Two weeks after an immigration agent fatally shot Renee Good, a mother of three, on the streets of Minneapolis in January, Tucson's city council voted unanimously to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement from using municipal property for raids without a judge-signed warrant. The action was swift and decisive, born from outrage 1,300 miles away.
Mayor Regina Romero made clear there was no room for negotiation. "You cannot compromise with crazy," she said. "You cannot compromise with unconstitutional."
Tucson is not alone. Cities from Seattle to Providence have enacted similar measures in response to the Trump administration's immigration enforcement surge. But there is a crucial difference: most sit in states with Democratic legislatures. Arizona is different. Its legislature remains firmly in Republican control, and conservative lawmakers have weaponized state law to punish cities that step out of line.
The Old Pueblo, a progressive enclave of 550,000 residents built on a foundation of union labor and university politics, has been a persistent target. In 2016, state lawmakers passed SB 1487, which allows any state legislator to challenge local laws deemed to conflict with state authority. The state attorney general has 30 days to rule, and if a city refuses to comply, the state can withhold half of its state funding, a threat that represents more than 30 percent of Tucson's budget.
The weapon has been deployed 36 times since 2016. All 36 complaints came from Republicans.
Tucson knows this fight well. Ten of those 36 challenges have targeted Tucson or Pima County. Tucson repealed a gun confiscation ordinance. Pima County scrapped its eviction moratorium and pandemic reopening guidelines. Tucson abandoned its COVID vaccination mandate for city workers after a Republican attorney general ruled it unlawful.
This time, three Republican state senators formally requested an investigation into Pima County's anti-ICE rule. Tucson officials expect their turn will come soon. The city sits just 60 miles from the Mexican border, and the immigration issue cuts deep into the local economy, where Mexican visitors leave nearly 2 billion dollars annually.
"Their actions are hurting our economy, are hurting our pocketbooks," Romero said, referencing Trump administration tariffs. "Mayors have to defend our city and our residents from our own state government and our own federal government."
State Representative Quang Nguyen, a Republican who chairs the House judiciary committee, defends the 1487 law as straightforward enforcement of state statute. "I'm just doing my job," he said. He has filed four complaints himself, most recently against Phoenix for passing an anti-ICE ordinance nearly identical to Tucson's. "Arizona is a state of law and order," Nguyen added.
But critics argue the law has become an instrument of political theater rather than legitimate governance. Katie Belanger, a consultant with the Local Solutions Support Center, noted that 1487 challenges were designed in an era when conservative lawmakers sought to control blue cities. The political landscape has shifted. Arizona now has a Democratic governor and attorney general. If Republicans lose their legislative majority, the dynamic reverses entirely.
"When you've got kind of this weird balance of blue on top, red in the middle and blue on the bottom, you've got to be creative," said Matt Grodsky, a Democratic political consultant in Arizona.
For now, Tucson is bracing for the legal assault. The city installed warning signs on municipal property alerting federal agents they cannot conduct immigration enforcement there. Whether those signs survive state pressure remains an open question.
Author James Rodriguez: "Tucson is gambling that charter city protections will hold, but Arizona Republicans wrote the playbook for municipal warfare, and they are not done using it."
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