The Return on Knowing: Why Mexican American and Latino Studies Is an Economic Investment in Our Shared Future, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

The Return on Knowing: Why Mexican American and Latino Studies Is an Economic Investment in Our Shared Future

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

July 14, 2026

I encourage readers to learn about Jim Estrada’s compelling and accessible book, The ABCs and Ñ of America’s Cultural Evolution: A Primer on the Growing Influence of Hispanics, Latinos, and mestizos on the USA.

Estrada approaches Latino history and culture partly from the perspective of a corporate marketing professional who spent decades advising institutions about Latino communities. His central argument is that widespread ignorance about Latino history, identity, language, cultural diversity, and economic participation is not merely a social or educational deficiency. It is an economic liability—a consequential gap in knowledge and understanding.

Latinos are consumers, workers, students, taxpayers, entrepreneurs, professionals, and voters. Their growing presence shapes education, employment, health care, public finance, consumer markets, and virtually every major institution in the country. Estrada therefore argues that schools and universities should cultivate the historical knowledge and cultural competence necessary to function effectively in an increasingly diverse society (Estrada, 2013).

His argument is especially useful when placed in conversation with Texas leaders’ growing emphasis on the “return on investment,” or ROI, of higher education curricula and degree programs. On its face, asking whether public institutions use resources responsibly is reasonable. The problem arises when ROI is defined too narrowly—as though the value of education can be reduced to a graduate’s first salary, the immediate labor-market demand for a major, or the direct revenue generated by a particular academic program.

Such calculations tell us something, but not nearly enough.

A more appropriate framework would be what I call the Return on Knowing, or ROK.

Return on Knowing asks what students, institutions, communities, and the nation gain when people understand the histories, cultures, languages, experiences, and contributions of the populations with whom they live and work. It recognizes knowledge itself as a form of public infrastructure. Just as roads, schools, health systems, and communications networks make social and economic life possible, cultural and historical knowledge equips people to navigate an increasingly diverse democracy.

ROI asks, “How much money does this degree produce?”

ROK asks, “What becomes possible because people know more—and what does ignorance cost us?”

The Return on Knowing includes economic benefits, but it extends well beyond them. It includes improved judgment, stronger public institutions, more effective professional practice, better communication, greater historical understanding, and the capacity to work across cultural and linguistic differences. It also includes the avoidance of costly mistakes that arise when institutions misunderstand the communities they serve.

Employers, educators, health professionals, public officials, journalists, and nonprofit leaders who understand Latino histories and experiences are less likely to rely on stereotypes, design ineffective programs, misread demographic change, alienate workers or customers, or make decisions based on incomplete information. Cultural competence is therefore not a decorative addition to professional preparation. It is part of what makes institutions capable, responsive, and effective.

The Return on Knowing also reveals the limitations of evaluating higher education solely through individual earnings. The return from investing in Latino students includes greater financial security for graduates and their families, but it also includes a more highly educated workforce, increased tax revenues, greater entrepreneurship, stronger public institutions, improved organizational decision-making, and professionals better prepared to serve the communities around them.

Conversely, what does the nation lose when it fails to educate students about Latino communities?

It loses talent when Latino students are underserved or pushed out of higher education. It loses institutional effectiveness when professionals are culturally unprepared. It loses economic opportunities when businesses misunderstand major consumer markets. It loses democratic capacity when the histories and contributions of large segments of the population are excluded from public knowledge. And it loses trust when students and families enter institutions that do not recognize their experiences or regard their histories as worthy of study.

This is why Mexican American Studies, Latino Studies, Ethnic Studies, bilingual education, and culturally sustaining curricula should not be dismissed as peripheral expenses. They are investments in professional preparation, institutional effectiveness, social understanding, democratic participation, and the nation’s economic future.

They also benefit students of every background. Latino Studies is not only for Latino students, just as African American history is not only for Black students and women’s history is not only for women. These fields provide all students with the knowledge necessary to understand the society they inhabit. They help prepare graduates to teach, govern, practice medicine, conduct research, build organizations, serve clients, manage workplaces, and participate intelligently in public life.

The Return on Knowing is therefore not a rejection of economic accountability. It is a more complete form of accountability. It asks policymakers to count benefits that narrow ROI calculations often ignore: knowledge, cultural competence, institutional trust, democratic literacy, social cohesion, and the prevention of costly errors.

It also requires us to acknowledge that not everything of public value can be captured in an immediate financial metric. Education prepares people not only to earn a living, but also to interpret the world, understand one another, evaluate evidence, remember history, and participate in democratic life.

Estrada’s work helps us see that ignorance has a price. Institutions pay that price through failed outreach, ineffective policies, cultural misunderstanding, lost markets, weakened trust, and poor decision-making. Communities pay it through misrepresentation, exclusion, and educational neglect.

The relevant policy question, then, is not simply whether Mexican American Studies or Latino Studies produces an acceptable financial return. It is whether Texas—and the nation—can afford the consequences of not knowing.

References

ASU News. (2014, February 7). Latino author makes economic case for teaching ethnic studies in schools. https://news.asu.edu/content/latino-author-makes-economic-case-teaching-ethnic-studies-schools

Estrada, J. (2013). The ABCs and Ñ of America’s cultural evolution: A primer on the growing influence of Hispanics, Latinos, and mestizos on the USA. Tate Publishing & Enterprises.

Latino author makes economic case for teaching ethnic studies in schools

February 07, 2014

Making an economic case for teaching ethnic studies in America’s schools and universities is the focus of a book talk presented from noon to 1 p.m., Feb. 11, by ASU’s School of Transborder Studies. Author Jim Estrada, a corporate marketing consultant and former San Diego television journalist, suggested there is a substantial information gap about the nation’s largest non-white European populations that could negatively impact the United States economy.

Estrada’s book, "The ABCs and Ñ of America’s Cultural Evolution: A Primer on the Growing Influence of Hispanics, Latinos, and mestizos on the USA," offers important insights into today’s 53 million U.S. Hispanics – including how their history and culture are influencing the nation.

The author said that he believes sharing accurate, non-subjective information about America’s Latinos, their histories and their contributions to our nation will lead to better understanding of their growing influence as consumers, students, taxpayers, voters and members of the workforce.

Registration for the lecture in Interdisciplinary Building B, B161-B, on ASU’s Tempe campus is required. RSVP to Lillian.Ruelas@asu.edu.

According to ASU’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy, Latinos constitute Arizona’s most rapidly growing ethnicity and could represent more than 50 percent of the state’s population by mid-century. Its 2012 report, Arizona’s Emerging Latino Vote, noted in particular the state’s disproportionate growth in young Latino citizens. “The ramifications will be profound, with major impacts to be felt in the health care industries, at all levels of education, the workforce population and in state budgeting – just to cite a few,” the report stated.

“There are many thoughts on how to create cultural competence,” Estrada said. “The logical place to start is in educational institutions, which are charged with expanding the knowledge base that affects our personal and organizational missions, goals and objectives.

“So it’s really up to our schools to address this critical need for ethnic studies. For students entering the marketplace, it will enable them to adapt successfully to a changing world.”

Estrada is owner of Estrada Communications Group, based in Austin, Texas. He has worked with major corporations, such as AT&T, Anheuser-Busch and McDonald’s, advising them on outreach strategies to Latino consumers for the past three decades. He said every few years, as his client contacts would change, he would need to re-orient their staffs about the Latino market: “My job was to help them avoid making mistakes, cultural faux pas, in their marketing communications.”

After many years, Estrada realized that what he was teaching marketing clientele could benefit a broader audience if compiled in a book. The primer’s 10 short chapters are a collection of essays about different aspects of Latino culture and history, from the Spanish conquest of Mexico to Latino voting rights. A book review by National Hispanic News noted that topics range from language, cultural diversity and history to relationships with the dominant majority, law enforcement and each other.

“Each of these chapters touches on historical and cultural tidbits neither likely to be known by the average non-Hispanic nor by the segment of Latinos themselves who lack exposure to their own contributions to society, or who know little of their place in U.S. history,” the critic observed.

Estrada said the media and entertainment industries are also responsible for projecting a less than positive image of Latinos, as well as those of other non-white, racial, ethnic and immigrant groups. He explained that for decades, mass media have misrepresented Latinos to the nation’s mainstream Eurocentric society through acts of “commission,” use of stereotypic portrayals in media and acts of “omission,” failing to provide factual information about the many Latino contributions to America, and even by historical revisionism.

“Creating cultural awareness and competency takes time and cannot be too daunting a task,” Estrada said. “Providing readers with basic facts, or the ABCs, together with a rudimentary understanding of the influence Hispanics, Latinos and mestizos are having on them and their personal interests can create a sense of ease about learning.”


The School ofTransborder Studies is an academic unit in ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

UT is merging four ethnic and gender studies departments. What changes this fall, by Lily Kepner, July 10, 2026

Friends, 

I invite you to read Lily Kepner’s important reporting on the uncertain future of the University of Texas at Austin’s newly created Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. Her article makes clear that the consolidation of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, American Studies, and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies is not simply an administrative reorganization. It entails the loss of departmental names, leadership positions, staff jobs, institutional homes, and scholarly identities built over decades.

At the same time, the appointment of Dr. Danielle Clealand as interim chair offers some reassurance that the new department will be led by a respected scholar who understands these fields and has the trust of many colleagues. Faculty are clearly determined to protect their students, programs, intellectual traditions, and hard-won legacies. 

Still, the unanswered questions remain profound: Will the new department receive the resources, autonomy, and institutional respect it needs to thrive—or is this only the first stage of further erosion?

Kepner’s article captures both the grief of what is being lost and the resolve of faculty to carry this essential work forward. 

-Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

UT is merging four ethnic and gender studies departments. What changes this fall

Six weeks before the University of Texas begins its fall semester, its new Department of Social and Cultural Analysis still lacks a permanent home and a clear identity.

By Lily Kepner,Staff WriterJuly 10, 2026

Murals decorate the University of Texas Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies office in Burdine Hall, Feb. 18, 2026. UT President Jim Davis announced plans this year to consolidate ethnic and gender studies into a new department and review the courses and majors within it, but the future of the new department is still unclear.

Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Six weeks before the University of Texas begins its fall semester, its new Department of Social and Cultural Analysis still lacks both a permanent home and a clear identity.

As Texas universities face growing political pressure over identity-based academic programs, UT President Jim Davis announced in February that the university’s four ethnic and women gender and sexuality studies departments would be consolidated into a new Department of Social and Cultural Analysis.

Offering the clearest picture yet of the department's future, College of Liberal Arts Interim Dean David Sosa on July 1 appointed Danielle Clealand, an associate professor in the Mexican American and Latina/o Studies department, as interim chair of the new department .

At the end of the academic year, the four department chairs learned they will lose their appointments in August, a new department manager was hired and the departments’ names were removed from the doors, the former chairs said.

Between the two new departments, which also include European and Eurasian studies, five staff members lost their jobs, and others were reassigned, Clealand confirmed. She said they were committed to finding new positions for the staff.

The new department and its website launch Aug. 15, when the departments of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, American Studies and Women and Gender Studies will close, Clealand said. But many questions remain.

After her first week as interim chair, Clealand, speaking to the American-Statesman as an individual, said she doesn't expect a Social and Cultural Analysis major to launch by the fall. She also said the new department has not yet been assigned a home, as the four former departments were spread across two buildings.

Although her focus going into the role is to unite the four departments in a collective vision, “I don't know if we have a unifying message yet,” Clealand said in an interview after her appointment. “Perhaps we'll get there. But I think for now we want students to know that yes, this is one large department, but within that department you can still take all of the same classes and majors that you could before.”

Clealand’s appointment eased faculty's fears that the consolidation would weaken the decades-old departments, which collectively offer six undergraduate majors, four graduate programs, six minors and three doctorate programs, said Karma Chavez, the chair of Mexican American and Latino/a studies.

“I think everyone in the four units realizes that we lost our battle, and that our objective now is to focus on building the best new department collectively and collaboratively that we possibly can,” Chavez said, adding that Clealand is “the right leader for this time.”

“The biggest question that all of us have is whether we're going to be treated like a normal department,” Chavez said, or if “another shoe will drop.”

Cherise Smith, the department chair of African and African Diaspora studies said she is "cautiously excited” about coming together with different intellectual groups and working with more students.

Smith said defining the department’s mission is complicated because social and cultural analysis is not a commonly established academic discipline.

“It’s destabilizing for all of us,” she said. “Many of us are wondering whether we can be a unified department.”

What will and won’t change this fall

Clealand said she accepted the interim chair position because she had earned the trust of colleagues in her home department and in African and African Diaspora studies, where she had often collaborated. She also held a leadership position in Mexican American and Latino studies.

Her hope for the new department, she said, is “longevity.”

Clealand said enrollment declined in ethnic and gender studies after UT eliminated the signature-course program that allowed students to satisfy core curriculum requirements through many of the departments’ classes.

Now, Clealand said she wants to encourage prospective students and faculty to see the new department’s potential despite frustration over the consolidation, which she said a majority of faculty opposed.

Having worked across two departments, Clealand said she’s seen the benefits of collaboration and hopes the consolidation will ultimately strengthen those connections.

“I think that right now people don't necessarily know what we're doing, and recruiting can be challenging because of that,” Clealand said. “But I'm hoping that we can establish ourselves as a really strong department, not only institutionally but nationally.”

Sosa, the College of Liberal Arts interim dean, said the college will begin reviewing the new department’s curriculum and degree programs during the next academic year. For now, Clealand said, all existing degree programs will continue enrolling students and offering the same curriculum.

Now, Clealand said she wants to encourage prospective students and faculty to see the new department’s potential despite frustration over the consolidation, which she said a majority of faculty opposed.

Having worked across two departments, Clealand said she’s seen the benefits of collaboration and hopes the consolidation will ultimately strengthen those connections.

“I think that right now people don't necessarily know what we're doing, and recruiting can be challenging because of that,” Clealand said. “But I'm hoping that we can establish ourselves as a really strong department, not only institutionally but nationally.”

Sosa, the College of Liberal Arts interim dean, said the college will begin reviewing the new department’s curriculum and degree programs during the next academic year. For now, Clealand said, all existing degree programs will continue enrolling students and offering the same curriculum.

‘This existential crisis’

In mid-August, professors will become “professors of social and cultural analysis,” a new department website will launch, and the four original departments will shutter.

For the former chairs, the changes amount to the loss of departments they spent their careers building.

Lisa Moore, who has taught at UT since 1991 and chairs Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, worries the new department will render her life work “invisible.”

“It's heartbreaking, and I do find myself kind of grief about it catching me,” she said. “It feels like just a really brutal loss of my scholarly and professional identity, and an erasure of the decades of my career that I know I've spent building this field.”

When Smith became chair, university leaders envisioned African and African Diaspora studies as a program that could touch every student through the core curriculum, she said.

The department eventually grew to 26 faculty members — the largest of its kind in the nation — attracting students from around the world. Although the department itself is disappearing, Smith said its legacy doesn’t have to.

“These challenges, this existential crisis, has made us recommit to and refocused on what we do,” Smith said. “ We're going to exist in a different way from here on out, but there are things that we will continue to do and that we need to continue to do intellectually and training our students, for example, that we don't need to have a department named African and African Diaspora Studies to do.”

Who are American students who are no longer the majority? by Dr. Rogelio Saenz

Friends,

I am pleased to share this timely op-ed by demographer Dr. Rogelio Sáenz, who calls attention to a revealing and consequential misuse of language in discussions of the nation’s changing student population. When Latino students are contrasted with “American students,” the implication is that they are somehow foreign to the country in which the overwhelming majority were born, raised, and educated.

As Sáenz makes clear, the demographic shift taking place in our schools is not from “American” to “non-American” students, but from a white majority to an increasingly diverse student body. Getting this language right matters—especially amid a political climate in which Latinos and other communities of color are routinely portrayed as outsiders rather than as integral members of the American public.

-Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Who are American students who are no longer the majority?

by Rogelio Saenz | July 12, 2026 | The American Bazaar

I read with great interest the article titled “American students are no longer majority in schools” written by Jayujyoti Mullick which appeared in The American Bazaar last month on June 14. This is an interesting article but there is confusion about who actually are American students who are no longer the majority in U.S. schools.

Mullick argues that “American students who are neither Latino nor multiracial represented fewer than 50% of students enrolled from nursery school through graduate programs in 2024.” Later in the essay, Mullick reports that “Between 2012 and 2022, Hispanic students increased from 24% to 29% of public-school enrollment, while American students fell from 51% to 44%.’ Still later Mullick notes “College participation also trails that of American students, with 37.3% of Hispanic young adults ages 20 and 21 enrolled in college compared with 53.9% of their American peers.”

READ: Four Indian American students win 2026 Harvard Hoopes Prize (May 6, 2026)

Put simply, Mullick’s essay indicates that Latino students are not American. The reality is that the large majority of Latinos enrolled in school are U.S.-born. According to the 2024 American Community Survey (ACS), among students enrolled in school in 2024, 91 percent of Latinos 0-17 years of age were born in the U.S., as is the case with 88 percent of those ages 18 to 24 and 78 percent of those ages 25 to 34 years of age. Hardly non-American people! Under the current politically divisive climate along with the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, clear demarcations have been established between the “us” and “them”—people who “belong here” and those with who “don’t belong here.” The misleading information in the essay fuels divisive fires which, for many, justifies reasons for deporting people when, supposedly, “they are actually taking over our schools!”

READ: US visa uncertainty pushes Indian students to consider other countries (June 30, 2026)

The reality is that non-white, rather than non-American, students now make up the majority of students in U.S. schools. As such, non-white students consisting not only of Latinos, but also Blacks, American Indians and Alaska Natives, Asians, Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders, and multiracial people, now are the majority in K-12 and college undergraduate enrollment, outnumbering white students. In 2024, according to 2024 ACS data, whites accounted for a slight majority (50.8%) of students enrolled in graduate and professional schools. Many of these non-white students are American—either born in this country, people who are naturalized citizens, and still others who are not citizens but have lived in this country for extensive portions of their lives.

Rogelio Sáenz is professor in the Department of Sociology and Demography at the University of Texas at San Antonio. His opinions and analysis expressed here are his own and not those of the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Dying in Detention—and in the Streets: ICE’s Expanding Crisis of Impunity, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. July 11, 2026

Dying in Detention—and in the Streets: ICE’s Expanding Crisis of Impunity

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

July 11, 2026

A disturbing new report by Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights documents a rapidly worsening human rights crisis within the United States immigration detention system. During the first 500 days of President Donald Trump’s second administration—from January 20, 2025, through June 4, 2026—52 people died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. The mortality rate was the highest in more than a decade, nearly four times the rate under the Biden administration and more than double that of Trump’s first term (Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, 2026).

These deaths cannot be explained simply by the growth of the detained population. Although ICE detention expanded to a record of more than 71,000 people in January 2026, deaths increased at a disproportionately higher rate. Medical experts reviewing available records identified disturbing indications of delayed treatment, inadequate care, failures to respond to medical emergencies, and possible preventable deaths. The report also found systematic failures by ICE to disclose sufficient information about deaths, medical treatment, and conditions inside detention facilities (Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, 2026).

The crisis extends beyond detention centers. Recently, on July 7, 2026, an ICE officer fatally shot 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo as the Houston homebuilder drove his construction crew to a job site. Salgado Araujo had lived in the United States for more than 35 years, had no criminal record, and was reportedly nearing the completion of a process to obtain legal status. He was not the person ICE originally intended to apprehend (Oyekanmi, Brook, & Foley, 2026).

People march through the streets during a vigil for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national fatally shot by a federal immigration agent a day prior, Wednesday, July 8, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/Mark Felix)

The Department of Homeland Security asserted that Salgado Araujo attempted to ram an ICE vehicle and endanger an officer. Yet the three men traveling with him have disputed that account, stating through their attorney that no officer stood in front of the van or faced a threat. Federal authorities have released no body-camera footage, photographs, or other evidence substantiating their version of events. The participating officers were not wearing body cameras despite Congress having allocated $20 million for their deployment (Oyekanmi et al., 2026; Santana, 2026).

The rising death toll in detention and Salgado Araujo’s killing are not isolated tragedies. Together, they reveal the consequences of an enforcement system expanding faster than its medical capacity, oversight, transparency, and accountability. A government that deprives people of their liberty assumes a heightened responsibility to protect their lives. A government that authorizes armed agents to conduct raids in unmarked vehicles must also ensure that lethal force is independently investigated and publicly accounted for.

Immigration status does not nullify a person’s humanity, right to medical care, or right to life. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo deserved to arrive safely at work. Those held in ICE detention deserve to emerge alive. Their families deserve answers—and the public must demand them.

References

Human Rights Watch, & Physicians for Human Rights. (2026, June 25). Dying in detention: Rising deaths in an expanding US immigration detention system. Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/report/2026/06/25/dying-in-detention/rising-deaths-in-an-expanding-us-immigration-detention-system

Oyekanmi, L., Brook, J., & Foley, R. J. (2026, July 10). Detainees tell their lawyer an ICE officer shot a Houston driver through a passenger window, Associated Press. https://apnews.com/article/ice-shooting-houston-lorenzo-salgado-araugo-10cf77f29d4559f0f3796342b946031a

Santana, R. (2026, July 10). DHS was granted $20M for body cameras. ICE agents in fatal Houston shooting had none, Associated Press. https://apnews.com/article/cameras-body-worn-houston-shooting-ice-immigration-trump-aa316992c75fcd919726afc4db6f4098

Dying in Detention: Rising Deaths in an Expanding US Immigration Detention System

In the 500 days between President Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025 and June 4, 2026, 52 people died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in the United States. The mortality rate of deaths in ICE custody is at its highest level in over a decade and has more than doubled since Trump’s second term began. The rate is nearly four times that of the Biden administration, and more than two and a half times as high as that of the first Trump administration. The current trend-level rate is now even higher than during the Covid-19 pandemic. Urgent action is needed to address this crisis and prevent further deaths.

The second Trump administration launched an aggressive campaign to expand immigration detention, pushing the number of people held to a record high of over 71,000 people in January 2026. The surge in deaths is much worse than what one would expect even considering the much higher number of people in detention. Deaths in ICE custody have increased at a rate disproportionate to the growth in the detained population. January 2025- January 2026 saw an approximately 140 percent increase in the annual mortality rate compared to the prior year.

 to expand Image

Graphic © 2026 

Methodology

This report draws on two overlapping bodies of analysis. The statistical analysis covers all 52 deaths in ICE custody over the first 500 days of the second Trump administration, from January 20, 2025 to June 4, 2026, and compares the mortality rate with data spanning the past two decades. The medical and human rights analysis focuses on the 39 deaths reported in the first 12 months of the second term, from January 20, 2025 to January 19, 2026, the period for which case documentation was available at the time of review. Medical experts from Physicians for Human Rights assessed the clinical circumstances preceding each death and the adequacy of care described in available documentation, including supplementary medical records in two cases. Human Rights Watch conducted interviews with family members, attorneys, and former cellmates of the deceased.

Findings: Deaths in ICE Detention Indicate Violations of ICE Policy and International Human Rights Law

Under international human rights law, the state has an obligation to respect and ensure the right to life. When a government detains a person, it has a heightened obligation to protect their rights, and to this end must provide adequate health care and other protections. In the case of a death in custody, the government should also provide all relevant information to the family, including medical reports and investigations into the death.

Failure to Ensure Transparency and Public Accountability for Deaths

ICE policy requires public disclosure of a death of a person in custody within 48 hours and more detailed public reporting of the facts and circumstances surrounding the death within 30 days. Physicians for Human Rights found that, in all 39 cases, the government did not publicly provide sufficient information about the circumstances of death or about the medical care provided in detention to support a definitive clinical assessment. The available documentation was often scant, but it was nonetheless sufficient to identify serious concerns about the care provided.

The lack of medical information in published government records, including about medical care requested and provided, severely limits external medical expert review. The government has systematically failed to report deaths in custody in a timely and comprehensive way, and to be transparent about the medical care provided during detention.

The family of one man who died in ICE custody in 2025 has been trying to access additional records on his case. His mother is desperate to know more about the care he received and the conditions he was held in before his death, and wants access to any available surveillance footage. “What I want is for them to investigate,” she told Human Rights Watch.

Evidence of Inadequate or Delayed Care

Based on available information, Physicians for Human Rights medical experts had a high suspicion of inadequate or delayed health care in several of the 39 deaths that occurred during the first year of the current administration, raising serious concerns that the deaths may have been preventable.

Examples of the types of circumstances and clinical details that raise concerns that a death may have been preventable include: worsening respiratory symptoms without intervention until the person was found unresponsive; people who did not have more frequent medical evaluations when they had known hypertension and worsening symptoms such as headaches; individuals who died from sepsis and had known risk factors for sepsis (such as an immunocompromised state or indwelling central venous catheter) but no blood cultures drawn or antibiotics given when febrile; cases where contradictory medical instructions were given to patients; and delays in starting cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for persons found unresponsive.

In one case, Maksym Chernyak, a 44-year-old man from Ukraine, suffered a stroke in detention. Despite having clear signs of an emergency including seizure-like movements and non-reactive dilated pupils, detention facility staff failed to ensure appropriate emergency medical care. Delays in getting him to higher level medical care almost certainly contributed to his death.

In another case, Ismael Ayala-Uribe, a 39-year-old Mexican citizen, reportedly died from cardiac arrest that PHR assessed likely arose from overwhelming septic shock. His repeated attempts to obtain appropriate medical help for an infected abscess were recurrently mishandled.

Santos Banegas Reyes, a 42-year-old Honduran citizen, was “cleared for detention within two hours of arrival” despite being identified during medical intake as being in active alcohol withdrawal. ICE’s reporting on Banegas Reyes fails to identify why he was not sent to a hospital for care or, at a minimum—as would be the standard of care for someone with unknown risk of future severity of withdrawal and thus with potential to progress to life-threatening withdrawal—observed more closely within the detention center’s medical unit. He was found unresponsive in his cell during morning count the day after his arrival and was declared deceased shortly after.

The facts of these and other cases suggest that the United States is failing to meet its obligations to respect and ensure the right to life and to ensure adequate health care in detention.

In addition to such cases, the high number of people who died by apparent suicide in detention is also a serious concern. According to ICE records, seven people died by apparent suicide from January 20, 2025 to January 19, 2026. This compares to one reported death by suicide in 2024.[1] In a custodial environment, the state has significant capacity to monitor wellbeing and safety, and to prevent and respond to attempted suicide. The high number suggests that the state may be failing to adequately respond to the risk of suicide.

Poor Conditions of Detention including Inadequate Staffing and Gaps in Health Care

The dramatic rise in the rate of deaths in detention is a foreseeable outcome of the Trump administration’s immigration policies and practices. Drawing on Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch’s decades of experience documenting deaths in detention and patterns of abuse in immigration detention, this report finds that the high numbers of deaths in 2025-2026 are likely fueled by both long-term systemic problems as well as new changes implemented by the second Trump Administration.

Long-term concerns about US immigration detention include poor conditions in detention facilities, such as unsanitary facilities and inadequate food, which contribute to illness and disease. They also include sub-standard health infrastructure and services in detention centers, which contribute to poor quality and delayed medical care for individuals with physical or mental health conditions or a health emergency. There has long been inadequate staffing at detention centers to ensure proper monitoring and responsiveness to individuals in detention, and inadequate and delayed publication of information about detainee deaths, undermining public accountability.

The second Trump administration has exacerbated these problems and created new ones, including:

• Restrictions on legal immigration pathways and the expansion of mandatory detention have swept more people into custody and prolonged their confinement.

• Soaring detention numbers since January 2025 expose more people to poor detention conditions and lead to more crowded facilities, which in turn worsens sanitation concerns and further strains the provision of health care. This report found that most of the 39 deaths occurred in facilities that had significantly elevated population levels in the two weeks leading up to the deaths (as compared with the previous three-year average population in these same facilities);

• The second Trump administration dismantled or rendered ineffective oversight mechanisms for Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE’s parent agency, which were flawed but important mechanisms for preventing and investigating deaths in custody; and

• Changes to the system for processing claims for offsite health care for detained immigrants raise concerns about gaps in health care and coverage.

Violations of ICE Policy, UN Standards, and UN Human Rights Treaties

The United States has obligations to protect the lives and health of those in its custody. The deaths of people in US immigration detention raise concerns that the United States has violated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which protects the right to life and obligates states to take steps to safeguard the lives of those in custody. The mistreatment of people in immigration detention contravenes the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (Mandela Rules), which, among other things, call for prompt access to medical care and prohibit delays in emergency response, as well as ICE standards on medical care and suicide prevention. Those ICE standards include the requirement that people in detention be able to communicate urgent needs to staff and receive timely responses. Poor detention conditions and the failure to provide adequate medical care can also amount to violations of the prohibition against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of the ICCPR and the Convention Against Torture (CAT), treaties ratified by United States, as well as the guarantee of humane treatment for people deprived of their liberty under the ICCPR.

Conclusion

For the United States to meet its human rights obligations and prevent more deaths in ICE custody, immediate action is needed to reduce the numbers of people in detention and to improve overall detention conditions, including by using detention only as a last resort. The government should ensure competent medical and mental health screening at intake, ensure adequate medical staffing and resources to those detained equivalent to that available in the broader public community, including mental health care, guarantee uninterrupted access to offsite care, and conduct periodic health assessments. The government should also provide remedies to the families of people whose death resulted from violations of US human rights obligations, restore independent oversight of DHS, and mandate transparent, comprehensive, and timely reporting of deaths and the conditions and decisions that led to them. State and local governments, private detention operators, and UN human rights bodies all have a role to play in upholding these standards.

Texas’ Long Struggle Over Civil Rights—and Why It Still Matters, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. July 10, 2026

Texas’ Long Struggle Over Civil Rights—and Why It Still Matters

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

July 10, 2026

I came across this pamphlet I picked up a while back at the Texas Capitol titled,Minority Civil Rights and the Texas Legislature, revised in 2018, and finally sat down to read it. In light of the recent contentious debates over Texas’ K–12 social studies standards before the State Board of Education, I found myself thinking that this brief but powerful document should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand Texas politics today.

At first glance, the document is a concise historical overview. But read closely, it is something more: a record of how law has been used both to deny and to expand democracy in Texas. It tells a story of slavery, Tejano marginalization, Black Codes, Jim Crow segregation, voter suppression, educational inequality, civil rights organizing, court victories, and the long fight for representation inside the Texas Legislature itself.

The report begins with a truth that Texas too often evades: Texas was a slave state. Its 1836 Constitution protected slavery, and by 1860 more than 182,000 enslaved people lived in Texas, about 30 percent of the state population. During the Civil War, enslavers from other Confederate states moved enslaved people into Texas to shield them from advancing Union troops. Some estimates place the enslaved population in Texas at more than 400,000 by emancipation.

This matters because the struggle over civil rights in Texas did not begin in the twentieth century. It is embedded in the founding architecture of the state.

The report also reminds us that Tejanos were not marginal to Texas history. Lorenzo de Zavala, Juan Seguín, José Antonio Navarro, and José Francisco Ruiz were central figures in Texas’ early political life. Yet even as Tejano leaders helped shape Texas independence and statehood, Tejano communities were rapidly subordinated under Anglo political power. After Navarro left office in 1848, no Latino or Latina served in the Texas Senate for more than a century.

That fact alone should stop us in our tracks.

Texas has long celebrated Tejano names on counties, streets, schools, and monuments while too often excluding Tejano people from power. Symbolic recognition has never been the same as representation.

The Reconstruction section is equally sobering. After the Civil War, Texas lawmakers moved quickly to restrict Black freedom. The 1866 Constitutional Convention granted African Americans certain limited civil rights, but Black Texans were denied the right to vote, hold office, serve on juries, and, in most cases, testify against whites. The 11th Legislature refused to ratify the 13th and 14th Amendments and enacted Black Codes that used labor contracts, vagrancy laws, apprenticeships, and convict labor to keep freed people in conditions of dependency and exploitation.

And yet, Reconstruction also produced democratic possibility. African American men served as constitutional convention delegates and legislators. George T. Ruby, Matthew Gaines, Walter Burton, Walter Ripetoe, and others helped imagine a different Texas—one committed to public education, infrastructure, land, labor, and political participation.

That possibility was violently and legislatively contained. By the late nineteenth century, African American representation had been driven out of the Legislature. The report notes that the 25th Legislature in 1897 was the last to include an African American member for seven decades.

Then came Jim Crow.

The report is clear that segregation in Texas was not only directed at African Americans. It was also directed at Mexican Americans and other Latina/o Texans. Schools, neighborhoods, public facilities, restaurants, buses, railroad cars, churches, and political systems were organized through racial separation. African American and Mexican American children were forced to attend inferior “colored” and “Mexican” schools. Minority voters faced poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation, ballot-stuffing, and accusations of incompetence.

This is why current efforts to censor discussions of race, racism, Ethnic Studies, and civil rights history are so dangerous. They do not merely omit the past. They disable our ability to understand the present.

The history of Texas is not simply a story of individual prejudice. It is a story of law, policy, budgets, schools, courts, legislative districts, and public institutions. It is a story of how inequality was built—and how people organized to dismantle it.

The report rightly highlights civil rights organizations as engines of democratic change. The Texas NAACP began in El Paso in 1915. LULAC was founded in Corpus Christi in 1929 to fight voter suppression and discrimination in public schools and housing. After World War II, Dr. Héctor P. García and other Latino veterans founded the American G.I. Forum to challenge discrimination against Mexican American veterans.

These organizations helped transform the legal landscape. Smith v. Allwright ended the white primary. Delgado v. Bastrop ISD challenged segregated Mexican schools. Sweatt v. Painter opened the door to desegregation in graduate and professional education. Hernandez v. Texas affirmed that Mexican Americans were entitled to Fourteenth Amendment equal protection. Brown v. Board of Education required an end to segregated public education.

These victories were never gifts from the state. They were won through organizing, litigation, testimony, risk, sacrifice, and intergenerational struggle.

The later rise of Henry B. González, Barbara Jordan, Irma Rangel, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Rodney Ellis, Royce West, Judith Zaffirini, Carlos Truan, and many others represents not simply individual achievement, but the long-delayed return of excluded communities to the halls of power. The report notes that minority legislators have left a significant footprint on Texas political history, including through committee leadership, coalition-building, and legislation important to all Texans.

That is an important point. Minority civil rights have never been a “special interest.” They are democracy work.

When Black and Brown Texans fight for voting rights, public education, fair representation, language rights, labor protections, and access to higher education, they expand democracy for everyone. The history of civil rights in Texas teaches us that exclusion is always defended as tradition, order, property, or local control. But democracy has always required people willing to challenge those claims.

This document is especially important now, as Texas once again struggles over whose histories may be taught, whose votes count, whose communities are represented, whose schools are funded, and whose children are allowed to see themselves as full participants in the state’s future.

The lesson is clear: Texas did not become more democratic by accident. It became more democratic because people organized.

And that means democracy can also be weakened—by silence, by erasure, by voter suppression, by attacks on public education, by curricular censorship, by gerrymandering, and by the refusal to tell the truth.

Minority Civil Rights and the Texas Legislature gives us a usable history. It reminds us that the Texas Legislature has been both a site of exclusion and a site of struggle. It has enacted injustice, but it has also been forced—by movements, courts, and courageous leaders—to widen the circle of belonging.

The question before us is whether we will keep widening that circle.

Because in Texas, civil rights have never simply been about the past. They are about the democracy we are still trying to become.

Reference

Secretary of the Senate, Senate Engrossing & Enrolling, & Senate Publications & Printing. (2018). Minority civil rights and the Texas Legislature (Rev. ed.). Texas Legislative Reference Library. https://lrl.texas.gov/scanned/SIRSI/MinorityCivilRightsandtheTexasLegislature.pdf

Academic Freedom in Texas Higher Education is also a Latino Struggle, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. July 9, 2026

Academic Freedom in Texas Higher Education is also a Latino Struggle

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. 

July 9, 2026

I am grateful to see attention given to this important lawsuit challenging censorship in the Texas Tech University System. I also want to thank Lily Kepner for her tireless coverage of Texas education politics. My concern here is not with the messenger—far from it. We need more journalists willing to cover these consequential struggles with care and persistence. May her kind multiply.

My concern is that the issues named here—academic freedom, faculty governance, classroom censorship, LGBTQ+ rights, and the teaching of race, gender, and inequality—are urgent and consequential not only for Texas Tech, but for all of higher education in Texas.

That said, I want to gently but critically note an omission that matters. Latino communities, scholars, students, and organizations have been deeply and tirelessly involved in these very struggles across Texas—shoulder-to-shoulder with Black communities, LGBTQ+ communities, faculty organizations, civil rights groups, students, and other allies. These fights are not new to us. They are the same fights over curriculum, representation, Ethnic Studies, DEI, academic freedom, and the right of students to receive a truthful and complete education.

Indeed, many of us have researched, documented, testified, organized, and published on these issues for years, including the harms produced by SB 17, attacks on DEI, the chilling of race- and gender-conscious scholarship, and the broader dismantling of democratic governance in Texas higher education. Latina/o students and faculty are not peripheral to this story. 

We are central to so much of it.

That is why it is disappointing to see the article frame the issue almost exclusively through Black communities and Black professors, without also naming the Latino communities and scholars who are likewise targeted by these policies and who have been in the struggle from the beginning. In Texas, this omission is especially consequential. 

Latina/o students make up a major share of the state’s public higher education population. Many of the programs, courses, histories, and pedagogies now under threat—Mexican American Studies, Latina/o Studies, Ethnic Studies, bilingual education, immigration studies, borderlands history, and critical policy research—speak directly to our communities’ lives and futures.

This is not a call to diminish the anti-Blackness at work in these attacks. Quite the opposite. Anti-Black racism must be named clearly and confronted directly. But in Texas, anti-Blackness, anti-Latino racism, anti-immigrant politics, anti-LGBTQ+ attacks, and hostility toward gender justice are intertwined in the same authoritarian project. The struggle for academic freedom is strongest when we name all of the communities whose knowledge, histories, and presence are being targeted.

So yes, this lawsuit matters. It deserves support. The chilling of faculty speech and the restriction of what students can learn should alarm everyone who cares about democracy.

But the public narrative should also reflect the full coalition of communities that has been fighting this fight. Latino communities are not bystanders. As reflected in this very blog, we are part of the intellectual, legal, pedagogical, and political resistance to censorship in Texas higher education—and have been for a long time.

And this is not about recognition for recognition’s sake. It is about accuracy, accountability, and coalition. When the state targets race, gender, sexuality, immigration, Ethnic Studies, and DEI, it is not targeting one community at a time. It is targeting the very conditions that allow for a multiethnic/multiracial democracy to exist in public higher education.

Professors' union sues Texas Tech System over LGBTQ, race teaching restrictions

By Lily Kepner,Staff WriterUpdated July 8, 2026 1:05 p.m.

Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, authored Senate Bill 26, which would invest more than $4 million in teacher pay increases.

Jay Janner/American-Statesman

A national professors' union and its Texas chapter are suing the Texas Tech University System’s chancellor and regents for restricting professors' ability to teach about LGBTQ identity, gender and race, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court.

Brandon Creighton, chancellor of the Texas Tech University System and a former Republican state senator, announced last academic year that the five universities he oversees could not teach courses that advocate for race or gender “prejudice” or mention that more than two genders exist.

In April, he canceled all academic programs “centered on” sexual orientation and said professors “generally” cannot teach courses that include LGBTQ themes.

Wednesday’s lawsuit, filed by the American Association of University Professors and its Texas chapter, alleges that the decisions violate the First and 14th amendments and censor course discussion.

“This case presents an extraordinary system of censorship in higher education, in which professors in the Texas Tech University System are prohibited from teaching the most basic scholarship, while at the same time not fully comprehending the contours of prohibitions that place them under threat of losing their employment and livelihood,” lawyers for the professors' union wrote in the filing. “To make matters worse, professors cannot reasonably make sense of what is and is not prohibited, further chilling their classroom speech.”

Creighton said in a statement that the university system is confident its policies are “lawful and compliant.”

“Our commitment to academic integrity and the First Amendment rights of our students and faculty will not be distracted by lawsuits as we continue our mission to deliver rigorous academic programs, relevant coursework, and groundbreaking research,” Creighton said.

What do the policies restrict?

Creighton, who championed legislation restricting faculty input and diversity, equity and inclusion practices at universities during his time in the Texas Legislature, has said the restrictions ensure the Texas Tech University System provides “rigorous” and valuable degrees.


There is no law restricting what can be taught in Texas higher education. In 2023, Creighton authored Senate Bill 16, which would have restricted teaching that compels students to adopt beliefs that one race or sex is superior. The bill did not pass.

A higher education reform bill he authored, Senate Bill 37, succeeded in giving regents more power over curriculum and defanging faculty governance in 2025, but it did not include specific restrictions on race and gender. Initial drafts included those limitations.


Regardless, university systems have increasingly adopted policies to restrict what professors can teach after a Texas A&M University professor was fired at Gov. Greg Abbott’s urging for teaching about gender identity.

The viral fallout ultimately resulted in the president of Texas A&M stepping down, and the A&M System restricting courses that “advocate” for gender identity or race. Before Creighton was appointed, the Texas Tech University System banned teaching that there were more than two genders, and the University of Texas System also announced an audit of courses concerning gender identity.

The professors' union lawsuit specifically targets two decisions from Creighton that go further. In one of his first acts as chancellor, Creighton banned advocacy or promotion of race or sex-based “prejudice.”

In April, when he announced the cancellation of programs that teach sexual orientation, or gender identity, Creighton instituted a “strict prohibition on (sexual orientation or gender identity) content in all core and lower-level undergraduate courses,” and on “instruction that advocates for concepts of inherent racial or sexual superiority, inherent bias, or collective guilt.” That order did not apply to teaching about historical events tied to LGBTQ and civil rights.

The legal filing states Creighton’s orders are too vague, “chilling” any speech that has to do with LGBTQ identity, gender or race. The Texas Tech System provided guidance on its restrictions, but the suit maintains that the orders suppressed professors' academic freedom.

TJ Geiger, the vice president of the Texas Tech University AAUP chapter, said that the policies have led to confusion across campus, leading to self-censorship and “inconsistent” directives to professors on what they can teach. The limits ultimately hurt students, who “are not getting a full, accurate, and complete education” if professors are censoring their teaching, he said.

“It’s just been a really tumultuous time leading to what I’ve characterized as intellectual and professional triage,” Geiger said. “Our otherwise good work and effort that would have gone into teaching and research has been directed toward trying to figure out where the lines are in terms of what we’re supposed to say or not say.”

What is the lawsuit seeking?

The 84-page court filing asks a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas to prevent Creighton’s directives from being enforced.


Antonio Ingram, senior counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, a legal organization focused on racial justice that is representing the professors' union, said the restrictions have prevented professors at Texas Tech University’s medical school from teaching about health disparities based on race, and left law professors unsure about how to teach about legal victories for racial equality.

A spokesperson for Creighton did not immediately respond to the claims.

“These are targeting Black communities, Black professors,” Ingram said. “We want the federal court in El Paso to declare the memorandums unconstitutional based on First Amendment violations, based on vagueness, and based on its racial discrimination.”

This is a breaking story that will be updated.


July 8, 2026|Updated July 8, 2026 1:05 p.m.

Lily Kepner

HIGHER EDUCATION REPORTER

Lily Kepner started at the American-Statesman in October 2023. She has appeared on BBC, NPR and Texas Standard to talk about her coverage, which has spanned the impact of state laws and politics on the University of Texas, pro-Palestinian protests, free speech, the anti-DEI ban, LGBTQ student belonging and more. Kepner graduated with honors from Boston University's College of Communication in 2023, where she received the college's highest awards for writing and journalism leadership and led the award-winning student newspaper as Editor-in-Chief. In her time with the American-Statesman, she contributed to reporting that won an Edward R Murrow Award for breaking news, won the School Bell Award for Outstanding Feature from Texas State Teachers Association, and Critics Choice for Best of Austin in the Austin Chronicle. Previously, she has been published in USA Today, The Boston Globe, The National Catholic Reporter and GBH. Kepner is passionate about accountability and service journalism and encourages anyone to reach out to her to tell their story or share a tip.