'We didn't break any laws': Latino civil rights group demands investigation into Ken Paxton voter fraud chase

The League of United Latin American Citizens is demanding a federal investigation into Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's probes of alleged illegal voter registration efforts after a number of law enforcement raids in the past week targeted Latino activists.

During a news conference in San Antonio on Monday, members of the nation's oldest and largest Latino civil rights group and community advocates gathered to decry the raids by Paxton's Election Integrity Unit as an invasion of privacy, a violation of civil rights and an attempt at voter suppression.

"It is evident through his (Paxton's) patterns of lawsuits, raids, searches and seizures that he is trying to keep Latinos from voting," Roman Palomares, the national president of LULAC, said during the news conference. "LULAC will not stand idly by and allow our members to be to be targeted, harassed, bullied or intimidated."

On Friday, the Texas director for LULAC, Gabriel Rosales, first announced that several members of the group had been served search warrants at their homes in South Texas, prompting the organization to seek federal assistance in responding to what it views to be a series of civil rights violations.

A request for an investigation into the voter registration probe is being submitted to Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for civil rights with the U.S. Department of Justice, the group's leaders confirmed Monday.

"We're going to continue to work on this, no matter what this attorney general thinks he's going to do," Rosales said. "We didn't break any laws. All we did was go out there to increase the political participation of the Latino community."

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A spokesperson for the Justice Department said the federal agency is aware of the matter and declined to comment further.

In a statement last week, Paxton touted the execution of multiple search warrants in Frio, Atascosa and Bexar counties tied to ongoing investigations into alleged voter fraud and vote harvesting during the 2022 election cycle. Paxton has not publicly released evidence pointing to voter fraud in the election.

The state's top attorney also celebrated the successful start of "undercover operations" in major metropolitan areas in Texas to identify and prevent possible illegal voter registration, accusing nonprofit organizations of setting up registration drives near Texas Department of Public Safety driver's license offices.

Paxton, who has vowed to investigate "every credible report we receive" pertaining to criminal activity tied to elections, argued that citizens have the ability to register to vote when renewing or registering for a driver's license with the DPS, "so there is no obvious need to assist citizens to register to vote outside DPS offices — calling into question the motives of the nonprofit groups."

Lidia Martinez, an 87-year-old retired teacher from San Antonio who was targeted in the raids, said she opened her front door at 6 a.m. Aug. 20 to nine officers from the attorney general's office who were there seeking information about her efforts to register voters.

Just having returned home from the hospital after a bout with a respiratory infection, Martinez said she was surprised by the officers' presence and that they would not let her change from her nightgown as they rummaged through her home for several hours.

"'What do you want out of me? I'm an old woman,’ ” Martinez recounted telling an interrogator. "I said, 'I help the seniors. I help the veterans. What do you want from me?’ ”

Amid the raid on her home, Martinez said she was compelled to hand over her laptop, appointment book, cellphone and information tied to her work registering voters.

"I don't know when I have an appointment with my doctors. They took my cellphone; they took all the information that I had," said Martinez, uncertain of when or whether her belongings would be returned.

Paxton's office has not responded to American-Statesman requests for comment on LULAC's response to his office's voter fraud probes. He also hasn't released additional information on the search warrants that were served to Martinez; Cecilia Castellano, the Democratic candidate for state House District 80, whose home was also raided last week; or others who were targeted by law enforcement.

More: LULAC calls for federal probe as members targeted in AG Ken Paxton's search for voter fraud

"The lack of information in the warrant regarding the reason and the phone they sought left me questioning their motives," Castellano said Monday. "As I stood there with my family by my side, I couldn't help but feel a sense of injustice."

Gov. Greg Abbott gave a nod to the effort to remove names from the state's voter rolls Monday, pointing to more than 1 million people who have been erased from the rolls since 2021, including more than 6,500 "potential noncitizens" of which approximately 1,930 had a voter history.

"I have signed the strongest election laws in the nation to protect the right to vote and to crackdown on illegal voting," Abbott said in a statement, touting legislation passed last year that makes illegal voting a second-degree felony. "These reforms have led to the removal of over one million ineligible people from our voter rolls in the last three years, including noncitizens, deceased voters, and people who moved to another state."

This is not the first time state officials and LULAC have clashed over voter registrations, as a previous dispute with the secretary of state's office over voter roll maintenance resulted in a settlement agreement and a congressional probe.

As part of the 2019 agreement, the secretary of state's office, which oversees elections in Texas, revised its process for maintaining its voter rolls to limit and prevent naturalized citizens from being accidentally removed.

After the settlement, congressional lawmakers took interest in the situation, which led the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform to begin an investigation. Paxton's office refused to cooperate.

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Outside of federal action, Sens. Roland Gutierrez and José Menéndez, both Democrats from San Antonio, said during Monday's news conference that they would soon send a letter to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asking for a Senate investigation into the probes Paxton's office is conducting.

A vocal critic of Paxton, Gutierrez chastised the attorney general Monday for a recent 18-month pretrial intervention agreement that resolved a nine-year securities fraud case against Paxton as well as Paxton's previous attempt to evade being served a subpoena.

"The net effect of what this does — and we've seen this show from this crooked Ken Paxton over and over again — it is only voter suppression and voter intimidation," Gutierrez said.

"When the police showed up to his office on multiple occasions and knocked on his door, nobody pointed a gun at him," he continued. "He is pointing a gun and intimidating our abuelitas."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: LULAC decries Ken Paxton's Texas voter fraud probes as intimidation