Latino Rights Groups Urge DOJ to Investigate TX Attorney General for Raiding Homes of LULAC Leaders

this is democracy Now democracynow.org the Warren peace report I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez we turn out to Texas where the Republican attorney general Ken Paxton is Raising concerns about voter suppression by targeting the country's oldest Latino Civil Rights group lulac the league of United Latin American citizens lulac was the first was first founded to fight discrimination against citizens of Mexican descent in Texas now it's responding to a series of raids of the homes of lulac member State lawmakers and other Latino leaders in the San Antonio area last week speaking to the media Monday longtime lulac volunteer 87-year-old Lydia Martinez described how armed officers arrived at her home at 6: a.m. with a warrant to seize electronic devices swab for DNA as they collected evidence of alleged vote harvesting and identity fraud I was in my night gown and I thought it was my next door neighbor and I went to the door and uh nine officers from uh the Attorney General's office walked in and they had a search warrant and uh uh they told me that they were there because I had filed a complaint uh that seniors were not getting their mail ballots and and I said yes I did and he says do you have the names and I said I have a few of the names and they came in and I said can I get dressed they didn't let me uh they set me down and they started searching all my house my store room my garage my kitchen everything and uh after 2 hours of questioning they took me outside uh in front of all my neighbors and uh all the all the officers around me and uh for half an hour while they searched the living room where I had been sitting and uh after half an hour they let me go back in the house and they continued the questioning uh and um asking me about L like members in particular and uh I told him why are you all doing this and he said because there was fraud lulac is calling on the justice department to investigate Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over the raids this comes as propublica and the Texas Tribune report Paxton has also used Consumer Protection Law more than a dozen times to investigate a range of mostly Latino organizations or groups who offer food and shelter to migrants and Asylum Seekers along the border Paxton also tried to shut down the Immigrant L Civil Rights group Fiel in Houston claiming it engaged in electioneering but a judge recently shot down his effort all of this comes as prosecutors agreed in March to drop security fraud charges against Paxton himself that allowed him to avoid going to trial if he performed a 100 hours of community service this is separate from more recent corruption allegations paon face that led to his impeachment trial last year in which he was acquitted by the Republican controlled Texas Senate for more we go to Houston where we're joined by Cesar espanosa executive director of Fiel which is the Spanish acronym for families of immigrants and students in struggle and in Miami Florida we're joined by Juan prano CEO of lulac the largest and oldest Latino Civil Rights group in the United States Juan let's begin with you explain what happened last week in Texas well good morning Amy thank you for having me uh as you said you know uh last Tuesday uh to our knowledge over 12 search warrants were actually presented to Latino leaders uh lulac members in San Antonio um in the case of Lydia as you just described uh eight armed officers came in but in another case um Manuel Medina almost 40 officers armed with um AK-47 SWAT gear um came in tactical gear came into his home at 6:00 a.m. his daughter was sleeping on the couch downstairs thought someone was breaking into the home he was upstairs with his wife and his other daughter as they came downstairs and they were held interrogated for over 7 hours and one proel what does this tell you about the uh efforts of the uh of officials in Texas to intimidate uh Latino voters well I mean you know it's pervasive um you know we've been obviously doing a lot of research here and uh it didn't start last week you know uh this investigation on Election Integrity started over two years ago essentially at this point also referred by another Republican district attorney there with no no evidence at all whatsoever in June we saw that they sued the arch dases of Rio Grand Valley sister Norma pimel which provides migrants with services that are in this country legally uh then we saw um last month with anunciation house which provides uh Refugee Services as well uh obviously with Fiel um too and also saw 12 other nonprofits that effectively have gone through the same search and seizure process at least what we've heard from the courts that this is unconstitutional effectively the tort law that he's using to essentially Sue nonprofit organizations because they're providing because they're 501c3 organizations and providing services to immigrants is really blatant discrimination um you know our expectation was that he would obviously come after lulac and Su lulac but certainly we were very surprised when he started to go after Latino leaders and actual lulac members of those 12 that we know of four of them are lulac members three of them are women in their 80s uh and they were told not to talk to anyone um post um the search and seizure uh they took their cell phones they took their computers they took documentations in the case of Lydia they took her calendar which is essentially where she keeps all her doctor's appointments uh personal contacts information about her prescription medicine and she just been to the doctor the day before and had to go back in order to get that and so she was left without any communication device at all to communicate with her family and had to literally leave her home go to another lulac member's house to get assistance so can you talk about the timing of this Juan Pano um for the first time in lak's history established a 1929 uh Lula's adante pack the political action committee endorsed Harris and woles endorsed uh kamla Harris to be president can you do you think that there is a direct link and explain uh the different parts of your organization sure and thank you Amy for that question so you know lulac uh to your point was founded in 1929 in Corpus Christie it was actually founded as a 501c4 organization um that is the entity that everyone effectively knows and commonly refers to essentially as lulac we have over 535 councils around the country every single one of those councils is incorporated they actually carry the lulac name and seal we have over 240,000 members in all 50 states and we have actually um those 535 councils in 33 States and 207 cities so we are the largest Latino membership organization in the country in addition to that we have a 501c3 which is our lulac National Institute so all the programmatic work that we do to provide programs and services to the Latino Community is actually done through our 501c3 um the 501c3 is actually Incorporated in uh the District of Colombia and then more recently we actually uh established the lulac adalante pack uh and so it's actually a Super Pac and actually it's Incorporated in District of Colombia um you know I don't believe that it is actually connected specifically to the pack primarily because all of the lawsuits and essentially the pattern of lawsuits are primarily targeting um nonprofit organizations and specifically 501c3 organizations they also only have purview over corporations that are founded in the state of Texas so um you know Paxon cannot go after uh the lulac National Institute the 501c3 or the lulac adant pack but you know that obviously was very close in time I believe the date of the endorsement was August 9th or August 10th so um less than two weeks ago at this point and ju I wanted to ask you about a a a separate matter also related to elections on Monday uh the governor of Texas Greg Abbott announced that the state has removed over 1 million names from the Texas voter roles now purges are common in many states but that's a that's a big number and it's obviously coming so close to the election yeah I mean look uh we we actually saw that it came out about 5:00 um you know we started our advocacy campaign uh on Thursday night it literally took us two days to get information about Lydia's case and to begin to gather all the facts uh relevant to this case uh really it is his form of deflection right it's his effort to basically say look you know we have a million people that are on our voter roles that we effectively are removing I actually went through those numbers uh over 467,000 of them essentially are deceased right another 400,000 or so or effectively what they call in the suspended mode but only 6,500 of those are actually would are classified effectively as non-citizens so you're talking about 0.65% less than less than 1% of those are actually non-citizens and only 1,00 which is 1 1,000 of a percent of that million have actually any voting history at all whatsoever um but to say that there is systemic voter fraud and voter harvesting happening in the state of Texas is absolutely false Juan bro in a minute we want to ask you about Lulu's study of project 2025 uh but we want to bring in Cesar espanosa the executive director of Fiel families of immigrants and students in the struggle um Cesar can you start off by talking about what happened in your new office your old destroyed by a Hur hurrie about the serving of a lawsuit against you by the attorney general who himself is under investigation and went through an impeachment trial now is serving community service but he's also doing this well so uh we unfortunately lost our our office Fel has been here in Houston for the last 17 years uh and in the 17 years we helped out so many houstonians uh regardless of their immigration status recover from natural disasters so just the few days after hurricane hit or a day after hurricane hit uh Barrel hit excuse me I I was talking to my family about the fact that uh I was ready to get back out there ready to uh serve our community and serve people get and help people get back on their feet unfortunately though this was not the case we were hit by two storms number one the actual physical storm of barrel and then second one the first day we moved in to our new building uh we were served with a lawsuit by the state of Texas um which which really took us off guard and what does this lawsuit say what have you been sued for this lawsuit was stating that we were electioneering by uh a series of of social media posts who were interpreted by the Attorney General of Texas as uh advocating for uh for a certain party or or certain or or certain issues uh but at the end of the day our institution and our work is based out on educating the Community empowering the community and getting community members from all walks of life to be integrated fully into US society and the uh the lawsuit was Harris County Judge RK sandel denied Paxton's efforts could you talk about what the judge said well at the end of the day uh the the judge sandal uh declared that uh that uh the Attorney General kexon did not have standing in the case uh that he was uh going too far um and at the end of the day uh the case was was dismissed uh but this sends really alarms all over the the state of Texas to many organizations who are trying to help our community uh and that they could be targeted as well and what kind of support have you received uh uh across Texas as a result of this attack by the uh attorney general well uh are we are are really overwhelmed by the uh amount of community support that we've um that we've received uh the amount of support online uh a lot of people coming forward and saying that uh the attorney general has come too far you know uh I I always tell my wife never to read the comments in the in the Articles or things like that but I myself went in and and read and what what I read and what I gathered from all the Articles all the everything that was published is the fact that people uh from all walks of life from any any side of the political Spectrum are feeling that this attorney general is going way too far and then on the heels of this uh we hear about what L like is going through uh and it's just one thing after another after another then they challenge the parle in place program so there's so many things that they're doing trying to disenfranchise trying to disillusion uh Latinos uh from participating that that it's really uh like we are swimming up swimming against the current here in the state of Texas so Juan Pano as we listen to what's happened to Cesar Espinosa and you described the raids on uh your members including the home of an 87-year-old 35e volunteer of lulach um can you talk about what you're demanding of the justice department a review of these Texas raids uh and how Paxton's actions fit into the changing politics and demographics of Texas so you know first and foremost we stand in solidarity with zet and field they are doing absolutely incredible work and in regards to Lydia not only she's not only is she 87 years old Amy she is a grandmother she is a great grandmother her five brothers actually uh served in the military one of her brothers was killed in the Vietnam War and uh received the Silver Star these are American US citizens right uh and so you know for us it really kind of sort of goes beyond the pale um in regards to what these actions are uh we have actually reached out to the Department of Justice we've actually sent a letter requesting an investigation um of these voter supression tactics currently underway in Texas uh we will continue to stand strong and we're organizing our allies both in the African-American and the Latino Community as well we're going to stand and we're going to fight and Juan Pano could you talk also about lak's new report the battle ahead Latino civil rights versus project 2025 sure and and I apologize there was one part there that I didn't answer for Amy a little bit about the demographics um so in the last US Census report U put out by the Census Bureau they reported that 12.1 million Latinos in the state of Texas uh for the first time right and really for some time now Latinos actually outnumber non-hispanic whites which is at 12 million okay so when you take into account not just the uh Latino uh population in the state of Texas but the African-American and Asian population and even if you factored in uh two races or more uh the minority community in Texas now stands at over 60% Texas is and has been a majority minority State and so that large demographic shift that you are seeing you know uh is prevalent and so we see these effectively as tactics for the Republicans to actually stay in control uh of the government in Texas the demographics are shifting they're not going to be able to uh to change that anytime soon and they are going to have to deal with that sooner than later in regards to project 2025 lulac actually published a couple of weeks ago really the first and only report that I see that analyzed project 25 through a Latino lens uh obviously it's been very widely reported throughout it was obviously very prevalent in the Democratic national conventions platform in Chicago we were there to listen to vice president Harris and walls actually speak to that um you know I was very concerned shocked when I was watching the Republican National Convention on that Tuesday and they came out with mass deportation signs you know somebody thought about that somebody designed those signs they ordered them they printed them they passed them out to thousands of people in that Convention Center that's only one part of what is in Project 2025 you know they're talking about effectively you know um programs which effectively are for for unserved communities um of gutting that the Department of Education as well limiting different types of visas that which allow for Pathways for citizenship into this country it is systemic all the way through it would impact not only Latino communities but other immigrant and minority communities across the country and not just minority communities it would impact a significant number of non-hispanic whites because it really cuts across social economic factors as well we want to thank you both so much for being with us Juan prano is CEO of lulac he was speaking to us from Miami Florida and Cesar espanosa is executive director of Fiel in Houston families of immigrants and students in the struggle you can see all of our segments on the Republican and Democratic national conventions and immigration and project 2025 at democracynow.org I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez for another edition of democracy Now