The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), one of the nation's oldest Latino civil rights organizations, is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate a series of raids ordered by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that have targeted Latino voting activists and political operatives, The New York Times reported.
Paxton, a Republican who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election, ordered the raids be carried out as part of a larger inquiry against alleged voter fraud. In a statement last week, he said that the raids were part of an “ongoing election integrity investigation” into allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting, a specter raised by former President Donald Trump as an excuse for his 2020 loss.
Republican officials, following Trump's cues, have sought to pass restrictive election laws and purge voter rolls, despite experts noting that voter fraud is exceptionally rare.
But LULAC and other civil rights organizations and activists said that the raids disproportionately targeted Democratic leaders and volunteers, suggesting that they are meant not to uncover actual fraud but to suppress Latino voters.
Officers conducting the raids seized cellphones, computers and documents from people's homes, including the cellphone of Cecilia Castellano, a Democrat running against former Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin for a state House seat. Castellano told the Times that the raid on her home last Tuesday was "very frightening" and she did not know why she was targeted. “This is all political,” she said.
Another raid brought officers to the home of Manuel Medina, a consultant for Castellano and the chair of Tejano Democrats, a group that advocates for greater Latino representation in the Democratic Party. “I have been contacted by elderly residents who are confused and frightened, wondering why they have been singled out,” Rosales told the Times. “It’s pure intimidation.”
The Times interviewed one of those residents, Lidia Martinez, an 87-year old retired educator from San Antonio and LULAC member, whose home was searched by nine police officers, some of them armed, right before 6 a.m. last Tuesday. According to Martinez, the officers said they came because she had filled out a report saying that older residents were not getting mail ballots and were looking for voter cards residents had filled out that might have been stashed in her house.
“I told them, I don’t have them here,” she said, recounting how the officers asked her about her entire life and whether she knew other LULAC members and local Democratic officials.
