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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is facing counteraction from a voting rights organization after ordering his office to execute search warrants on Democratic candidates and election volunteers for what he claims is part of an “election integrity” investigation.
Last week, Paxton’s Election Integrity Unit raided the homes of several people in Southern Texas, including some residents in their 80s, claiming it was part of a sprawling investigation into allegations of “vote harvesting” and “election fraud” that he says happened during the 2022 election.
Phones, laptops and documents were collected from individuals’ homes, leaving some shaken.
Now, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), one of the oldest and largest Latino rights organizations in the country, has asked the Department of Justice to investigate Paxton’s raids.
“Paxton is working to suppress the Latino vote using a call for election integrity as a veil for voter intimidation,” Roman Palomares, the president of LULAC said in a press conference on Monday.
The raids, while allegedly part of a two-year-long election integrity investigation, targeted residents like Lydia Martinez, an 87-year-old retired educator living in San Antonio who works in the community to help older residents stay engaged in politics.
Martinez has been a member of LULAC for 35 years and is certified by the state to register voters, Palomares said.
Officers went to Martinez’s home at 6 a.m. last Tuesday with a search warrant, demanding she hand over voter cards that she did not possess, rifling through her belongings and eventually confiscating her laptop and cell phone. Officers interrogated her for three hours.
A similar raid was carried out on the home of Cecilia Castellano, a Democrat running for a Texas House seat.
Castellano said officers provided her with a one-page search warrant that had no specifics on it.
“I was shocked, I’m still shocked,” she told CNN.
Five other individuals, all who worked on Castellano’s campaign, also had their homes raided, according to The Texas Tribune.
Paxton’s office did not make clear how exactly the individuals were supposedly tied to the election integrity investigation in his press release, but previously alleged that “various nonprofit organizations” have been offering to assist in voter registration for people at driver’s license offices.
“But all citizens have already been presented an opportunity to register to vote as part of the process of renewing or being issued an identification card or driver’s license, 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,” a prior press release from Paxton’s office said.
Paxton’s Election Integrity Unit was established in 2021, in part after Donald Trump made false claims of mass voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Multiple investigations and reports have found little to no evidence that mass voter fraud took place during the election.
Paxton, a Republican Attorney General, has been subject to criticism about the methods he uses to enforce law in Texas.
Last year, Paxton sent letters to hospitals threatening to take legal action if they provided abortion services for Kate Cox, a woman who needed an abortion for medical reasons. She was forced to go out of state to recieve medical care.
Earlier this year, Paxton attempted to shut down a migrant shelter at the Texas-Mexico border, claiming it encouraged migrants to enter the country illegally.
LULAC sent a letter to Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, asking that the DoJ investigate Paxton’s actions.
“Attorney General Paxton has a documented history of targeting Latino organizations, as evidenced by his recent actions against Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley and Annunciation House,” Palomares wrote in the letter, obtained by The Independent.
“These actions appear to be motivated not by legitimate legal concerns but by a desire to suppress the Latino vote, which is becoming increasingly influential in Texas and across the nation.”
