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On a February morning, the broadcast studio at Radio Campesina in Phoenix, Arizona, feels frenzied: Drive-time DJs relinquish their seats to incoming guests, trading jokes over a norteña song’s jaunty accordion. But at 10:18 a.m., a producer gestures for silence. Mics go on, and Osvaldo Franko starts the show: “Vámonos, from coast to coast and border to border!”
Franko’s voice reaches some 750,000 people — many of them Latino workers, from bellhops in Las Vegas to farmworkers in California’s Central Valley. Every weekday morning for more than 25 years, Spanish-speaking listeners around the West have tuned into Punto de Vista for casual but curated conversations on topics ranging from national politics to romance.
Today’s segment, though, is something new: Conoce Tus Derechos, or “Know Your Rights.” Radio Campesina launched the weekly program soon after the election, as President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to initiate mass deportations turned tangible.
In recent weeks, lawyers and activists have joined Franko to share advice on interacting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Today’s guests are here for a grim follow-up: how to make sure your family and belongings are cared for after you’re detained.
“Did you know that if you need to let someone take care of your house, you have to leave them certain specific documents so they can make decisions?” Franko asks in Spanish.
His first guest is Juliana Manzanarez, an immigration lawyer. At Franko’s urging, she lists the paperwork an undocumented listener ought to compile: A power of attorney authorizing someone to take your kids to the doctor. Another for accessing your bank accounts. One for the title to your house, and a general one they could use to sell your car.
Franko, 45, has a short swoop of salt-and-pepper hair, squarish glasses, and the disciplined ease of someone who runs several miles before work. He’s from Mexico City, where he developed a colloquial, assertive radio persona (and replaced the “c” in “Franco” with a “k”). Two years into hosting Punto de Vista, he’s practiced at fielding questions that come through Facebook and WhatsApp. Some are general: Where should I keep those documents? How long do I have after I’m detained before I’m deported? Others are more specific: If I’m married to a U.S. citizen but don’t yet have my own papers, what should I do if I’m stopped by ICE? In a voice message, a man asks, “Franko, can a work permit protect me?”
The answers, from Manzanarez and two community organizers sitting beside her, are friendly but direct. Make several copies of those documents, and give them to the people you’re leaving in charge. The timeline after you’re detained depends on your record and what country you’re from. If you’re stopped, remain silent. A work permit alone will not protect you from deportation.
“They’re sending greetings from Tempe and say, ‘God bless you and take care of you,’” Franko tells the guests, reading from his phone. Addressing the audience, he paraphrases Cesar Chavez: “The struggle does not end until we stop fighting.”
“It’s not the first time we’ve been in a moment like this,” he adds.
The comment likely resonates with listeners here in Maricopa County, where notorious former Sheriff Joe Arpaio targeted Latinos for decades. But it’s also true of the radio station itself. Chavez and the United Farm Workers founded Radio Campesina in 1983, hoping to connect and educate migrant workers confronting abuse. And La Campesina is not alone in that effort: For nearly a century, at stations large and small, Spanish-language radio has proven a powerful tool for defending immigrant communities across the West.
“The struggle does not end until we stop fighting.”
DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION, as Americans sought a scapegoat for their financial woes, more than a million people of Mexican descent — a majority of them U.S. citizens — were forced to leave the U.S. for Mexico. In Los Angeles, a veteran of the Mexican Revolution took to the airwaves to protest. From 4 to 6 a.m., Pedro González and his band, Los Madrugadores (“The Early Risers”), serenaded KMPC listeners heading to the factories and fields with a combination of corridos and political commentary. The show was so popular that authorities tried to revoke González’s broadcasting license — and eventually sent him to prison on trumped-up charges before deporting him. The border made a poor sonic barrier, though — González quickly got back on the air in Tijuana.
In the 1970s, with the advent of public broadcasting, Chicano organizers were able to start their own Spanish-language radio stations. The first were located in agricultural communities: KBBF in Santa Rosa, California, and KDNA in Granger, Washington. As historian Monica De La Torre wrote in a recent study of KDNA (pronounced “cadena,” the Spanish word for “chain”), radio was a uniquely effective medium for reaching farmworkers: cheap to produce, free to access, no reading required. Workers could listen to portable transistor radios while they picked wine grapes and Red Delicious apples.
Beyond entertainment and a sense of community, the stations provided a safe and anonymous forum for listeners to ask questions about navigating the immigration system. They also shared urgent news in real time. When immigration raids hit Washington’s Yakima Valley in the 1980s, KDNA designated lookouts to keep watch — and created a covert alert system. “They used a song called ‘La Cosecha de Mujeres.’ When that song went on the air, the farmworker community knew there was migra action,” Francisco Rios, the station’s news director, told HCN.
Cesar Chavez visited KDNA in 1980. Dolores Inés Casillas, a radio scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara, writes that he was particularly impressed with the station’s DIY counter-surveillance efforts. Soon after, Chavez invited one of KDNA’s producers to help start a new station in California: KUFW, Radio Campesina’s flagship station. (Four decades later, KDNA still broadcasts from a small community station in Granger; Radio Campesina now operates a network of several commercial stations around the country.)
Not everyone was a fan of the migra alerts, of course. According to De La Torre, agents with the Immigration and Naturalization Service complained that hosts were aiding illegal activity. But the broadcasts were unrecorded, and their fleeting nature made investigation difficult. Besides, even if regulators tuned in, few of the Federal Communications Commission’s employees spoke Spanish.
Today, it’s not so easy to fly under the radar. Radio broadcasts are less ephemeral; many stations, including Radio Campesina, post shows on social media. And the Trump administration is aggressively working to suppress live immigration reporting: In February, the newly appointed chair of the FCC, Brendan Carr, announced the agency was opening an investigation into California station KCBS for its coverage of raids in San José.
First Amendment experts broadly agree that law enforcement operations are a matter of public interest. Still, KDNA and Radio Campesina are taking a cautious approach: These days, rather than broadcasting alerts themselves, staff at both stations said they’re sharing information about local grassroots groups that offer real-time warnings and legal support.
But in Phoenix, Radio Campesina is still building on the other strategy that inspired Chavez in Washington. When staff hear rumors about a raid, the company’s outreach team drives out to independently verify them. Ruben Pulido, a member of that team, said in early February that the vast majority of the reports they’d received so far had been false. “The most important thing is to know if it’s really happening, to not alarm people,” he told HCN.
Maria Barquin, the network’s program director, said this kind of work is central to La Campesina’s mission: “How we’re going to make sure people understand their value, make people understand that unidos somos más, that there’s light at the end of the tunnel.”
As immigrants around the West steel themselves for a dark political era, Barquin hopes they’ll look to both the technologies and the activists of an earlier generation. In her office, she pointed to a box of red “Know Your Rights” cards, just below a larger-than-life poster of Chavez. “There’s some good tactics that they need to learn from the past, and I think that’s the opportunity,” she said.
PUNTO DE VISTA ends before 11 a.m. — but ever since the inauguration, Osvaldo Franko has been getting messages from worried listeners at all hours. On the Wednesday Manzanarez joined his show, he’d organized an evening event for people trying to assemble all the paperwork she’d recommended. The venue was an office building downtown where Franko broadcasts a side project — an internet station called Frekuencia Alterna (“Alternate Frequency”).
By 7 p.m., the station’s studios had been transformed into a makeshift legal clinic, sound equipment pushed back to accommodate a table covered in power of attorney forms. Franko and a smiling woman who hosts an ’80s pop show were organizing the documents into folders. They kept having to print more: Dozens of people were lined up to talk to an attorney in the break room.
Adriana Cota, a blonde woman in leopard-print boots, helped distribute the folders. Cota is a legal document preparer and Franko’s wife. (They met when Franko asked her to be a guest on his show.) In the hallway, she was stopped by a young pregnant woman in a pink dress. Sofia (a pseudonym) told Cota her baby was due soon, and that she had a toddler at home. She’d come to Arizona from Mexico three years ago.
“I’m afraid they’re going to come and take me,” Sofia said. She wanted to know whether she could authorize her 18-year-old nephew, the only adult in the family with U.S. citizenship, to take responsibility for her kids if she were deported. Cota assured her that she could.
Sofia was accompanied by her older sister, Elena (also a pseudonym). Elena’s son was the 18-year-old — and she said he was scared, too. Earlier that week, he’d gone to the store but left without buying anything when he saw what looked like immigration agents.
“I had no idea there were places like this, that give you advice.”
“What responsibility for a kid to feel,” Cota said quietly. “That if I go out, they’re going to take my parents.”
“We have to do what’s possible to leave them with someone and be prepared. Like right now, with the packet,” Elena said, holding up her folder. She told Cota even this thin pile of documents brought some comfort: “We didn’t have any idea what to do.”
“I had no idea there were places like this, that give you advice,” Sofia added.
Cota explained that Franko, standing in the corner, had organized the event — and that he hosts Punto de Vista. Elena seemed surprised and impressed. “My husband listens to La Campesina all the time,” she said.
“What’s your husband’s name?” Franko asked. If Elena had a message for him, he said, he’d share it on the air the next day.
Elena thought for a second. “Tell him I love him,” she said.
