The possibility of ICE surging into Tucson as it has in Minneapolis, and more recently Maine, has led to a public debate over how residents in southern Arizona should respond.
Tim Steller, a columnist for the Arizona Daily Star, has called for "blanket resistance." On the other hand, Pima County Attorney Laura Conover is asking for calm and for protesters to be smart and organized.
Joe Ferguson of the Tucson Agenda joined The Show to talk more.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: So you say that in the Tucson Agenda that in your mind, both of these people are right, given the roles and sort of given the spaces in which they operate.
Can you explain what you mean by that?
JOE FERGUSON: Sure. Tim is a columnist and has been a columnist here for a long time. And so I think he has the voice of the people who are mistrusting and looking at Minnesota to see what might happen here in Tucson and projecting out that way. We've had a congressman who's been maced by ICE.
And so, you know, we have some deep-seated concerns about what's going to happen next here in Tucson. And I think Tim is reflecting what activists and residents are saying about being scared, concerned, and that we can't respond to these raids like we may have 10 years ago. And so he really wants that there to be a widespread kind of response back. And so that's his voice responding back to it.
Meanwhile, we've got Laura Conover, who works with ICE on different types of cases. And so she's been saying, listen, we aren't seeing those raids here right now. We shouldn't respond that way. We should be careful and watch and make decisions independently based on the information we have available.
She wants us to be quote, unquote, smart about our responses. And so there's a push and pull in between those two.
BRODIE: I want to read something that Laura Conover wrote in a message online. She says, and I'm quoting here, "there is a vast difference between taking the bait and acting out recklessly and giving the Trump administration excuse to do even more harm and a calculated, supportive, smart response if we end up with actual ICE sweeps in Tucson."
It kind of sounds like this is in many ways reflective of sort of the larger debate on the left of what is the appropriate response when ICE comes into your community.
FERGUSON: And so Laura's talking about the fact that there has been some high-profile arrests recently that weren't typical ICE raids as we have seen them in the media, in other communities. And so she's saying we haven't had that response yet. So we should not respond in the same way that they're responding in Minnesota.
BRODIE: So does this seem like kind of an unusual amount of nuance in a public debate in 2026?
FERGUSON: I think it is and I think that, you know, it's probably everybody is responding from their corners. Laura's talking from a law enforcement perspective while Tim is talking to us as, you know, somebody who been to these things and understands the border very well and says that, you know, this isn't the old way, that we've got a new normal now.
And so he's trying to push a better way of looking at these things by responding and not just, you know, ignoring it and driving past it.
BRODIE: I wonder also if this discussion, maybe if the tone, if the tenor, if the, maybe even the content changes, if ICE actually does come to Tucson.
Like is it easier to have this kind of nuance, this kind of debate when it's kind of a hypothetical situation as opposed to an on the ground it's happening situation?
FERGUSON: Well, I mean, I guess the question is, what's the difference? I mean we've got ICE arrests happening on a regular basis here right now. They are single-person arrests. They are not the headlines. They are not large troops like what we're seeing with Bovino in Minnesota and what, what we've seen in other cities.
And so where does the line demarcate? Do we have a protest when two people are arrested? Do we have a protest when there's an apartment complex raided? It's real hard for us to understand that.
And I think the issue is that we're really not sure what to expect here in Tucson. Yeah, we've heard rumors that Phoenix is going to be targeted next and there's a deep concern that they're going to come to Tucson where we're a blue dot in a purple state.
BRODIE: Yeah. Have you gotten a sense based on comments to what you've written or comments that you've heard in the community of sort of where folks in Tucson come down on sort of the, the Steller side or the Conover side of how to handle this?
FERGUSON: Well, I think that the Tucson City Council weighed in last night and said that they're going to ban federal officials from using city resources, city parks, city parking lots, anything of that sort for these type of immigration. And so it seems like they're falling in line with pushing Steller's side of the fence at the end of the day.
And so those are seven Democrats at the end of the day who also Conover’s one as well, but they see this as, you know, a bigger problem, and they are bracing for, you know, a major action here in town at some point in the future.
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Last year, 305 residents applied for delayed birth certificates. Nearly two-thirds of 9,949-square-mile county encompasses tribal lands belonging to Navajos, Hopis and White Mountain Apaches.
