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.
The Austin Signal is a production
of KUT News, hosted by
Jerry Quijano.
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?
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.
I do, but can you just remind us for
the listener?
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.
Yeah, hunkered down is what I think,
yeah.
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.
Okay.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Okay, well, we have about a minute
left.
What have we heard from local
officials, government officials
about the preparedness ahead of this
storm?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
Well, hey, Jerry, how's
I think this is your first
appearance in 2026.
Oh my stars!
Happy new year and there's
not just a regular old Thursday,
right? What is today?
It is not.
Today is Daniel Johnson's birthday.
He would have been 65, but it's
also the Hi-Ho Are You Day.
Yeah, yeah, so what is high?
How are you day in case someone out
there isn't familiar?
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.
Yeah, just down the street from us
over here.
Right down the street.
Super cool. Right now it's just a
standing wall, unfortunately.
I think it's even cooler that
way for some reason just that one
wall in the middle.
I really like that
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.
And I know that they normally do
some events around, hi, how are you
day? What are they doing this year?
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.
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?
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.
Okay, and and sort of
like an ability to directly buy from
the artists in a lot of cases,
right?
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.
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?
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.
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.