Yana Kunachov

What do you mean?

Glad to be here.

Yeah, well, what we've seen is a huge ramp up in arrests and particularly street level arrests across the state.

What that's meant in southern Arizona is that you've kind of had this resounding response network that's grown out of decades of organizing, but now has a rapid response number.

People are going immediately to whenever they hear that there's enforcement happening.

You've had school districts that have had to come up with

plans for when ICE comes to their door.

So you've kind of had like a community-wide response that has happened since Trump took office.

Yeah, I mean, I think that this region is really interesting because immigration and biculturalism has been like a huge part for generations of this community.

It's a border community.

I think what is different now is that there's so much more happening for people to respond to.

And also it's a much less dense place than somewhere like Minnesota.

So I think people have had to think of tactics that are useful and specific on the ground in like a Southwestern community, which has been really interesting to watch.

Yeah, I mean, I think that when I was covering the election in 2024, the concerns about border security and people's feelings about what was happening on the border, I think were like really big emotional talking points.

But I think some of the enforcement in the specifically Tucson area communities is a lot less abstract.

So I think it is really different to feel concern about what might be happening in a bigger level and then like to respond to the fact that you have a neighbor down the street whose father was taken.

Yeah, and I love that question because I think I don't often recognize the Arizona that I see spoken about nationally.

Like I think there are really deep divisions here politically for sure.

But I think the reality is that to live in this place that has so many challenges, water challenges, heat challenges, people really have to work together and have to kind of be in common cause with each other even if they don't share a political identity.

And like that's what I see happening.