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Immigrations and Customs Enforcement operations have been happening in Austin and Central Texas in recent week. During the past weekend’s weather event, local officials had to dispel rumors fueled by the operation. The lack of information and communication around these operations is causing panic and anxiety that can boil beyond social media.
Gov. Greg Abbott is freezing new H-1B visa applications until 2027, with some exceptions. The move is the latest in the administration’s scrutiny of foreign workers employed at taxpayer-funded institutions.
We’re less than a month away from the start of the new Austin FC season. We’ll take a look at some of the team’s offseason moves.
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] Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations have been happening in Austin and Central Texas in recent weeks, and during this past weekend’s weather event, local officials had to dispel rumors of a large-scale enforcement operation here in Austin. The lack of information and communication around these operations is causing panic and anxiety that can boil beyond social media. We’re going to have more about that. And Governor Greg Abbott is freezing new H-1B visa applications until 2027, with some exceptions. The move is the latest in the administration’s scrutiny of foreign workers employed at taxpayer-funded institutions. More about the order on today’s show.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:00:45] The Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Jerry Quijano.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:49] And we’re less than a month away from the start of the new Austin FC season. We’ll talk about the team’s off season moves today on Austin Signal. Howdy out there. This is Austin Signal. Thank you for making us part of your day. It’s Wednesday, January 28th. I’m your host, Jerry Kehannel. Let’s get started with today’s show. While trying to get out information about the inclement winter weather over the weekend, local officials also had to put out information to dispel rumors about a major immigration and customs enforcement operation here in Austin. For more about how that situation evolved, we’re chatting with Emiliano Tahui Gomez. He covers immigration and Latinos at the Austin American Statesman. Hi, Emiliano. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me, Jerry. Now, we know that there are real ICE operations happening across central Texas. We have seen that play out. What sparked the discussion about this planned major event that was supposed to take place in Austin over the weekend?
Emilliano Tahui Gómez [00:01:55] Yeah, that’s a great question. I think the source of these claims are still not completely clear, but we do know, I mean, I know that they were around at least since Thursday of last week. I know I started seeing them on Friday, although rumors and claims about ice being here or there are, as you know, very common here as they are elsewhere in the United States. But they really did seem to pick up steam this time. I mean they were shared by a lot of prominent individuals on social media and from food influencers to a prominent immigration attorney here in Austin, and they largely revolved around two claims, which were that one, that ICE had checked out a big block of rooms in a downtown hotel, and two, that people were seeing ICE arresting service workers after work on Friday night. And so, because those two claims were being so widely shared, and because they were such a similar claim, you know, we at the States began to kind of try to track that out and make sense of, you know why were these claims picking up a lot of speed and how much validity or soundness… Was there to them. And what did y’all find? We reached out to a lot of the people who had made these claims and were often told that it was coming from a friend that they had heard from, so a sort of chain of people having heard from other people. And then we began to reach out also to local elected officials. The first who spoke to me, Councilman Chito Vela, who you know represents the very immigrant heavy North Austin part of the city, and Vela said he had spent the whole Saturday as well after noticing this large number of claims, reaching out to people in downtown hotels, businesses, trying to make sense of things themselves. He’s a former immigration attorney reaching out to other immigration attorneys and that by Saturday he was pretty convinced that those weren’t true, that this had been information that had picked up a lot of attention because of the fraughtness, I think, of the moment. People were at home and people were turning their eyes to the news and seeing what was happening in Minneapolis. Absolutely. And as you and I know, Minneapolis for the last week has really been the center point of national tension. And we see extreme amounts of conflict between local residents and the large number of federal immigration agents that are there, and that has even led to the fatal killing of a man there.
Jerry Quijano [00:04:01] And amid all this uncertainty and misinformation, possibly on social media or this searching for real information from city officials, what do we actually know about if ICE operations are taking place? Do we know anything concrete in terms of those operations right now?
Emilliano Tahui Gómez [00:04:18] Yeah, I mean, I should be clear. So then as you know, as you and I were discussing kind of what happened this weekend, the city on Saturday evening, the mayor, Police Chief Davis came out and, you know and tried to really hold strong and said, you know, we’ve been in touch with ICE. We’ve we’ve heard what people are saying. We have really tried to sort this out and we are being assured this is not happening. Right. But seemingly residents were not immediately assured by those sorts of statements. Right. And I think that speaks very strongly to the complete collapse of trust. That you see in a liberal city like Austin with the federal government and its communication, right? But I think that distrust comes from the fact that A, ICE is uncommunicative and has been proven by the media in many instances to provide inaccurate or false information, right. And I think it also comes from that fact that they are not wrong to think that ICE is in Austin. I mean, we’ve done reporting that outlets like yourselves have done have shown that ICE has very much been in the city through the past 12 months. I think the strongest evidence that we see of that is their collaboration with the Texas Department of Public Safety, the state troopers, particularly in immigrant-heavy parts of the city, like the Rumbert Lamar corridor. I know we wrote last year about how they were consistently going around an elementary school in that neighborhood, arresting parents near that school and causing a lot of fear and really instability in that area because it led to arrests and deportations. But that is something if you were to go on to a Spanish-language Austin area. Social media page, if that’s the way to say it. Like an influencer page. You will see that people are sharing these claims. I mean, sometimes those claims turn out to not be true. But I mean there are there’s a lot of people taking videos of ICE very, very, very often with DPS in immigrant heavy parts of the city. So we know that DPS is contacting ICE during traffic stops in those situations. So Austinites I think are very correct to believe that the ICE is here, that ICE is acting, that if they disagree with that, then there is something to disagree with. You know, but we do not have not been able to confirm. Any sort of large scale operation that has ever occurred in Austin, singularly by federal immigration agents in the same way that we’ve seen in other large cities in the United States.
Jerry Quijano [00:06:26] Well, yesterday on our show we had a reported piece from the KUT newsroom with voices from Elgin, people who are affected. One undocumented person spoke on this story. I was wondering, what are you hearing from the community here in Austin? You mentioned earlier, you know, that trust that’s being broken. And what else are you hearing from the people that you’re speaking with?
Emilliano Tahui Gómez [00:06:51] What I thought was very interesting about this weekend, going out and reporting about some of these claims, is a lot of these things I saw this time around, this weekend were on the English language side of things. They were people in the restaurant industry, downtown, people with social platforms on the english language side things. And I remember reaching out to a lot of immigrant activists who are Spanish speaking during the Austin area over the weekend. They always see these videos. And to them, the idea that they should, if this means something to them if this mean something to their loved ones, that they should be keeping up with this. Is always there. And so this particular rumor that I think a lot of us saw this weekend, people, a lot immigrants that I speak to day in, day out, are trying to be very aware of this, have already been impacted by this, are making difficult decisions as to whether, if they do not have legal status, whether it’s worth being in this country. You know, and those are stories we see day in day out and we’re trying to tell the statesman and I’m sure you all are as well.
Jerry Quijano [00:07:49] And what are you going to continue working on in the coming days, in the coming weeks? What stories are you focusing on?
Emilliano Tahui Gómez [00:07:57] I think we’re very interested to continue to document the economic effects that we’re seeing on many immigrant families. I know that’s something we’re interested in at the States, but I know in some way this has already come out in our reporting when we’ve very often cover the arrests of men and families and in families where the man was the largely the sole breadwinner of a family. You see the complete collapse and how effective this immigration crackdown has been on putting people in very difficult positions, and that’s very arguably the intent here. And I think that’s something we think is very important to continue to make sense of. We know it’s breaking people, but how many people are able to, in some way, make their way past this? And when are these final straws for a lot of the immigrant individuals, immigrant residents, immigrant neighbors that Austinites have?
Jerry Quijano [00:08:48] We have been speaking with Emiliano Tahui Gomez. You can read his story and more from his reporting at the Statesman. He covers immigration and Latinos there. Emiliano, thanks for coming on the show. We appreciate you. Governor Greg Abbott this week directed all public universities and state agencies to freeze new H-1B visa applications through the end of the next legislative session in 2027, except without written permission from the Texas Workforce Commission. For more about the order and its impacts, we’re joined by Jessica Priest. She covers higher education for the Texas Tribune. Thanks for being with us today.
Jessica Priest [00:09:28] Thank you for having me.
Jerry Quijano [00:09:29] So first off, I wanted to ask who is eligible for an H-1B visa and how are they used by public universities and state agencies?
Jessica Priest [00:09:37] H-1B visas typically are people that have PhD degrees. They are for like specialty roles, and so I don’t know about eligibility, but that’s what they’re normally used for in the university setting. People with H-1B visas are professors, doctors, really skilled researchers.
Jerry Quijano [00:10:04] So what is the reasoning behind this initiative from the governor that was issued yesterday?
Jessica Priest [00:10:09] The governor, we got like a preview that he was thinking about this like a week, maybe over the weekend. Another news outlet had reported that he was asking the Texas A&M University system about their use of H-1B visas. And conservative news outlets have reported about, you know, Texas A& M system and the University of Texas system, spending a lot of money, helping, I don’t know. Helping is the right word, but facilitating these, like, petitions for and employing people with H-1B visas. So I think the governor is concerned about the cost and also about the, he in his statement yesterday talked about how he wants these rolls to go to Texans.
Jerry Quijano [00:11:03] I mentioned that he is freezing these new H-1B visa applications, except without written permission from the Texas Workforce Commission. What else was included in this directive?
Jessica Priest [00:11:18] The universities and state agencies that employ people with H-1B visas have to report information to the Texas Workforce Commission. They have to, like, report the number of people they employ, their countries of origin, the roles that they fill, so their job titles, and when their visa expires. He also wants documentation about Just so showing that they made like a reasonable effort to employ a qualified Texan for the job
Jerry Quijano [00:11:53] Okay, you mentioned numbers. What do we know about the numbers of H-1B visa holders here in Texas?
Jessica Priest [00:11:59] Um, so I was getting a crash course on this earlier this week, but, uh, there’s this great website, uh you know, where you can look up like employer data for, uh H1B visas and like The people who are the companies that employ the most H-1B visa holders are in the private sector, number one. But if you filter it in Texas, in the education sector, the number one employer is Dallas ISD, which isn’t the subject of the governor’s directive. It’s just universities and state agencies. And so if you look at universities, the The number one is UT Southwestern Medical Center.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:12:50] Okay.
Jessica Priest [00:12:51] 220 as of this data that I’m looking at for September 30th, 2025, followed by Texas A&M University and College Station, and then the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. UT Austin actually comes in number five. They have 165.
Jerry Quijano [00:13:12] You mentioned those emails obtained that were sent to a Texas A&M University leaders. Have you heard anything from other public universities here in Texas?
Jessica Priest [00:13:21] I reached out on Monday to MD Anderson and UT Dallas and UT Southwestern Medical Center for comment, but I didn’t hear back from them. On Tuesday, after the governor’s order came out, both the Texas A&M system and the UT system said that they would be complying with the governor order and they’d be sending him. The information that he wants.
Jerry Quijano [00:13:51] Okay, we only have about 40 seconds left. The last question I have, this sort of crackdown isn’t just happening here in Texas, correct?
Jessica Priest [00:13:57] No, it’s also happening in Florida. Last year, the governor there was asking a lot of the same questions that Governor Abbott is asking, and he proposed the same thing, like a pause. But unlike here, the proposal is being taken up by the universities themselves, and they’re going to be adopting a policy.
Jerry Quijano [00:14:19] Okay, that is Jessica Priest. She covers higher education for the Texas Tribune. We’re gonna have more. We will have her story in the show notes for today’s podcast and you can find it right now over at kut.org. Jessica, thanks for coming on the show. Thank you. And thank you out there for spending part of your Wednesday here with Austin Signal. We are brought to you by listener powered public radio, KUT. We will be back in just one moment. This is Austin Signal. Thank you for spending part of your Wednesday here with us. So we are less than a month away from the start of the newest Austin FC season and here to help us talk about what’s been happening this off season is KUT’s Juan Garcia. He is one of the hosts of the KUT Austin FC podcast, Vamos Verde. Juan, thanks for coming on the show. Always a pleasure, Jerry. So last year’s team made the playoffs, made a first round exit, so didn’t advance too far. They had a pretty good season, but every team is going to look to retool in the off-season and to revamp. What did Austin FC really need going into this recent off- season? Well, the…
Juan Diego Garcia [00:15:41] Biggest area of need that most folks looked for in the offseason would have been some way of improving the goal tally. They struggled for stretches on the year to score relatively consistently. Granted, that could have been affected by many things. Injuries, a relatively new squad that was still gelling with one another, but it did come after a summer where they spent a lot of money on attackers. And so that was the area that I think disappointed most folks in what can be seen in many respects as a season where they met and in some ways exceeded the expectations going into the year.
Jerry Quijano [00:16:19] Yeah, this might be soccer, but we’re still Americans, we still want to see points on the board, you know, that still feels like translating to success. And Austin FC made a recent signing that they’re going to be announcing tomorrow. Who is this person and is he going to help score some goals?
Juan Diego Garcia [00:16:36] He is a known quantity in Major League Soccer. He arrives in Austin holding the record for the most goals scored by a single player at Orlando City.
Jerry Quijano [00:16:46] Okay, that sounds good, sounds good off the bat.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:16:51] And he’s an upgrade on what the team had. Ultimately, they made a move to sell winger Osman Bukhari after a couple, I think two and a half years with the team, or a year and a 1 half with the theme. Bukkari arrived with a lot of expectations around, you know, being this dynamic winger that could take defenders on one-on-one. But his production never really justified the cost of bringing him in and holding him at a premium roster slot. Uh, so he got shipped out to Poland and in his place, they brought in Fakundo Torres. Um, this is a guy that, like I said, has proven experience in major league soccer, uh, would slot into his role as a winger relatively effectively in a one-to-one. He’s younger than Bucari. You’re bringing in a guy who knows how to score goals in major league soccer. And I think that’s the. Logic around this signing is we need to score more goals. So we brought in a guy who has proven to know how to do just that in Major League Soccer.
Jerry Quijano [00:17:53] And scoring goals comes in a variety of ways in Major League Soccer. Some people create their own shot, some people are in the right place at the right time and just know how to put the ball in the back of the net. Facundo Torres, what kind of player is he? Is he a finisher? Is he creator? It’s very clear that
Juan Diego Garcia [00:18:10] he scores goals more than he creates them. And that could be something that gives some folks pause in terms of like the expectations going into the year. The team had a clear need to create more goals. They weren’t scoring the chances that they were creating last year, but in many cases those chances weren’t the best chances that could have been created. And so that’s why there was a lot of questions around whether they would be targeting. A player that’s more of an orchestrator, a chance creator, rather than a chance finisher. Instead, they actually went a different route. They brought in two chance finishers last offseason in Mirtuzuni and Brandon Baskes occupying two designated player slots. Those are the premier roster slots where the cost of acquiring a player and paying their salary, only a certain portion of that is actually going to apply to the cap. So that’s designed for teams to be able to bring in more expensive players with higher transfer fees, higher salaries, and still be able to field competitive teams against other teams that also have three or four players that are being paid a little bit more or cost a little more to be brought in. What they didn’t do so far this season is bring in a player that is that chance creator profile instead choosing to bring a guy that is going to slot into Bukkari’s role but they hope will score goals at a much higher rate than Bukkarri. That tells me that they’re comfortable with the players that they have and with the system that they have that they feel they will be able to create enough high quality chances consistently for these players to do what they do best which is put the ball in the back of the net.
Jerry Quijano [00:19:59] Well, a new season for Austin FC means a new season of the Vamos Verdad podcast, which you host along with KUT’s Jimmy Moss. What are y’all cooking up for this new season? Ooh, quite a bit.
Juan Diego Garcia [00:20:13] We’re trying to approach things a little bit differently, but for the most part, what you’re going to hear is- What?
Jerry Quijano [00:20:16] What what season sorry to interrupt but what season will this be for y’all show?
Juan Diego Garcia [00:20:20] This is gonna be our third season and, you know, we’re looking to maybe mix things up a little bit, but not too much. We’re gonna try to put more of a focus, more of an emphasis than we did last year on stuff around the team. The artists that do the heartbeat and the anthem and that contribute to sort of the culture side of building Austin FC’s relevance in the city. We’re going to be talking to artists, we’re gonna be talking too. Some of the new players as well. Just looking to approach things with a fresh set of eyes. You know, we’ve done it for two seasons now. We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, but we’re seeing areas that we can improve on. And yeah, I’m really excited to see what what’s coming up this season. We actually have an interview coming up with someone who was on The Signal earlier this week. We’ll be talking to Lindsay Mackin of Annabelle Chairlegs in this sort of early portion of this upcoming season.
Jerry Quijano [00:21:18] Very cool. Well, we are excited for the new season for Austin FC and for Vamos Verde. That is Juan Garcia, one of the hosts of the show. Thanks for coming on the signal, Juan. Thanks for having me, Jerry. And before we get out of here today, we’ve got another update from the KUT newsroom. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suited Delaware-based nurse practitioner, alleging that she broke Texas law by prescribing abortion pills to women in Texas. In the suit filed This week Paxton said that the operator of the organization Her Safe Harbor has sent packages containing the medications Mifepristone and Misopristol to women in cities including Beaumont, Houston, and El Paso. The suit references statements Lynch made to media outlets, including in a profile by the Austin American statesman. Her Safe harbor advertises itself as a telehealth service that offers, quote, safe private care to women and all 50 states. The action follows a cease and desist letter the Texas Attorney General’s Office sent Lynch last year. KUT’s health care reporter Olivia Aldridge has more over at KUT.org and you can find more from what we do every single day at K-U-T dot org slash signal. That is it for today’s show. Thank you for making us part of your day. Thanks to Emiliano Tahui Gomez, to Jessica Priest, and to Juan Garcia for their help with today’s episode. And as always, thank you to Rayna Sevilla and Kristen Cabrera for making Austin’s Signal happen every single day. I’m Jerry Quijano. We will talk to you tomorrow.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
