Listen
An arctic cold front is approaching Austin and Central Texas. The National Weather Service has already issued an Extreme Cold Watch and a Winter Storm Warning for the weekend. We’ll have more about the latest forecasts and the ways for you to be prepared.
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement operations have continued in Central Texas. KUT News has obtained video of one such incident in Kyle. As these operations increase, so does the concern for public safety amid reports of slack hiring practices and training regulations for ICE officers. Speaking with Austin Signal is Alain Stephens, investigative reporter for the Intercept covering gun violence, arms trafficking, and federal law enforcement.
Plus, it’s Hi, How Are You Day in Austin. We’ll share how you can celebrate.
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] An Arctic cold front is approaching Austin and central Texas, and the National Weather Service has already issued an extreme cold watch in a winter storm warning for the weekend. We’re going to have more about the latest forecasts and the ways that you can be prepared ahead of the storm. And Immigrations and Custom Enforcement operations have continued in central Texas. KUT News obtained a video of one such incident in Kyle. And as these operations increase, so does the concern for public safety. Amid reports of slack hiring practices and training regulations for ICE officers. We’ve got more about those stories coming up in today’s show.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:00:43] The Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Jerry Quijano.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:48] Plus here in Austin, today is Hi How Are You Day, how you can celebrate. We hope you’re doing good out there. This is Austin Signal. Howdy out there, this is Austin Signal. Thank you for tuning in. It is Thursday, January 22nd. We appreciate you making community-powered public radio part of your day. We’ve got a lot going on today in Austin. It’s been a busy week here. And of course, we are keeping our eyes on everything and the weather that is slated to overtake us. In about 48 hours or so, KUT’s newscast editor, Trey Shaar has been following the forecast. And he is joining us now on Austin Signal. Trey, thanks for coming in. Yeah, thanks, for having me. So we know there’s a lot of anxiety that builds up in the days ahead of a winter storm here in Austin and across central Texas, and the forecasts are always changing. What are the latest forecasts saying about the weather that we’ve got coming?
Trey Shaar [00:01:54] Yeah, there’s some trauma left over from events we’ve had in recent years, and that’s understandable. The latest is that we’ve gone from a winter storm watch to a winterstorm warning. And you know how watches and warnings go.
Jerry Quijano [00:02:07] I do, but can you just remind us for the listener?
Trey Shaar [00:02:09] Yeah, when, uh, when there’s a watch that means the ingredients are there for something to happen and when it becomes a warning, that’s when the national weather service is certain that this is going to happen. Okay. In this case, a winter storm warning that’s, uh frozen precipitation, basically it’s a forecast to fall over a wide area of Texas. And depending on how far North you are, we’ll determine what kind of winter precipitation that is. And here in Austin… We’re kind of on the edge. And the good news is, when I say there’s a winter storm warning, you’re thinking, OK, this is bad.
Jerry Quijano [00:02:44] Yeah, hunkered down is what I think, yeah.
Trey Shaar [00:02:46] It could be, but the forecast actually is better today than it was yesterday. And, uh, that was better than two days ago. So what I mean by that is the weather service now expects the temperature to go below freezing in Austin, not until Saturday night, around eight or nine o’clock.
Jerry Quijano [00:03:05] Okay.
Trey Shaar [00:03:05] And it’s only when that happens that all the rain that’s falling can freeze on contact and become freezing rain. So that means there’s a shorter window of time during which we’re going to get freezing rain. And that’s looking like eight, nine o’clock Saturday night until early Sunday morning. And that also going to have some sleet mixed in. So that’s, you know, don’t let your guard down. That’s not insignificant. But it’s not as bad as they were thinking it might be a couple of days.
Jerry Quijano [00:03:31] And you mentioned trauma, a lot of people have trauma from the 2021 storm to 2023 storm. You dealt personally with tree limbs coming down in your yard, I guess that was a 2023 storm. Yeah. So you know personally, that is really what we’re keeping our eyes on, right? This ice accumulation.
Trey Shaar [00:03:47] Yeah, that’s arguably the worst kind of winter precipitation because it can weigh down tree limbs and power lines and cause power outages. And, uh, you know, everybody remembers 2021 because it was so widespread, but 2023 was more localized here in Austin, but people were without power for, you know, days and days. It was bad.
Jerry Quijano [00:04:05] Yeah, and you can, if you’ve been to your local HEB or your local superstore lately, you have seen the impacts already there. So you mentioned that the impacts here in Austin have been pushed back. Originally, we were expecting maybe early Saturday morning, now maybe later Saturday night. Does that mean we’re going to be, the storm effects are likely going to last into Monday morning.
Trey Shaar [00:04:27] Well, the precipitation is expected to end for our area pretty early on Sunday, but the coldest temperatures of this, well, cold front, in addition to the winter storm, the coldest temperatures are not going to happen until Monday morning, and that’s when we’re going to be in the teens. And that actually has improved also, because just yesterday we were looking at lows in the teens in Austin for three mornings in a row, and now it’s just Monday morning.
Jerry Quijano [00:04:51] Okay, well, we have about a minute left. What have we heard from local officials, government officials about the preparedness ahead of this storm?
Trey Shaar [00:04:58] Well, TxDOT has been pre-treating roads, and that may be a problem because now we’re expecting heavy rain tomorrow, and that could wash off the pre-Treatment, so I’d expect them to revisit that. ERCOT says this is not 2021. They say they’ve got more capacity, they’re better prepared, so they’re not concerned. However, were they concerned before 2021? I don’t know. And the city and county are… Like the mayor and the county judge are gonna go in front of reporters tomorrow morning and off of the latest there I expect they’re gonna say they’re ready for this as the head of Austin Energy did earlier this week. He said they’re already preparing.
Jerry Quijano [00:05:39] Alright, well, we will continue to bring you the latest updates from the city officials tomorrow on Austin Signal. We have a bunch of ways for you to be prepared ahead of the storm moving in over at KUT.org. And of course, KUT’s newscast editor, Trey Shaar, will be following it just like the rest of us. And maybe we’ll have him back on the show. Trey, thank you for coming in. We appreciate the update. Central Texas cities continue confirming immigration and customs enforcement operations, the latest being the city of Elgin on its Facebook page. Yesterday KUT News shared on social media an interview and video of a woman who saw first-hand operation in Kyle while she was waiting in the drive-thru line to get some coffee. As these operations increase, so does the concern for public safety as reports of slack hiring practices and low training regulations for ICE officers continue to surface, sometimes in the forms of viral social media videos. For more insight, we’re talking with Alain Stephens, who wrote about this for The Intercept. He’s an investigative reporter covering gun violence, arms trafficking, and federal law enforcement. Alain, thank you for being on the show. Thanks for having me. So can you first just tell us a little bit, we’re gonna talk about the training that is required. Can you tell us little bit about your background with law enforcement training?
Alain Stephens [00:06:59] Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I’m coming in a little bit hot on this one. I’m coming a little big, not only as just like a journalist, but like, because I was a police officer, I was a Police Officer from Texas. And I’m very well aware of the municipal law enforcement training pipeline, the state law enforcement training, pipeline, and the typical federal law enforcement training pipeline. And so but I’m here to just kind of tell you from a perspective. So we’re just going to separate the philosophy of what they’re doing from a tactical perspective. This is a disaster. And when you’re in the police academy, one of the things they hone in is an officer safety. You do a little bit of CCP, you do a bit of law, but the majority of what you’re doing is how to walk. How to not drop your gun, how to not slip on your ass when you have body armor, right? How to, you know, not lock yourself out of the car, how to control, right, a real time environment and keep people in custody and keep people safe.
Jerry Quijano [00:08:01] Well I mentioned earlier that these viral videos of ice encounters, some critics of ice have found them comical, you use the phrase dystopian cringe, but in the article you say that these videos show something that’s more worrisome, it sounds like that’s what you were kind of about to get into right now.
Alain Stephens [00:08:19] I mean, the first thing is it’s inherently, and I just cannot overemphasize enough, it’s dangerous. It’s just straight up dangerous, right? Some of the stuff that you’re seeing, like when you’re in the police academy, just keep it real, there’s a saying, how many guns are on the scene at any given time when you show up? At least one, your own. So I’m over here watching federal agents, right? And they’re dropping guns. They’re waving guns around. There’s incidents of crossfire. U.S. Marshal got injured, right. And so when you’re looking at some of these situations, like the shooting of Goode in Minnesota and stuff like that. I’m here to just tell you that like what people are seeing is an absolute training failure. It’s people putting themselves in situations where they have to shoot themselves out of. And I’m even going to put it further. And I want people to start looking at this when you’re trained. You’re not only trained to hit the target. You’re trained to know what lies beyond that. And so I’m going to sound pretty brutal here. But if that was Osama bin Laden in the car, who was behind the car? Agents? Civilians? Children, and he’s throwing rounds. So I’m even going to back up here and just kind of give you some examples of how the training pipeline, we’ll do a little fun math here. Go ahead. So even in this state that we’re in, the average police academy time in Texas is about 40 weeks. Austin PD is 32 weeks around there. Texas state troopers is 30 weeks in resident. You got to there. ATF, the Waco guys who, you know, typically kind of get booted on for not having the greatest tactics, right, 27 weeks. And when you look at this, you know, the six week pipeline compared to ICE, like we could put it in numbers, they’re 83% less trained than your average police officer. 79% less training than the average Austin police officer. When you see an ICE agent running around with all this gear, all this body armor, there’s 77% less train than a Texas state trooper. Like we could put some math on it, right? And it shows. It’s almost like in the military, there’s certain stuff you don’t want to cheat on. You don’t wanna cheat on the fighter pilot tests. Because why? Because if you get up in the air and you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re gonna crash a billion dollar plane and create an international incident.
Jerry Quijano [00:10:38] You talked a little bit about the amount of money that has been budgeted for immigration and customs enforcement. So how do you think we ended up in this situation that we are seeing play out across so many cities in the nation?
Alain Stephens [00:10:52] Well, quite frankly, I mean, and I’m just going to say this for any sort of massive hiring situation when it comes to law enforcement. And this is what’s quite concerning. Any police department will tell you this training is a long pipeline. It is a incredibly long pipeline, all the stuff that I also said, once you get out of the academy, you go into field training with a essentially a one-on-one field training officer who’s going to monitor you for another six months before they let you really start operating independently. And so when you start seeing these rushes of throwing money and bodies at people under a promise of a very short timeline, There’s just no way you can deploy those people out there with adequate knowledge of the criminal courtroom procedures, adequate knowledge is the law, and especially adequate knowledge of literally safety tactics, literally how you carry yourself. And a lot of the stuff is just basic, you would be smoked in in a typical police academy, they would not let this fly. Nevertheless, have you out here with rifle resistant plate carriers, and all your tactical doodads and which you do not even know how to operate, homie. Let’s just keep it real. Like even in the basic police academy. Like you still have to do additional advanced rifle courses to even operate all of these tools. And so It’s just kind of sad because what they’re doing is quantity over quality. And here’s the thing that I’m super afraid of is that right now, I’m just going to put this out here. The situations that ICE is confronting with, thank God, the American public has been essentially docile in this because when you started looking at law enforcement encounters, which is what I also do a lot of work on historical ones and stuff like that, you know, if they do come across a suspect that, that is you got two suspects with the weapon, it’s almost always a law enforcement encounter where law enforcement injury is going to occur, like historically. And so like, we’re not even talking about hard law enforcement tactics. It’s really literally like they cannot control the streets that they’re on. And so I’m really kind of raising the alarm and just saying, listen, this is sliding sideways into stuff. That’s going to be a lot worse because an untrained agent is a dangerous agent, period. An unconfident agent is dangerous agent period. I know this is going to sound wild, but if you’re ice agent, listening to this, I’m here as someone who’s former law enforcement and been through the training pipeline and talking to other federal agents who are currently in there, including within HSI. And I’m here to tell you, they’re making, they are putting you in danger as an agent.
Jerry Quijano [00:13:46] Okay, Alan, we only have a minute left. You talk in the article about the public credibility that law enforcement has been working to gain over so many years and how that is sort of being eroded by what we are seeing play out through immigration and customs enforcement situations. Do you expect that to change since now there is sort of credibility being lost among local law enforcement when it comes to ICE?
Alain Stephens [00:14:10] I mean, we’re seeing it in real time. Um, I actually think that it’s a little bit more of a complex situation because you know, historically, yeah, like one of the things is that, you know even if you look at entertainment shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and stuff like that have had to contend with the fact that the public does not see law enforcement even broadly as credible as it once was. And so law enforcement’s response has been to kind of do a whole bunch of things from even hiring their own PR firms to try to do more community action, et cetera, et I think when I say it’s a little bit more complex in this situation is because if local police you know, it always ends up kind of the buck always ends up kind of stopping with them no matter what. If you know in some of the police departments in the few police departments across America that said, listen, we’re not going to have this, you know untrained guys on the street creating more public safety chaos that’s antithetical to public safety. I actually can see a little bit of boost in that. But for the local law enforcement who, you know, bend or stay silent on this This is gonna create more credibility problems. And so people don’t see ICE agent running around. They see police. That’s what ICE puts on. They say ICE police on their patch. And people are just gonna shortcut that. So I’m almost saying for other officers and stuff like that, for people who are in public safety training, for the guys who are actually wearing the ICE badge right now and are in this car, these guys are robbing you, man. They’re ripping you off and they’re putting you in danger.
Jerry Quijano [00:15:47] All right, we have been speaking with Alain Stephens. He is an investigative reporter at The Intercept. We’re gonna have a link to his reporting in our show notes and at kut.org slash signal. Alain, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. And thank you out there for making Austin Signal part of your day. We have more coming up after this break. And don’t forget, you can find more in our show notes and at kut.org slash signal. This is Austin Signal. Thanks for being here. We wanna talk a little music on today’s show and to help us do just that, we are joined by Miley Carballo from our sister station, KUTX. Howdy Miley.
Maile Carballo [00:16:44] Well, hey, Jerry, how’s
Jerry Quijano [00:16:45] I think this is your first appearance in 2026.
Maile Carballo [00:16:48] Oh my stars!
Jerry Quijano [00:16:49] Happy new year and there’s not just a regular old Thursday, right? What is today?
Maile Carballo [00:16:54] It is not. Today is Daniel Johnson’s birthday. He would have been 65, but it’s also the Hi-Ho Are You Day.
Jerry Quijano [00:17:01] Yeah, yeah, so what is high? How are you day in case someone out there isn’t familiar?
Maile Carballo [00:17:05] Yeah, so if you’re familiar with, you know, Daniel Johnston, he was an outsider artist of many means, but most famous probably for his Hi How Are You Frog mural.
Jerry Quijano [00:17:18] Yeah, just down the street from us over here.
Maile Carballo [00:17:20] Right down the street. Super cool. Right now it’s just a standing wall, unfortunately.
Jerry Quijano [00:17:24] I think it’s even cooler that way for some reason just that one wall in the middle. I really like that
Maile Carballo [00:17:30] I mean, it does show how important he was, like we’re going to preserve his art no matter what. But essentially, the Hi How Are You Project has kind of claimed this day as Daniel Johnson’s birthday and also kind of as a way to advocate for their platform, which the HiHowAreYou Project just kind of aims to educate young adults about the importance of mental health, which was something that Daniel Johnston did suffer from. Um, just kind of through creative elements like music and art and things of that sort.
Jerry Quijano [00:18:01] And I know that they normally do some events around, hi, how are you day? What are they doing this year?
Maile Carballo [00:18:06] They do, yeah. So there are multiple events. Typically they do a benefit concert and that will be happening tomorrow at the Paramount Theater. Nathaniel Rateliff is soloing. He’s gonna be performing and headlining the show and I just, I cannot recommend it enough. I went last year, Madison Cunningham played with Andrew Bird and it was just a wonderful way to celebrate Daniel Johnston. They sang some of his music and also to fundraise for the event.
Jerry Quijano [00:18:34] Yeah, to support a good cause. And if you can’t make it out, maybe you can buy some merch. I have a hi, how are you beanie. That is the most complimented item I have ever had in my life. So maybe you grab one of those as well. OK, so let’s switch things up a little bit and talk now about AI and the music industry. What’s going on with Bandcamp? What is Bandcamp for someone who might not be familiar?
Maile Carballo [00:18:58] Right, so Bandcamp is a platform, it’s an app. Post MAlaine has gotten famous off of it, Billy Eilish. Essentially new artists can just freely upload their music and it’s findable for most people on the internet. A lot of rappers will do that, Bandcamp’s kind of famous for its type of trap rap.
Jerry Quijano [00:19:18] Okay, and and sort of like an ability to directly buy from the artists in a lot of cases, right?
Maile Carballo [00:19:24] Yeah, that is true. And we’ve talked about AI and the signal before Universal Music Group has partnered with Suno and UDO, which are different AIs that their artists can use. But Bandcamp is saying no to that. They’re saying no AI is allowed on Bandcamp music that is generated wholly or in substantial part by AI is not permitted. And all of the styles that AI can replicate is also not permitted So they’re encouraging users to send in flags for their team to review to keep everything as human and creative as possible.
Jerry Quijano [00:20:04] Before you get out of here for today, let’s bring it back home to KUTX, who is the Artist of the Month for January?
Maile Carballo [00:20:09] Absolutely. Our first artist of the month this year is Annabel Cherlegs. They’re a super great kind of surf rock, kind of psychedelic adjacent group led by singer Lindsay Macken. And a fun fact about them is actually that Annabel Cherleg’s was her alter ego and her original college rock band. An amazing name. The group itself though is wonderful. Nolan Potter kind of A Psych God here in Austin is the guitarist. Their new album, Waking Up, is releasing. And speaking of Psych Gods, Ty Siegel produced the album, super cool. It’s their third full length album and I’m super psyched about it.
Jerry Quijano [00:20:49] We got a chance to speak with Lindsey Macon when they were doing their studio 1a and you said psych I saw that they’re gonna be performing at psych fest with Ty Siegel lots of great names there So an exciting time for live music and I know Annabelle chair legs I believe is gonna be having a album release show next month We’re gonna have more about that We I said as I said got a change to talk with Lindsey Mackin and we’ll have that coming up next week on the Austin signal We’ve been chatting with Miley Carbio from our sister station in KUTX. Miley, thanks for the update, as always. Thank you, Jerry. And in addition to the Hi How Are You Day events that are happening this weekend, our Art Beat desk has you covered on other happenings going on here in Austin, including a gallery opening at Women and Their Work and a short fringe at Frontera Fest. You can find out more about those at kut.org slash Art Beat. And one thing that’s not happening this weekend because of the weather that we are expecting, is the screening and Q&A for the short film Walk With Death, which we told you about yesterday. We had a conversation with filmmaker Melissa Nguyen. Again, that Q& A that was scheduled for this Saturday has been postponed until Saturday, March 21st because of that inclement weather that we are expecting. So we’ll remind you in March about the Q&a and screening. And let me take this moment now to remind you that we have. Plenty of ways for you to prepare ahead of that weather that we are expecting. Trey Shaar was with us earlier in the show. He said that city officials here in Austin will be meeting tomorrow morning. Of course, we’re gonna have an update for you on the Signal tomorrow. So we will talk to you then with the latest that we have and we look forward to chatting with you and we hope you have a wonderful day. Thanks for being with us here on Austin Signal. Kristen Cabrera is our managing producer. Rayna Sevilla is our technical director, and I’m your host, Jerry Quijano. Have a great day.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
