Immigration enforcement activity at Taco Giro on Grande Avenue.

The searches by federal agents at Taco Giro restaurants Friday at first seemed to echo similar actions years ago at Chuy's restaurants. 

Back in 2011, federal agents served search warrants at the Chuy's locations in Tucson, Phoenix and California. 

One big difference: That year the searches were met with curiosity, not protests, as at the Taco Giro on North Grande Avenue Friday. 

Another big difference: Immigration and Customs Enforcement immediately announced they had arrested the owners of and accountant for Chuy's restaurants. This year, it's unclear exactly what led to the searches, nor what the outcome will be, beyond 46 arrests for "administrative immigration violations." 

Federal agents and protesters clashed during a federal operation last week at a Taco Giro restaurant on Tucson's west side.

In fact, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Lokey told me in an email Monday, "The search warrants are out of the Tucson Federal Court and are sealed and we do not expect any imminent unsealing or filing of unsealed documents in the case." 

So while that angle is a dead end for now, here are four interesting upshots of Friday's immigration-related raids:

Agents with Homeland Security Investigations carried out targeted enforcement operations at multiple Tucson restaurants early Friday morning, part of a years-long investigation into immigration and tax violations, federal officials said.

One of the raids at a Taco Giro restaurant at 610 N. Grande Ave., in Barrio Hollywood on Tucson's west side, resulted in a clash between federal agents and protesters.

 1. Grijalva pepper sprayed 

Rep. Adelita Grijalva showed up at the scene after the protest was underway. Grijalva said she was headed to Taco Giro for lunch. 

When she arrived, a sort of standoff was going on between protesters who had blocked the only exit to the restaurant's parking lot and a Homeland Security special response team called in to help them.

Grijalva said she was trying to defuse the situation when she was hit with pepper spray. Specifically, she said she "was sprayed in the face by a very aggressive agent."

That became a big deal on the political right. Her former election opponent Daniel Butierez said of Grijalva on Facebook: "This woman was not pepper sprayed. I was also there today and this was a staged event to attack the administration." Pinal County Attorney Brad Miller accused her of lying: "She had to manufacture outrage where none exists." 

And DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said "She wasn’t pepper sprayed. She was in the vicinity of someone who was pepper sprayed as they were obstructing and assaulting law enforcement."

But video taken by Oscar Gomez of Univision shows an agent shooting a powerful spray in Grijalva's direction, if not directly at her, from maybe 6-8 feet away. It would be surprising if some of it had not hit her.

Also, radio host Bill Buckmaster and Green Valley News editor Dan Shearer saw her soon after the incident, when she went to KVOI studios for an interview with them. Both said, independently, that the left side of her face showed signs of the pepper spray.

"She was sitting two feet from me," Shearer said in a text. "Her left eye was beginning to close and she had marks on her forehead and under her chin." 

A bigger question is why the agent was spraying people, without warning, in the first place. He also directly targeted identified members of the press, Gomez and Paul Ingram of the Tucson Sentinel.

"They were trying incite some sort of riot, because there was no reason at that point for them to still be there," Grijalva said in an interview on the radio show Democracy Now! on Monday. 

Rep. Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz.

2. Protesters won't trust

In the aftermath of the protests Friday, some people made the seemingly apt point that this was not a random immigration sweep of the type that have provoked protests around the country. It was targeted.

Federal agents served search warrants at 16 sites, ICE spokespeople said, including all eight Taco Giro restaurants. They said the searches resulted from "a years-long investigation into immigration and tax violations."

Also, some of the agents involved belonged to Homeland Security Investigations and the Internal Revenue Service, not ICE per se. HSI as an agency is part of ICE but historically has conducted more complex investigations, involving the illegal movement of contraband, people, weapons, child-sexual-abuse material and sensitive technology. 

The protesters who responded Friday morning didn't know that, and it probably wouldn't have mattered to them anyway. They have been in rapid-response mode ever since President Trump took office, sending observers to any immigration action that their phone network hears of. 

On Dec. 2, for example, rapid-responders went to an ICE stop of a vehicle in Barrio Viejo south of downtown. The agents were able to arrest the driver of the vehicle, but the passenger managed to escape.

These responses happen pretty regularly but rarely turn into drawn out protests like the one Friday.

Alba Jaramillo, an attorney with Coalición de Derechos Humanos, noted that under Trump, immigration agents are incentivized to rack up numbers of arrests and deportations to meet quotas. 

"When we show up in terms of rapid response, we’re not going to assume they are going to get a criminal," said Jaramillo, who was not at Friday's protest. "We’re assuming they’re going to get any immigrant."

 

3. Tough spot for TPD

Federal officials called Tucson police for help getting their agents out of the area near Taco Giro, and officers responded.

But this could become a tight spot for Tucson police.

The city's political leadership is opposed to Trump's immigration policies, as they made clear in a joint statement by Mayor Regina Romero and Vice Mayor Lane Santa Cruz. 

"Today, federal officers conducted a raid in Tucson that rapidly escalated into violence against the public," they said. "We share the fears in our community created by President Trump’s immoral and inhumane immigration policies."

It went on, "Their disproportionate use of force, smoke grenades and pepper balls against the public, including our own Representative Adelita Grijalva, is not justified and cannot be tolerated."

Police tape surrounds Taco Giro at 610 N. Grande Ave. Friday after a Homeland Security Investigations raid last week.

So, TPD's leadership knows which side their bosses are on, and it's not ICE's side. Still, they have a duty to keep the peace. This is how Chief Chad Kasmar explained their involvement:

"After deploying chemical munitions at this incident location, federal agents requested emergency support from the Tucson Police Department to assist in exiting the area. TPD Rapid Response Team (RRT) personnel responded to the location to support a safe and orderly environment. For a brief period, vehicle traffic on Grande Avenue was restricted to allow federal special agents to exit the area safely."

They'll be lucky if that's as dicey as it gets.

4. More to come

This was a strange incident because it was apparently the end of a long investigation, not a spontaneous sweep as seen in Chicago and elsewhere.

Still, it shows what is likely to happen if immigration officials ramp up enforcement here.

And there's every reason to think they will. The administration has shown it responds to opposition by officials like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker by raising the temperature, not lowering it.

The Grijalva incident is unlikely to be forgotten by the political appointees overseeing immigration sweeps. And if they get started in Tucson, the rapid-response network is sure to show up. 

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Contact columnist Tim Steller at tsteller@tucson.com or ​520-807-7789. On Bluesky: @timsteller.bsky.social