League of United Latin American Citizens calls on US justice department to look into raids on at least three members
Sam Levine | The Guardian | August 27, 2024
One of the United States’ oldest Latino civil rights organizations is raising alarm after several of its members had their homes raided as part of a voter fraud investigation by the Texas attorney general’s office.
The League of United Latin American Citizens (Lulac) wants the Department of Justice to investigate raids on at least three of its members in Texas. Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said in a statement last week his office had executed multiple search warrants in Bexar county, which includes San Antonio, as well as neighboring Frio and Atascosa counties as part of an ongoing, two-year investigation. The office did not provide details of the investigation or respond to a request for comment.
No one has been arrested and the exact nature of the investigation remains unclear. But the searches themselves were designed to intimidate, Lulac officials said.
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“They’re trying to intimidate our folks that are out registering people,” said Lulac’s president, Roman Palomares. “What they’re trying to do is they’re trying to intimidate, and then that has repercussions down the line here, where folks read about that and they go, ‘God, I mean, if they’re doing that to her and I’m a registrar, God, how are they going to go after me?’”
A justice department spokesperson said the agency was aware of the matter and declined to comment further.
Lidia Martinez, 87, said nine officers from the attorney general’s office showed up at her front door at 6am last Tuesday and spent hours searching her home as she watched in her nightgown. She said they told her they were there because she had filed a complaint that senior citizens were not receiving their ballots.
Martinez was taken outside in front of her neighbors while officers searched the house, she said. Eventually, the officers left with her laptop, planner and cellphone.
“I asked them why are you all doing this? And he said because there was fraud,” she said. “I said I’m not doing anything illegal. All I do is help the seniors.”
Texas has extremely strict rules around mail-in balloting. Only those who are sick, out of the county on election day, confined in jail, giving birth within three weeks of election day, or aged 65 and older are authorized to request a mail-in ballot. Anyone who assists someone in requesting a ballot must fill out a form indicating they assisted. Anyone who assists the voter in returning the actual ballot, other than a family or household member, must sign the envelope with the ballot noting their assistance.
Paxton’s office has operated an entire unit dedicated to prosecuting cases of voter fraud for years. The unit has a budget of millions of dollars, but closes very few cases. In the last fiscal year, for example, it had a budget of $2.3m and handled just four cases, according to the Houston Chronicle.
In 2021, Texas’s highest criminal court ruled that Paxton could not unilaterally pursue cases and instead had to be invited to investigate by a local district attorney (in the Lulac matter his office has said he was invited by local prosecutor Audrey Louis to investigate). Even before that ruling, Paxton would inflate cases to create the impression that he was uncovering massive fraud in Texas.
Paxton, who filed an unsuccessful lawsuit at the supreme court to overturn the 2020 election results, also said last week his office was investigating reports of people registering non-citizens outside DMVs. That investigation appeared to be prompted by a quickly debunked claim from Fox’s Maria Bartiromo.
Paxton’s investigations come as Republicans have sought to fan fears about non-citizen voting, which is extremely rare, ahead of this fall’s election.
A copy of the search warrant for Martinez provided by Lulac showed officers were instructed to collect evidence of violations of the Texas law that prohibits collecting mail-in ballots for compensation or “to deliver votes for a specific candidate or measure”. Officers were also instructed to gather evidence of a Texas law prohibiting the fraudulent use or possession of personal identifying information.
Martinez said the officers asked her about other Lulac members and Manuel Medina, a Democratic political operative and former chair of the Democratic party in Bexar county. Medina’s home was also searched last week, the Texas Tribune reported. An affidavit from Texas attorney general’s office investigator obtained by the outlet says officials have a recording of Medina discussing a scheme to collect votes for Cecilia Castellano, a Democrat running for a competitive state House seat.
Castellano said on Monday that her home had also been searched. Officers showed up at 6am with flashlights while her son was sleeping, she said.
“This is how the Republican party works. They cause confusion, false allegations and wasteful spending of our tax dollars,” she said.
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