AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We turn now to Texas, where the Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton is raising concerns about voter suppression by targeting the country’s oldest Latino civil rights group, LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens. LULAC was first founded to fight discrimination against citizens of Mexican descent in Texas. Now it’s responding to a series of raids of the homes of LULAC members, state lawmakers and other Latino leaders in the San Antonio area last week.

Speaking to the media Monday, longtime LULAC volunteer, 87-year-old Lidia Martinez described how armed officers arrived at her home at 6 a.m. with a warrant to seize electronic devices, swab for DNA, as they collected evidence of alleged vote harvesting and identity fraud.

LIDIA MARTINEZ: I was in my nightgown, and I thought it was my next-door neighbor. And I went to the door, and nine officers from the Attorney General’s Office walked in. And they had a search warrant, and they told me that they were there because I had filed a complaint that seniors were not getting their mail ballots. And I said, “Yes, I did.” And he says, “Do you have the names?” And I said, “I have a few of the names.” And they came in, and I said, “Can I get dressed?” They didn’t let me.

They sat me down, and they started searching all my house — my storeroom, my garage, my kitchen, everything. And after two hours of questioning, they took me outside in front of all my neighbors and all the officers around me and — for half an hour while they searched the living room where I had been sitting. And after half an hour, they let me go back in the house, and they continued the questioning and asking me about LULAC members, in particular. And I told them, “Why are you all doing this?” And he said, “Because there was fraud.”

AMY GOODMAN: LULAC is calling on the Justice Department to investigate Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over the raids. This comes as ProPublica and The Texas Tribune report Paxton has also used consumer protection law more than a dozen times to investigate a range mostly Latino-led organizations or groups who offer food and shelter to migrants and asylum seekers along the border. Paxton also tried to shut down the immigrant-led civil rights group FIEL in Houston, claiming it engaged in electioneering, but a judge recently shot down his effort.

All of this comes as prosecutors agreed in March to drop securities fraud charges against Paxton himself, that allowed him to avoid going to trial if he performed a hundred hours of community service. This is separate from more recent corruption allegations Paxton faced that led to his impeachment trial last year, in which he was acquitted by the Republican-controlled Texas Senate.

For more, we go to Houston, where we’re joined by Cesar Espinosa, executive director of FIEL, which is the Spanish acronym for Families of Immigrants and Students in the Struggle. And in Miami, Florida, we’re joined by Juan Proaño, CEO of LULAC, the largest and oldest Latino civil rights group in the United States.

Juan, let’s begin with you. Explain what happened last week in Texas.

JUAN PROAÑO: Well, good morning, Amy. Thank you for having me.

As you said, you know, last Tuesday, to our knowledge, over 12 search warrants were actually presented to Latino leaders, LULAC members in San Antonio. In the case of Lidia, as you just described, eight armed officers came in. But in another case, Manuel Medina, almost 40 officers, armed with AK-47s, SWAT gear, came in — tactical gear, came into his home at 6 a.m. His daughter was sleeping on the couch downstairs, thought someone was breaking into the home. He was upstairs with his wife and his other daughters. They came downstairs. And they were held, interrogated for over seven hours.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Juan Proaño, what does this tell you about the efforts of officials in Texas to intimidate Latino voters?

JUAN PROAÑO: Well, I mean, you know, it’s pervasive. You know, we’ve been, obviously, doing a lot of research here. And it didn’t start last week. You know, this investigation on election integrity started over two years ago, essentially, at this point, also referred by another Republican district attorney there with no evidence at all whatsoever.

In June, we saw that they sued the archdiocese of Rio Grande Valley, Sister Norma Pimentel, which provides migrants with services that are in this country legally. Then we saw last month with Annunciation House, which provides refugee services, as well, obviously with FIEL, too, and we also saw 12 other nonprofits that effectively have gone through the same search and seizure process.

At least what we’ve heard from the courts, that this is unconstitutional. Effectively, the tort law that he’s using to, essentially, sue nonprofit organizations because they’re providing — because they’re 501(c)(3) organizations and providing services to immigrants is really blatant discrimination.

You know, our expectation was that he would, obviously, come after LULAC and sue LULAC, but, certainly, we were very surprised when he started to go after Latino leaders and actual LULAC members. Of those 12 that we know of, four of them are LULAC members, three of them are women in their eighties. And they were told not to talk to anyone post the search and seizure. They took their cellphones. They took their computers. They took documentations. In the case of Lidia, they took her calendar, which is essentially where she keeps all her doctor’s appointments, personal contacts, information about her prescription medicine. And she had just been to the doctor the day before and had to go back in order to get that. And so, she was left without any communication device at all to communicate with her family, and had to literally leave her home, go to another LULAC member’s house to get assistance.

AMY GOODMAN: So, can you talk about the timing of this, Juan Proaño? For the first time in LULAC’s history, established in 1929, LULAC’s Adelante PAC, the political action committee, endorsed Harris and Walz, endorsed Kamala Harris to be president. Do you think that there is a direct link? And explain the different parts of your organization.

JUAN PROAÑO: Sure. And thank you, Amy, for that question. So, LULAC, to your point, was founded in 1929 in Corpus Christi. It was actually founded as a 501(c)(4) organization. That is the entity that everyone effectively knows and commonly refers to, essentially, as LULAC. We have over 535 councils around the country. Every single one of those councils is incorporated. They actually carry the LULAC name and seal. We have over 240,000 members in all 50 states, and we have actually those 535 councils in 33 states and 207 cities. So we are the largest Latino membership organization in the country.

In addition to that, we have a 501(c)(3), which is our LULAC National Institute. So, all of the programmatic work that we do to provide programs and services to the Latino community is actually done through our 501(c)(3). The 501(c)(3) is actually incorporated in the District of Columbia.

And then, more recently, we actually established the LULAC Adelante PAC. And so, it’s actually a super PAC. And actually it’s incorporated in District of Columbia.

You know, I don’t believe that it is actually connected specifically to the PAC, primarily because all of the lawsuits and, essentially, the pattern of lawsuits are primarily targeting nonprofit organizations, and specifically 501(c)(3) organizations. They also only have purview over corporations that are founded in the state of Texas. So, you know, Paxton cannot go after the LULAC National Institute, the 501(c)(3) or the LULAC Adelante PAC. But, you know, obviously, it was very close in time. I believe the date of the endorsement was August 9th or August 10th, so less than two weeks ago at this point.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Juan, I wanted to ask you about a separate matter also related to elections. On Monday, the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, announced that the state has removed over 1 million names from the Texas voter rolls. Now, purges are common in many states, but that’s a big number, and it’s obviously coming so close to the election.

JUAN PROAÑO: Yeah. I mean, look, we actually saw that. It came out about 5:00. You know, we started our advocacy campaign on Thursday night. It literally took us two days to get information about Lidia’s case and to begin to gather all the facts relevant to this case.

Really, it is his form of deflection, right? It’s his effort to basically say, “Look, you know, we have a million people that are on our voter rolls that we effectively are removing.” I actually went through those numbers. Over 467,000 of them, essentially, are deceased, right? Another 400,000 or so are, effectively, what they call in the suspended mode, but only 6,500 of those are actually what are classified, effectively, as noncitizens. So you’re talking about .0065%. Less than 1% of those are actually noncitizens. And only 1,900, which is 1/1000th of a percent of that million, have actually any voting history at all whatsoever. But to say that there is systemic voter fraud and voter harvesting happening in the state of Texas is absolutely false.

AMY GOODMAN: Juan Proaño, in a minute, we want to ask about LULAC’s study of Project 2025. But we want to bring in Cesar Espinosa, the executive director of FIEL, Families of Immigrants and Students in the Struggle. Cesar, can you start off by talking about what happened in your new office, your old destroyed by a hurricane, about the serving of a lawsuit against you by the attorney general, who himself is under investigation and went through an impeachment trial, now is serving community service, but he’s also doing this?

CESAR ESPINOSA: Well, so, we, unfortunately, lost our office. FIEL has been here in Houston for the last 17 years. And in the 17 years, we helped out so many Houstonians, regardless of their immigration status, recover from natural disasters. So, just a few days after hurricane hit or a day after hurricane hit, Beryl hit — excuse me — I was talking to my family about the fact that I was ready to get back out there, ready to serve our community and serve people and help people get back on their feet.

Unfortunately, though, this was not the case. We were hit by two storms: number one, the actual physical storm of Beryl, and then, second, the first day we moved into our new building, we were served with a lawsuit by the state of Texas, which really took us off guard.

AMY GOODMAN: And what does this lawsuit say? What have you been sued for?

CESAR ESPINOSA: This lawsuit was stating that we were electioneering by a series of social media posts who were interpreted by the attorney general of Texas as advocating for a certain party or certain issues. But at the end of the day, our institution and our work is based on educating the community, empowering the community, and getting community members from all walks of life to be integrated fully into U.S. society.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the lawsuit was — Harris County Judge R.K. Sandill denied Paxton’s efforts? Could you talk about what the judge said?

CESAR ESPINOSA: Well, at the end of the day, the judge, Sandill, declared that the Attorney General Ken Paxton did not have standing in the case, that he was going too far. And at the end of the day, the case was dismissed. But this sends, really, alarms all over the state of Texas to many organizations who are trying to help our community and that they could be targeted, as well.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what kind of support have you received across Texas as a result of this attack by the attorney general?

CESAR ESPINOSA: Well, we are really overwhelmed by the amount of community support that we’ve received, the amount of support online, a lot of people coming forward and saying that the attorney general has gone too far. You know, I always tell my wife never to read the comments in the articles or things like that, but I myself went in and read. And what I read and what I gathered from all the articles, all the — everything that was published, is the fact that people from all walks of life, from any side of the political spectrum, are feeling that this attorney general is going way too far.

And then, on the heels of this, we hear about what LULAC is going through. And it’s just one thing after another after another. Then they challenged the parole-in-place program. So, there’s so many things that they’re doing trying to disenfranchise, trying to disillusion Latinos from participating, that it’s really like we are swimming up — swimming against the current here in the state of Texas.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Juan Proaño, as we listen to what’s happened to Cesar Espinosa and you describe the raids on your members, including the home of an 87-year-old, 35-year volunteer of LULAC, can you talk about what you’re demanding of the Justice Department, a review of these Texas raids, and how Paxton’s actions fit into the changing politics and demographics of Texas?

JUAN PROAÑO: So, you know, first and foremost, we stand in solidarity with Cesar and FIEL. They are doing absolutely incredible work. And in regards to Lidia, not only is she 87 years old, Amy, she is a grandmother, she is a great-grandmother. Her five brothers actually served in the military. One of her brothers was killed in the Vietnam War and received the Silver Star. These are American U.S. citizens, right? And so, you know, for us, it really kind of sort of goes beyond the pale, in regards to what these actions are.

We have actually reached out to the Department of Justice. We have actually sent a letter requesting an investigation of these voter suppression tactics currently underway in Texas. We will continue to stand strong, and we are organizing our allies, both in the African American and the Latino community, as well. We’re going to stand, and we’re going to fight.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Juan Proaño, could you talk also about LULAC’s new report, “The Battle Ahead: Latino Civil Rights vs. Project 2025”?

JUAN PROAÑO: Sure, Juan. And I apologize. There was one part there that I didn’t answer for Amy, a little bit about the demographics. So, in the last U.S. Census report put out by the Census Bureau, they reported that 12.1 million Latinos in the state of Texas. For the first time — right? — and really for some time now, Latinos actually outnumber non-Hispanic whites, which is at 12 million, OK? So, when you take into account not just the Latino population in the state of Texas, but the African American and Asian population, and even if you factored in two races or more, the minority community in Texas now stands at over 60%. Texas is and has been a majority-minority state. And so, that large demographic shift that you are seeing, you know, is prevalent. And so, we see these, effectively, as tactics for the Republicans to actually stay in control of the government in Texas. The demographics are shifting. They’re not going to be able to change that anytime soon. And they are going to have to deal with that sooner than later.

In regards to Project 2025, LULAC actually published a couple weeks ago really the first and only report that I see that analyzed Project 2025 through a Latino lens. Obviously, it’s been very widely reported throughout. It was obviously very prevalent in the Democratic National Convention’s platform. In Chicago, we were there to listen to Vice President Harris and Walz actually speak to that.

You know, I was very concerned, shocked, when I was watching the Republican National Convention on that Tuesday and they came out with “mass deportation” signs. You know, somebody thought about that. Somebody designed those signs. They ordered them. They printed them. They passed them out to thousands of people in that convention center.

That’s only one part of what is in Project 2025. You know, they’re talking about, effectively, programs which effectively are for unserved communities, of gutting that, the Department of Education, as well, limiting different types of visas which allow for pathways for citizenship into this country. It is systemic all the way through. It would impact not only Latino communities but other immigrant and minority communities across the country. And not just minority communities, it would impact a significant number of non-Hispanic whites, because it really cuts across socioeconomic factors, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you both so much for being with us. Juan Proaño is CEO of LULAC. He was speaking to us from Miami, Florida. And Cesar Espinosa is executive director of FIEL in Houston, Families of Immigrants and Students in the Struggle. You can see all of our segments on the Republican and Democratic National Conventions and immigration and Project 2025 at democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, for another edition of Democracy Now!