🎙️ Buckmaster's Budget Bonanza: When Progressive Promises Meet Deportation Dollars
How Democrats celebrated "victories" while secretly funding immigration enforcement
Based on the Buckmaster Show for 6/27/25, a daily radio show in Tucson, AZ, interviewing local newsmakers. Analysis and opinions are my own.
😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
👧🏾✊🏾👦🏾
👨⚖️👩⚖️ Politicians in Arizona passed a budget they claimed would support families with benefits like 🍎 free school meals and 🎓 college scholarships, but secretly included funds to 👮♂️🛑 arrest and 🚫 deport immigrants.
Meanwhile, 🐕🐈⬛ Tucson's animal shelter is overcrowded with too many dogs, and some 🏢 companies want to build 💧 water-guzzling computer centers in our 🏜️ desert.
A 📻 radio show exposed how politicians sometimes say one thing but do another, 🤔 especially when it comes to protecting immigrant families while also funding 🚓 the police who arrest them.
🗝️ Takeaways
🚨 Arizona's "progressive" budget secretly allocates millions for immigration enforcement despite Democratic claims
🐾 PACC faces severe overcrowding with 525 dogs in a facility built for 350
💧 Project Blue data centers threaten Tucson's water resources while employing few people
🤝 Bipartisan budget includes both progressive programs and deportation funding
📊 Budget document contradicts Nancy Gutierrez's claims about "zero dollars for mass deportation"
🏛️ Democrats celebrated victories while voting for immigration enforcement that targets their own constituents
Buckmaster's Budget Bonanza: Dogs, Data Centers, and Democratic Deception
When politicians promise progress but deliver oppression with a progressive bow on top
Bill Buckmaster's Friday show on June 27th delivered a triple threat of Tucson topics that had this Indigenous Chicano journalist's keyboard clicking with a complex cocktail of concern and curiosity.
From preemptive pet protection to political posturing in Phoenix, the show served up a smorgasbord of subjects that showcase both the challenges and contradictions facing our borderland community.
But hold up, hermanos y hermanas—sometimes what politicians promise and what they actually deliver are as different as a piñata and a prison cell. Case in point: that shiny "progressive" budget that Assistant Minority Leader Nancy Gutierrez was celebrating on air.
The Animal Crisis: Steve Kozachik's Compassionate Calling
Former Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik, now director of Pima Animal Care Center, painted a picture of pet pandemonium that would make any animal lover's corazón crack.
With "525 dogs in the shelter right now" crammed into a facility "built to house about 350," PACC is practically bursting at the seams—and the Fourth of July fireworks fiasco hasn't even begun yet.
Kozachik's candid commentary cut through the usual bureaucratic babble, revealing the real reasons behind our animal apocalypse:
"We have a community that does not spay and neuter. They don't confine animals. We have strays all over the community. They don't microchip their animals."
His three-pronged approach—humane treatment, staff safety, and public protection—makes sense, even when it means making the difficult decision to euthanize animals that pose behavioral risks.
Because apparently, in capitalism, even our pets become casualties of systemic neglect and individual irresponsibility.
The crisis extends beyond overcrowding. Kozachik revealed that "roughly 57% of the dogs that we take in are strays and fewer than 20% of them are microchipped."
Meanwhile, "we have roughly 1,500 animal protection service cases right now that are on backlog," with "over 50 of those are hoarding cases."
For our communities, especially Indigenous and Chicano families who often view pets as sacred family members, this crisis hits particularly hard. Many of our familias struggle with veterinary costs and may not have access to affordable spay/neuter services—yet another example of how economic inequality trickles down to affect even our four-legged compañeros.
The $5-per-day foster stipend (courtesy of Friends of PACC) represents community-centered solutions, though Kozachik admits "it is not going to solve the problem."
The new Friends Pet Clinic, offering low-cost veterinary care for PACC adoptees, represents exactly the kind of mutual aid our communities need. And that July 4th "read to the dogs" event? Pure genius—channeling our celebratory energy into canine comfort instead of explosive entertainment that traumatizes both animals and veterans.
Nancy's Negotiation Knockout: Budget Battles and Hidden Betrayals
This is where things get spicier than abuela's chile pequín, carnales.
Assistant Minority Leader Nancy Gutierrez delivered delicious details about the dramatic denouement of Arizona's budget battle, celebrating what she called a bipartisan breakthrough. After Governor Katie Hobbs righteously rejected two Republican "skinny budgets," Democrats stepped up with what Gutierrez painted as progressive victories.
"We got a ton of wins and I am thrilled that we are getting this for the people of Arizona," Gutierrez proclaimed, highlighting achievements like civil legal aid funding, Community College Promise Program scholarships, and full school meal funding.
She boasted about "a record number of Democratic votes" and credited the budget to negotiations "with the House Democrats."
Sounds lovely, doesn't it? Like a political fairy tale where Democrats save the day...
But here's where the cuento takes a darker turn, mis amigos. That budget document tells a different story—one that contradicts Gutierrez's rosy rhetoric about immigration enforcement funding.
When pressed about the controversial "GIITEM language" (Gang and Immigration Intelligence Team Enforcement Mission), Gutierrez dismissed concerns, claiming: "These monies, since they've been in office, have never been spent on mass deportation, and they never will be."
She further insisted: "This budget has zero dollars for ice and it has zero dollars for mass deportation."
The GIITEM Gotcha: When Progressive Promises Meet Enforcement Reality
Ay, Dios mío—if only Nancy had read the fine print before celebrating on the radio.
The budget document reveals a harsh reality that directly contradicts Gutierrez's assurances.
Of the $24,749,000 appropriated to the GIITEM line item, $12,895,100 shall be used for one hundred [100!] Department of Public Safety GIITEM personnel. But here's the kicker that would make even the most seasoned politico's stomach turn:
The budget explicitly allocates funding for "at least fifty [50!] sworn department of public safety positions to be used for immigration enforcement and border security" along with "fifty [50!] department of public safety positions to assist GIITEM in various efforts, including:
1. Strictly enforcing all federal laws relating to illegal aliens and arresting illegal aliens.
2. Responding to or assisting any county sheriff or attorney in investigating complaints of employment of illegal aliens."
So much for "zero dollars for mass deportation," ¿verdad, Nancy?
For our Indigenous and Chicano communities, this represents a profound betrayal. While Democrats celebrated "progressive victories" like free school meals, they simultaneously funded the very apparatus that terrorizes our familias, separates our children, and criminalizes our existence on our ancestral lands.
This budget allocates millions specifically for "strictly enforcing all federal laws relating to illegal aliens"—language so dehumanizing it would make Trump's speechwriters blush with pride.
For undocumented students who might benefit from those Community College Promise scholarships, the same budget funds the officers who could arrest them on their way to class.
The colonizer's playbook never changes: give with one hand while taking away dignity, safety, and humanity with the other.
Project Blue's Digital Dilemma: Environmental Racism in Binary Code
Tucson Spotlight's Caitlin Schmidt brought up the brewing battle over Project Blue, the mysterious data center development that has environmentally-conscious citizens seeing red.
With Councilwoman Nikki Lee's 2,000-word technological takedown leading the charge, this issue epitomizes everything wrong with corporate capitalism's relentless resource consumption.
"Nobody seems really happy about this," Schmidt observed, noting that "we are a community that loves and protects its nature and natural resources." The secretive nature of the project—complete with non-disclosure agreements—reeks of corporate overreach and governmental capitulation.
For Indigenous communities who understand water as sacred, these data centers represent a particularly insidious form of environmental racism. While our communities face water restrictions and rising utility costs, tech corporations get fast-tracked approval to drain our desert aquifers for their digital mining operations.
Because apparently, cryptocurrency and cloud storage are more important than our children's future access to clean water.
When TEP simultaneously announced a 14% rate increase (purely coincidental, they claim), the optics became more toxic than a uranium mine on sacred land. Schmidt noted the irony:
"A portion of the community is already calling on the city to end their relationship with TEP" just as the utility pushes for massive rate hikes.
The Systemic Sickness: How Budget Theater Masks Border Brutality
This budget battle reveals the fundamental flaw in liberal electoral politics: the illusion of choice when both parties ultimately serve the same master: white supremacist capitalism.
While Democrats celebrate crumbs like school meal funding, they simultaneously feed the beast that devours our communities.
The contrast between community-centered solutions (like PACC's foster program) and state-sanctioned violence (like GIITEM funding) illustrates the schizophrenic nature of "progressive" politics under colonial rule. We get dog shelters and deportation forces, environmental protection and extraction permits, educational scholarships and enforcement squads—all wrapped in the same budget bow.
For Indigenous and Chicano communities, this represents the ongoing legacy of colonization: benevolent programs designed to pacify resistance while maintaining the fundamental structures of oppression. The same government that funds our children's education funds the officers who might arrest their parents.
It's the classic colonial strategy: assimilate the children while criminalizing the culture.
Beyond Electoral Theater: Building Real Community Power
Real change won't come from celebrating budget compromises that fund both school lunches and deportation forces. It comes from building independent community power that doesn't rely on politicians' promises or corporate philanthropy's pittance.
The mutual aid demonstrated by Friends of PACC, the grassroots resistance to Project Blue, and the community organizing against GIITEM funding represent the kind of horizontal power-building our communities need.
When we rely on ourselves and each other instead of electorally-captured Democrats, we create lasting change that can't be negotiated away in budget backrooms.
What Can You Do?
Support local animal welfare through volunteering at PACC or donating to Friends of PACC
Attend Tucson City Council meetings to oppose Project Blue and demand transparency
Join immigrant rights organizations fighting against GIITEM and deportation funding
Build mutual aid networks in your neighborhood to reduce reliance on state services
Support independent media like Three Sonorans that exposes contradictions mainstream outlets ignore
The path forward requires us to see clearly: electoral politics alone won't liberate our communities from the violence of borders, the extraction of capitalism, or the dehumanization of our familias. But organized communities can create the world we need, one act of solidarity at a time.
Because when the politicians betray us—and they will—we still have each other.
Support Three Sonorans Substack to keep this critical analysis and community journalism coming. Independent media relies on community support, rather than corporate advertising or loyalty to a political party.
What Do You Think?
How can our communities hold Democratic politicians accountable when they celebrate "progressive" budgets that simultaneously fund deportation forces?
What would genuine community-controlled solutions to animal welfare, environmental protection, and immigrant rights look like in practice?
La lucha sigue, compañeros. The struggle continues, and so do we.
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