Tucson officials want residents to feel reassured. There is no current National Guard presence in the city, they say. If federal troops arrive, Tucson will watch closely, document activity, inform the public, and prepare to challenge any violations in court, reports KGUN 9 TV.
That language is meant to sound vigilant. It isn’t.
Every verb in the city’s so-called precautionary plan happens after something goes wrong.
“Observe and document” is not a protective strategy. It assumes harm will occur and focuses on recording it rather than preventing it. Watching does not interrupt violence already in motion. Informing the public afterward does nothing for the people already harmed.
This is not a failure of imagination. It is a choice, one that treats inaction as governance and delay as prudence.
The city’s wait-and-see posture (news release) translates to something far more familiar: now is not the time to do anything, let’s see how it goes, no need to escalate, so everyone calm down. That tone is not neutral. It is institutional condescension. It shifts risk downward while insulating decision-makers from having to act meaningfully.
The strategy also rests on a false assumption: that ICE agents will behave in good faith and respect legal limits if those limits are clearly articulated. That assumption does not survive contact with reality.
The Trump administration has plainly laid its cards on the table. The law applies to everyone else. Federal power answers to no one. Translated for Tucsonans, a response strategy that relies on legal review after the fact only works if the aggressors fear consequences. The Trump administration has shown that it does not.
When Renee Nicole Good was approached by ICE agents in broad daylight, everyone was watching. There were witnesses. There was documentation.
She died anyway.
Visibility did not protect her. Documentation did not stop the trigger pull. Legal review afterward did not undo the damage. Federal authorities obstructed state-level accountability by removing evidence and refusing to cooperate.
Our Mayor also promised an informational website and assurances that it will “inform the public.”
A website is so routine it should not be news. Elevating it as preparedness suggests the city ran out of ideas and settled for something that looks busy while changing nothing on the ground.
Tucson already communicates through social media, email lists, emergency alerts, and press briefings. Rebranding these tools as preparedness does not create capacity. Information-sharing is baseline governance, and it does not intervene, interrupt, or protect in real time.
What has been released publicly in Tucson is not an operational plan. Where is the detailed strategy, and why does action remain contingent on authorization after the fact?
That is not readiness. It is delay by design.
This is not complicated. If a city cannot protect its residents, it is powerlessness. If the only response available is observation, documentation, explanation, and lawsuits, then prevention has already been abandoned as a goal. The outcome is predictable.
When Tucson’s leadership avoids creating a real plan, it is not buying safety. It is buying time with optics until after the damage is done.
That is not preparedness. It is surrender.
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Everyone seems to agree that protesting and documenting are not enough but everyone goes mute after that. What actions are any of you advocating for? Are you saying people should physically obstruct ICE, an illegal act?
No one is obligated to spoon-feed you a menu of tactics just because you showed up pretending to ask a question. That’s a lot of words to say when you’re obviously not here in good faith.
BTW, cute “gotcha” question.
My suggestions are to:
* ALWAYS have a lot of people there whose only function is to video everything from all angles simultaneously, from prior to the beginning until after it is all over.
* Always keep the protest peaceful and legal. Do not illegally block sidewalks or streets.
* It is not illegal for you to wear goggles and helmets, and even gas masks, to protect yourself from assaults by ICE agents. Even supposedly non-lethal bullets and sprays can cause serious, permanent injury and sometimes even death.
* Always carry identification and copies of your birth certificate or passport with you.
Yep, John Who Lives on Taxpayer Money Because He’s the Biggest Hypocrite in Arizona Kavanagh is trying to bait us.
F-ck off you weird children’s genetalia obsessed freak. (Really, search his name, he thinks about it alot, which should be a warning sign).
How about you stop by the day after the next election, which is both a dare and the answer to your inanne question.
The facts are straightforward: Senator John Kavanagh has repeatedly pushed legislation regulating which bathrooms, locker rooms, and sleeping arrangements students are allowed to use, and is now attempting to take those measures directly to voters after they failed legislatively.
That’s an issue worth discussing.
Like anyone would tell you, stoolie stooge.
Nationwide, statewide, and locally, Dems strategy seems to be “let MAGA overplay its hand, while we lay low and win the midterms”.
Meanwhile, American’s are being murdered in the streets, shot in the FACE, denied medical care while they bleed out, by illiterate, racist, fascist thugs being given 50K bonuses of taxpayer money, families are being torn apart, innocent lives ruined, businesses destroyed along with the jobs they provide.
If you’re a Dem and you’re not on in the streets EVERY DAY demanding an end to ICE and the release of all the Epstein files, I hope you get primaried back into anonymity and spend the rest of your pitiful life praying you can make rent AND buy food, and spend your final days wishing you’d have fought for single payer every time you sneeze.
If you’re a lawmaker we pay you to represent us and I don’t see many Dems doing their job.
I don’t care what you did yesterday or last year or if you cured cancer, if you’re not fighting for decency every day then fuck you.
Maybe do something before PedoPOTUS fires up the Insurrection Act, cancels the election, and we all look back a year from now and say Gosh, how did we not see that coming, he only said he’d do it about a million fucking times”.
“Lay low” only works against opponents who respect time, norms, and elections. Authoritarians don’t wait it out. They use the waiting period to finish the job.
By the way, turning rage on people on our own side is not accountability. It’s a loyalty test and it’s emotional arson. It burns allies, not fascists.
If we can’t tell the difference between strategic disagreement and moral failure, authoritarianism won’t have to finish the job. We’ll do it for them.
I dunno’, being scolded about disagreeing feels a little bit like a loyalty test. 🙂
I’m pretty sure we’re on the same page 95 plus percent of the time.
I’ll never vote GOP because they’re women hating racist Nazi’s who support a pedophile POTUS.
But I’m more loyal to the people being murdered by ICE and the victims of Trump/Epstein than to any candidate or party.
Being loyal to Dems is why I voted for Sinema in 2016, even though some of us got into hot water here when we pointed out that she’s trash.
How’d that work out?
No POTUS primary in 2024…how’d that work out?
Dems, especailly in the Senate, are wayyyyyy too old, they’re out of touch and the younger voters see it.
See RBG for more on why it’s bad to get too old, and I say this as an old myself.
There’s a direct line from Dem failures to losing Roe and to the rise of MAGA.
“If we can’t tell the difference between strategic disagreement and moral failure, authoritarianism won’t have to finish the job. We’ll do it for them.”
Yep, 100%. 🙂
I get what you’re saying, and I don’t think we’re far apart, either.
I think it is time for the author to include suggestions as to how we can lobby our electeds right now; links to email and call our Mayor and City Councilperson. State some ACTIONS that can be taken by the reader.
Thanks!
I understand the suggestion, but that wasn’t the purpose of this piece. This article was about naming a systemic failure, not issuing a checklist.
At this point, information isn’t the barrier. Engagement is. Arizona voters should know by now how to contact their local officials, and adding generic links or info hasn’t meaningfully changed outcomes. I’m done with the hand-holding.
Watching is not prevention. Neither is waiting to be told what to do next.
I submitted a number of actions to thwart ICEholes from terrorizing Tucsonans but moderators of Blog4AZ seem too fearful of publishing anything other than bland “e-mail your officials” comments. Preparing to take matters into our own hands seems to be a no-no here.
Be advised that when we’re locked up at Manzanar or Tule Lake or Jerome, AR concentration camp, wusses will not be invited to my cell block for afternoon tea and biscuits.
Nunna, the call to not publish your comment was mine. I was on board with your irreverent, mischievous ideas until you delivered, with a wink-wink nudge-nudge, a hint about “Tucson restaurants being cited for contaminated meals.” That crossed a boundary I wasn’t willing to join you in crossing. The fall-out could damage someone’s livelihood and expose them to legal issues. I’m not okay with innocent people becoming collateral damage. Now, if you’re still looking to offer practical mischief, though, here’s a better suggestion: tell friends and family to hit the panic button on their car key fobs when they spot ICE in their neighborhoods. I just watched a video where that exact move sent a couple of hapless ICE agents scattering.
Thanks for owning up. We’ll just agree to disagree. I’m not advocating anyone do anything illegal but if, for example, a swarm of drones were to track ICEholes and push locations via social media like Mastodon, it might make life interesting for them. I also just read a story about ICEholes on Grindr, Tinder and other sites being exposed. Wouldn’t it be great if someone could find an AZ politician’s account? Now is the time for active resistance, innocent people will get hurt but collateral damage will be necessary to dig us out of this swamp.
“Collateral damage” (meaning innocent people will get hurt) reframes carelessness as inevitable and allows abuse to be normalized and justified, not prevented. I can acknowledge that harm sometimes occurs in the real world, but I’m not willing to be cavalier about it or treat it as acceptable.
I couldn’t agree more! While I don’t have the expertise or experience in what Tucson can do to prevent ICE from being deployed here and engaging in its routinely illegal actions, I strongly believe that our Governor, Attorney General, and our Mayors should ALL have a meeting to discuss precisely what should be put in place to protect Arizona and Tucson from the Hitleresque ICE scenarios being played out in other cities and states.
You are assuming they don’t and haven’t. I assure you they have, and they will continue to do so. Planning state insurrections against federal enforcement agents is not something you do openly. Those conversations are happening – they are just not being broadcast.
I understand all of your skepticism of our Democratic leaders willingness to take risky steps. But events will force their hands eventually, unfortunately. Just look at what Walz in doing in MN, like calling up the Guard. There is a reason he dropped re-election; it is a psychological commitment device, not political cowardice. It’s bravest fucking thing I have seen any politician do in recent history: he dropped his bid so that he could remain absolutely committed to this fight without any regard for his political future. He and others are writing, battletestign, and sharing the playbook of how to resist and prevent the abuses of an unhinged and Constitionally unbound and illegitimate federal government.
We Dems have a clear handicap, however, we have to remain inside the law, while they couldn’t give a fuck about norms, laws, civil rights, or the Constitution itself. We can’t give this Regime the excuses it needs to use the Insurrection Act and have it stand up to Article 3 scrutiny. This Regime has not completely broken with Article 3 branch yet, because they believe -maybe rightly – that they own it. We’ll see. We Dems are fighting with one hand behind our backs. We have to remain non-violent and still totally disrupt the systems by which the Trump Regime projects and abuses power; that’s a hard and long road and a lot of learning to be done.
We can NEVER escalate any armed conflict, because the fascist Regime has the means and capacity to excalate, to and beyond, any levels we can using our own actual armed fucking forces. Don’t kid yourself, there are a lot of partisans in the ranks, too, who are itching to aim a gun (or drone, or missle) at those fellow Americans who they see as pinko baby-eaters. There WILL be soliders willing to carry out such illegal orders. Sen. Kelly’s reminder was not without purpose and urgency – HE KNOWS. Many of our Democratic leaders recognize what is happening and taking steps.
I don’t blame our Democratic officials for being cautious, incremental, and quiet about their plans and defenses against Trump’s personal ICE militias (let’s not mince words about what they functionally are now): we are absolutely off the map constitutionally. This Regime is breaking the law, violating citizens civil rights, and violating our Constitution with (thus far) total impunity. Their ICE militias are told they have absolute immunity, effectively unlimited budgets, and zero accountability; this Regime has their backs, even when one of them openly murders a civilian citizen for no goodamn reason. NOBODY in this country has a fucking playbook for any this.
We are going to have to help ourselves, our neighbors, and our communities to get through this, and we are only now looking for and absorbing lessons from all those shit-hole countries where the law and governance has broken down. We ARE the shit-hole country now. What else can you call what Trump has made of us? It’s a fucking nighmare come to life, and many are slow to realize this fact, but they will get there.
Unfortunately, getting there WILL claim more lives of more martyrs like Rene Goode before everyone gets there and the massive revolt this will eventually engender begins. We are complancent, lazy, comfortable and coddled as a people, it will take a lot of rude shocks before most average Americans realize that all of this threatens THEM directly. When they do, there will be a motherfucker of bill to pay, and these fascist fucks haven’t a clue what a can of whoop-ass they are opening for themselves. They haven’t seen any real consequences from our system thus far, so why not keep pressing? They don’t realize that the reckoning will come from OUTSIDE the system, not within it. Americans value their freedom, and they WILL die for it – the fascist Regime don’t believe they have anything to fear from the average American: they are SOOOO disastrously wrong and historically pig fucking ignorant. They are fucking around, and they are GOING to find out.
Someday – and I hope it is soon – a democratically legitimate and lawful government will be building monuments to the martyrs who will die defending our freedom: Rene Goode will likely be just the first.
I strongly urge you to not call plans for taking actions to prevent unconstitutional and illegal acts by our federal government’s agents “insurrection”! It is NOT insurrection to take action against a President or any other official or agent who is acting illegally or unconstitutionally…. which is precisely what Trump and his ICE thugs are doing. THEY are the insurrectionists!
Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3:
“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
Trump the Pedophile was not eligible to run in 2024 or ever again unless Congress approved.
The MAGAts currently doing his ego-boosting dirty work should be put on notice that he is an illegitimate POTUS and the pardons he’ll grant them are null and void and they should expect to be tried and if found guilty they’ll get three hots and a cot for life.
And not in the cushy Club Fed like Trump’s child raping accomplice Maxwell.
Same for all 1600 J6 pardons and any pardon granted after a million dollar plus donation to anything Trump branded.
They’re fake pardons.
The Fourteenth was discussed when he announced, and I suspect Dems let it slide assuming he couldn’t win after what we all lived through the first time, especially in 2020.
They wanted him in 2016 and 2424 and here we are.
They seem to have made a very bad calculation and innocent people are paying for their f’ up.