Dana Gentry, Nevada Current

Advocates for America’s wild horses are finding little beauty to behold in Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which would slash funding for the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro program by 25% and allow the slaughter of some 64,000 federally protected wild horses in government holding facilities.

“The President’s budget will greatly endanger wild horses and burros,” Rep. Dina Titus, a Democrat from Nevada, said in a statement to the Current. “I am deeply concerned by how these cuts will impact the care of these beloved creatures. Even more worrying is the omission of the long-standing provision against horse slaughter.”

The proposal, horse and burro advocates note, mirrors Trump’s 2017 budget, which initially called for a 30% cut to the program’s funding and the elimination of protections against slaughter. Congress restored the protections against killing the animals and augmented funding.

“Typically, the president’s appropriations bill contains a provision prohibiting horse slaughter. The Trump budget bill does not have this provision, opening the door to animals being sold off for slaughter,” said Dick Cooper, a spokesman for Titus.

The budget proposal is straight from the pages of Project 2025, the ultra-conservative manifesto of which Trump once claimed ignorance, but has since adopted de facto as a blueprint for his policies.

“What is happening to these once-proud beasts of burden is neither compassionate nor humane, and what these animals are doing to federal lands and fragile ecosystems is unacceptable,” says Project 2025, which asserted “the uncontrolled growth of wild horses and burros poses an existential threat to public lands.”

More than half of the nation’s wild horses, estimated between 70,000 and 95,000, are in Nevada, notes Project 2025. “Congress must enact laws permitting the BLM to dispose humanely of these animals.”

The policy is an “attack on animal welfare and America’s public lands,” according to American Wild Horse Conservation (AWHC), a wild horse advocacy organization.

“This budget would be a bullet to the head of America’s wild horses if passed by Congress,” said Suzanne Roy, executive director of AWHC. “Slaughter is a barbaric solution to a fundamentally broken federal program.”

The current program is focused on what critics contend are inhumane roundups that end in the warehousing of the creatures in government holding facilities.

A better solution, say horse advocates, is increasing fertility control efforts and restoring habitat.

Last month, Titus announced the formation of the Wild Horse Congressional Caucus, “to encourage federal policies for more humane treatment of wild horses and burros,” according to a news release.

Days later, Titus and 82 members of Congress urged a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee to craft legislation requiring the BLM to spend at least 10% of the Wild Horse and Burro program’s $140 million budget on fertility control in additional herd management areas.

“The letter included several requests but notably included language maintaining the prohibition on the sale or adoption of healthy wild horses and burros that results in their destruction,” Titus said in a news release.

Titus has opposed the BLM’s use of aircraft in roundups. The U.S. has paid helicopter companies $57.4 million for roundups since 2006, according to Titus, a process she has attempted to ban.

“Scientific research has shown that more humane and cost-effective alternatives, like fertility control, are equally effective in controlling equine populations,” according to the May statement from Titus announcing the Wild Horse caucus. “The BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program, however, currently spends less than four percent of its budget on these methods.”

Diverse interests, ranging from cattle ranchers to animal activists, have called for vast reductions to wild horse populations, which they contend are three times the number public lands can accommodate.

“The greatest threat to our wild horses and burros and our public lands right now isn’t the BLM, it’s not cattle, ranching or mining interests. It’s not animal advocates. It’s climate change and the new reality is fast settling in,” Stephanie Boyles Griffin, the chief scientist of the Humane Society of the United States’ (now Humane World for Animals’) wildlife protection department, told Reuters in 2021.

Americans, deeply divided on a plethora of topics, are on common ground when it comes to wild horses, says AWHC, which commissioned a 2017 poll that revealed 83% of Trump voters supported protecting wild horses and burros from slaughter, compared with 77% of Hillary Clinton’s supporters.

“After decades of costly and ineffective roundups, the BLM now stockpiles more wild horses in government pens than remain free on the range,” said Roy in a news release. “Americans deserve a better federal plan that genuinely tackles off-range holding issues without resorting to slaughter.”

A divisive and protracted years-long quest to terminate Mesquite’s police chief is causing collateral damage in the executive offices of City Hall over allegations of racist remarks by the city manager.

In an audio recording obtained by the Current, Mesquite City Manager Edward Owen Dickie tells several residents that he notified police union officials last year that if Chief MaQuade Chesley were fired, he’d replace him with a “6 foot 5 Black woman…”

“…Early on, I said ‘guys, I’m going down to Louisiana, I’m going back to the back parishes and I’m going to find me a 6 foot 5 Black woman chief…’” Dickie is heard saying in the recording from February.

The statement echoes another by Dickie recorded in late 2024, according to sources, in which he repeats a similar assertion made to the Mesquite Police Officers Association, which was seeking Chesley’s ouster.

“I told them I’d like to go down to Louisiana with the biggest Black Aunt Jemima. I was careful how I said it cuz…. But I said ‘(unintelligible) would love that and come back and just flippin’ whip you guys into shape,’” Dickie can be heard saying. “I brought this up. I’ve heard things and if the Chief doesn’t come back you guys, it’s not going to be, you’re probably going to hate the next Chief more than him.”

Dickie goes on to say he’s “heard there’s racial issues” in the department.

Mesquite City Manager Edward Owen Dickie. (Photo: City of Mesquite)

Dickie, during a phone interview, called the statements “poor taste of humor. I didn’t know I was being recorded. I own it. I learned you just don’t say things that you really shouldn’t be saying. The City Council is aware and they’re going to hand down a reprimand.”

Dickie says the residents who recorded him were alleging racism against police officers and suggested he hire a Black chief.

“‘Maybe what we need is diversity,’ I was telling them. ‘Maybe it’s an African-American woman, you know, that is qualified,’” Dickie said of the recorded conversations.

“Those comments are inappropriate for anybody to be using, especially in a work environment, especially in a position of power, where you’re picking the next police chief,” says Wes Boger, who was re-elected in November to serve on the city council, but resigned after a month, citing a desire to spend more time with family.

“I don’t blame Wes for leaving, because this is not worth it,” Councilwoman Patti Gallo, the only member of four who voted against terminating Chesley, said at a special meeting in March that was called to investigate Chesley and ratify his termination.

Last month, Judge Nadia Krall ruled the city failed to comply with the law in its investigation of Chesley, and granted the former chief’s request for a restraining order and injunction, prohibiting the city from holding a public investigation into Chesley’s termination.

Dickie’s statements should preclude him from “any role in the recruitment and/or appointment of the next Chief of Police,” Mesquite resident Bob Muszar wrote in an emailed complaint last week to Mesquite Mayor Jesse Whipple.

Federal law prohibits hiring based on race. Dickie says the city has scrapped its search and will stick with a successor from inside the department.

Whipple, in a reply to Muszar, defended Dickie, suggesting he “was trying to express to them that he would like to make sure that racism was not acceptable within our city or department,” and “was using that example as an illustration that our department could use some diversity within its leadership. I do not believe that he intended it literally.”

“At some point, the City Manager’s intended message becomes irrelevant,” Muszar wrote back. “Throwing race, gender, size and point of origin all into a single statement generates just too much fodder for anyone wanting to challenge the recruitment/appointment process.”

While Dickie’s recorded statements indicate he was defending Chesley, the relationship at some point became more antagonistic.

When Dickie’s statements prompted a flood of public record requests from residents seeking his text messages and emails, Chesley says he asked the city manager how he was coping with the requests.

Dickie, in response, defended his earlier comments.

“I didn’t say anything like ‘I hate n——, I hate Mexicans,’” Dickie can be heard saying on the recording provided by Chesley.

Dickie, asked to authenticate the recording, said he didn’t remember saying the ‘N’ word, adding he never uses it. “If I said it, it would be that I was saying ‘I didn’t say this.’”

Chesley suggests Dickie could have conveyed the thought without using the actual word.

Dickie alleges Chesley may have altered the recording. “I know he learned how to do that at the FBI academy.”

Former Mesquite City Police Chief MaQuade Chesley has filed a wrongful termination suit against the city. (Photo: City of Mesquite)

“I have the entire conversation and it is easy to prove it wasn’t doctored,” Chesley responded, adding he would sign a court affidavit stating as much.

Dickie also suggests he was baited by residents Nick Alfonsetti and Mike Benham to repeat the assertion he made to the police union about finding a female Black chief.

“It’s sad,” he said, adding he “didn’t know there are people really like that out there.”

Alfonsetti and Benham say Dickie was not baited. The discussion, they say, was in response to Dickie’s earlier assurances that he would not fire Chesley.

“That’s when the whole thing came up about hiring somebody outside Mesquite, because the police didn’t like anybody that was in the department,” Alfonsetti said.

Dickie said he is good friends with Chesley, though he acknowledges they never socialized together. Chesley says Dickie, who was hired by the city last summer, “is not my friend and never has been. I don’t associate with people who make racist comments or jokes. In the short time I’ve known Owen he has repeatedly done both.”

Dickie, who initially cited a no-confidence vote by the Mesquite Police Officers’ Association as one of the factors to be considered in Chesley’s termination, was unable to say how many members voted or how many expressed no confidence in Chesley.

The MPOA did not respond to the Current’s request for the information.

“As a labor attorney who represents labor organizations, I would never recommend doing a vote of no confidence unless you can have almost 100% if not 100% of your members voting,” says Reno attorney Ronald Dreher, who is representing Chesley in a lawsuit against the city, adding “it’s odd not to put up the numbers.”

The wrongful termination lawsuit filed by Chesley against the city alleges the city violated Nevada law, which requires any investigation of a police officer be conducted by law enforcement. The city has commissioned several investigations, Dreher said, but none were conducted by law enforcement.

Fall from grace

Mesquite, a small city about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, was founded by Mormon pioneers in the 1880s. The population was predominantly Mormon until a building boom in the last 15 years brought thousands of retirees to the Virgin Valley community.

“Every police chief that’s ever been promoted in the City of Mesquite has been a white Mormon,” says Chesley. “I fit the bill in 2019 when I became the police chief.”

A turning point came, Chesley says, when he began getting calls from individuals who expected favors, such as making traffic tickets disappear. “My response was always ‘we have court proceedings for that.’”

His fall from grace with the Mormon community, he says, was cemented on the heels of rumors allegedly circulated by former City Attorney Bob Sweetin. Sweetin was appointed last year by Gov. Joe Lombardo to the Real Estate Division’s Common Interest Communities Commission, which regulates homeowners’ associations.

“Bob had spread rumors that I was having affairs and getting people pregnant and having sexual relationships with minor females, and so I filed a harassment complaint with Human Resources,” says Chesley. “I’ve been a police executive for the past 14 years. I’ve always held myself to a higher standard. I don’t have locker room talk. I don’t have sexual discussions like most guys do. No one will ever say ‘MaQuade is talking filth.’ I just don’t talk that way. I don’t like to be around it. To be accused of these things floored me. It destroyed me and my family.”

Sweetin says an investigation cleared him of spreading rumors. He says his termination was purely political.

Sweetin also alleged financial crimes against Chesley. Attorney General Aaron Ford investigated and found no evidence of criminal violations, according to Chesley’s lawsuit against the city.

The final straw for Chesley may have been an internal investigation Mesquite Police initiated under Chesley’s watch into allegations leveled against Officer Ryan Hughes.

“Ryan had applied multiple times for the police department, but he never passed any background checks,” says Chesley. As a police officer, Chesley assisted on Hughes’ background investigations and quickly learned Hughes had a reputation as a bully.

Hughes was eventually hired by former Chief Troy Tanner.

In June of 2024, Mesquite Police launched an internal investigation of Hughes. Chesley says the officer went on leave for twelve weeks, mounted a campaign against Chesley, and won assurances from two council members, Karen Fielding and Brian Wursten, that they’d vote to fire Chesley if the police union could deliver a vote of no confidence.

Hughes, Fielding, and Wursten did not respond to requests for comment.

In January, Hughes was terminated because he never passed a background check, a psychological exam, or a polygraph examination, according to Chesley, but was rehired three days later by Dickie.

“Ryan Hughes was terminated, through no fault of his own, due to the City’s discovery of an incomplete background investigation performed by a previous police administration,” Dickie told the Current via text. He says Hughes was rehired “due to the fact the discrepancy was not due to any action or inaction on his part.”

“They wouldn’t allow me to be involved at all,” says Chesley, adding Hughes “painted a picture that I retaliated against him and placed him on administrative leave and investigated him” because he was vocal in his opposition to Chesley in union meetings.

At the January 14th city council meeting following Hughes’ rehiring, text messages from Hughes’ police department cell phone obtained through a public records request were read during public comment by a detractor, Daniel Miller.

“Watching this battle between the Dallas little dicks and buff daddies feels like I’m watching two severely Down Syndrome kids see who can lick more windows on the short bus on their way to school,” read one text attributed to Hughes.

“I could not stop envisioning beating the shit out of both of those kids last night. I had to open the Corona app and do some breathing exercises,” says another text.

In another text, Hughes decries a city law that prohibits drinking alcohol in the park. “The government can’t tell us when and where we can drink. I’ll bring an ice chest.”

In another text, Hughes writes he hasn’t “been very good about logging” his K9 training. “I may or may not be copying and pasting my logs from a different time period and just changing the dates.”

The revelation could prove perilous for the city should Hughes’ arrests involving a K9 be challenged in court, say experts.

Whipple, the mayor, said the text messages and K9 log falsification were investigated internally by Mesquite Police, who deemed Hughes could not lose his job for the offenses under the union contract.

“There were two officers who had an issue with the K9 logs,” Whipple said during a phone interview Monday. “Both were disciplined by loss of pay for that, and Hughes had more” sanctions as a result of the offensive texts.

Just weeks after Hughes’ termination and rapid rehiring, Chesley was summoned to a meeting with Dickie, the city manager, and the mayor.

Chesley, who says he was at a doctor’s appointment at the time, informed the city that he was unable to go to work, based on his doctor’s order.

Dickie says Chesley’s failure to attend the meeting amounted to insubordination and terminated him.

“It was just weird,” Dickie said of Chesley’s failure to make the meeting. He declined to say whether it’s city policy to terminate individuals who take leave on doctor’s orders.

Chesley is suing the city for wrongful termination in both state and federal courts.

Nevada’s captains of industry and political leaders are doing little, if anything, to prepare for the potential economic hit as well as the human toll of President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to deport at least 11 million undocumented immigrants, including 189,000 who live in Nevada.

Trump has long said he intends to use the National Guard, local law enforcement, and possibly the military, to achieve his goal – beginning on “day one.”

“Getting them out will be a bloody story,” Trump said at a rally in Wisconsin earlier this year of Operation Aurora, named for the Colorado town Trump insists is being taken over by Venezuelan gangs.

Gov. Joe Lombardo ignored multiple inquiries from the Current about whether he’ll assist Trump by deploying the state’s National Guard.

UNLV Immigration Clinic Director Michael Kagan says he’s not surprised the governor is evading questions about whether he’ll cooperate with Trump, observing that as sheriff of Clark County, Lombardo was keen on cooperating with ICE.

“Lombardo more or less ran on that when he campaigned for governor,” Kagan told the Current. “He has to run for re-election himself in two years, so a request like that could put him in the hot seat.”

Trump is naming a team of loyalists to oversee the effort – as Attorney General, former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, who was investigated but not charged by the Justice Dept. for allegedly operating a sex trafficking ring of underage girls; former adviser and speechwriter Stephen Miller, one of the pro-deportation architects of Project 2025, as his assistant chief of staff for policy; former ICE director Tom Homan as ‘border czar’; and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Director.

Homeland Security oversees not only immigration, but also anti-terrorism initiatives and the Secret Service. Noem is best known for killing her hunting dog and a goat out of anger.

The president-elect pledges to remove some 11 to 13.5 million undocumented individuals whose contributions to the economy are significant but often unseen – particularly in construction, hospitality, and agriculture.

A report from the American Immigration Council (AIC) pegs the cost of a one-time deportation operation at $315 billion. ICE currently has only 41,000 beds. Detaining immigrants is estimated to cost $167.8 billion. CNN reported this week that Trump’s associates have been working with the private sector to detain and deport the undocumented population, citing sources familiar with the discussions.

AIC’s estimate of $315 billion is conservative and does not account for long-term costs of a sustained operation “or the incalculable additional costs necessary to acquire the institutional capacity to remove over 13 million people in a short period of time—incalculable because there is simply no reality in which such a singular operation is possible.”

Assuming 20 percent of the undocumented population would “self-deport”, the AIC estimates the costs of a multi-year campaign at $88 billion a year and $968 billion over a decade.

According to the AIC, mass deportation in Nevada would:

remove some 136,000 undocumented workers who make up 9% of the state’s employed workforce, the highest share per capita in the nation;remove almost one-quarter of skilled construction workers and 13% of hospitality workers:result in the loss of 43% of landscaping and groundskeeping workers; 42.5% of construction laborers, 41.6% of carpenters, 35.3% of housekeeping workers, and 25.4% of cooks.

U.S. born Americans, who work for undocumented entrepreneurs, are also at risk of losing their jobs.

Kagan says the “devastation to the Nevada economy and to Nevada’s families and communities is something that I don’t think anyone alive has any lived experience to calculate, to understand.”

An analysis from the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy concludes that mass deportation adversely affects society because businesses do not replace the deported workers.

“This is because they do not find U.S. workers who want to do the jobs; they turn to machines to replace the workers, depending on the industry, or because they reduce operations, resulting in layoffs, elimination of positions, or salary reductions,” writes Maribel Hastings of America’s Voice, an immigrant rights organization.

AIC projects gross domestic product would decline by 4.2 to 6.8% as a result of mass deportation. Tax revenue for the federal government, buoyed by $46.8 billion in annual federal income tax paid by undocumented immigrants, would plunge, as would state and local coffers across the country, which receive $29.3 billion a year from the undocumented population.

Undocumented immigrants also contribute $22.6 billion annually to Social Security and $5.7 billion to Medicare.

A study released this year from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning, nonprofit think tank, found undocumented immigrants paid nearly $100 billion in federal, state and local taxes in 2022.

Undocumented immigrants would contribute another $40.2 billion more per year in federal, state and local taxes if the population had legal permission to work, pay taxes, and receive the benefits.

In Nevada, undocumented immigrants paid a total of $507.1 million in taxes in 2022, with more than half, $271.9 million, in the form of sales tax, the study said.

Joe Lombardo gives a thumbs up to Donald Trump in Las Vegas while running for governor in July, 2022. (CSPAN screengrab)

Lombardo also did not respond to questions about the impact of deportation on Nevada’s budget, which is heavily reliant on sales tax.

Trump, in deporting millions of undocumented immigrants “would degrade productive capacity, balloon deficits and — yes — bring inflation roaring back, keeping a grim pledge on punitive immigration policy while breaking one on providing relief to American consumers,” economist Paul Krugman wrote Monday in the New York Times.

The cost of bacon, a favorite flashpoint for conservative voters who are banking on Trump’s promise to lower prices, is likely a fraction of what it would be should undocumented workers, who comprise roughly half of the nation’s agricultural workers (who kill livestock in addition to picking fruits and vegetables) be removed.

“There has long been collective, willful blindness,” Kagan says of the ubiquitous space undocumented immigrants take up in the economy and in communities. “We see it everywhere, but it’s also easy to ignore it.”

Official Nevada to the rescue?

Although Trump’s prelude to deportation has been lengthy and loud, political and business leaders in Nevada are revealing no concrete plans to impede it.

U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto says she “will always stand up for hardworking immigrant communities,” and will “do everything in her power” to stop Trump. She would not say what power she has to derail the deportation plan or whether she’s discussed it with Lombardo.

“Senator Jacky Rosen has serious concerns about a far-reaching plan to deport immigrants who haven’t committed crimes and who are contributing to our economy every day,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “She’s committed to standing up for Nevada’s hardworking immigrant community, and will fight back against efforts that would separate law-abiding families.”

The spokesperson did not say how Rosen would “fight back” or whether she’s talked with Lombardo.

Attorney General Aaron Ford, a Democrat who has been named as a potential rival to Lombardo in 2026, would not say whether he’s discussed Trump’s deportation plan with the governor.

Trump’s priorities for a second term include building affordable housing – a product that is likely to be slowed and made more expensive by mass deportation. The Southern Nevada Home Builders Association said it had nothing to share on the topic, and declined to say whether the organization had approached Lombardo.

Trump is also counting on deportation to free up homes for citizens. In 2022, 39% or 1.6 million undocumented immigrants nationwide owned their own homes. Census data indicates about a third of unauthorized immigrants in Nevada are homeowners.

The Nevada Resort Association, which represents the state’s gaming and resort industry, is unaware of any discussions about the effects of deportation among its members, some of the largest employers in the state.

“I don’t think the resorts employ undocumented people,” NRA president Virginia Valentine said via email.

Many resort industry employees, however, live in mixed-status households, says Culinary Local 226 Secretary-Treasurer Ted Pappageorge. “It’s their family members, their neighbors, their friends,” who are at risk of deportation, he says. Trump, who owns a hotel in Las Vegas, would likely suffer from a dearth of hospitality workers.

The union, which represents nearly 60,000 workers, also counts among its members Dreamers, young people brought to the country illegally as children, who have been awarded temporary protected status via Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

The AIC estimates some 5.1 million U.S. born children live in America’s four million mixed-status households, and projects the deportation of a breadwinner would result in decreased household income of 62.7% or $51,200 a year. In Nevada, 9% of households are mixed-status, the largest share in the nation, according to Pew Research.

The state’s Department of Employment and Training Rehabilitation says it has no data on the effect of deportation on the workforce and the economy.

Pappageorge says conducting mass deportations “is a ridiculous idea. It will blow up this economy, and with Trump’s policies of tariffs, you don’t know what it’s going to do.”

The union “negotiated very tough language in our contract that essentially supports the rights for folks to become citizens, but also requires companies to follow the rule of law and not be agents of wild mass raids and deportations,” Pappageorge says. “We’re going to fight like hell to protect our members, their families and this economy.”

The Las Vegas Chamber acknowledges Trump’s deportation plan and intent to impose tariffs would affect its members.

“Our Government Affairs Committee hasn’t weighed in on those issues at all,” spokeswoman Cara Clarke said during an interview. “Our members, like the rest of the nation, are still processing results, and no specific policies have been brought forward for enactment or for legislative debate.”

Scott Muelrath, president and CEO of the Henderson Chamber, declined to respond to inquiries, according to a spokeswoman.

“The discussions with industries/members and the LCC, has been consistently asking, begging (for), demanding etc. Comprehensive Immigration Reform“ says Latin Chamber of Commerce president Peter Guzman. “My members need employees, and immigration done correctly can help fill those voids. Furthermore, it is important that this country have a dignified process for immigrants to continue to contribute to this great country. Without that dignified reform, you get chaos.” He declined to say whether he has discussed deportation with Lombardo.

Bryan Wachter of the Retail Association of Nevada says he’s keeping an eye on the situation but has yet to discuss it with members.

The local chapter of the National Federation of Independent Businesses says it is not involved in the issue and declined to say whether it has discussed deportation with Lombardo.

NFIB’s October jobs report notes 35% percent of business owners reported having job openings they could not fill in October, up one point from September, while 49% of contractors have an open position they can’t fill.

Four steps to the border

“I know Trump says ‘day one’ but that’s not the way it would work,” says Kagan. “This would be more like a big, heavy train that starts off going extremely slowly, but then accelerates.‘

Deportation is a four-step process. The government must first identify, locate, and apprehend undocumented people. Next it must determine whether an individual can be released on bond, paroled, or detained. Experts say it’s likely most or all would remain in custody. Third, a judge determines if the immigrant qualifies for relief, or if the government should be awarded an order of removal, or allow the person to voluntarily leave. Lastly, the government deports the individual, who is generally repatriated to their home or another country.

Project 2025, which Trump claims he knows nothing about, calls for military assistance in the apprehension of undocumented people, while Trump’s own Agenda 47 envisions the National Guard and local law enforcement lending a hand. He’s also said he’d “have no problem” using the military.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Trump’s advisers are “weighing a national emergency declaration that would allow the incoming administration to repurpose military assets to detain and remove migrants.”

Democratic governors in some states could mount a resistance to using the Guard and local police. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey told MSNBC that she would “absolutely not” allow state police to assist with deportations.

Should Lombardo and others resist a Trump bid to allow the Nevada National Guard to assist, the future president could override them via the Insurrection Act of 1807, which allows the president to deploy the National Guard, and which Trump has threatened to use.

State Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro and Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager did not respond to requests for comment.

Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill would not say whether he’d allow Metro Police to take part in deportations.

However, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police provided a policy that says although officers have the authority to assist with federal law enforcement, Metro “will not enforce immigration violations. Officers will not stop and question, detain, arrest” on the grounds that an individual is undocumented.

Refusing to participate could cost Metro in the form of federal funding. Trump is considering pulling grants from police departments that refuse to cooperate.

In 2019 — when Trump was in office and Lombardo was sheriff — Metro ended its immigration agreement with ICE. The controversial partnership called for holding detainees on misdemeanor charges until immigration agents could arrive and transfer to federal detention for removal from the country.

However, in 2021, after Lombardo crowed at a campaign event about deporting 10,000 immigrants, the Las Vegas Review-Journal revealed that Metro, under Lombardo’s direction, helped Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrest non-violent undocumented immigrants – the same people Trump now seeks to deport.

The Washoe County Sheriff also declined to answer. “At this time, that is a hypothetical question and we have no comment,” a spokeswoman said.

Local law enforcement, critics argue, is not set up to manage such duties and still keep their communities safe.

Who will be targeted?

Trump’s demonization of immigrants as criminals who are “poisoning the blood” of Americans has resulted in a phenomenon in which people discount any application of his policies to them or those they know, suggests Kaplan.

“People convince themselves ‘he’s not talking about me,’ or ‘he’s not talking about my employee,’ or ‘he’s not talking about my neighbor or my friend’. He talks about them all as criminals or even worse. And so people think ‘he’s clearly not talking about the people I know.’”

Trump and his surrogates have said they’ll target criminals first. But Kagan notes the government is already deporting undocumented immigrants who have criminal records.

Trump deported more than 1.5 million people during his first term, about the same as the 1.49 million deported by Pres. Joe Biden’s administration, which also turned back some 3 million immigrants at the border under Title 42, a Trump policy that remained in effect for much of Biden’s term.

“If they really only want to target people who have criminal records, that’s not very different from the Biden policy. There is a line to be drawn. How serious a criminal record do you have to have to be a target? You could turn the dial up a little bit, and affect some people, but that’s in the margins. That’s what they did in the first Trump term. That’s not a mass deportation.”

“In my work, I have to take him seriously about what he said he wants to do, and there are a lot of signs that both Donald Trump and the people around him have given a good deal of thought to this,” he says “So you’re not going to be talking about people with criminal records. You’re going to be talking about everyday people who are very integrated in our community.”

Trump, for all his pro-family rhetoric, has no qualms about separating children from their parents via deportation.

“When you hear that you’re going to be separated from your family, you don’t come,” Trump said in a 2023 interview with Univision.

“People need to be deported,” Homan, Trump’s designated border czar, has said. “No one should be off the table.”

That includes recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) – people who arrived in the country illegally as children – as well as those granted temporary status while cooperating with law enforcement prosecution of labor law violations (Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement), and others with temporary protected status.

“I don’t think it’s going to be the mass deportation he’s been talking about,” says Alfonso Lopez, political director and organizer for Sheet Metal Workers Local 88 in Las Vegas. “When you try to deport 10 or 11 million people, you know the economy is going to take a hit, and that’s one of his biggest campaign issues – to improve the economy.”

“He can build a perfect storm. That’s for sure,” said Lopez’ colleague Robert Diaz. “Chaos follows him, and somehow he can wrangle the tornado.”

Trump’s campaign declined to address the dissonance of its pledges to lower costs on goods and services while purging the nation of low-income workers who perform jobs Americans reject.

“The people of Nevada elected Donald Trump to carry out an America First agenda that includes enforcing our laws and deporting illegal immigrants” Trump’s Nevada communications director said via email following the election.

“He will deliver,” added a spokeswoman for the Trump-Vance transition team.

Former Pres. Donald Trump’s running mate, U.S. Sen. JD Vance, unleashed a litany of attacks Tuesday in Southern Nevada against Vice Pres. Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s likely presidential nominee.

Vance’s maiden visit to Nevada coincided with audio leaked to the Washington Post from one of Vance’s meetings this weekend with fundraisers, in which the candidate calls the Democratic Party’s switch from Biden to Harris “a political sucker punch. The bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger. And Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did.”

Vance tried to flip that script in Henderson Tuesday.

“The entire world now knows that she (Harris) helped cover up Joe Biden’s declining mental capacity for years, and now our country is saddled with a president who can’t do the job,” Vance said Tuesday. “Our adversaries are licking their chops and the world is in disarray because of weak American leadership.”

With the exception of bringing Republican Senate candidate Sam Brown on stage, Vance’s 30-minute speech before a crowd of several hundred Republican faithful was heavy on red meat, but lacked any mention of Nevada issues, including Trump’s promise to stop taxing tips. His speech was also bereft of previous comments some have perceived as sexist.

Trump is defending his running mate, who is being criticized for his comments over the years on women and families. The former president, in a Fox Newsinterview Monday, said Vance “loves families”.

“A lot has happened in the last month,” Vance said, without mentioning the outrage, even among some Republicans, over the surfacing of his “childless cat lady” remarks from 2021. He has attempted on several occasions to explain the comment but stands by his contention that Democratic leaders are not parents and are ill-equipped to lead as a result.

Vance has also suggested that parents with children be permitted to cast extra votes on behalf of their minor offspring.

“We’re going to say a word about the media. I know we have some friends in the media back there,” Vance said of reporters and camera operators in the back of the gym. “Not all of them are bad. Just most of them,” he said, echoing Trump, who Vance once characterized as “America’s Hitler.”

Vance promised that in six months, “President Trump will launch the largest deportation program in American history. We’re gonna end catch and release. We’re gonna ban sanctuary cities, and then we’re gonna finish building that beautiful Trump wall.”

He accused the Biden administration of handing out “work permits to 3 million illegal aliens who lied to claim asylum. They turn a blind eye while those fraudsters steal American jobs and undercut American wages,” adding Harris is “not going to stop until every illegal immigrant has the right to vote, which is going to destroy your voice in your own country to make room for people who shouldn’t even be here.”

Vance referred to Harris as Biden’s “border czar,” a position she never held.

Harris, in 2021, was given the job of addressing the root of migration from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. She has never been in charge of the border.

“I’ll ask you a simple question,” Vance said. “Do we want open borders? Do we want to bankrupt Medicare by giving it to illegal aliens? Do you want to defund the police? Do you want to ban fracking? So, do we want Kamala Harris? Hell, no!”

Harris, in 2017, was the first co-sponsor of Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All Act. The bill would have abolished private health insurance and instead, the government-run benefit would have been available to every resident, including undocumented immigrants.

Border crossings, thanks to assistance from Mexico, have dropped in the last several months, with June crossings reaching the lowest point in three years.

However, Vance put “all illegal aliens” on notice. “President Trump and I have a different message. If you are here against the laws of this country, pack your bags, because you’re going home in six months.”

Vance promised the crowd he and Trump are going to “lead a great American restoration. We’re going to bring strength back. We’re going to bring common sense back. We’re going to bring prosperity back to the American people, and it’s starting in Nevada.”

A second rally was scheduled in Reno for Tuesday afternoon. Nevada is one of a handful of battleground states in the presidential election and is leaning Republican, according to pollsters.

Nevada Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com. Follow Nevada Current on Facebook and X.

Former Pres. Donald Trump needs to discard his storied penchant for racist and sexist tropes and nicknames if he wants to win over independent voters in his likely race against Vice Pres. Kamala Harris, say political experts in Nevada, one of a handful of battleground states.

Harris, who raised $81 million in the first 24 hours of her candidacy and has been endorsed by enough delegates to win the nomination, has long been a target of Trump’s barbs – from his constant deliberate mispronunciation of her name to his assertion in 2020 that she is not a natural-born American to more recent evaluations of her mental health.

““Kamala, I call her laughing Kamala,” Trump said at a rally Saturday, the day before Pres. Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the presidential race. ”Have you seen her laughing? She is crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh. She is nuts.”

On Monday, as support for Harris’ candidacy expanded, in a social media post Trump assigned her a new nickname – “‘Dumb as a Rock’ Kamala Harris.”

“It’s important for her to manage her nervous laughter, but she’s definitely not dumb,” former Nevada Republican Party chairwoman and political commentator Amy Tarkanian said during an interview, adding Trump is doing himself no favor with suburban women by belittling Harris.

Campaign consultant Lisa Mayo DeRiso, who primarily represents Republicans, agrees.

“Republicans need independents to win in November,” she said via text. “They will be better served if the focus is on issues and competency and not gender or race.”

Tarkanian says Trump is further cementing his image as a “misogynistic jerk” with his choice of J.D. Vance as vice-president, noting Vance suggested women in violent marriages should stay put for the sake of the children.

In a 2021 Fox News interview, Vance lumped Harris in as one of the “childless cat ladies” who is “miserable” with her life. “The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” who don’t have a “direct stake” in America, Vance said.

Harris, a former U.S. Senator who served as Attorney General of California and District Attorney in San Francisco, is poised to knock her head against, if not break through, a number of glass ceilings. If elected, she’d be not only the first woman president but the first female Black and Asian Indian president, as well, in an election cycle where reproductive freedom is on the ballot in Nevada and at least four other states.

Trump, who appointed three Supreme Court justices on the basis of their opposition to abortion, has attempted to distance himself from the court’s ensuing decision abolishing Roe v. Wade, the abortion law of the land for almost half a century. Vance, however, wants to pursue a national abortion ban.

“Trump could have had plausible deniability over his position on abortion,” says Dr. Rebecca Gill, a UNLV political science professor. “However, his choice of JD Vance makes it a little bit more difficult for him to back away from that.”

Gill says Trump “hasn’t quite settled on what his argument is going to be against Harris. So far, it’s been ‘laughing Kamala’ and ‘crazy Kamala.’ These are certainly more personal attacks, as opposed to settling on an argument against her qualifications, experience, or policies.”

Following Biden’s announcement Sunday that he was endorsing Harris, the underbelly of America took to social media with vile attacks against Harris, some sexualized, with seemingly little concern of backlash over Trump being found guilty of 34 felony counts related to covering up payments to a porn star, or a jury’s finding that he was liable for sexual abuse against columnist E. Jean Carroll, who he assaulted in a department store dressing room.

Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, a Republican, said of Harris “100 percent, she was a DEI hire. When you go down that route, you get mediocrity.”

In 2020, Biden pledged to choose a woman as his running mate.

On Tuesday, Republican House leaders instructed members to eliminate race and gender from their criticisms of Harris, POLITICO reported.

“This should not be about personalities. It should be about policy. And we have a record to compare,” Speaker Mike Johnson told POLITICO after meeting with his colleagues. “This has nothing to do with race. It has to do with the competence of the person running for president, the relative strength of the two candidates and what ideas they have on how to solve America’s problems. And I think in that comparison, we’ll win in a landslide.”

“I think what Black women and other women of color are going to have to do is put up a shell,” says Erika Washington, executive director of Make the Road Nevada. “We’re going to have to put up that extra guard, certainly up until election day because the people on the internet feel like they can say anything to anybody, and there’s no filter. We saw it happen in 2016 with Hillary Clinton that everything a woman does is viewed so negatively. This is a woman who is Black and Indian.”

Getting personal

Trump, who led his crowds at rallies to chant “lock her up” during his 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton, is unlikely to let his own legal woes temper his insults against Harris, says Gill.

“But it definitely will color the way that people receive those remarks,” Gill says. “Part of that has to do with Kamala’s career history. She was a prosecutor, she was a specialist in crimes against women. This kind of prosecutor versus felon typology is probably a lot more relevant than her simply being a woman. I think she will be in a strong position to prosecute the case against him.”

“In those roles I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” Harris said at a campaign office rally Monday of her experience as a prosecutor. “Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”

Gill says it’s hard to say whether voters find personal attacks tiresome.

“We have two test cases ahead of this, and I think they split the evidence,” she says, noting in 2008 America elected its first Black president, Barack Obama. “America does not want to be seen as a country that still has racism and racist tendencies, so you did see an enthusiasm and coalescence around this charismatic Black leader. But then we have this glass ceiling of electing a woman president.”

Harris, according to Gill, lacks the baggage of decades in the public spotlight and the public vitriol that weighed on Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency.

“A lot of people who felt that they wanted to vote for a woman still had a very difficult time actually pulling the lever for that particular woman,” she says. “It remains to be seen how that’s going to shake out around Kamala Harris’s campaign.”

“I’m not thrilled with Kamala, but for the first time, I think the vice-president choice is really going to make a difference because of that attempted assassination (of Trump) being so fresh in people’s minds,” says Tarkanian. “I want to see who Kamala chooses.”

Harris is said to be considering a handful of potential running mates, predominantly white men.

“I don’t think she has to choose a white man,” says Tarkanian, adding that voters who would be turned off by a person of color “are already voting for Trump.” Nevada Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com. Follow Nevada Current on Facebook and X.

The shooter who killed three UNLV faculty members Wednesday mailed at least 22 envelopes without a return address to education professionals across the country before entering the campus with a Taurus handgun and 11 magazines of ammunition, Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill revealed at a news conference Thursday afternoon.

One envelope contained a white powdery substance that is being analyzed by police

The Clark County Coroner identified two of three UNLV faculty members killed during Wednesday’s on campus shooting. Las Vegan Patricia Navarro Velez, 39, was an associate accounting professor. Business Professor Cha Jan Chang, 64, lived in Henderson. The third victim has yet to be identified, pending notification of next of kin.

According to the university faculty directory, both Chang and Navarro Velez had offices in Beam Hall, which authorities have said is where the shooting started.

The shooter, identified as 67 year-old Anthony James Polito, applied for a number of positions at Nevada institutions of higher learning and was denied employment, but McMahill stopped short of identifying the rejections as a motive for the shooting, despite discovering a target list in his Henderson apartment.

“The suspect had a list of people he was seeking on the university campus as well as faculty from Eastern Carolina University,” McMahill said. “We have contacted almost everyone on those lists to make sure that they are alright. We have done that for all of UNLV and all of Eastern Carolina with the exception of one individual who was on an international flight.”

None of the three victims killed were named as targets on the lists, McMahill said.

Two deceased victims were discovered on the third floor of Beam Hall, another on the fourth floor, and the victim who survived is believed to have been on the fifth floor. His condition has been downgraded from stable to a “life-threatening position,” McMahill said.

The first campus police officer arrived 78 seconds after being notified at 11:44 a.m. of shots fired in Beam Hall, a building adjacent to the UNLV Student Union. Campus police were joined by LVMPD officers and entered Beam Hall, according to McMahill, “without hesitation,” and searched for the suspect.

At 11:55 the suspect, pulled out his weapon and engaged in a gun battle captured on a surveillance camera.

“The suspect was struck multiple times and collapsed to the ground,” McMahill said.

“These two detectives are heroes,” UNLV Police Chief Adam Garcia said at the news conference. “They risked their lives in order to save countless others in what the sheriff pointed out could have been a bloodbath.”

McMahill noted the shooter had 150 rounds of additional ammunition.

“I believe he was probably headed toward that student union,” which McMahill said was “full of kids having a barbecue and playing Legos. I believe we avoided a much larger tragedy by the actions of that police officer.”

UNLV President Keith Whitfield echoed McMahill and praised the campus police for running “into danger and they made our university safe and clearly stopped a larger tragedy from happening.” Whitfield said the school is discussing augmented security that will still allow it to freely serve the public.

The victim who survived walked out of Beam Hall and was met by Metro officers, McMahill said, and “thrown into a police car and driven to an arriving Community Ambulance” which took him to Sunrise Hospital and “probably saved his life.”

An arrow on a chair discovered by police in Polito’s apartment pointed down to a “last will and testament,” according to McMahill, who said the shooter was experiencing financial difficulties, evidenced by an eviction notice police found taped to his door.

McMahill said police have not discovered any clues prior to Wednesday’s events that would have provided an indication of Polito’s intentions. The Taurus handgun was purchased legally in 2022. Polito had a criminal history involving computer trespass in Virginia in 1992.

Nevada Current is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com. Follow Nevada Current on Facebook and Twitter.