The Hangout with David Sciarretta
Conversations with interesting people.
The Hangout with David Sciarretta
#97 Mayor Paloma Aguirre: Grassroots Politics and Cross-Border Environmental Justice
Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre shares her inspirational bi-national journey from surfing college student to passionate environmentalist to elected official. Paloma is currently running for San Diego County Board of Supervisors District 1 (special election will take place July 1, 2025).
On X: @paloma4D1
Visit paloma-aguirre.com
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Welcome to the Hangout Podcast. I'm your host, david Shredda. On this show, we have conversations with interesting and inspiring people, and the guest for today's episode, paloma Aguirre, is no exception. Paloma is currently the mayor of Imperial Beach, california, and a candidate for the county supervisor seat for District 1 here in San Diego County. As mayor of Imperial Beach, she has led the fight to clean up the Tijuana River sewage crisis, securing over $600 million in federal funds to stop toxic pollution from flowing into the South County of San Diego. We talk in great depth and detail about the sewage crisis, what the roots are and how it requires true and authentic binational cooperation and collaboration in terms of coming up with effective, long-lasting solutions.
Speaker 1:Paloma, prior to becoming mayor, was a community organizer and an environmentalist, and in 2014, was named Woman of the Year for her relentless fight to get government to act on the Tijuana River sewage crisis. Paloma is up for the election on July 1st, so anyone living within San Diego County who is eligible to vote please jot that down on your calendar and make your voices heard on that important day. And as part of this important process, paloma is engaging, passionate and clearly committed to the residents of Imperial Beach and of the county and, rather than seeing herself as a career politician, she sees herself as a career servant of the people. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Welcome Mayor Aguirre. Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon.
Speaker 2:It's a pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 1:I was wondering if we could start with your origin story, a little bit about your background, where you grew up, and then what brought you to San Diego County and then Imperial Beach specifically.
Speaker 2:Sure. So I was born to Mexican immigrants in San Francisco my parents waited tables for a living. I lived there until I was about seven and a half eight and they decided to move us back to grow up among our extended family. So we moved back to Tepic Nayarit for a bit and most of my formative years I spent in Puerto Vallarta, jalisco, where my mom and my grandma were from, and I always wanted to come back to college because I have citizenship. But my parents weren't really excited about that idea, so they encouraged me to go to college there.
Speaker 2:There was only one campus university campus in Puerto Vallarta that had four majors. None of them I liked. So I was working, trying to figure out what to do with my life and then psychology opened. So I found that very interesting. So I decided to go for that major. And I was two years in when a couple of my friends from Puerto Vallarta were competing in bodyboarding here in California, specifically in San Diego, and going to college. They're like you should just move in with us, you can crash on our couch. So I think it was. Yeah, it was early September 2001. I just packed a carry-on suitcase, I had $500 to my name and I took a one-way flight to Tijuana under the promise that they'd come pick me up and they did, thankfully and I had never visited the area, so I surfed in Pearl Beach for the first time without a wetsuit. I remember it was very cold and I just fell in love with it and 9-11 happened a few days later.
Speaker 2:That's right, and that was pretty scary. So my parents were like you need to move back, and I'm like, no, I'm going to tough it out. So I did and I got a job applied to USD because USD has a partnership with Universidad de Guadalajara, because USD has a partnership with Universidad de Guadalajara. And I got in and they took in all my credits that I had acquired to that point and, yeah, the rest is history.
Speaker 1:So I imagine your parents were. I'm sure they were proud of you but also a bit trepidatious about being so far away from home.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I actually got a job at Chula Vista Mall, a retail store that was opening.
Speaker 1:On H Street. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So everybody was being let go because everything went into chaos. But that store was already slated to open, so they gave me a job and that's how I was able to work full-time, while going full-time to USD, and I decided to not live on campus because I wanted to be able to wake up every day and surf.
Speaker 1:ID.
Speaker 2:So that was challenging. I'm not going to lie, but I graduated with a degree in psychology and then I remember being walking the beach and in Pearl Beach and this guy that he always dropped in on me, by the way, so he wasn't my favorite so if you're the guy out there listening, shame on you. No, no, no but he, uh, he was putting up signs that said clean water now oh very red and black and I'm like what is that?
Speaker 1:so he was a good.
Speaker 2:He was the good guy well, it turned out to be the good guy because, uh, this guy said don't? You know, you surf the most polluted beach in America and I had been surfing for years. This was like four years later. I had no idea. So that guy turned out to be Serge Dadina, the founder of Wild Coast. So he's like you need to come and volunteer for us if you want to get involved. So the very next Monday I went and started volunteering for Wild Coast. That's how I became involved in the sewage crisis back in 2005.
Speaker 1:He's the former mayor.
Speaker 2:Correct. He was the founder of Wild Coast and my predecessor. He was mayor of Imperial Beach for eight years. For eight years, and everything we've been able to accomplish in these last two to four years has really been because he really ramped the efforts up we used to be confronted with. This was before he was mayor. When we would talk about the sewage crisis, leaders, local leaders would be like you need to stop, you're going to ruin our businesses. You know they would try to quiet us down and we understood that that's exactly the opposite of what we needed to do, because people didn't really understand back then and even today how severe and how much of a not just public health emergency this is, but an existential threat to the South County. It is Public health emergency. This is but an existential threat to the South County. It is.
Speaker 1:What an opportunity to have subsequent or consecutive administrations that dovetail and allow one to build on the other right, as opposed to often what we see is it's like either going in different directions or somewhat the same, but then over here and it's not right, like there's not a lot of building on what comes before. Yeah, so that's a pretty interesting the waves brought you the two of you together yeah, and, and you know our passion for coastal protection.
Speaker 2:So I I stayed at wild coast, I think, since 2005, and then I worked my way up to coastal and marine director and then I always felt the need to go and become more educated in the quote unquote environmental field, right? So in 2014, I applied to go to the master's program at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. It's an advanced studies program, so it's an accelerated one year program and you know, serge gave me a leave of absence to go do that. So I did that and that's how I got my master's. And then, through that master's program, I applied to the NOAA Sea Grant Canals Fellowship. So I was selected one of 12 nationwide to go work in Congress in 2015. So that's how I became Senator Cory Booker's first NOAA Sea Grant Fellow, so I had the opportunity to draft bills for him and work on environmental and ocean issues.
Speaker 2:And then my fellowship ended right around the time Trump got elected the first time and then coincided with one of the biggest sewage spills we have ever had here in the region, where there was a huge die-off of leopard sharks in the river mouth, and it was really bad. So I decided to move back and do what I could here locally, and because I had seen what Serge was able to do, I said, well, if he can do it, I can do it. So I ran for the first time never been involved in politics and the party and labor nothing I just did. I'm going to go knock on everybody's door and tell them I want to fight for them around the sewage crisis, housing and quality of life. And I got first place against the incumbent. And I got first place against the incumbent.
Speaker 1:I remember when Cory Booker was mayor of Newark, when he would do these things. When you just made that comment before about I just go out and I kind of take things on before we hit record, I think that's really inspiring because it sounds like your transition into formal politics was not really. Perhaps this consciously planned thing is like, okay, I have a 10-year plan and I'm going to get elected. It was like there's a need, I'm going to see the need, I'm going to advocate, like and try to affect a change in the world.
Speaker 2:That's exactly it and that's what I expect of any government. Truly, I know that not every elected official has that as a central priority or is the ethos of why they run, but that's for sure the reason why I have.
Speaker 1:So let's talk a little bit about this sewage crisis. For those people who may not know really what we're talking about, it's obviously something that has had a century or more of trajectory. There's a burgeoning growth in Tijuana. There's changes to the climate. There's infrastructure that has deteriorated. Can you paint a picture for listeners about what you're facing in your city and what work has been done to date at your end?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the reason why we have an issue is because we share a watershed. It's 1,800 square miles in size, three quarters of it are in Mexico, one quarter in the US, and most of the city of Tijuana sits, on average, 300 feet above sea level. So the way that everything drains into the river and then across the border is just the geographical nature of it. The challenge is, as you said, even though we've had this issue for decades, it's really worsened in the last few years because, ironically, our housing crisis is having unintended consequences on the pressures that are being put on top of an insufficient system. Mexico has well Tijuana specifically has a stormwater slash sewage combined infrastructure system. So anytime it rains, all that pressure causes a lot of these outdated pipelines that are made of clay to break and collapse, so all of that sewage washes into the river, across the border, into our region.
Speaker 2:Now the city, as you mentioned, has been continuously growing. That infrastructure hasn't. And then, on top of that, you have a very concerning layer of all of the assembly plants that have been established in Tijuana, especially after the first NAFTA trade agreement. Even though the environmental laws do exist in Mexico, the capacity for them to enforce them isn't as robust as ours. So, even if there are many of them being US-owned, japanese-owned, mexican-owned assembly plants, a lot of legal discharges of industrial waste is taking place into the river and that is not being treated by any plant, neither on the Mexican side or on our side. So where it's really become concerning has been since 2023. We had a massive storm event. I remember it was 23 or 24. Tropical Storm Hillary. I don't know if you recall.
Speaker 1:I do.
Speaker 2:When there was the flooding here in South Carson, Shelltown.
Speaker 1:For us it was 24. 24. Yeah, January February. Right, that's right, February 24th. Yeah, I remember I was out of town and, yeah, I think it was February 24th. Yes, Cars were floating down, Correct, I mean, it was right.
Speaker 2:So for us what happened is the river was flowing massively, at almost 7 billion gallons per day. Usually it maxes out around 1 billion. So suddenly we started to see an uptick in people reporting gastrointestinal illnesses, an uptick at our local health clinic of people falling ill. We later found out there was a small outbreak of Shigella in one of the areas closest to the estuary. So in the past it had been an issue of if you go surf or swim you get ill. But now we're having people fall ill without even remotely getting close to the beach, just from the air.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm. So that piqued the interest of several different institutions. So Dr Kim Prather, one of the leading atmospheric chemists in the world, who actually advised Dr Fauci that COVID was airborne before they understood it to be she's from Scripps she had done a study where she had discovered that these pollutants can become aerosolized and travel long distances. So, based on that study, several different institutions later that summer it was UCSD, sdsu, ut Austin and UC Riverside spent weeks and weeks and weeks in Imperial Beach and the River Valley collecting samples, air samples, water samples, soil samples and it turned out that just one toxic gas alone, which is hydrogen sulfide, which is the rotten egg-smelling gas, we were seeing levels 160-plus above state standards overnight.
Speaker 2:And that was consistent with, anecdotally, what we were experiencing in Imperio Beach and the adjacent area of the Tijuana River Valley, and Nesta and San Isidro, where overnight we couldn't even open our windows because we were choking on the smell. So they found empirical evidence that those levels were incredibly high, along other toxic gases that you can't really smell. So that's when we sounded the alarm and did a press conference announcing those results and that we needed a lot more help. And sadly, um, the county held a press conference a day later saying, no, this isn't true and the results aren't there. Is that and I'm just, I'm just being straightforward because I've read about it we have to because you know what would be the?
Speaker 1:the motivation just to try to not have that kind of negative check against something related to the region.
Speaker 2:It could be At the time I just found it to be very strange because we had gone to the CDC in DC by that time I think I had gone already twice to DC to ask for help to declare a state of emergency from President Biden. We had sent letters to Governor Newsom. Every single mayor in the county sent a letter to Governor Newsom asking him to declare a state of emergency. The CDC eventually came that fall and did the CASPER study, which is a community assessment type of study, and what they found was exactly consistent with what we had been feeling and experiencing.
Speaker 1:What you've been living right.
Speaker 2:And anecdotally, yes, it was even worse in the sense of the mental health of our communities in South Bay.
Speaker 1:How so Just being stuck indoors?
Speaker 2:More than 70% reported either anxiety, depression, some even suicidal tendencies or ideation because you can't even live your life. You can't go outdoors, you don't know if you're jogging, if you're going to get sick. The worry is constant. The worry about your children is constant. So people I can't tell you how many people have emailed me, especially elderly on fixed income that are ready to move, but there's no way or they just can't because they don't have the means. So that's what we've been dealing with in South County. This is beyond Imperial Beach. I mean, this is something that's impacting all the way to the 805. So that's, you know, pretty inland South.
Speaker 1:Chula Vista and those communities. So I noticed that. I saw on the news that recently the top administrator of the EPA his name is escaping me Lee Zildin yeah. That he came and I think you guys did a well. Why don't you tell us about that visit and kind of what the upshot of that whole process was?
Speaker 2:Sure, the upshot of that whole process was Sure, so I and I do. Before we go into that conversation, I do want to be very clear that, despite us asking the governor and our past president for help, they did send letters to Congress asking for $300 million. To your point about progress, I forgot to mention that we did secure $600 million to upgrade the international wastewater treatment plant.
Speaker 1:On the US side, which is based in the US and treats 100% sewage from Mexico. Okay, so that's essentially that treats the sewage that's coming south to north, for lack of a better term.
Speaker 2:It treats residential wastewater only, and it was built to treat up to 25 million gallons per day. When we started advocating to double its capacity to 50, it was discovered that it was in a total state of disrepair and not even functioning. So that's when we had to secure all that funding to fix it, to maintain it and to double its capacity.
Speaker 1:And is that also the facility where, in the beginning, it was difficult to get accurate? Oh yeah, even just. I think there were freedom of information requests, even just to figure out the document paper trail connected to it, and it seemed like and I'm not an expert at all, but I'm reading it and I'm going it sounds like something out of the 50s, like pieces of paper lying around and just there was no internal systems, there was not even a program where all the information was being integrated into.
Speaker 2:I mean, and this is both sides of the aisle have been responsible for that, because that's a government pardon, that's a president's appointee who leads the commission. The commission is not. The International Boundary and Water Commission is parallel to the Department of State, is funded by the Department of State, but it's not under the org chart, if you will, of the department. It's appointed by the president. So all these past commissioners have really just let it fall into a really bad state. The past commissioner, marielena Ginert, was fantastic because she tried to do as much as she could with what she had, but she was dealing with over 10 years of deferred maintenance. So, that being said, that progress has taken place on the Mexican side after years, I think, three different governor administrations us begging them to fix another plant that's on the coast. That plant hasn't been working for over 10 years. San Antonio de los Buenos has been now completely rehabbed and is coming online, if not already, but that only is going to treat 18 million gallons per day. So there's between 20 and 40 million gallons of flow in the river right now as we speak. That include not just residential sewage but industrial waste that is still going into our communities and the coast and permeating our air, our soil and our water. So that's the major area of concern. So, even though the past president and the governor asked for funding, they just never reached the point of declaring a state of emergency, which could have really helped facilitate and accelerate fixes and help for us.
Speaker 2:So when the new administration came in, I reached out to administrator Lee Zeldin even before his confirmation hearing, asking him to come visit and for help. Once he was confirmed, I reached out again, sent him a letter. Uh, he acknowledged receipt of it, but that was about it. And then next thing I know I saw a tweet that he was coming to San Diego. I'm like, okay, great, I don't whether it was me or not. I don a tweet that he was coming to San Diego. I'm like, okay, great, whether it was me or not, I don't care, he's coming to San Diego.
Speaker 2:So funny. I'll tell you the story because why not? It's the truth. He scheduled a visit to the plant, he scheduled a roundtable and he scheduled a press conference, and I was not invited. Oh, but I invited myself, oh.
Speaker 1:That's that part where you're like I'm just going to take it on. I had to Look I am the mayor. You're the mayor of the city.
Speaker 2:The people have entrusted me to fight for them.
Speaker 2:I represent the 26,000-plus residents that are the most affected by this crisis. I was going to make sure I showed up and at least told the administrator exactly what my community is suffering. So I had heard that I was going to be at the plant and I'm over there all the time. So I just went and it was really funny because I arrived exactly at the same time he was arriving. So we got out of the car and I was the first hand. He shook and I thanked him for coming and I said you know, this is what my community and elderly, you know, immunocompromised the children they can't sleep at night. This is what's happening. Our economy is really being impacted, not to mention the environment. So he was very open and after that initial conversation you know we had several different conversations at each of the four stops that the tour included and I felt that he understood the issue and the importance of taking action.
Speaker 1:So it sounds like there's progress. There has been progress. The capacity is still not there.
Speaker 1:So this is a 5, 10, 15, 20 or more year process, right Like if you had the magic wand that you got all the money, or that this region got all the money that needed and all the attention right now on both sides of the border I know the Mexican president, I think at the end of Amilo's term, I'm not sure, but the Guardia Nacional took over running one of the plants and so there was some attention. If all that worked out, how long does it take until the residents of Imperial Beach, for example, have the ocean and the experience that they deserve?
Speaker 2:So that's a good point that you just reminded me about the president. Past president Omel turned the keys over to their equivalent of the Army Corps to expedite the fix of their plant. Had that not happened, we would still be waiting for them to fix it.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that was a positive step.
Speaker 2:That was a positive, absolutely and truly. There's a lack of political will here, and I'm just going to be straightforward about that. If I were president, we could have done the exact same thing that President Amlo did and turned the keys over to Army Corps of Engineers said you know this procurement and contracting, procurement processes, environmental regulations and laws, nepa review, other types of laws can be waived if we want them to, and I'll give you a perfect example. I think two or three years ago, I can't remember when they were talking about completing the wall, they built a wall over the river floodplain because the river was the only area that was not secured by a wall. It was a big open space, because that's where the water has to flow through.
Speaker 2:That project was done in less than a year I think it was nine months with zero environmental review and unlimited resources in the name of national security. So the president has those exact same powers at their hand to do the same. So if this president were to say I am going to issue an executive order to divert and treat the river and expedite construction of that, so it could be whatever's already being built at the plant and just an additional piece of infrastructure that could pre-treat industrial waste and not just wastewater and discharge that three miles offshore, then we would immediately start seeing relief at our coast and in the region and that could be done in a year or two. And we have a trillion-dollar budget in this nation. There's no reason why a couple billion dollars can't be spent on protecting people's lives and well-being.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not to mention the experience of the people who go to the beach and play the Tijuana.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, I mean, that kind of sometimes gets lost in the dialogue. But I mean, I've been to the beach on both sides and it smells bad and I'm sure that it's hazardous just all around. Do you think that your background and experience as being binational, bicultural, bilingual has helped in collaborating with officials in Tijuana? I think so. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I have a pretty strong working relationship with the governor of Baja, marina El Pilar. I credit her because when we first came into office I think we came into office around the same time we did a meet and greet, acknowledged the issue and talked about how important it was for us to collaborate and work on this, which was very different from my experience with her predecessor the one before who didn't even acknowledge that this issue existed. So this was prioritized at the highest level of their government and there was serious funding put into it and, as we talked earlier, the project was even expedited. So, I think also at the local level, I've met with the mayor of Tijuana stormwaters, under city's jurisdiction in.
Speaker 2:Tijuana. So the importance of that is maintenance of their culverts and sediment capture basins, which help collect trash and sediment, which, by preventing that, we prevent all of that from clogging our infrastructure on our side and causing these spills to happen on our side, or malfunctions, if you will. So there has to be collaboration. This whole rhetoric around I mean I've heard it all build a dam to close the border, which I oppose because that's the equivalent, it's equivalent to shooting yourself in the foot. Our economies are interdependent. Do we need more help from Mexico? Absolutely, but do we need more help from our own federal and state government and county government? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:The county is our health and human services, is the health and human services agency for the entire county. Every single jurisdiction has to receive support from the county. As far as health and there's nobody at the wheel right now when it comes to that we haven't had any comprehensive systemic epidemiological study to better understand everything that we talked about earlier the anecdotal reports, reports and then the perception reports from CDC we need actual medical interventions to see how far and how severe people's bodies are being affected. That's one. Two, we need to remove some of the sources of pollutants immediately. They can be removed at the river. In the river valley there's some areas that have riprap along the river that are actually facilitating aerosolization of these pollutants, Just because it's like rapids kind of.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly it's a cascade and rapids.
Speaker 1:Like mini waterfalls, yes, interesting.
Speaker 2:Which is exactly the process that is used at treatment plants to remove some of the bacteria through their treatment.
Speaker 1:They're these tanks that use air bubblers, kind of like bubblers. Yes, so you have naturally occurring ones out there in the field, is what you're saying?
Speaker 2:Yeah, but that are flowing in the air and traveling long distances. We have urban areas that are as close as two blocks to those hot spots where people actually live and go to school, so that's concerning.
Speaker 1:So you bring up the county.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you're currently in a campaign and running for the District 1. Running for the District 1. What will you bring to that seat? Related to this, but then also the myriad other important issues that this region faces from well, you mentioned cost of living. That's somewhat tied to homelessness connected to mental health, connected to fentanyl lots Budget decisions, like reserves at the county. Do we tap them, do we not? How much? Why not? Why yes?
Speaker 1:Can you kind of paint a picture of you know what your plan is and your vision going forward in that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's all interconnected, by the way, everything you just mentioned and I think it's important. You know we were talking earlier about what government is and should be to the people. It should serve the people and it's their taxpayer dollars that are at the county and we have this very bloated reserve account that is well above the standards and guidelines that fiscal entities recommend having. And especially District 1 hasn't had its fair share. It has not had the resources that we need to tackle affordable housing, to tackle homelessness. There has been almost a vacuum of leadership between the county and the jurisdictions that need to work on this right.
Speaker 2:I am Pearl Beach, san Diego National City, chula Vista. I think that I'm going to bring the same energy that I bring as mayor in Pearl Beach to these problems, because I don't consider myself a politician. To me, I'm a public servant and I want to make sure that the government is working for the people. And we have the lowest median household income in the entire county. In the district we have the highest rate of people that don't have health coverage. We have the highest rate of households that are overburdened, meaning more than half of their income is going to keep a roof over their head.
Speaker 2:So how are we talking about? Oh, we're going to fix our housing issues by building more luxury and market rate housing. Well, that's one of the prongs that we need to tackle this challenge, but we also need to build housing that people can actually afford. So that's one. Two, we need the wages to be on par with the costs of living. City of San Diego is one of the, if not the most expensive city in the nation, so we need to make sure that people get paid fairly, that they have good paying jobs, that they have good benefits so that they can have a high quality of life. So we need somebody who's going to fight for that at the county, because we've been neglected for many, many, many years, well before my predecessor. So my opponent has been talking about cutting programs, aligning themselves with what the Trump administration is proposing. We know very well. The Trump administration is proposing cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. We have over 140,000 people who depend on these programs in District 1, not to mention kids.
Speaker 1:So 140 out of like 650, right yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a very large number Like.
Speaker 2:I said we have the lowest household income in the county, we have the highest need. Let's just say it simply right, we have the highest need in our district. And this whole conversation of the structural deficit at the county I think what we need to do is look at what programs are functioning correctly, look at what isn't. But I would not be supportive of cutting social safety net programs, because that's the last line of defense that many of these people have and we need to make sure that that continues and we have the resources to do that. We have a reserve of almost $2.4 billion. We almost have enough to buy LA County if we wanted to. So as long as we remain within the you know we do it in a responsible way and we stay within the guidelines that are recommended to have reserves, we'll be okay.
Speaker 1:So those reserves? That's just a result of, depending on who you ask either responsible conservative fiscal management or conservative fiscal management, that who's which, where the goal is just to accumulate more and more for whatever rainy day may or may not come. What do you think's behind that?
Speaker 2:Well, the conservative policies of our past board of supervisors. We've had the board of supervisors under Republican control since its inception until not even six years ago.
Speaker 1:Until what First it was Fletcher right.
Speaker 2:Fletcher came in and, you know, whatever one may think of him, I credit him for starting to change the direction of the county. And then we had, you know, the rest of the supervisors come on board and it takes time. I think that that's going to be the push, the push to prioritize the working class and the underserved, not just externally, in in the social politics, if you will, of the conversation, but in the actual tangible programs and funding. And how do we prioritize that administratively at the county? So that's the energy I plan to bring at the county.
Speaker 1:Now your, you know, District 1 obviously abuts the international border and so immigration, immigration enforcement, philosophies around immigration enforcement, the general mood I could tell you in the school leadership world. We've been, we've been any school leader will tell you that we've been strategizing and holding information evenings with our parents and trying to assuage fears. I think it seems that most of the fears have not yet, and hopefully never, come to fruition. But there's definitely out there in the community. Is there anything that you could see doing in that District 1 seat that would help kind of address that? Doing in that district one seat that would help kind of address that? It's a, it's obviously immigration enforcement's a federal, uh, responsibility.
Speaker 2:But there's this interface right, yeah, the county there is, there is and and there is a role for us to either be leaders on it, um, and and you know, not rubber stamp these awful policies coming out of the White House. I mean unconstitutional policies coming out of the White House we're talking about. We're seeing maybe not in our region yet, but we're seeing US citizens get deported. We're seeing elected officials being arrested for protesting ICE practices. I have not witnessed this myself, but I have talked to community leaders that have witnessed ICE agents without any identifiable badges or in masks, pick up people and take them without any due process, and now we know some of them are being sent off to awful prisons in El Salvador with no hope of returning. So I don't agree with any of that. I don't agree with mass deportations we were talking about. We are an interconnected, interdependent region economically, culturally, socially. You know statutorily required practices of not using our local resources to do the federal government's work.
Speaker 2:There's been the point of tension when it came to the county sanctuary policy and the release of violent offenders. I don't agree with releasing violent offenders onto the street. That is, at the discretion of the sheriff. I have a good relationship with Sheriff Martinez. I trust what she's doing, because nobody wants to see violent offenders put back into the community. But that's a very fine line that we need to continue to monitor because we're seeing the suspension of our laws really in the way that this is being handled. I mean even what? A couple of days ago there was conversations about suspending habeas corpus. Yeah, so I think in me what people will find as a leader of representative of the most diverse district in the county is we're not going to allow those types of policies and practices to take hold in a district that is incredibly diverse and interdependent with our neighbors to the south.
Speaker 1:Well, you've been very generous with your time and I want to honor your time. Is there anything that we have not yet touched on that you were hoping we were going to cover? I know July, what is it? July, july 1st, july 1st.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, yes, thank you for reminding me. Ballots are dropping in the mail the week of June 1st. So it's a very tricky schedule scheduled this special election because the week of july first people are going to be out on vacation for the fourth of july. Our kids are going out of school in the summer, so and it's not a.
Speaker 1:It's not a.
Speaker 2:I think turnout in general is what we're trying to push for whichever side people yes, and that's what I was going to say. Our district has this primary. We barely I think it was 18% turnout. That's extremely low. So I encourage your listeners to go out and vote. I mean, vote for whoever you think is the best candidate, but vote because that's the only way we make our voices heard. One of the most important ones, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much for for being gracious with your time and your expertise and um, as I told you before we hit record that I've long admired your tenacity as an advocate for um tackling a huge issue. There are a few issues that are bigger than this. You've got an issue between countries. You've got an issue where there's this kind of decades of neglect on both sides of the border, like federal policies on both sides. It couldn't get more complicated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true, and you're going to be upgrading Should you prevail in July. You're upgrading from this region right at the border to the whole chunk of the county.
Speaker 2:So best of luck with that. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:I hope you enjoyed this episode with Paloma Aguirre. With Paloma Aguirre, if you are so inclined, please give us a five-star rating on whichever platform you're listening to this on, and consider supporting the show with a contribution. No amount is too small and all amounts matter. Thanks again for coming on in to hang out.
