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Latino Civil Rights Group Demands Inquiry Into Texas Voter Fraud Raids
The organization said many of those targeted by the raids, conducted by a unit created by the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, were Democratic leaders and election volunteers.
The League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organizations, said that many of those targeted were Democratic leaders and election volunteers, and that some were older residents. Gabriel Rosales, the director of the group’s Texas chapter, said that officers conducting the raids took cellphones, computers and documents. He called the raids “alarming” and said they were an effort to suppress Latino voters.
In a statement last week, Mr. Paxton, a Republican, described the raids, carried out in counties near San Antonio and South Texas, as part of an “ongoing election integrity investigation” that began two years ago to look into allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting. His office has said that it will not comment on the investigation because it is still underway.
That investigation is part of a unit, the election integrity unit, which was created as Republican-led states sought to crack down on supposed voter crime after former President Donald J. Trump began making false claims of fraud in the wake of the 2020 election. Experts have found that voter fraud remains rare.
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On Tuesday, Mr. Rosales said, officers raided the home of Cecilia Castellano, a Democrat running against Don McLaughlin, the former mayor of Uvalde, for a state House seat, taking her cellphone.
Ms. Castellano described her experience as “very frightening” and said she still did not know why she was targeted. “This is all political,” she said.
Last week, officers also broke down a door to raid the home of Manuel Medina, a consultant for Ms. Castellano’s campaign and the chair of the Tejano Democrats, a group that advocates Hispanic representation in the Democratic Party.
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One of those residents was Lidia Martinez, an 87-year-old retired educator in San Antonio. She said she heard a knock on her door right before 6 a.m. on Tuesday. She thought that maybe a neighbor needed milk and eggs, she said, and she fastened her sleeping gown and opened the door.
Nine officers, seven of them men, some with guns in their holsters, then pushed open the door and marched past a living room wall decorated with crucifixes, she said.
“I got scared,” she recalled in an interview on Sunday, speaking in both English and Spanish. “They told me, ‘We have a warrant to search your house.’ I said, ‘Why?’ I felt harassed.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/realestate/amagansett-renovations-summer-house.htmlMs. Martinez said that the officers told her they came because she had filled out a report saying that older residents were not getting mail ballots. “Yes, I did,” she told them. For 35 years, Ms. Martinez has been a member of LULAC, the civil rights group, helping Latino residents stay engaged in politics. Much of her work has included instructing older residents and veterans on how to fill out voter registration cards.
“I go to a lot of senior events; I explain to them what they have to do,” she said. “I’ve been involved in politics all of my life.”
The officers said they were looking for voter cards that residents had filled out, she said.
“I told them, I don’t have them here,” she said.
One of the officers handed her a copy of the search warrant and ordered her to sit at her kitchen table. Two of the agents went to her bedroom and searched everywhere, “my underwear, my nightgown, everything, they went through everything,” she recalled. They took her laptop, phone, planner and some documents.
