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.
The Austin Signal is a production
of KUT News, hosted by
Jerry Quijano.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
And what
are you going to continue working on
in the coming days, in the coming
weeks? What stories are you focusing
on?
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?
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.
Thank you for having me.
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?
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.
So what is the reasoning behind this
initiative from the governor that
was issued yesterday?
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.
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?
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
Okay, you mentioned numbers.
What do we know about the numbers of
H-1B visa holders here in Texas?
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.
Okay.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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...
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.
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?
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.
Okay, that sounds good, sounds good
off the bat.
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.
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
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.
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.
We're trying to approach things a
little bit differently, but for the
most part, what you're going to hear
is- What?
What what season sorry to interrupt
but what season will this be for
y'all show?
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.
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.