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Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis and members of the Austin City Council met with community members this week to talk about local Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations and the city and police’s role in them. The meeting was billed as a conversation but turned into a shouting match that laid bare the community tensions around ICE enforcement in the Austin area and around the country. We’ll talk more about that meeting, and we’ll hear from some of the voices who were there.
Construction is happening on a new convention center in downtown Austin. Even so, a judge could rule any day on an effort to stop anything new from being built.
The new “wishbone” pedestrian bridge is opening this weekend on the eastern end of Lady Bird Lake. We’ll hear more about it.
Steven Skybell speaks about playing Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof playing at the Austin Opera House tonight and this weekend. We’ll hear more about it.
The full transcript of this episode of Austin Signal is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:08] The Austin Police Chief and members of the Austin City Council met with community members this week to talk about local immigration and customs enforcement operations and the city and police’s role in them. The meeting was billed as a conversation but turned into a shouting match that laid bare the community tensions around ICE enforcements here in the Austin area and around the country. We’re going to talk more about that meeting and we’ll hear from some of the voices who were there. That’s coming up on today’s show.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:00:34] The Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Jerry Kehoe.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:39] Construction is happening on a new convention center in downtown Austin. Even so, a judge could rule any day on an effort to stop anything new from being built. And a new pedestrian bridge is opening this weekend on the eastern end of Lady Bird Lake. Come hear more about it. That’s today on Austin Signal. This is Austin Signal. Thank you for tuning in to community powered public radio and thank you for spending part of your Friday here with us. I’m your host, Jerry Quijano. Let’s get into today’s show. Austinites are demanding that police and city leaders do more to resist immigration and customs enforcement. That’s a paraphrase of the headline topping kut.org today after Thursday’s public meeting with city leaders and the community went just a little beyond a conversation. For more about what went down, we are joined by Mo’s Boucher, who was there. He has been covering immigration for the Texas Newsroom, and he’s here with us now in Austin Signal. Mo’s, thanks for joining us. No problem, Jerry. So a lot of tension arose because a state law, SB4, which was passed in 2017, says that police departments can’t stop officers from reporting someone to federal immigration agents. Austin leaders thought that they could get around that, but then there was an incident with a woman from Honduras. Can you remind us about what happened there?
Mose Buchele [00:02:01] Yes what happened last month and uh… It was that uh… A woman a woman was uh… Had called a a p d on a disturbance call uh… And officer showed up they ran her background they found that she had what they call the minister of warrants uh… They’ve been put out by ice uh… Saying that she was potentially in the country uh… You know unauthorized uh… End up She ended up being deported with her daughter. That as you said, kind of, that showed in a very stark way that people in Austin can be deported after interactions with local law enforcement, something that the city has always said they did not want to happen. And so that has really kind of started up this big, like you said more than a conversation, a huge debate over what the city does next.
Jerry Quijano [00:02:44] Yeah, and your article is at kut.org. We’re gonna have a link in the show notes for today’s episode of Austin Signal. In there, you write that records show that Austin officers called ICE dozens of times last year after encountering people flagged with ICE warrants. And again, these are administrative warrants, not criminal warrants and I think that’s part of the issue. This is obviously a big issue, but that’s a part of issue with the backlash from the community, correct?
Mose Buchele [00:03:08] Yes, so what happened is after Trump comes in in his second term, ICE floods police databases with these administrative warrants. And again, these are not criminal warrants, these not judicial warrants these are basically just an ICE agent saying we think maybe this person might be able to be deported. And so when an officer finds that in a background check, they may then contact ICE, give ICE the person’s updated information or in the case like we just talked about, even perhaps stay with the person and hand them over to ICE when ICE appears. This is what’s been happening for the last year since these warrants have come on the scene. And this is what the city is now trying to create new policy around. How do we react to this new development in integration enforcement?
Jerry Quijano [00:03:48] And part of that reaction is trying to connect with community members and that’s why they had that meeting last night. It was at Go Valley Elementary School. How did it go?
Mose Buchele [00:03:56] It was tense. It was really tense. What’s happened since this whole thing has kind of gained the spotlight is that you have a growing divide in Austin between, you know, progressive Austin, between some people who want an aggressive resistance to the Trump deportation policy and to state leaders who back it, and then you have more moderate voices, I guess you could say, in Austin city government saying, we are restrained and constrained by some state laws. Uh… And so there are laws in texas that say we cannot tell police that they cannot contact ice for example and so what we do within the confines of those laws that still allowed uh… But that is not uh… I guess you could say you know a direct confrontation
Jerry Quijano [00:04:41] Okay, you used the word tense, let’s hear a little bit from that.
Chief of Police: Lisa Davis [00:04:44] There is a rule of law that I have to follow as the Chief of Police here in the state of Texas. But what we can do is create policies that assist with that.
Jerry Quijano [00:04:56] That was the voice of Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis kind of getting booed out there from some of the members there What were the concerns of the people who showed up there to speak with city officials?
Mose Buchele [00:05:05] Yeah, what we just heard was the first of many increasingly loud, I would say, eruptions of discontent from the crowd. And like I said, basically, many of them were just demanding that city leaders flat out resist and ignore state law. The message from some of these folks was we are going to not, we’re not going to follow the law. We’re going to resist it. And if that means that you lose your job, which is one of the outcomes potentially from this SB4 law that we talk about, then so be it. And if the city is fine, then be it, we will go to court over this essentially and perhaps maybe find some satisfaction through the court system saying that parts of this law might be unconstitutional. There’s a lot of speculation about that.
Jerry Quijano [00:05:52] And I know there was a woman there, Carmen, I believe was her name, what did she have to say?
Mose Buchele [00:05:56] So she was talking about actually like trust in the police. I think that maybe we have a soundbite from her we could listen to. Let’s throw to them.
Meeting attendee: Carmen [00:06:07] First, I don’t trust the police. Second, Second, You are going to leave us in the hands of the feelings of a police officer. And not under the law. Because there is no law that protects us.
Mose Buchele [00:06:31] What she says there is that she doesn’t have trust in the police, which is of course what we hear from city council members all the time. We want people to feel safe calling the police. She says, I don’t, and she’s speaking as an immigrant and an activist for the immigrant community there. And then she said, you’re leaving our fate essentially to the whims of a police officer because there’s no law essentially to protect us. And that’s the kind of reality that a lot of these people that were protesting were pointing to. The city might be able to kind of tinker around the edges of what’s legally permissible in Texas, but the reality, they point out, is that if you do follow SB4, an officer is allowed to contact ICE.
Jerry Quijano [00:07:12] Okay, tell us a little bit about what city leaders had to say. I know that you spoke with Chito Vela, a council member.
Mose Buchele [00:07:18] Absolutely. The plan from the city, like I said, is to try to mitigate this. Their idea is to create a system where an officer calls their commanding officer if they’re going to call ICE. And so then the commanding officers may redirect that officer on the beat to say, well, listen, you can call ICE, we can’t tell you not to, but maybe you should also go somewhere else. Maybe you essentially shouldn’t wait to hand this person over to ICE. Uh… They think that will probably lower these interactions uh… But you know i like you said i caught up with uh… With councilmember bella after this event and he knows that there’s a lot of disappointment with that kind of work around policy
Councilman Chito Vela [00:08:00] with the current political environment in Texas, and with President Trump in the White House, I cannot say that everything is gonna be fine. APD has limitations. We’re trying to work within those limitations to maximize people’s safety, but there are very real limitations and very real risks.
Jerry Quijano [00:08:22] Okay, Mose, before you got into the station, we were talking a little bit about the night and how it played out. It started around six o’clock. Because it was so raucous there, how did the event end up ending?
Mose Buchele [00:08:33] So what we saw at the end after all of that shouting and all that tension was actually the police chief and many council members stayed beyond the deadline there, along with a lot of the same people that had been shouting and making their voices heard. And there were a lot of one-on-one conversations between some of those folks in the audience, the police Chief, I know council member Vela was there and others. And so it did kind of eventually… Dissipate into a more kind of personal conversation, but certainly tensions and emotions were high and will probably remain so as, not just as this happens in Austin, but as we see these images across the country of these ICE actions all over the place.
Jerry Quijano [00:09:15] We’ve been speaking with KUT’s Mo’s Bouchelle. He has been covering immigration for the Texas newsroom. We’ll have a link to his story at kut.org slash signal. And in today’s podcast show notes, Mo’s thanks for your reporting.
Mose Buchele [00:09:27] Thank you, Jerry.
Jerry Quijano [00:09:29] Construction is already going on a new convention center in downtown Austin, but a judge could rule any day on an effort to stop anything new from being built. KUT’s Luz Moreno Lozano reports on the case, which could determine whether Austin has a convention center at all.
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:09:46] The decision before Travis County District Judge Jessica Mangrum is if a citizen-initiated petition that was denied by the City of Austin in the fall can move forward. The Austin City Clerk said the petition, which seeks to stop the project, did not have enough valid signatures. Last week, the Austin United Political Action Committee argued their case before Mangrum as they fought to get their petition validated. The group hopes that if they get their proposition on the ballot, the people would vote against a new convention center. Bobby Lewinsky, an attorney representing the PAC, says instead of that, they’d like to see more support from museums and other cultural draws, including using the money for green spaces, public pools, and art.
Bobby Lewinski [00:10:24] There’s also some really great land downtown that’s already been, you know, basically the site’s been prepared for potential uses. And so you could use that space for other things than just the convention center.
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:10:38] So why is a city building a new convention center? Let’s look at both sides of the argument. Convention centers can cause a mix of emotions for residents. Often the facility is being used by out of towners and the funding mechanisms can be complicated. So why have a massive concrete box in the middle of downtown if it doesn’t benefit the people who live here? Well, in a way it does. Alan Shearer is an urban planning professor at UT. He said conventions bring people to the city, and those people stay at hotels and spend money at restaurants, local businesses, and other places of entertainment.
Alan Shearer [00:11:10] We think about how much of the Austin economy is tied to entertainment, to the music scene, to the restaurants. But what conventioneers bring in is traffic, customers during the middle of the week. And so what it does is it provides a more stable basis for those kinds of businesses to operate week long, month long, year round.
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:11:34] For example, the South by Southwest Festival brings in people from all over the world. In 2025, more than 200,000 people came to Austin, generating millions of dollars for the city. Some of that money funds city services like park improvements and public safety needs. Beyond South by South West, Katie Zemeznik, Deputy Director at the Austin Convention Center, says the facility welcomes all kinds of conferences from medical, tech, and corporate companies. It even transforms for junior and collegiate volleyball tournaments. With the expansion, Zmeznik said the convention center could host larger events like the Dell Technologies World Conference, which moved to Las Vegas after it outgrew Austin. She said the facility could also host multiple events at the same time, reducing dark days or days that can’t be sold because of events moving in and out.
Katy Zemeznik [00:12:19] We were turning away nearly 50% of the business leads that we were getting either because we were too small or we didn’t have the space.
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:12:27] But others argue large-scale conventions and conferences are a thing of the past. Many companies have started to cut back on travel and some conferences have transitioned virtually making convention centers moot. The attorney for the group trying to stop the convention center, Bobby Lewinsky, says Austin can still host major events at hotel conference rooms, UT, and the new hotel and convention center being added at the Circuit of the Americas. But without a convention center in downtown Austin, shares says that could mean tourism and businesses downtown suffer.
Alan Shearer [00:12:56] Again, it’s the question of what could you put there that would still provide the kind of midweek. Of people coming in to support our restaurants and clubs.
Luz Moreno-Lozano [00:13:13] Some downtown Austin businesses are already feeling the pinch as construction on the convention center and work on I-35 continues. I’m here at the corner of Trinity and 4th Street and folks, there is a giant empty hole where the Austin Convention Center used to sit. No new building means no convention center at all. And foot traffic and restaurant business has already started to drop. In December, the Downtown Austin Alliance offered subsidized Uber rides just to get people downtown. So let’s get back to the courtroom. If the judge rules the petition should move forward and voters deny an expansion, the project would pause. I’m Luz Moreno Lozano in Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:13:52] A little sports news today on this Friday. We’re five months out from the 2026 World Cup and it was announced this week that the Saudi Arabian soccer team will use Austin as their home base for the duration of the tournament. The Saudi team faced the U.S. At Q2 Stadium last June and they’ll have their hands full in Group H competition going against Spain, Uruguay and Cape Verde. Austin Signal will be back after a break. Thanks for making us part of your Friday. This is Austin Signal, welcome back. There are some classic musicals that seem to be timeless. At the Austin Opera House, one actor spoke with Texas Standard about his role and a performance happening this weekend.
Stephen Skybell [00:14:44] My name is Stephen Skybell, I’m playing Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof at Austin Opera. Fiddler on the Roof, it has such universal appeal. And the thing that I think appeals to an audience about it is that it’s essentially about a family, a husband and a wife, and their five daughters. And the three elder daughters are all of marriageable age. And there’s complications and confusion about how to get these daughters married. So I think a lot of people just can relate to the idea of a family. But what happens in Fiddler, which becomes meaningful, even more meaningful today than maybe it was in 1966, is that the lens opens up to show this village, this village of Jewish people that are ultimately, spoiler alert, forced out of their town. And so, it’s a musical about family, it’s musical about community, and it’s the musical about love and faith and about the… Intolerance that sometimes can happen in the world and force people to have to pick up and move somewhere else.
Stephen Skybell [00:15:59] Oh, all that we can leave this pot. No, we can’t. All right, we’ll take it.
Stephen Skybell [00:16:07] I was born in Amarillo. I grew up in Lubbock, a little Jewish actor boy growing up in Lubeck, Texas. There were a hundred Jewish families there. There was a children’s theater in Lubbeck, Texas and my brother was part of it. And I said to my mother, I want to do that. And I was 10 years old and I started doing plays when I was ten and I have really never looked back. The first time I played Tevye I was 17 and I was at the national music camp in Interlochen, Michigan which was a summer arts camp that I went to for five summers. I played him when I was 21, undergrad, Yale University. Then I had a big hiatus, was looking for Tevya to play him and I never played him. Finally I got the opportunity to play Tevyes as an age-appropriate adult. In the Yiddish version of Fiddler on the Roof that the National Yiddhish Theater of Falksbyna did in New York City directed by Joel Gray. The thing I’ve learned about Tevye as I’ve grown older is that he actually is quite optimistic and hopeful in a world that around him is less than that. So as I have gotten older I respond more and more positively to the optimism that Tevya holds even in the face of all this tragic developments that are happening around him.
Stephen Skybell [00:17:38] We have to catch a train and a bus, you understand? Prince, put your bundles on the wagon.
Stephen Skybell [00:17:45] Fiddler on the Roof has music that everyone is going to recognize and sing. I do think, ultimately, it is a cautionary tale about what can happen when the powers that be exert their force and force citizens and people to have to leave their homes. And so it’s ultimately a message about peace and tolerance in a time then that was less than that. And I hope that it’ll just get people’s. Hearts feeling hopeful for mending fences between people.
Stephen Skybell [00:18:22] Goodbye. Our card, Mother. Come to us soon. I will, man.
Jerry Quijano [00:18:33] That was Stephen Skybell speaking with Texas Standard. He’s performing in Fiddler on the roof this weekend at Austin Opera House. The Wishbone pedestrian bridge opens tomorrow on the eastern end of Lady Bird Lake, completing the biggest gap in the Ann and Roy Butler hike and bike trail. For more about that, we’re speaking with KUT’s transportation reporter, Nathan Bernier. Nathan, thanks for spending part of your Friday with us.
Nathan Bernier [00:18:58] It’s good to be with you, Jerry.
Jerry Quijano [00:18:59] I’m glad you’re here, this project is a near and dear to my heart, because every single weekday on my way to KUT News, I drive over the Longhorn Dam, and that’s basically how people have had to complete the gap prior to this wishbone bridge, correct?
Nathan Bernier [00:19:14] Yeah, well, I mean, since Longhorn Shores was developed in the mid-1970s, there hasn’t really been, you know, the trail has detoured. I mean it’s essentially, and for years, I mean, you’ve probably been around long enough to remember when it was a four-foot wide sidewalk over the Longhorn Dam. Now that got expanded, so it’s not so narrow, but that was pretty bad. Now, this is the last remaining big gap on the trail. And tomorrow it’s gonna be complete. I mean, it’s going to be.
Jerry Quijano [00:19:47] Yeah, I’m very excited. You know, this is kind of an embarrassing story. But the first time I rode my bike on the trail there and I got to the to the lake, I didn’t know where to go. And I just I just turned around and went back to my house, you know, because I didn’t know where where it was going to go and now be able to use the wishbone bridge. Why is it called that? And is it because of what it looks like? Yeah. OK.
Nathan Bernier [00:20:08] Okay, it’s like a y-shaped bridge, you know, I’ve heard different Metaphors one person on Instagram said it was thong shaped But basically it has three prongs it goes in three different directions. It connects Longhorn Shores, Canterbury Shores and the Peninsula there. It’s okay the unnamed peninsula But the other day someone gave it a name told me it had a name. Anyway, you there’s that was it
Jerry Quijano [00:20:30] Was it thong peninsula? No, it was not.
Nathan Bernier [00:20:31] No, it was not. But that might, maybe that’s, we should approach the city with this idea. And it’s very, you know, wishbone bridges are not very common. Most bridges connect one thing to another. You don’t often see three pronged bridges. But this solves a very unique problem. And one interesting thing about it is that it wasn’t even a city idea. It didn’t come from an engineer, it didn’t from transportation, public works. They held early in this process, They held public meetings and it was. About a dozen members of the public rode in, hey, how about a wishbone bridge? And they’re like, hmm, and they liked the idea enough, they took it seriously, they studied it, and boom, 2026, now it’s about to open.
Jerry Quijano [00:21:10] Well, one thing I really appreciate about you, Nathan, is you’re a crack transportation reporter, right? You’re really good at what you do, but you’re also sort of becoming a transportation influencer, because over on the KUT Instagram feed, you have this video where you’re out on the Wishbone Bridge and you’re highlighting some of what’s happening. The cool thing about the bridge, there’s so much to appreciate there, but there’s also a tunnel that’s got some cool art featured in there. Can you tell us where that is? Yes.
Nathan Bernier [00:21:35] Absolutely, so you know you cross over the bridge the tunnel actually goes underneath Pleasant Valley Road now there used to be a tunnel there It was like a six foot wide box culvert. It was I mean people have described it as creepy
Jerry Quijano [00:21:47] It was not enticing, you know, you didn’t want to put your bike underneath there. I was just, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it out the other side.
Nathan Bernier [00:21:53] Right, and also it would flood, like the drainage in there was horrible, the lighting was bad, it was weird, and not always a safe feeling for people. So that’s gone, that’s completely filled up, and then just a little bit north of there is where they’ve put this new one, it’s 30 feet wide, it’s got recessed lighting, and a mural covering the entire thing. Part of it is painted, part of it as tile work, and along the very entrance and exit are going to be about more than 200 handprints that people came out and just anyone who could have done it, they held these workshops, people came out and they made their, pressed their hands on these tiles. So there’s gonna be that aspect of it. And I think there’s one dog print on there as well. So, but I think, you know, the artwork is beautiful. Reginald Adams from Houston was the artist commissioned to do the artwork, but the accessibility is gonna be the main issue there. Now, if you’re at Quig Fields or you’re in Roy G. Guerrero Park, it’s gonna to be super easy just to walk over. Also, there’s a big parking lot there. So say you want to hit the trail. You could park by Creek fields, go under that, that, through that tunnel and boom, you’re on the Butler trail.
Jerry Quijano [00:22:57] Mm-hmm. Yeah, I see people do it all the time when they’re paddle boarding things like that. You mentioned Reginald the artist Can you let’s hear a little bit of tape from him?
Reginald Adams [00:23:05] Which includes a 160 foot long mosaic that’ll go on both sides of this tunnel. And really excited to bring this public art project to completion. It’s been two years in the making and in the next four days we’re gonna bring it together. There will be over 200 hand prints that will adorn the outer lip of the tunnel. And these are all hand prints from local Austinites, folks who came to our community engagement events and that’ll kind of be the welcome into the tunnel on both the outer sides so as people come in and out of the tunnel they’ll be able to see their contribution to this public art installation.
Jerry Quijano [00:23:39] So the Wishbone Bridge is opening tomorrow, Nathan, with a little ceremony. What’s gonna be happening?
Nathan Bernier [00:23:44] Grand opening 10 a.m. Mayor will be there, members of Congress, and a whole bunch of people are invited. I know that lots of folks are excited about this. I hear there’s live music and food trucks too.
Jerry Quijano [00:23:52] Okay, it should be a good time out there. That is KUT’s transportation reporter, Nathan Bernier. We’re gonna have a link to his story at kut.org slash signal and and our podcast show notes for today. Nathan, thank you for your time. Thanks, Jerry. And thank you out there for tuning in to Austin Signal every weekday at one o’clock here on KUT. And you can download us wherever you listen to your podcast too. Thank you to Kristen Cabrera, our managing producer and Rayna Sevilla, our technical director. I’m your host Jerry Quijano and we will be back with you on Monday. Have a great weekend.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
