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Welcome to the Middle.

I'm Jeremy Hobson along with our house DJ Tolliver and Tolliver.

You know, no matter where you live or where you go in this country, you probably had some exposure to President Trump's deportation efforts.

Yeah, a lot of my friends have been protesting for weeks months in LA and Chicago and like a lot of the spots they used to go ghost towns now, so it's a lot to take in interesting.

You may have seen masked immigration and Customs enforcement or ICE agents.

You may have visited a restaurant with fewer workers or a home depot with fewer day laborers in the parking lot because they were afraid of being deported or being detained by a mistake that's happened.

You may live in Wisconsin, where that judge was arrested for allegedly trying to help a man in her courtroom evade immigration authorities.

Or maybe you live in Florida, home of Alligator Alcatraz, the detention center in the Everglade.

Here is Governor Ron de Santis, explaining its purpose in an interview with Fox News in June.

This is going to be able to have more than three thousand illegals.

It can be processed through here.

We've got a massive runway right behind us where any of the federal assets.

If they want to fly these people back to the home country, they can do it one stop shop.

Well, it turns out that facility, which costs hundreds of millions of dollars, is now being emptied out after a judge said it had to be closed within sixty days.

But there are apparently others like it on the way, the so called Cornhusker Clink in Nebraska, the deportation depot near Jacksonville.

No matter your personal connection to the more aggressive immigration tactics of the Trump administration, you probably have some thoughts about them.

Our listeners always do.

Are they needed in this moment?

Or they step too far?

That is our question this hour.

We're taking your calls at eight four four four middle that's eight four four four six four three three five three.

But first last week on the show, we talked about America's loneliness epidemic and what can be done to solve it.

Here are some of the comments we got on our voicemail.

Hi, this is Ellie.

I am from Shoreview, Minnesota, and I think loneliness in general is very common for the younger generations, especially with social media and the lack of accessibility to outdoor places that.

Don't include athletics and things like that.

I'm a named Belichia Beans from hunting to Meet, California.

I think that after the COVID nineteen pandemic, a lot of in person third spaces.

Just don't exist anymore.

Because of the Internet and everyone going online.

It seems really hard just to have the day to day chance interactions with people.

Hi, this is that coming from Colorado Springs.

One of the things that I think is contributing to the loneliest epidemic is how much energy we all are putting into the political climate every day.

And so I think one of the ways that civic leaders could address the loneliest epidemic is by trying to cool the temperature.

A little bit.

Well, thanks to everyone who called in, and you could subscribe to our podcast The Middle wherever you get your podcast to hear that entire episode.

So now to our question this hour, what do you think of ICE's tactics, Tolliver, how can people reach us?

Yeah, you can call us at eight four four four Middle that's eight four four four six four three three five three, or you can write us at Listen to the Middle dot com.

You can also comment on our live stream on YouTube.

I'll say it again, listen to the Middle dot com.

We already have emails coming in.

Hit me with some morow I'll get you on air.

And I was telling somebody earlier what the topic of the show was.

I want to make sure I pronounced this properly.

I'm not asking you about ISIS tactics like ISIS.

It's ice ic apostate important tactics.

We're talking about immigration joining us this hour.

Doug Nichols, Republican mayor of you Arizona, which is right on the Mexican border.

Mayor Nichols, great to have you back on the Middle.

Thanks for having me back such a great time the first time.

I appreciate the second thought.

We are grateful to have you and Mary Sanchez also back with US Kansas City based journalists and colonists with a Tribune content agency.

Mary, great to have you back as well.

Great, thank you.

All right, So before we get to the phones.

Maryor Nichols, as a Republican who was supportive of tougher immigration policy, what do you think of the tactics being used by ICE that we just talked about under President Trump?

Well, you know, I think it's an interesting discussion point because here in Yuma, where you would expect those tactics to be in full use, they're not.

We don't see any of these massive ice raids, We don't have any of those setups with the courts or anything like that.

So I'm having a hard time putting my arms around some of it.

I think some of it's probably a little bit overblown by coverage.

I think some of it is for shock and awe to like have the the new sheriff in town making sure that people know what the approaches and the fact that we're pushing back on immigration.

So I think it's a mix of tactics besides what's happening on the streets.

But what's really the intention behind the two or three different approaches to reporting on it and what their effects really are.

I mean, do you think that you're not seeing it there because you're in the same party as the president.

Although the governor of Arizona is a Democrat.

And our two senators are Democrats.

No, I think it's it's more because I think those are the exceptions, not the rules.

As far as how the immigration arrests are happening, I'm not saying they're not happening that way.

I'm just saying that I think that's not the standing operating procedure for ICE.

I think it's in the extremely large cities, you have extremely large protests, you have extremely large groups of individuals that all fall into the category that are subject to the arrest orders.

So I think that's it.

But I mean every country, every community in the United States is an experiencing the ICE arrest.

Is the same the same, Mary, What are you seeing in Kansas City?

How is this playing out there?

We're seeing everything that you described, but not at the massive scale that you might in Los Angeles.

What a lot of people within the civil rights community really believes that that's almost like a test place, largely by demographics, but that some of those same tactics.

I mean we have seen here.

We have an immigration court, and up until probably about a month month and a half ago, there were some cases where they, you know, an immigrant would show up ready to have their case heard.

You know, totally illegal.

They were doing what they were asked to do, and the case was dismissed and then they were immediately taken into custody.

We're a regional area for the federal government, so we have ice offices here, FBI, US Marshals, all the letter agencies.

But they've had court monitor watchers, people who are train to just be there as a witness, and that seems to have stopped that within our court here in Kansas City.

But we've had everything else too.

We've had massed agents, you know, a lot of different sidings of different people in different areas.

We have had some smaller raids where like some restaurants were hit owned by the same owner and both of the locations were rated for lack of a better term and workers were taken out in the early morning.

Mary Nichols, as we listened to Mary Sanchez describe what's happening there, and we've heard, you know, anecdotal accounts all around the country.

It's quite clear that the crackdown is going far beyond people who are violent criminals and gang members.

A lot of other people are who may have been in this country for years are being snatched up.

How do you feel about.

That given that the president did run on a promise of getting rid of the violent criminals and the gang members at least first.

All right, so, my discussions with our Bord patrol agents that are actually HUMA agents that have been spread across the country to help the ro efforts in that is, you know, if they're going after one criminal migrant that needs to be deported or go through a process and they run into two or three that are also out of immigration status and they get picked up, that's what they're focused on.

They do not have standing orders to go after anybody.

The people that they're looking to go after are the ones that are are criminal.

Now, however, if there's a criminal member in a family and a non criminal member in a family, but they're in the same location during you know, interdiction or raid or whatever you want to refer to them, then they get picked up because they're also not of that.

You know, they're also in violation of the law even though they don't have a criminal background.

Mary, how do the people that you speak with, as the ordinary people in Cans the city feel about the fact that that it's far beyond just criminals being targeted.

I think it depends on how aware they are, frankly, how much they understand about immigration law, which is incredibly complicated.

It's supposed to be the second most complicated form of our government, second only to the tax code.

So I understand why people don't know about it.

That's why I've been.

Doing a lot of explanatory writing on different cases.

I think as people hear more and more, they're a little bit mortified, partly because they don't understand.

They're like, how is it that someone could go to work in the morning and literally see their place being rated.

We had one restaurant here where they left food cooking on the stove when they haul people out of there and just put a like it was on a legal pad, closed taped to the door, And there was one worker who was showing up for work and saw that and didn't know what had happened.

She hadn't heard yet.

I think there's just a lot of fear and lack of understanding.

It kind of depends on who you are, though.

I mean, one of the things I'm really worried about a lot of false narratives about latinos.

I mean, eight out of ten of us are US citizens.

First of all, some US citizens have been picked up though in some of those kind of let's just scoop a wide net.

So it causes.

People to fear and question, and I think somewhat unders get a grasp of that.

They don't fully understand what's going on.

Do you see that fear at all among your constituents in Yuma, Doug Nichols.

You know, we're sixty to seventy percent Hispanic in our community, and we don't really have that.

Actually, during the last previous four years, in the previous administration, when the swarms of people were coming through our community, there was more of an outrage about that than this have.

I guess you want to call them raids, But they're are nine checks.

We're making sure that people that are employed and the employer's done the right check to make sure that they can work.

And those are resulting in like one or two people at a time.

So that doesn't really resonate a whole lot of fear throughout our communities.

So I don't I'm not getting that from the community as a whole.

There are some people, and we do have some minor protests that express those fears.

Okay, Tolliver, You know, one of the faces of the Trump administration's crackdown has been Tom Homan, who was actually appointed to a senior pedition positioned at ICE by President Obama in twenty thirteen, and it served as President Trump's borders are in the second term.

Yeah, and he's defended the deportation policies.

Here he is in an interview with CBS's Lilia Luciano.

I think we're doing the right thing.

This country safer because what we're doing, we're keeping our promised to American people.

Would you say that the strategy of arresting the worst of the worst has shifted?

No, will we go out and do these operations or shovel going on right now across the country.

We're targeting public safety, trust, national security threasts.

Now, I'll have you on that.

No one's off the table priorities.

If you're in the country legally, you're on the table.

By the way, ICE has a goal of arresting three thousand people today, but as of July that number was closer to one thousand.

Well, I wonder where that is interesting.

Because it's hard to find that many people who are especially violent criminals, but I guess it's hard to find people who are just in the country without documentation as well, that many per day.

We'll be right back with more of your calls on the Middle.

This is the Middle.

I'm Jeremy Hobson.

If you're just tuning, in the Middle is a national call in show.

We're focused on elevating voices from the middle geographically, politically, and philosophically, or maybe you just want to meet in the Middle.

This hour, we're asking what you think about the tactics of immigration and Customs enforcement also known as ICE under President Trump.

Tolliver the number again, please.

It's eight four four four Middle.

That's eight four four four sixty four three three five three.

You can also write to us at Listen to the Middle dot com or on social media.

I'm checking and I'm joined by Yuma Arizona mayor, Doug Nichols, and Mary Sanchez, a columnist for the Tribute Content Agency.

And the phone lines are lighting up, So let's go to Janine, who is in Minneapolis.

Janine, go ahead with your thoughts about the immigration tactics of the Trump administration.

Hi, Yes, thank you for having me on.

And my thought is that I'm an independent voter, not really a Democrat, not really a Republican, voted for both parties in my lifetime.

But what I'm seeing right now makes me not even recognize America.

I just think it's horrifying.

It's like we have lost our humanity.

We're just turning into this cruel country.

And the thing that really bothers me is, you know, when Trump was running, it was about getting the elite people out.

Okay, nobody's against making sure that people come to the country legally, but it's been lost.

Now it's rounding a people.

Now we have minimum numbers of people that need to get rounded up.

They are sent to horrible places like Alligator Alcatraz.

They're sent to countries that they have no reason to be sent to, to terrible facilities in those countries.

And it's just horrifying to me.

I don't recognize America.

It makes me very sad, and I don't know what has happened to us.

I don't know where our humanity and our empaty has gone well.

And Genine, let me just ask, are you seeing this personally?

Have you seen any of this directly or are you seeing it in the news.

I have seen it directly.

I've seen it where they've come through Minneapolis and they've gone into areas.

I will say, the folks in those areas bought back and really put a stock to some of that.

I give those people a lot of credit.

The other thing, you know, to be honest, The other way that I just sort of anecdotally see it is that when I go anywhere, if you go to a restaurant, if you're in a hotel, we always saw lots of Latin people, right, lots of Mexican people working.

They're not there anymore.

I don't know where they are, but I never see them anymore.

They're not around.

I don't see them on the streets.

I don't see them in the grocery stores.

They've sort of disappeared.

Janine, thank you so much for that call.

Mary Sanchez, How does that square with what you're you're hearing about where you are and just the level of fear I guess among Latinos, whether they're in the country legally or not.

It squares with it.

I mean, you will hear those voices, you know.

I went to a grand opening of a new El Mercado Fresco, and there were hundreds of people, almost all Latino, that were there, but everyone said, well, we feel like this is a safe place.

Then I also know of people who this one woman I can think of, she owns a salon.

She's legal.

A lot of her clients are undocumented or their mixed status family, some of their family members might be She will close the door and lock it behind people just for their comfort and.

Sure, and a lot of this is based on just a fear.

There's the administration has said that they want people to self deport you know, so part of the tactic is fear intimidation.

We're going to come for you.

You don't know where you're going to be picked up.

We had some people here recently who were fishing, and we're not quite sure who it was that came upon them first, but asked about a fishing license, which they didn't have.

They're in deportation proceedings right now, or it's technically called removal proceedings, and we don't know if it was a ranger, if it was a county sheriff.

You know, other people have been driving.

You roll through a stop sign and that's how you're apprehended.

Those are not the violent criminals, by the government's own data some of the most recent that's been crushed.

It's about seven percent of the people who have been arrested for removal.

Only about seven percent actually had a violent conviction, which I think most people would be okay with if it's truly a violent and they've served their time, you know, for the victims so that they feel like they had justice.

I think most people would be okay with that type of.

Removal, right, Nichols.

I mean you talked about the fear, you talked about the the idea that this is about sort of like you get something on TV and you're sort of scaring people maybe into self deporting.

Are you seeing people decide that they are ready to just go back to their country of origin because they're afraid where you are in Yuma.

Well, actually, you could just see that by the numbers trying across the border.

You know, we were at fifteen hundred people a day at peak people trying across the border.

Now we're at four.

Yeah, I think the almost nothing right.

Clear, right, you know, and so it gives a sense of security to the border.

Now.

I know my last name is not Hispanic, but my wife's previous last name, her main name is.

You know, it's not like I'm removed from any of the culture that is existence in my community.

And people again were more concerned about the fifteen hundred coming through with a very very very limited vetting and just being released than they are of at least in my community and what I've been experiencing.

At least from that perspective, then, you know, people be getting picked up if they're not supposed to be here, whatever their status is.

Then that seems to be the counter motion to where we were for the last four years.

So there is a sense of of security for a lot of people in my region.

So I guess it's very regional.

Let's go to Lisa in Kansas City where Mary is.

Lisa, Welcome to the middle go ahead.

I mean, I almost can't talk about it without crime.

I'm a lifetime messed around tour.

I'm sixty years old and I started early, you know, in my teens.

Our industry, of course, is employed many undocumented workers.

They've also taken me into their homes and I've known their families, and I just I'm stunned.

I'm stunned at the rack of humanity and the fact that this administration puts every other thing first, every single everything first.

It's just.

So this heart me.

You know, I'm anything that I don't want to study.

Have you seen any raise yourself in your in your restaurants?

Have you had to deal with that directly?

I have not.

And here's why I'm an independent contractor.

I'm not.

I don't employ people.

I do work in places all right where people are employed.

And and and I don't know who is or who isn't, but I look around and and I know that, you know, they're mixed households of people.

Some are and some are not documented and they're all reading in fear.

That's my issue, like invoking fear when we already struggle with that as human beings to begin with.

Yeah, I'm yeah, Lisa.

Thank you very much, joh for calling in.

I really appreciate it.

And I'm going to go to Tamaron, who's in Brigham City, Utah.

Tamaron, go ahead with your thoughts.

I just live here in I mean, it's a growing area here in Utah, and we're seeing a lot of a lot of new folks come in.

And I write for the local paper here and one of the stories I was recently assigned was to cover a family who had taken over one of the fruit stands here, and the family talked a little bit about being an immigrant family coming from Mexico forty years ago and becoming a part of this community over that, you know, forty years time.

And it was just something where where I had started talking with some folks around me in the at the paper and in my family, and just things that I had started to see online and in person.

You know, I had very recently seen some ice officers at a grocery store arresting a man.

I have no no additional knowledge on that, but it started to you know, just oddly concerned me and maybe I shouldn't be talking about immigrants anymore, that there's just a you know, angry rhetoric that's that that's just come over things.

I just got real concerned about it and including it as part of the story.

And yet at the same time, you know, it is still a part of their story.

It's part of America's story, right, It's we're all immigrants from other places, you know.

Just worried that even just by reporting on it, that it could it could hurt I guess immigrants who are who are in the country, Tameron, thank you very much for that, called Doug Nichols.

I mean, we're hearing a theme here from different people in different places that they are they're upset about sort of the fear that's being instilled in places around the country.

Sure, and I think that.

I think what the last caller kind of hinted at was the uh, the rhetoric of fear and hate, and I think that is something that needs to get removed from the discussion.

I think it's used on both sides of the topic to to generate sympathy, to generate narrative.

You know, at the end of the day, what we're talking about are people who broke the law generally, you know, arrests or not.

I don't care what you're being arrested for.

It's not the best day of your life, right, I mean, they're they're they're aggressive, You're being taken a place you don't want to go.

I mean, I don't think that's unusual, whether you're being arrested for as an American citizen for something you did to break a law here or someone that's come from another country.

I don't think that process is ever going to look Disney esque but you know, at the end of the day, there there were millions of people let into this country, and I think that's what we're trying to do, is trying to get things rebalanced out and the.

Do you think that the only way to do that though, is to have like people be afraid, to have agents wearing masks, to have people be sent to really bad prisons, not just regular prisons, but like surrounded by alligators or in El Salvador, where you know, you.

Don't know what's going to happen.

Is the only way for the Trump administration to accomplish its goal of dealing with illegal immigration to have these kinds of taxes and scare people.

So you know, I'm not inside operations.

I don't know what their other chances are of doing different methods, but I do know for the last four years, they had two tents set up here in Yuma for eight hundred people a piece to weather through the winter, the summer, through the whole process of coming into the country.

And that's if they didn't die in the desert.

We had fifty people a year die in the desert trying to get through here.

Numerous stories of rape and just horrific things that people are telling come across the border.

So, I mean, what we're talking about is a bad situation from beginning to end.

And I think what we could really be focused on is not perpetuating the hate on either side.

I mean doxing federal law enforcement agents requiring them to have the mask up so they don't get docksed is a problem too.

I mean that's not something that we should be doing as Americans either.

So I don't have the answer.

I don't know that there's a softer and nicer way to get this done.

However, there was definitely part of the election process was the Americans wanted to see a different motion, a different process than what was being done in the previous.

Four tolliver what is coming in Online?

Yeah.

David in Minneapolis says Trump's immigration policy has little to do with immigration and everything to do with attacking and intimidating blue states and areas period.

And then Greg and Boise says, masked, unidentified armed men kidnapping people off the street is illegal.

It's meant to distract from the fact that Trump's policies are a disaster for the economy.

It's also meant to cause unrest.

So Trump can declare martial law, cancel the elections in twenty twenty six, and keep himself in power and an area I kind.

Of wanted to ask you about that.

Do you think that this is part of a larger strategy from the Trump administration.

Read Project twenty twenty five.

I mean, yes, there are some larger strategies.

I don't know that he's always orchestrating all of it, but there is this essence and move towards more authoritarian, more taking over and taking people's basic civil rights.

I mean, it's really a civil violation and immigration status.

It's not a criminal illegal act.

Even our immigration courts, they're not criminal, they're not civil, they're administrative.

I mean most people don't even understand that.

So that's part of the whole verbiage there is, you know, to the mayor's point.

I mean, one of the big things that people are looking at, and it's in fear of that extremes, is civil rights leaders across the country and in Kansas City as well, are already talking about just the need to train and grind into nonviolence, nonviolent protests because after October you're going to have more armed guards.

They're sending in more of our National Guard troops everywhere.

They're not trained in de escalation all it takes.

And we've already had some issues here.

I've written on this where frankly, people screaming about fascists and Nazis and all this, and that can really screw up something that's occurring.

Or it is so easy to escalate things.

And if you're supposed to be a silent witness who is documenting, you cannot be doing that.

Number One, that tape cannot be used in some of these federal court cases that are challenging the tactics.

There's you know, there's a lot going on all at once.

There there is this huge need to train people so that they can take that passion and you know, implement it in a way that actually can help us bring us back to where we want to be as a country.

And like the mayor was saying.

To do it the right way and that you can change the laws, you can manage this.

You don't have to be grabbing people off the streets.

There are ways to do immigration that would not involve fear, hatred, stereotyping, all of that.

I want to get the mayor's thoughts on that right after this break.

But Tolliver, if you look at the poll numbers, Republicans are still in favor of the tactics being used by ICE, Democrats and independents believe they've gone too far.

Yeah, but the king of podcasting, Joe Rogan after you.

Of course, Jeremy, who supported Trump's reelection, had some choice words for ICE operations in an episode of his show back in June.

Ice Raiser nuts man.

I don't think if they the Trump administration, if they're running and they said we're going to go to home depot and we're going to arrest all the people at home depot, We're going to go to construction sites and we're going to just like tackle people with constructions.

I don't think anybody would signed up for that.

They said we're going to get rid of the criminals and the gang members first, right, and now we're we're seeing like home depots get raided.

Like that's crazy, Telliver, I think I make one two hundred and fifty millionth.

Of the salary of Joe Rogan, by the way, close enough, and let's just.

Let get that out there.

We'll be right back with more of the middle.

This is the middle.

I'm Jeremy Hobson.

This hour, we're asking how you feel about the tactics of ICE under President Trump.

You can call us at eight four four four Middle that's eight four four four six four three three five three.

You can also reach out at Listen to the Middle dot com.

I'm joined by Kansas City based columnist Mary Sanchez with Tribune Content Agency, and you met Arizona Mayor Doug Nichols, a Republican.

And joining us now on the phone from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is Tom.

Tom, go ahead with your thoughts about ICE's tactics.

Hey, well, yeah, I mean a lot of what people have said already I agree with you know, the mask is unreasonable, approaching authoritarianism.

But the one thing that nobody has talked about so far is the fact that a lot of people in this country without papers are here to claim asylum political asylum, and what one thing they should be doing is fixing the court system.

You know, they're understaff, they're overworked, there's not enough judges to process these cases.

That needs to be fixed.

And if you if you approach immigration from the way our laws have been set up, I think that that's going to solve a lot of the problems.

I think that the Trump administration's approach is one of fear, as other people said, and also playing to his base.

You know, he promised to deport I don't remember how many millions it was of people, but I don't think people understand what impact that would really have on the economy if they did deport fifteen million people or whatever it was.

You know, there's there's I mean, I could go on and on.

I don't want to.

You've brought up here, You've brought up some good points, So let me let me take those to our guests.

Mayor Nichols a lot in there.

First of all, are you worried about the economic impact of deporting as many people as the Trump administration is going to deport?

Well, so locally now, you know, as I mentioned, when they do an I nine engagement whatever however you want to refer to, that, that opportunity where they're only walking away with one or two people at a time.

Uh, the community here we produced ninety percent of the leafy greens that United States and Canada consume every winner.

So if you've eading a salad during the summer, it's come from Yuma.

But the farmers who hire all the labor do not want labor that is not documented.

They want only documented labor.

So we're not going to see that impact here in our community.

Are we going to see it in New York or in la I can't speak to that, but here locally, those are things that we've looked into.

I've talked to our major employers.

They're not anticipating any lack of workforce to that's going to affect how we produce our economy here in Yuma.

Let's go to Nova, who is in New London, Connecticut.

Nova, go ahead with your thoughts.

I'm younger compared to most of the people responding to this.

I'm only twenty, and honestly, I am scared.

You wouldn't think in backwater Connecticut there would be a fear for this, but there is.

The most I'd heard about immigration before it became such a large political standpoint was a raid that happened eight years prior, and people talked about it as if it was a marvel or something that definitely didn't happen often.

And the way I interpe of it as well was like, not something to be scared of.

But I am scared, and I feel deceived by the Trump administration.

If anything, what they're promising is not what they're doing, especially hearing all the news stories about citizens being deported as well, children, babies, not just criminals.

Have you seen with your own eyes any of the things we're talking about or is it mostly what you're seeing and reading in the news.

Mostly what I'm seeing and reading in the news, but also local news.

I have heard of ice raids and people getting pulled over over for flags, even bumper stickers on flags as bumper stickers.

I've seen stories of local people Hartford, New London, people fighting back.

There's a huge movement here for know your Rights pamphlets and don't open the doors.

Nov Thank you for calling, and also love to have a twenty year old that we have one in every show at least, I appreciate your call.

By the way, next week we're going to be talking about the challenges of Generation Z, so tune in for that one as well.

But thank you for that.

Mary Sanchez.

You know we're again we're hearing from people around the country who are really feeling that fear.

I don't want to just ask the same question over and over again, but this seems like this is the theme.

Do you think that this is.

Going to play out among voters as we get into the midterm elections next year.

If redistricting early doesn't change some of that in some areas, that's a whole other show you can do.

I do think it will, and partly because people.

They sense that they know, I know that there's something intrinsically unfair about a lot of these tactics, even if they don't understand or somehow have dismissed that even someone with an undocumented status has legal rights.

You have legal rights in this country.

They just know that it's wrong.

The other thing is, I think she did mention or several people have the idea of mixed status families, and I think people kind of that's one part of immigration that they grasp that, you know.

I mean, one of the things is I'm thinking statistics like more than eight percent of all children in the US live in a household with at least one undocumented member.

Now they're starting to work on some of these studies now about what would be the impact if you removed x percentage of the undocumented population with right now we think is about fourteen million people, which is high.

It's higher than it's a higher percentage per capita than.

It's been in Deck Gates.

So, I mean people are reacting to something that's very real, and I think you need to like honor that that's a truth, but it's what you do and how you manage it.

And I think what people are understanding is that these literally are your neighbors, and it's a mixed status family.

It may be a child who's a US citizen, but it might be their parent.

Do you want that parent remove from the home?

And what does that do to the child?

What does that do to a school system?

You know, what are we disrupting here long term in terms of our economy, mental health, communities.

There's just it's a.

Really wide net that's being cast in terms of what the impacts can be, and they're not positive.

Mary Nichols, let me ask you.

You mentioned that illegal immigration has dropped down significantly.

What do you say, four people as opposed to fifteen hundred a year ago.

It's down overall more than ninety percent in July compared with last year.

Is there a point you see at which the emergency that Trump declared that led to all this aggressive immigration enforcement comes to an end?

Definitely.

I think there would would be a natural opportunity to make that happen.

I don't know what that number is.

I know the fourteen million that Mary referred to, there was a large percentage of that are recent within the last four or five years, and so I think that's probably the target area is to try to you know, reset that because when those people showed up in our communities, that disrupted our schools, that disrupted a lot of things too.

So I mean there's a disruption in the whole the whole process.

But I'd like to just kind of tag on to what Mary talked about, and that is elections in Arizona, we redistrict, redistricted right after the census.

We do it a lot earlier than most and so that's that landscape is not going to change for us.

But if the effort and the energy is put forward by the community, members need to be focused towards that.

Because everything that has happened since the eighties and nineties in immigration falls under the law, the same immigration law.

It's the policy that changes from administration to administration.

So when Obama declared, you know, we're going to make sure that the dreamers have an opportunity to get things right.

Well that was quite a while ago, right, how many of them have so if they're end up in a situation now, well, it's not like it was just yesterday that that was mentioned that you know, Okay, we've got a situation, let's put a pause button on deportations.

But it wasn't a forever pause.

It was something to get fixed.

So, I mean, I think there is a lot of complexity when you start talking immigration and you just say there's a specific number.

I don't know that you could, but definitely this would definitely have to come to an end at some point.

Yeah.

Jennifer is calling from Pomona Park, Florida.

Hi, Jennifer, Welcome to the middle Go ahead.

Hi.

Yeah, I'm really really upset and experiencing something quite different from your gentlemen from Arizona.

My community is sixty five percent Hispanic, and I just looked up.

The date of it.

On May tenth thereabouts, Ice came through and with in cooperation with the States troopers and our local law enforcement and terrorized our schools.

We have two schools.

We have an elementary and a high school, junior senior high school, and they were harassing parents in the drop offline.

They were buzzing both schools with helicopters and basically just terrorizing and harassing my neighbors and my friends in this community.

They for all of the money spent and the upset it caused in our community.

They found two undocumented people, and it just is outrageous as expensive, and it's unnecessary.

We have some real problems in this country and we could be using that effort and money to address our genuine problems and not harassing these people that are just working and raising their family.

Jennifer, thank you very much for that call.

Mary Sanchez.

You know, that is an interesting point about the different problems.

There's clearly a disagreement in this country about how much of a problem illegal immigration is.

I think you've muted yourself.

Can you still hear me?

Yeah?

No, now you're back.

Okay, Okay, great.

I don't know what happened there, but I'm back.

You know, your caller was pointing out something I think it used to be called the Morton memo.

And you talk about changing policy.

It used to be.

That churches, schools, and hospitals were off limits.

Those weren't places that ice and previously I ins ever went to.

They were just considered almost sacred spaces.

You know, it's a place that you disrupt for this type of you know, you know, take apprehension for lack of a better word.

That was part of the policy change under the administration was oh no, no, anywhere's fair game.

Will you put the fear into a school system?

I mean, we have school districts here.

That's a Supreme Court law.

It's Pliler versus Doves from nineteen eighty two that no matter what a child's immigration status is, they are they are allowed to have a K through twelve education.

Now, the Dreamers, that was for someone who was older, and we never passed that legislation to give them the rights of illegal status.

We never fixed it for them.

It's just this temporary, same thing for DACA.

But those sorts of changes are what's causing people a lot of you know, apprehension and fear and the pushback that I think you might see at elections, especially when you start messing with people's kids.

That's when people start to fight back.

Let me go to another caller, David Is in Denver, Colorado.

David, what are your thoughts about ices tactics?

Well, I just wanted to say Jeremy and thanks for taking my call.

I am a veteran, a former military police officer.

I've worked with federal law enforcement.

This isn't the way we do business.

I also have a wife who's a thirty year immigrant who's in status, probably seven years left on our green cart status.

We know two people, one from Great Britain and one from Australia who were picked up and put in attention, not directly sent back to their country of origin.

It seems tunitive.

I'm also curious about what happened.

As a former law enforcement officer, what happens when they show up at an American citizen's house, which they've done before by mistake, try to take them into custody.

They're wearing a mask, they don't identify themselves, and it's a stand by ground state, and one of these officers get shot.

God forbid what happens.

Then we have a real problem.

And I think that your former guest, who identified himself as a Republican, who said that you know that it's always a bad day when you get arrested and that this is not disney esque, is not being completely truthful.

We know that Stephen Miller, the assistant chief of staff, is set of three thousand person to day quota.

You can't do that by getting the worst of the worst.

Stephen Miller's made it clear he wants every immigrant and what he calls homegrowns gone as well, and as a freelance writer as well, I've watched hours of video of them swooping in on da daycare centers and elementary schools and traumatizing children.

This is not the way we do business as law enforcement in this country.

What's going on?

Thank you for that call it yes, and thank you for your service as well, David, And I'm going to let the mayor respond to what you said there.

Well, I mean, even back to the previous caller with the schools.

We have a county of two hundred and twenty thousand people, so we have quite a few schools.

That's never happened here.

So I don't know what the difference is between here and anywhere else in the country, but we're not seeing that.

We're not seeing daycares being rated or stocked out, and none of that is happening here.

But again, it's one of those things that we do need to make sure is done right.

It's my understanding, and I've not witnessed any of these grades where people are masked, but they're still badged as what agency they're with, So there should still be ability for however you want to say, at reparations, to make sure those things get fixed.

So you're okay, You're okay with the masks as long as they have a badged and they can identify themselves officially.

Correct.

I think that's understandable given the fact that people's have ideas have been then put online with their home addresses, and their families have been threatened, and their kids have been threatened, and they've been stocked.

That's not what we want for a law enforcement officers either.

I mean, they are Americans.

They're doing a job the same They're falling directions like they did in the previous administration where they just passed people through through the border without worrying about what their backgrounds are.

So I mean, they're doing their job.

So let's not make their lives at danger.

Let's show up at the polls change things the way people want them to be changed.

That's where the energy I think is best placed.

Regardless of what your political position is.

Let me just ask you one other question, Mayor, which is you know, we've heard people upset about the massed agents.

Somebody brought up the national guard in cities.

We've seen also investigations into political foes by the Trump administration, and to some of our listeners and to some people in this country, it's starting to look like authoritarianism.

We've heard that before.

As a Republican, do you think it does or when you hear people say that, you go, oh, come on, relax.

Well, I think, for instance, the investigations into political foes, that's not this administration's first.

I mean other administrations have done the same thing, including the last one.

So I think we need to kind of take that paranoia out of the way.

But the as far as the other elements, I think we need to always step back and take a look at it.

I'm trying to remember your example or what your specific.

National guard in the cities and masked agents and stuff like that.

Right, So, national guard generally is crowd control.

They're not the ones generally kicking the door down.

Usually that's the feral agents, those that are trained in actual hands on opportunity because they have to.

They're there for crowd control.

They don't have the ability to engage as far as armed.

So you're not You're not worried about authoritarianism, is what you're saying.

You know, you always have to keep it in check, and that's what elections are for.

And if and if any administration tries to get rid of an election cycle, I think you're going to see it up people in this country like never before.

That is the Republican Mayor of Few may Arizona, Doug Nichols.

We've also been speaking with Mary Sanchez, a colmnists with Tribute Content Agency.

Thanks so much to both of you for joining us.

Thank you, thanks for having me.

And don't forget to subscribe to our podcast.

There's extra episodes of our One Thing Trump Did podcast every week on the Middle podcast feed.

Next week we'll be right back here talking about the issues that Generation Z faces, the challenges.

So if you are one of our many gen Z listeners, please call.

As a member of gen Z.

I'm very excited.

Yeah.

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