With ballots on the way, Grijalva faces Butierez in final debate for CD7

Just before early ballots head to voters, congressional candidates Adelita Grijalva and Daniel Butierez vied over several major issues, including immigration and border security, water policy, and the wars in Gaza and Ukraine during a debate in Tucson on Tuesday night.

The Sept. 23 special election was made necessary by the
death of Adelita Grijalva’s father, longtime U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva,
who died in March after a battle with lung cancer.

Grijalva stepped down from her seat on the Pima County Board of
Supervisors in April to pursue the seat. She was a few months into her
second term after serving two decades on the Tucson Unified School
District Governing Board.

Grijalva said she was running for
Congress to continue the work of her father, who was known as a champion
for the environment, immigrants and indigenous people.

Meanwhile, Butierez is making a second bid for Raúl Grijalva’s seat, after he lost to the congressman last November, earning just under 37 percent of the vote.

Throughout the debate, Butierez focused on issues in Tucson rather than the entire wide-ranging district—which runs from Yuma County across the state, and includes the border communities of Yuma, Nogales, Naco, and Douglas, as well as Bisbee, and Tohono O’odham Nation.

During his opening statement, Butierez said he found his purpose while driving around the city, “looking at all the homeless, all the things that were happening in our city that’s falling apart. It’s not getting any better,” Butierez said. “Nobody seems to have a clue how to address the issues.”

Grijalva said she has traveled throughout the district, visiting people in Nogales, Douglas, Avondale, Tolson, Bisbee, Patagonia, and “of course, Tucson.”

She said she was afraid for “the future of our state and the future of our country” because the Trump administration is “systematically taking away our rights.”

“Little by little, we feel attacked—scapegoated—and what I have heard repeatedly is that we need a fighter,” Grijalva said. “Send me to Congress, so I can fight for Southern Arizona.”

Immigration

The two candidates spent a substantial amount of time on immigration. 

Grijalva called out the “inhumane tactics” of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and said she was “very frightened” for next year when the agency’s budget is “not double, but 20 times that.” 

“The militarization of our communities is something that we have to fight against,” she said, adding she “will fight for comprehensive, humane immigration reform with pathways to citizenship.”  

“We need to have immigration reform. We absolutely need to do that. The gentleman that was in this seat prior to us spent the last two decades trying to do that. It didn’t work. So I believe it’s time for different leadership,” Butierez said. He said ICE agents are “doing what the law requires them to do, not what the administration is requiring them to do.” 

“The only thing the administration is requiring them to do is enforce the laws that are already in the book,” he claimed.

In fact, ICE officials have wide discretion and in previous administrations were asked to prioritize cases. Further, the Trump administration has pursued people at their court hearings, using a legal maneuver to end people’s cases and make them eligible for deportation—creating what one attorney called “mayhem” at the Phoenix immigration court in May.

He then criticized Pima County’s role in aiding legal asylum seekers after they were released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection—a program that began under the Trump administration in 2019. Then, Butierez complained about Tucson’s Sun Tran, which allows free bus fares under a policy approved by the Tucson City Council.

“That’s a little bit of a conflation of a lot of different issues,” Grijalva said. She noted the program for asylum seekers was a “federally funded program” and did not draw from “our tax dollars here locally.” And, she called the free bus system in Tucson a “completely different conversation.”

She added the Trump administration has cut federal spending for affordable housing which will “negatively impact our local community” along with cuts to the health department. “Those programs being cut, we’re going to exacerbate the problem,” Grijalva said.

Butierez demanded federal officials remove all the people who arrived in the U.S. during the lasts four years, and said the courts are “overwhelmed.” While court cases have massively increased, the backlog has been long-running and increased throughout the Trump administration—driven in part because federal officials have reopened thousands of cases that were previously closed.

Butierez said people should “enter the right way.”

“The people that came in through seeking asylum, that is a legal process,” said Grijalva. She noted that asylum seekers were processed by federal officials and released with court dates. Other people have tax identification numbers.

“Why do you think we have ICE agents going to people’s houses asking for specific information? People are not hiding,” she said. “They are being taken out of their homes when they’re contributing to our communities.”

On the border wall, Butierez said the “ports are too small” and the Trump administration should “finish the wall.” 

Here he claimed he knew more than Grijalva about the ports because “I actually know that there’s more than three ports of entry.” He, then tried to enumerate the border crossings, but struggled to name them all.

The Nogales port has multiple crossings, including the Mariposa cargo and passenger facility, the Dennis DeConcini border crossing and the Morley pedestrian crossing. Butierez also forgot a border crossing near San Miguel, which is an unofficial gateway and reserved only for members of the Tohono O’odham Nation.

Grijalva said the “environmental needs are not being considered” and pushed for impact studies on wall construction. “Most of these areas are so far removed, and that’s not where people are crossing.”

She also pushed for modernization of the ports of entry, which has been funded by the “previous Congress.”

Butierez spoke about the area near Sasabe, Ariz., where thousands of people crossed in late 2023. He then claimed, without evidence, while people “bring pills through the port” across the border “they’re bringing in pure fentanyl, and it’s killing our people, and I don’t care what it costs, an American life matters.”

Grijalva said CBP is “capturing drugs every day. What we really need to focus on, in my opinion, is looking at the people, the consumers, the people on this side of the United States.”

She said the U.S. should “look to prevention programs, early intervention programs and substance abuse programs, coincidentally, all of which are being cut in this new, in this upcoming fiscal year.”

Oak Flat

Butierez said he would support safeguards for the open-pit mine slated to be carved out of land sacred to the San Carlos Apache tribe, but did not clarify what those would be.

Grijalva said Congress should intervene, noting the rights to mine Oak Flat came as part of 2014 rider.

“Congress has a role to protect that site, and we have to look at what is governing mining right now,” she said, noting the law that harkens back to 1872. She said foreign companies take the profits for mines, while the U.S. doesn’t collect royalties for four years.

“So you mine, you destroy our environment, our air, our water and our land and then leave. And many of these mining companies are foreign mining companies, and they change hands often,” she said.

Foreign policy

On the war in Gaza, Grijalva said the United Nations “has declared a stage five by famine, which means starvation, destitution and widespread death.”

Our role should be one of creating an opportunity for peace and a two-state solution, where humanitarian aid must be restored to Gaza, the Gaza Strip and all hostages must be returned,” she said.

“I stand with Israel, and I don’t see… we’ve tried diplomacy, Israel’s tried diplomacy. As long as Hamas is in there, controlling that country, we’re not going to get anything accomplished,” Butierez said.

On Ukraine, the two candidates ended up agreeing.

Butierez said he was against sending funding to Ukraine “especially when they wouldn’t tell us where it was spent,” however he said the U.S. is too far into the conflict and Russia cannot be allowed to continue its aggression. “We need to get in there and support them. Period,” he said.

Grijalva said the invasion by Russia “made us all more unsafe.” And, she noted while Trump promised there would be peace in Ukraine “day one” the war has continued. “And the only accommodations that Trump has made is to offer aid in exchange for basically all the mineral resources that Ukraine has.”

She said the U.S. should “stand in solidarity with Ukraine” and provide humanitarian aid and strategic support to “push back on Russia.”

Breaking with their party

Grijalva said she would look at bills holistically, and slipped in a broad critique of the Bill Beautiful Bill that passed through Congress. She also criticized congressional members who sought exceptions from the cuts baked into the bill.

“How un-American for you to throw the rest of the country under the bus in order to save yourself,” she said. “I think it’s important to work within the system that is created, but if these senators and members of Congress were honest with their communities and what they sold them out for, they wouldn’t get re-elected.”

Butierez said he would “obviously have to bring resources to Arizona that would make Arizona want to elect me again next year. If I don’t bring the resources, they can have another primary and elect somebody else.” 

Homelessness and drug use

Butierez said federal dollars should target treatment programs before housing programs. If not,”you’re just wasting money and spreading out the problem that is going to ultimately collapse on itself.”

“We need to address treatment and then move towards housing,” he said, adding he has a plan. 

Butierez has been homeless himself, after he was released from prison on probation after he spent about four years in prison on a cannabis offense that he said he did not commit. (Pima County Judge Jeffrey Bergin agreed with Butierez and vacated his conviction in 2020.)

While on probation, Butierez was living on the streets for about two years after he got hooked on crystal meth and crack cocaine, he said.

He went back to prison on a probation violation and “that’s when I gave my life over to Christ.”

After his release from prison, Butierez worked for a family painting business before launching one of his own. He credits President Donald Trump for creating the opportunity to launch his own business.


Grijalva said the Trump administration “is willing to sell out the American people to provide big tax breaks for the 1 percent and also add to our national deficit.”

“These are cuts. These are real cuts. And the unfortunate part is that most of them are going to come to fruition after the midterms,” she said, adding that the bill will mean 383,000 people are kicked off of Medicaid, including 142,000 children. The cuts also hit SNAP benefits, programs in schools for occupational therapy, speech therapy, physical therapy. She said there will be “systemic devastation” including cuts to five rural hospitals.

The city of Tucson alone faces a $5 million cut, she said.

Butierez again complained about Sun Tran’s fares, and said social programs are “collapsing.”

He said people claimed Grijalva is a communist, “which isn’t true. “She’s a progressive,” he said. “And there’s a difference: Communism takes away a person’s property. Progressivism lets you keep the property, and they take away your profits.”

Water

Butierez failed to outline how the federal government would manage water, especially as the Colorado River basin faces cuts that increasingly fall on Arizona’s shoulders. And, he said the federal government should consider damming the Santa Cruz River to keep it from “flowing into the ocean.” The Santa Cruz flows from the San Rafael Valley into Mexico, before returning to the U.S. and flowing north into the Gila River system.

Grijalva said “Arizona must get its fair share of water.” She said “some of the most creative conservation systems are happening here in Arizona, and every bank and state must contribute to a long term solution for sustainability and long term conservation efforts. But we also have to rein in these corporations that are drawing an incredible amount of water.”

She also pushed for tribal water rights, and a review of how irrigation is done throughout the Colorado River basin.

“Water is a precious resource that is declining, and we have to acknowledge the fact that we are in a climate crisis,” she said.

Q&A

Following the debate, each candidate faced reporters for five minutes.

Butierez said he has addressed homelessness by offering jobs for people to “help them get their self-esteem, and doing that actually helps.” He told reporters he hired 67 people and 15 “wound up using again.”

When pushed on where he would break from his party Butierez could only come up with the SALT cap—which allows people to deduct what they spent on state and local income taxes. Under the latest spending bill, the cap was quadrupled to $40,000.

He also demurred on criticizing Republicans for saying one thing and doing another, refusing to answer a follow question by telling one reporter, “but you’re trying to suck me into something… I’m just not going to buy into that.”

He also criticized Project Blue—the proposed Amazon Web Services data center in Pima County— because it was “secretive.” He also said that Medicare had “a lot of fraud” but struggled when answering how he would help kids who are losing access to health care, attempting to link those kids to kids who are undocumented. He added he wanted to get them to their parents.

Grijalva then came into the room and asked for questions.

When asked if she had escalated her rhetoric on Gaza, she said she was never asked a question about the issue.

“So this is the first time that someone has, in a public arena asked the question. And respectfully, the situation has continued to escalate since the primary, so I think that it warrants having a really strong answer,” she said.

She also defended DACA—the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival. Responding to a question from a Spanish-language outlet, Grijalva replied in Spanish and said the people covered by DACA have “no memory outside” the U.S. and should have the opportunity to become a citizen.

She said the federal government has a role in regulating data centers like Project Blue and create “safeguards” for personal data and water use. 

“So I think that we all have real, significant concerns about the use and misuse of our water, and it’s precious—we live in the desert,” she said. “No one is going to come to rescue us.”

She ended by telling reporters she could work as part of the congressional minority.

“Sometimes I was the one no vote,” she said on her tenures on the Tucson Unified School Board and on the Board of Supervisors. “Sometimes that voice needs to speak up and talk out loud, so you are sort of the conscience of other people.”

She said others described her dad as the “conscience of the Congress.” 

“And so I hope to have the privilege to be able to speak on behalf of Southern Arizona on the issues that are important,” Grijalva said. 

The Democrats have a significant voter registration advantage in
Congressional District 7, where 40 percent of voters are registered
Dems, 21 percent are registered Republicans and the remaining 39 percent
are independent of the two major parties.

The district includes
precincts in Tucson, Yuma, Nogales, Douglas, Sells and other areas in
Southern Arizona. The majority of voters – nearly 61 percent – live in
Pima County, while 14 percent live in Yuma County, 13 percent are in
Maricopa County, 7 percent are in Santa Cruz County, 4 percent are in
Cochise County and less than 1 percent are in Pinal County.