Lidia Martínez heard someone knocking on her door at 6:00 a.m. on Tuesday, August 6. Just a day earlier, this 80-year-old retired teacher from San Antonio, Texas, had left the hospital, where she recovered from Covid and a respiratory infection. She thought it was a neighbor, but she was wrong. “Nine police officers from the prosecutor’s office came in with a search warrant,” says Martínez, who greeted them in her pajamas. The officers wanted to know if she had filed a complaint because some elderly voters had not received their ballot. She answered yes, and the officers did not even let her get dressed. “They started searching my entire house, my warehouse, my kitchen, everything. After two hours of questioning, they took me out in front of all my neighbors, surrounded by officers, where they held me for half an hour while they searched the living room,” she explains.
What happened at Ms. Martinez’s home was repeated at least in four other residences, all of them belonging to Latinos in Texas. The agents argued that she was under suspicion of having committed electoral fraud. “I’m not doing anything illegal. All I do is help the elderly. (…) I help veterans. My five brothers were in the military and I do it in their name,” Martinez told the agents. After three hours of searching, the agents left with her computer, her agenda and her cell phone, which have not yet been returned.
Martínez has been volunteering for several decades at the League of Latin American Citizens (LULAC), one of the oldest Hispanic human rights organizations in the United States, based in Washington. Within LULAC, Martínez helps eligible Latinos to vote. The nonpartisan group spoke out in early August, for the first time in its 95-year history, in favor of the Democratic candidacy of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for the November 5 elections.
In addition to Martinez, agents working for District Attorney Ken Paxton searched the home of Cecilia Castellano, a Democratic candidate seeking election to Congress to represent Uvalde, a highly competitive district, and five people who are working on her campaign. Three of them are members of LULAC, like Lidia Martinez. They claim that the investigation launched by the District Attorney’s Office is intended to inhibit the Latino vote, which generally favors Democrats, and that this type of operation is repeated in the State every time there are elections.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks at a news conference on the U.S. southern border, May 2021, in Washington, DC Anna Moneymaker (Getty Images)
LULAC President Roman Palomares on Monday charged that Paxton “is using his position of authority to harass and intimidate Latino organizations and nonprofits, Latino leaders and LULAC members.” At a press conference in San Antonio, LULAC leaders announced they will ask the Justice Department to investigate what motivated Paxton to launch the investigation.
“It is evident through their pattern of lawsuits, raids, searches and seizures that they are trying to prevent Latinos from voting. LULAC will not sit back and allow our members to be targeted,” Palomares said. The Attorney General’s Office has not filed charges against any of those involved, so far.
LULAC director in Texas, Gabriel Rosales, insisted that the investigation launched by Paxton is not going to stop them. “We are going to continue working on this, no matter what this prosecutor thinks he is going to do. It is only going to add more fuel for us to continue doing what we know. We have not broken any laws. All we have done is go out to increase the participation of the Latino community,” he said.
The Texas Attorney General’s Office reported last week The group said its Election Integrity Group, a unit that investigates alleged fraud claims, launched an investigation in three counties, Frio, Atascosa and Bexar. The group did not name LULAC and declined to provide details because the case is ongoing. It said, however, that a 2022 investigation yielded enough evidence to open a new probe into “voter fraud” and “ballot planting.”
“Secure elections are one of the cornerstones of our republic,” said Attorney General Paxton, a Republican official who in 2020 sued the swing states in which Joe Biden won against Donald Trump, who accused without evidence of having been the victim of electoral fraud. Trump will consider Paxton, who survived in 2023 to an impeachment for corruptionamong his candidates for US Attorney General if he wins the fall election.
The original statement from the Prosecutor’s Office was followed by another which provided further clues as to the nature of the investigation. “It was opened following reports that there are organizations in Texas that may be registering non-citizens to vote, which would be a violation of state and federal laws,” the Attorney General’s Office said.
According to Paxton, volunteers from nonprofit organizations provide voter registration assistance outside DMV offices, where driver’s licenses are processed. “If legally eligible citizens can legally register to vote inside these state offices, why are they being offered a second chance at a booth outside?” the attorney general questioned. Paxton claims that the Biden-Harris administration has “intentionally flooded” the country with foreigners and that, without oversight, they “could illegally influence the election.”
In Texas, the Latino vote is crucial, as they already comprise 40.2% of the population of 30.5 million. Several Latino organizations are dedicated to promoting registration among Hispanics, who have a lower rate of participation at the polls. In the 2020 elections, 74% of the non-Hispanic white population registered to vote nationwide, while only 61% of Latinos did so.
The digital medium The Texas Tribune He said on Monday that the complaints that launched the investigations originated from a tweet published By Maria Bartiromo, a host on the conservative Fox News network. Bartiromo quoted a friend of a friend on Aug. 18 who went with her son to three DMV offices where they saw a “huge line of immigrants getting licenses and being registered to vote in a tent outside.”
These claims were suspicious even to Republican state officials. Brady Gray of Parker County, who Bartiromo mentioned in his post, said that voter registration numbers in Weatherford were not skyrocketing as claimed in X. He also explained that each registration goes through a process that determines each voter’s eligibility, including whether or not they are a citizen. “We have not had any recent cases of ineligible people trying to register in the county. In fact, we have only had two in the last 15 years,” Gray said.
