Speaker 1: This week's trip Cast is sponsored by south By Southwest.
Hello and welcome to the Texas Tribune trip Cast for Tuesday,
February seventeenth, twenty twenty sixth. I am Matthew Watkins, editor
in chief of the Tribune. My co host Eleanor Klebanoff
is off today covering the rollout of early voting and
traveling for reporting. It is, of course, the first day
of early voting, so I hope you are making your
way to the polls, and I just want to give
a quick shout out before we get started to our
live trip cast next week, February twenty fourth in Austin,
nine am. If you want to hear us preview those primaries,
both the Republican and the Democratic, you can join me
and Eleanor live in Austin in our downtown study. You
can find that at Texastribune dot org slash events. But
today we're not going to talk about the primaries. We're
going to talk about in a usual incident that happened
in El Paso last week many of you, I'm sure no.
Last Wednesday, El Paso Wins woke up to find that
their airport had been shut down for ten days due
to national security concerns. The restrictions didn't end up lasting
nearly that long. They were lifted essentially that same day,
but they did bring a good amount of political turnmoil
in fighting within the federal government and anxiety and fear
on the ground in El Paso. And they've raised a
lot of further questions about the government's border security operations
and their impacts on the lives of people who actually
live across the Rio Grande from Mexico. Joining us to
talk about this today is my friend Robert Moore, CEO
of El Paso Matters More found at al Paso Matters
in twenty nineteen, is a nonprofit news site to use
journalism to expand civic capacity in our region, and in
that time he's established it as in what's in my book,
sort of the leading local news source in El Paso. Bob,
thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. Matthew, it's good to see you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great to see you. So I wanted to start
by if you could just sort of walk me through
your morning on this day when news sort of broke.
I know you had a story up on your website
very early in El Paso. You know, even earlier for you,
given that ol Passos in mountain time, how did this
sort of land? And you know what went through your mind?
Does this happen? So I was.
Speaker 3: Actually going to bed just about eleven o'clock and I
was settled in, and I keep my phone by the bed,
just because it's an old journalistic habit, and I got
two dings on my phone at about eleven fifteen indicator
I got a text messages. Yeah. My initial instinct was
just certainly, can wait until the morning, and I was
going to letting go.
Speaker 2: But you can relate to this. There's no way I
wasn't going to look at it.
Speaker 3: After a minute, I did look at it, and it
was the first of what became too notices from elected
officials from El Paso that the FAA was about to
implement an order shutting down the airspace over il Passo
for ten days, which it took me a little bit
a little while to process that. Fortunately, my wife is
a licensed drone pilot and is somewhat familiar with FAA
regulations and how to find stuff. So I got up
and I opened up my computer, found the air restrictions,
and what really caught my attention was that these air
restrictions authorized use of deadly force for any planes viewed
as a threat. That like woke me up, and so
that set me off on what would turn out to
be at like a seventeen hour journey. I actually did
not sleep for about thirty eight consecutive hours.
Speaker 2: Is this from the private day?
Speaker 3: And then as this was unfolding, so we got our
initial story up just a little after midnight. I think
we're the first news organization to report on this, and
then we kept kind of updating it throughout the morning,
and as you indicated, by about six am local time
here that FAA had lifted the Alpasso restrictions. But interestingly enough,
and this didn't get a whole lot of attention, there
was a parallel flight restriction in a part of New
Mexico just west of El Paso, and that stayed in
effect for another two days.
Speaker 2: And I'm happy to talk about sort of my theories
on that.
Speaker 3: But the you know, the big thing was that there
was no explanation to this. There's no communication with local folks,
so obviously the only comparison anybody has to these flight
orders is nine to eleven.
Speaker 2: So it's like, oh my god, what is happening here.
Speaker 3: You know, the Trump administration has talked openly about, you know,
bombing drug labs in Mexico, so we're worried about about that,
and there's just no explanation whatsoever. And then as the
hours unfolded and as the days unfolded, we got a
lot of explanation, and it just it comes down to
just good old fashioned government confidence at every level.
Speaker 2: So that's sort of the short version.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you mentioned you know, you're well, you're working
through the night. I am blissfully asleep, unaware that any
of this is going on. But then I wake up,
you know, pretty early to help start getting my kids
ready for school, and I see this and have that
sort of disoriented reaction of like am I still dreaming?
Like are we under invasion?
Speaker 2: Right now?
Speaker 1: You mentioned, you know, the the only real comparison, the
last time this had happened was on September eleventh, right,
And so that's like the sort of context when these
things go on. I mean, my understanding from your reporting
from other people as reporting, is that local officials did
not get any kind of like heads up or advance
warning on this. I mean, what are they saying to you?
What are their reactions to this in those early hours,
as there don't seem to be any answers here.
Speaker 3: Well, most local officials were finding out from us, and
so like the general reaction is, Bob, what can you
tell us?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: And so when you've got, you know, the local leadership
of the community trying to get information about what happened
from a journalist who hasn't now slept in a full day. Man,
it's not a recipe for success. And you know, the
collors from an Escobar was involved in trying to reach
out to the folks at the FAA to get answers.
I was able, interestingly enough in the restriction noticed there
was actually a bone number like if you have more,
if you need more information about this restriction, called this number.
So I did a two or two number of DC
and I got this poor guy uh uh at the
f a A. And I said, you know, okay, and
I identified myself that I'm a journalist. I said, can
you tell me what's going on? And he said he said,
I can't. And it's and it's not because I won't,
it's because I don't know. They just handed me this
and said to post it Uh. So again that was
not particularly reassuring. Uh And and so there was you know,
by the time the restrictions got lifted with no explanation,
you did have the uh uh sectory of transportation. Sean
Duffy posts a tweet early about you know, a drone
uh impeding in the airspace and it was taken out
and we had to do this. So that was just
said the lie right that that didn't happen. And it's
kind of very typical of what happens a lot with
the Trump administration. For those of us on the border.
It's like, you know, whatever the truth is, like default
to some kind of attack from Mexico, whether it's drones
or people or whatever.
Speaker 2: And you know, the truth that those of us who
live on the border know.
Speaker 3: That there have been drone incursions across the border since
drones got invented. Essentially they happen all the time. And
I'm not saying that's a good thing. Clearly, the cartels
are using it primarily as a surveillance technique to try
to figure out where the border patrol is. But those
those incursions aren't viewed as a threat to our airspace.
And it turns out what is views of the threat
to our airspace by the FAA is the border patrol
firing off lasers with no real discussion about the safety.
Speaker 1: Right, And so this is what sort of becomes revealed
over time in the twenty four hours after this happens,
is essentially that the unic Department Defense was using a
new our Homeland Security was using a new high end
energy laser weapon to take out drones what they believed
were drones being used by Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs
across the border. This laser is essentially being used pretty
close to the El Paso Airport, causing the FAA to
determine that this is unsafe. It's unsafe for planes to fly,
you know, to the airport in this case, right, am
I getting that right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And so lots of interesting things to unpacked there for
those of us who live here. So one is why
are they testing lasers at toward Blitz. The military has
a massive testing facility an hour up the road at
White Sands Missile Range, which has, by the way, cleared
airspace from ground to orbit that nobody can fly over
for exactly this reason.
Speaker 2: And so for whatever reason, the.
Speaker 3: Department of Defense is testing these lasers, I think reported
from the New York Times and some others later said
that this has been going on since about twenty twenty four,
and then in January of this year, the Secretary of Defense,
I'm sorry, the Secretary of War, Pete Heegs, that told
the Army to share their weapons with Department of Homeland Security.
So at some point in January, DHS, which is almost
certainly a border patrol, gets access to these laser weapons,
and that apparently is where the FAA gets a little
bit nervous. They've been in conversation with the Department of
Defense around these issues and hadn't made any headway, and
then they really ran into obstacles trying to work with
Homeland Security. And you know, right, that's the FAA's job
is to keep airspace safe. And some of the reporting
that's come out nationally has been that the relationship between
the FAA and the Department of Defense have been really
strained since last year when you had the tragic accident
at Reagan Airport in DC, where an Army helicopter collided
with an airplane coming in to land.
Speaker 2: So those tensions exist.
Speaker 3: As sort of a backstory here, and so Apparently they
were supposed to have a meeting on February twentieth to
talk about it. The FAA he wanted that meeting move up.
Nothing really happened with that. And then when you have
this deployment of the laser near a Passo International, that's
when the boarder or the fa said, Okay, we have
to act and we have to put in this restriction.
And the restriction they wound up putting in is just insane.
So they shut down the airspace around El Paso and
then a secretary in New Mexico for ten days, starting
late at night on February tenth, supposed to run through
February twentieth. This restriction grounded military, grounded public safety flights,
grounded air ambulances, like everything.
Speaker 2: El Paso was a no flism.
Speaker 3: That is an unprecedented restriction, both in length of time
and scope of restrictions at a major, major city. Even
after nine to eleven, things weren't that drastic. They allowed
public safety flights and some other flights to continue.
Speaker 2: So also because there's no conversation.
Speaker 3: With local leadership, this is like massively disruptive to the
local economy of the nation's twenty third largest city.
Speaker 2: Al Passo International Airport.
Speaker 3: Is a major economic engine, not just for passenger flights,
but for cargo flights. Hospitals rely on getting medical goods
flown in on a just in time inventory basis.
Speaker 2: Since it was a threat to our economy, it.
Speaker 3: Was a threat to public safety, it is a threat
to public health, and no conversations at all from the
federal government to the local government. And also it's worth
noting that Alpasso International Airport is a city owned airport.
They own this property and obviously they're going to have
people coming in in a few hours looking to catch flights.
The airlines weren't notified, so it was just just this
sprawl event.
Speaker 1: Is there any have you heard or seen in El
Pasa matters reporting like did this have you know? It
happened during a sort of low flight traffic time, right,
there's not I'd imagine there's not a lot of El
Paso flights coming in, you know after midnight. But did
this actually impact operations in any way? Were there you know,
air ambulance or flights into El Pasa that were disrupted
because of this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there were Metavac helicopter flights that were rerouted
to Las Cruises in southern New Mexico. Fortunately none of
them as far as we could tell. We're carrying Level
one trauma Patients University Medical Center in Olpasa at the
only Level one trauma center in the region. If somebody
had been in a bad traffic accident or had been
shot in some kind of outlying area, they would not
have gotten the medical care that they needed. But there
were some disruptions, and also the airlines wound up canceling
fourteen flights that were in and out of our Past
International in the morning. They had to preemptively take those
out and then once the restrictions were lifted. Fortunately there
weren't any other disruptions to passing through traffic anyhow, there.
Speaker 2: Was a total fourteen flights that got canceled.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, I mean I think like nationally,
you know, this was viewed as sort of a crazy, wild,
you know, experience in some people's perspectives, almost a sort
of comical like example of the dysfunctioning federal government. Right,
But I mean it did. I was, you know, sitting
there watching this sort of play out that during that day,
and I think it did really kind of lay out
you know why you want a functioning, you know, professional
government that communicates with each other and operates, you know,
with an understanding of the risks and what's important going on,
and it's communicating and and all the different things that
you ask for for your government, that it does have
real impacts. Right, people did have their flights canceled, you know.
I think lucky too that there wasn't some kind of major,
you know, accident or anything like that during that time.
But like, people's lives really could have been at risk here,
if you know, due to this miscommunication and maybe a
lack of understanding of the impact of their their actions here.
I want to talk a little bit of people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there were people who bugged out of El Paso,
uh when there was this uncertainty uh. And it's like,
you know, if something's going to happen here, I don't
want to be here when it happens. So they kind
of jumped in their car and drove off until the
all clear sounded. So, you know, I think the one
thing all those impacts you you layout or real, But
I think the other thing not to lose sight of
is that you had eight hundred thousand people living here
who are waking up in the.
Speaker 2: Morning or in some cases staying.
Speaker 3: Wing through the night, like, what the hell is about
to happen to me? What decisions do I need to
make for my family? That those are pretty serious implications
of this field too.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely all right, let's pause for a second to
hear from our sponsors, and then we'll talk a little
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T R B T sorry t R I B c
A s t okay, so bob. This then set off
a lot of anger by you know, the mayor, the
local members of Congress and everything like that. Tell me
a little bit about just what folks have been saying,
you know, from you know, the leadership capacity in El
Paso in the days following this.
Speaker 3: Now the main message was that not communicating with local
partners is unacceptable and dangerous and and you're right, there
was a lot of anger.
Speaker 2: Initially. Mayor Renard Johnson, who is a pretty laid back
guy and not a boat rocker.
Speaker 3: Uh, he was really really upset and really more outspoken
than I've seen him in the year he's been in office,
really really critical about what had happened. Congress from an
Escobar who was kind of on the front lines of
having to deal with the federal government, also extraordinarily frustrated
with not being able to get information. And then, you know,
I think we also have to acknowledge that there are
others who I think, for parties and reasons, weren't particularly critical.
Congress Montoni Gonzalez, who represents a part of our passo
and interestingly, in the last redistricting fight, was trying to
get the legislature to throw all passive.
Speaker 2: International airport into his district unsuccessfully.
Speaker 3: He basically has not had anything to say other than
all we need to kind of figure out where you know.
Speaker 2: Where things might have went wrong.
Speaker 3: Senator Cruz, I think has been a little bit more
outspoken kind of saying we need a briefing. The Congresswoman
Escobar and three members of Congress from New Mexico have
requested a classified briefing from the affected UH executive agencies.
They asked UH the two Texas manators and Congressman Gonzalez
joining that letter, and they didn't. So even in this
really serious moment for all pass I think to be
frank a warning sign of dysfunction for our government that
we really ought to be paying attention to. You, you're
still seeing this kind of partisan breakdown here where Republicans
and Democrats seem unable to come together and say, let's
fix this problem together. And you know, I think that
this this is a hugely embarrassing moment for the Trump administration,
I'm sure, but their embarrassment shouldn't be our principal concern
right now. And I think in public safety and trying
to make sure that you.
Speaker 2: Know, a bunch of things don't happen again.
Speaker 3: Make sure we don't have a government agencies firing off
experimental lasers in airspace near major cities. Make sure that
the FAA has more clear policies on when to impose
fight and restrictions over majorities. All of these should be
sort of non partisan or bipartisan sorts of points of agreement.
But you know, because of our broken political system, we
can't even get there.
Speaker 1: Right now, right, you know, I mean, you know, we
talk about the deploying of this laser, right and Sean
Duffy among other people, you know, saying that they were
shooting at a drone. I mean, among the things that
were reported by the New York Times and other national
media is that it wasn't actually a drone they shot down,
but rather a what has been described as a party balloon,
and I think in another New York Times article kind
of described it as a sort of metallic you know,
like one of those like you know, balloons you buy
at the grocery store that you know, for a kid's party,
which you know, I mean a lot of people laughed
at and chuckled at, you know, again to to show dysfunction.
But again I think it's just worth repeating, right that
that dysfunction has human impacts. It you know, terrifies hundreds
of thousands of people, that it shuts down travel and
and and all those different types of things. But I mean,
I feel like it also raised a question in my mind,
and I'm curious about how you think about this as
someone who actually lives in this community around just like
you know, the understanding of like how life is actually
experienced in the border, right, There's been you know, for
across administrations for a very long time, of course, places
like El Paso and other along Texas and New Mexico,
in California, in Arizona, conversations about you know, the whether
the border is lawless and all those different issues that
are going on, whether you know, even people in government
might have a sort of caricature of the border as
opposed to the reality. And this sort of act of
shooting down a balloon thinking that it's a cartel drone,
you know, sort of puts that into sharp relief. Is
what about that? I mean, are people sort of did
that kind of aspect of that hit home with people
in El Paso this this past week.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I want to start by saying, mistakenly, shooting
down a balloon is objectively funny and.
Speaker 2: Should be fair enough. Don't hold that.
Speaker 3: Against anybody, But I think the one thing and I
may be sensitive because I live here, but the one
thing that really jumps out and me from this whole
saga is there was never any discussion at any point
about the people who live here, right and in this
decision making chain and the federal government, there really no like, hey, uh,
if we fire off this laser, could could there be
some disruption to the hundreds of thousands of people who
live here, And not to mention the one point two
million people on the other side of the border. No
conversation that I've seen from anybody in the FAA like
what would a decision to shut down airspace do uh
for El Paso. So there's no sense that there are
real people who live here and there are lives that
are that are going to be affected. And as you indicated,
that's not a new phenomenon here unfortunately.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And and while it has happened across administrations, and as
you indicate, I don't want to give the Trump administration
a pass here, it is far more pronounced in both
Trump's first term and second term. It's not an accident
that the Trump administration in Trump one, began the family separation.
Speaker 2: Policy in Il Passo.
Speaker 3: You know, it's not a coincidence that Trump came to
al Passo to do a build the Wall thing without
any kind of real indication of what the people on
the ground thought. And it's certainly not an accident that
Trump decided to come to al Passo in the days
after the Walmart mass.
Speaker 2: Shooting in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: It's quite bipartisan pleading from people in all Passo to
stay away because the community was hurting. So there's no
recognition that there are human beings with real needs and
fears and concerns and hopes and dreams. Al Passo is
sort of this handy political prop which I think Sean
Duffy immediately plays into. It's like, oh, there's a you know,
we shot down this drone that that came over.
Speaker 2: He knew that wasn't true.
Speaker 3: But but it's a message that plays very well.
Speaker 2: With with the base. Uh.
Speaker 3: And you know, I think all people, you know, even
if you don't live here in the border should should
have some concerns about I think the overlooking of the
humanity that's here. And you know, I'll Passou is not
a perfect city. We've got like any other community, we've
got flows, we've got challenges and things like that. But
there are good people who live here, and and and
people just wanting to take care of their families and
and be able to go to work, be able to
board a flight, uh, be able to come home from
a business trip. You know, all of that was just
sort of invisible to the decision makers in this whole
chain of events.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting you sort of had me thinking about that.
Like the I the explanation that we were shooting down
a drone, you know, using this dangerous laser we had
to do. This makes a lot more sense if you
are bought into the idea of you know, the border
as a almost like sort of war zone, you know,
where like communities are under siege, right And you know,
whether he believed that or not, it was probably a
message that you know, to a certain segment of society,
of our population, made it seem like a more rational
choice to deploy that laser. But but again, like even that,
I mean that's frustration that has gone back for a
very long time of this idea of like, well, that's
not exactly how people in Olpasso experience living here. This
it's not a place of lawlessness and disorder. It's it's
it's you know, a growing community.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's a vital community, and it's and it's
important for the country. It is a huge economic engine
for Texas. For example, that because of our isolation, a
lot of Texans kind.
Speaker 2: Of lose sight of that.
Speaker 3: And and I get that, you know, we're in a
different time zone from everyone else, and and it could
be kind of hard to get here. But but El
Paso is a vital part of Texas, and and we
feel connected to the state here, and and you know,
I think all of that kind of gets lost in
the political shuttles.
Speaker 1: What about just like broadly, like how how does El
Paso feel different now than maybe it did two years ago.
I mean, you know, there have been times in recent years,
particularly in the Biden administration, where I know, local officials
are really concerned about, you know, the amount of migrants
coming over being you know released. You know, there were
times where Al Paso was you know, bussing migrants to
other destinations because they felt like they're services were being overwhelmed.
We are now in a time, of course, where border crossings,
border encounters have dramatically shifted, in large part because of
you know, the actions that the Trump administration has taken
but there are also, i know, concerns about the military,
militarization of the community and things like that. Just what
is what is different about El Paso in February twenty
twenty six than you know, February twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think first of all, to understand, even at
the height of migration, when there were some really really
difficult things happening here, people sleeping outside in the dead
of winter, you know, by the hundreds, most of that
never impacted the daily life of El Paso.
Speaker 2: Believe it or not. There are things that happen here other.
Speaker 3: Than migration, right, and so I think that that's an
important thing to understand. So the lives of our past
ones have not changed dramatically because of the change in
immigration policies. People still go about their business here like
like like they always have.
Speaker 2: The community remains very safe by by US standards.
Speaker 3: Primary that's much lower than what you see in other
major cities.
Speaker 2: I think I'll pass.
Speaker 3: Ones by and large are more worried about, you know,
getting jobs that.
Speaker 2: Pay well here so that they can raise a family.
I'll pass.
Speaker 3: The biggest issue is we are exporting young adults. You
mentioned earlier that I'll pass those a growing community. It
turns out that's really not acturate. I'll Passo is a
community that's dealing with population stagnation because of economic challenges.
Primarily are our low wading structure here, so those those
issues really rise a lot more for people who do
deal directly with micro It's obviously been a huge change.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: The Trump administration does like to say that it hasn't
released any migrants from custody since it took office.
Speaker 2: That may not surprise anybody not to be true.
Speaker 3: There are still shelters here that are taking in people
who have been released by border.
Speaker 2: Patrol or various reasons.
Speaker 3: One of the issues we're dealing with now, and the
Tribune has written about this too, is this rapid rise
and previeous corpus petitions that are overwhelming the federal court
system because El Paso has become sort of this major
holding area. We have the largest ice detention facility in
the country here and that's taken in a lot of
people from Minnesota in the last month. Those people are
filing previous corpus petitions seeking the release, largely with success.
Both and I'll pass on some other areas of the
western District of Texas. So that's been the primary migration
issue we're seeing. Again, if you're not a lawyer or
you're not on the front lines of providing assistance to migrants,
you're probably not aware of it. Or unless you're a
loyal reader of El Paso Matters or Texts Tribute, maybe
you're away.
Speaker 2: But the issues kind of have receded further into the background.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, if you are not a loyal reader
of l Paso Matters or Textas Tribute, you should be.
It's elpasomatters dot org. Thank you, Bob, this has been
really valuable. I appreciate your insights. I also want to
say thank you to Robin Chris, our producers, and thank
you to our sponsors. South By Southwest. Secure your badge
again at SXSW dot com slash trip cast and also
join us for the live trip cast on February twenty
fourth at nine am Texas Tribune dot org slash Events.
For that, Bob, it's been a great talking with you. Well,
we'll be back next week for another trip cast.
Speaker 3: H