath and see. But we’ve all lived through this, like you said before, Arpaio and that, scenarios of the workplace roundups and the immigration sweeps and those types of things.
GILGER: So we have lived through this before in Arizona, and we’ve seen some significant backlash to that here in our state. Stacy, do you anticipate that if what Chuck says starts to happen, are you going to see people change their tune on immigration?
PEARSON: When we don’t have a labor force, like what happened in 20 — what year was that? 10-ish, let’s say — with 1070, when we don’t have a workforce that will pick lettuce or pick watermelons and our produce starts to shoot through the roof, the business community, the folks worried about the economy are going to start squawking.
And it’s awful, but people start to respond when it impacts them personally. When their landscaper left the state or their child care provider took off. I mean, it really has to impact people personally.
The unfortunate part is if history repeats itself, what we will see is a reduction in crime, and it has nothing to do with crime not being committed. It has everything to do with people being afraid to call 911. And so the actual call volume is going to go down, and the Republicans are going to take credit for it. But it doesn’t mean our community is any safer.
GILGER: There’s a history of this, as we said, in Arizona. I wanted to ask you about 1070, Chuck, because you were kind of in the governor’s office when this all happened almost 15 years ago.
COUGHLIN: Such a lovely memory. Thank you so much. It’s a trip down memory lane here.
GILGER: But at the time, it was a popular message.
COUGHLIN: Hugely popular.
GILGER: But then it wasn’t, right? We saw this massive backlash.
PEARSON: Went too far.
GILGER: What would too far look like, Chuck?
COUGHLIN: Well, I think if we get into some of these workplace raids that would affect some of the unions, Stacy’s right on the employment side. That’s going to start impacting because we all know there’s not enough people here to do all the jobs. And so if he goes after hotel workers, maids, those types of things that are traditionally represented by labor.
GILGER: Caregivers.
COUGHLIN: Yeah, caregivers. If you get into that space, you will get an organized response to that. You will get an organized labor response to that, because that’s essentially what created the noise around 1070 was organized labor bringing in opposition and speaking to that and displacement and civil rights and those types of things that came up.
So if he tips the scale that way and starts a sweep of industries and businesses, you will see that happen.
GILGER: That’s interesting because you’re both talking about it in terms of the economy, essentially. And I want to ask you about that in terms of Prop. 314. We just saw a very similar measure passed very heartily by Arizona voters, but not much opposition at all from the Latino community, from the business community. Sort of trepidation, maybe, but not a lot of any kind of organized response.
Where will that come from, or does it not happen this time, Stacy?
PEARSON: So I think it will come from the ground up. To Chuck’s point, the labor groups that are representing construction worker tradesmen, building trades, those folks. And then it’s going to really get personal for people that their kid’s best friend in fifth grade is not in class anymore. And the woman that’s been helping take care of grandma is not here anymore.
And I think those responses are going to be pretty intense. And when we’re seeing folks that get deported and have to leave behind their American children, and we see DCS enrollment swell, children in custody of the state, it really is going to get ugly.
COUGHLIN: Yeah, the family separation thing is going to be huge if that becomes an issue. I mean, we’re all reading about that right now, right? We’re reading about parents who are here without authorization.
PEARSON: Mixed-status families.
COUGHLIN: Who have had kids in the United States who are American citizens. And when that starts tripping that wire, you get back into that childhood separation issue, the family separation issue, that’s going to be a problem. I mean, he’s got to know that, though. He’s got to understand that.
And so how much saber rattling — I mean, that’s that’s the way I look at a lot of his stuff is how much saber rattling is going to go on here and noise making and posturing and message sending. And then what really happens?
That’s why I’m interested to see congressionally if he prioritizes — as they should — they should prioritize a border security measure and a modernized nation of of the Customs and Border Patrol to give them more resources and be able to let people adjudicate or process them through a system.
That doesn’t happen right now. We don’t have the courts. We don’t have those institutions available. And he can make that happen.
GILGER: Stacy, do you think there’s any shot of comprehensive immigration reform of any kind, even a conservative version happening in this Congress?
PEARSON: Oh gosh, I would hope so. I mean, it is so long overdue.
COUGHLIN: We’re both highly cynical.
PEARSON: Yeah, we’re starting out the new year so optimistic. But I certainly hope so. And we’ve kicked the can on immigration in a way that has now cost the Democrats significantly. I mean, we have not given Dreamer kids status.
And we wonder why everybody raised their hands and clutched pearls in November. “What happened with Latinos?” Well, we’ve made broken promises to mixed-status families now for decades. And so if the Republicans are smart, they will process comprehensive immigration reform and do what Reagan did and win over a generation of Latinos.
COUGHLIN: And the other trigger here that could be going on is the SB 4 lytic litigation, which I’m not familiar with. I don’t know where that’s at.
GILGER: Happening out of Texas.
COUGHLIN: Right. But that appeal process and that will go on. He’ll use that as a backstop to talk about what is the problem and how we need to let states enforce it. Because he’s a federalist, in a way. He wants abortion policy now done by the states. He will want this to have statewide federalist enforcement.
So I think it’ll be interesting to see because he’ll use that in the course of this narrative.
