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.
The Austin Signal is a production
of KUT News, hosted by
Jerry Kehoe.
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?
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.
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?
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?
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?
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
Okay, you used the word tense, let's
hear a little bit from that.
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.
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?
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.
And I know there was a woman there,
Carmen, I believe was her name, what
did she have to say?
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.
First, I don't trust the police.
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.
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.
Okay, tell us a little bit about
what city leaders had to say.
I know that you spoke with Chito
Vela, a council member.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
Thank you, Jerry.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oh, all that we can leave this
pot. No, we can't.
All right, we'll take it.
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.
We have to catch a train and
a bus, you understand?
Prince, put your bundles on the
wagon.
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.
Goodbye.
Our card, Mother.
Come to us soon.
I will, man.
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.
It's good to be with you, Jerry.
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?
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.
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.
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
Was it thong peninsula?
No, it was not.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
So the Wishbone Bridge is opening
tomorrow, Nathan, with a little
ceremony. What's gonna be happening?
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.
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.