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.
Thanks for having me. Matthew, it's good to see you.
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.
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.
But you can relate to this. There's no way I wasn't going to look at it.
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.
Is this from the private day?
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.
And I'm happy to talk about sort of my theories on that.
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.
So it's like, oh my god, what is happening here.
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.
So that's sort of the short version.
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?
Right now?
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.
Well, most local officials were finding out from us, and so like the general reaction is, Bob, what can you tell us?
I don't know.
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.
And you know, the truth that those of us who live on the border know.
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.
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?
Yeah?
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.
And so for whatever reason, the.
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.
So those tensions exist.
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.
El Paso was a no flism.
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.
So also because there's no conversation.
With local leadership, this is like massively disruptive to the local economy of the nation's twenty third largest city.
Al Passo International Airport.
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.
Since it was a threat to our economy, it.
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.
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?
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.
Was a total fourteen flights that got canceled.
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.
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.
Morning or in some cases staying.
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.
Absolutely absolutely all right, let's pause for a second to hear from our sponsors, and then we'll talk a little bit more about the reaction on the ground, and I'll pass. So this episode is brought to you by south By Southwest twenty twenty six. This March twelfth through eighteenth Innovation Conference will take over Austin, Texas for one electric week. The city becomes a playground for boundary pushing ideas, world
class networking and emerging technology. This is your chance to gain real access to new ideas, people, and opportunities that don't happen anywhere else. You're your badge at s x s W dot com slash trip cast one more time. That's s x s W dot com slash trip cast. 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.
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.
Initially. Mayor Renard Johnson, who is a pretty laid back guy and not a boat rocker.
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.
International airport into his district unsuccessfully.
He basically has not had anything to say other than all we need to kind of figure out where you know.
Where things might have went wrong.
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.
Know, a bunch of things don't happen again.
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.
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.
Yeah, And I want to start by saying, mistakenly, shooting down a balloon is objectively funny and.
Should be fair enough. Don't hold that.
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.
Uh.
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.
Policy in Il Passo.
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.
Shooting in twenty nineteen.
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.
He knew that wasn't true.
But but it's a message that plays very well.
With with the base. Uh.
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.
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.
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.
Of lose sight of that.
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.
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.
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.
Believe it or not. There are things that happen here other.
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.
The community remains very safe by by US standards.
Primary that's much lower than what you see in other major cities.
I think I'll pass.
Ones by and large are more worried about, you know, getting jobs that.
Pay well here so that they can raise a family. I'll pass.
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.
You know.
The Trump administration does like to say that it hasn't released any migrants from custody since it took office.
That may not surprise anybody not to be true.
There are still shelters here that are taking in people who have been released by border.
Patrol or various reasons.
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.
But the issues kind of have receded further into the background.
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.
H