Gov. Greg Abbott’s Timeline of Voter Suppression, Matt Angle, Lone Star Project Memorandum, March 26, 2021

Friends:

Check out this Memo from Matt Angle of the Lone Star Project. It details the
history of voter suppression, citing that "Greg Abbott has been the point on the spear of racially discriminatory voter suppression in Texas since the day he became Texas Attorney General in 2003."

Great timeline resource below.  

Eyes wide open, my friends. These are perilous times.

-Angela Valenzuela

#Vote #VoterSuppression

 

Memorandum

To:       Press and Other Interested Parties From:  Matt Angle, Lone Star Project Director Re:      Abbott's History of Discriminatory Vote Suppression Date:   March 26, 2021

With the hearing process underway in both the State House and the State Senate, Greg Abbott and Texas Republican legislators are moving forward with efforts to impose changes to Texas election law that would, by any fair measure, make voting harder in Texas. The efforts amount to overt, racially discriminatory voter suppression.  It is important for Texans to know that the Republican-proposed discriminatory voter suppression underway now is just their latest cheat-to-win gambit.  It’s the newest play in a now two-decade long strategy by Greg Abbott and Texas Republicans to hold power and impose harmful state policies by undermining the voting strength of Hispanic, Black, Asian, and minority voters, along with new and young voters of all ethnicities.  The Lone Star Project has documented Abbott’s attacks on voting rights and constitutional protections from the beginning.  The timeline below lays out “low-lights” of Abbott’s efforts to deny Texans voting rights and undermine their voting strength. Voting in Texas is already more difficult than in any other state. Neither Abbott nor any Republican legislator have provided—now or ever—substantive evidence of widespread or even significant voter fraud in Texas.   Abbott’s passive-aggressive nature and flat demeanor sometimes obscure an important fact: Greg Abbott has been the point on the spear of racially discriminatory voter suppression in Texas since the day he became Texas Attorney General in 2003. I also want to specifically point out an early action by Greg Abbott that many reporters and most Texans don’t know about but throws into relief Abbott’s overt hostility to basic civil rights and his use of official resources to harass and intimidate Texas voters, especially minority voters, and undermine their rights under the law.     Abbott Formed a Phony Voter Fraud Unit to Train Discrimination Early in his tenure as Texas AG, Greg Abbott diverted $1 million in federal funds intended to fight cybercrime and online child porn to pay for a special unit he used to prosecute almost entirely minority Texans – all under the dishonest cover of “voter integrity.”  Abbott’s phony voter fraud unit prosecuted less than two dozen mostly minority senior citizens but won no significant convictions.  It did, however, prove to be a vicious tool for vote suppression and voter intimidation: Training racial discrimination – From his earliest days, Abbott saw any person of color voting as a threat. As part of his phony voter fraud efforts, Abbott and his agents at the AG went around the state giving a slide show tutorial on how to spot and report potential voter fraud. The examples he used expose Abbott’s discriminatory intent. He showed a slide of a sickle cell stamp as a suspicious sign of potential voter fraud, and he also showed a picture of African Americans standing in line to vote as a sign of potential trouble at the polls. Harassing & intimidating an elderly woman in her home – Abbott sent agents to the home of Fort Worth senior citizen Gloria Meeks. After being told that she could not come to the door because she was bathing, the agents refused to wait respectfully and walked around her house, peering through her bathroom window startling Ms. Meeks as she was getting out of her bath. The agents then forced Ms. Meeks to put on a bathrobe and submit to hostile questioning about her encouraging other senior citizens to vote. Abbott’s agents had no warrant, had no accusations of wrongdoing, and filed no charges. The entire effort was clearly designed to harass and intimidate Ms. Meeks.  Fortunately, Ms. Meeks had the courage to make a statement documenting the harassment and later joined a lawsuit against Abbott.  Her fight against Abbott was cited in Ms. Meeks’ funeral program as one of her proudest achievements. Click here to view links and PDF of the timeline appearing below.

Greg Abbott’s Timeline of Voter Suppression

Sen. Ossoff: 'We May Need To Revise The Senate Rules In Order To Govern'

The two Georgia Senators John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are a powerful team, as Lawrence O'Donnell states. I shudder to think of what would have happened had they not won their elections. Among other things, as we all know, President Biden's $1.9 Trillion Pandemic Relief Bill would not have happened. 

Major lesson? Voting matters without which democracy is in peril. Now, we must pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to preserve and extend access to the vote for all Americans to the ballot box.

-Angela Valenzuela

#ProtectTheVote #VotingMatters #VotingRightsAct

He suggests a way to recast the notion of partisanship ..overwhelming bipartisan support.

"A Time for Action: There is no Alternative," by Dr. José Angel Gutierrez

Do read this word of caution and action proposed by Dr. José Angel Gutierrez, founder of the Raza Unida Party. I hope that the election does not go down the path of this deeply-concerning scenario—even as we know that voter suppression is real.

However, as 2016 tells, together with ongoing Russian meddling, his predictions are certainly within the realm of possibility. Read closely and consider yourself sufficiently warned and informed on next steps...

-Angela Valenzuela

#Vote2020 #2020Election #vote2020 #vote #votersuppression #votersuppressionisreal

A Time for Action: There is no Alternative

by Dr. Jose Angel Gutierrez

Trump is going to steal the General Election despite a landslide victory by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. He is going to claim illegal votes, fraudulent voter tallies, stolen and destroyed ballots and countless other lies. Everything he has said and done the past six months corroborate this prediction. He has slowed the mail service to prevent timely mail in ballots be counted; that continues. Some states have changed the vote by mail and in person rules. Some lower federal courts have upheld these new rules which include limiting mail drop boxes for ballot to one per county in Texas as Harris County. Houston is larger in population size than Rhode Island. Texas and Alabama have prohibited curb-side voting; handicapped persons must find other ways to vote. Tennessee has mandated first time voters must do so in person, no mail in ballots. Federal courts have upheld all these voter suppression measures. In almost all states, voters standing in line to vote early are having to wait up to 10 hours to do so; the average nationwide is 4 hour wait time. This is purposeful voter suppression.  Florida created a new poll tax by mandating all felons pay up all outstanding court fees to be able to vote. In California, the state Republican Party put up their own ballot drop off boxes to supposedly help voters get their ballots in on time. These boxes remained past these state ultimatums and deadlines. No one was arrested.  

During the recent summer protests Trump sent expeditionary troops from Homeland Security into Democratic-controlled cities supposedly to impose “law and order.” The governors and mayors of these cities did not ask for these armed thugs. Trump has threatened to re-send troops to prevent voter fraud on election day. He already has claimed ballots which voted for him have been thrown away in Pennsylvania. 

After 7pm the night of November 3rd, he will begin the tirade of lies about stolen ballot boxes, voter fraud, intimidation of voters, and the media reporting false vote returns. By the morning of the 4th, he will declare the election having been a total hoax, flawed, and fraudulent. He will prohibit the states having reported Democratic landslides from ratifying who will receive the Electoral College votes. His nine solid Republican governors will agree and withhold those votes on their own. He will ask his lap dog, U.S. Attorney General William Barr to investigate key states whose votes he needs to invalidate vote returns and keep Biden/Harris from an Electoral College wipeout. Trump and Barr will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold this fabricated investigation and announce him the winner. They will 6 to 3, maybe 5 to 4. The Supreme Court did this in Bush v. Gore, 531 US 98, (2000).

There is no alternative. It is a time for action. Let us all, especially those of us of Mexican origin, to begin a national campaign: No Compro/No Trabajo. Let us use our real power of labor and consumer spending given our numbers to kill Trump’s dictatorial plan. Let us not buy or report to work on Tuesday, December 8th, the day electors in states meet. Let us not buy or report to work on Monday, December 14th, the actual day for the Electoral College votes and reports that Biden and Harris are the winners of the national election. 

joseangelgutierrez@yahoo.com

An American Tragedy: Lawyers say they can't find the parents of 545 migrant children separated by Trump administration

I'm posting a couple of recent reports on the exceedingly cruel and inhumane tragedy of parent-child separation along the U.S.-Mexico border that has remained an open wound that screams for justice but has gone unheard by this Nazi administration and president. Were it not for Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement leadership and policy, this unspeakable tragedy of colossal proportions would not have happened to begin with.  

If you noticed from this week's debate, Trump callously stated, "They are so well taken care of. They’re in facilities that were so clean."  It didn't phase him in the least that for close to a thousand children that were separated from their parents in the context of the 2017 pilot program in El Paso, that for 545 children, their parents cannot be found. Even if and when their parents are located, the entirety of these children's lives will be defined by this government-sanctioned cruelty. Their parents, too.

This is neither an "immigrant" nor "immigration problem." 

This is American tragedy that we must fully address—not only so that every parent is located and reunited with their child, but also so that this never happens again. Never again.

Let's vote this callous, cruel, and cowardly person and his administration out of out of office. Only five days left until October 30 when early voting ends in Texas. 

-Angela Valenzuela

#vote #Vote2020 #FamiliesBelongTogether #FamiliesTornApart

Lawyers say they can't find the parents of 545 migrant children separated by Trump administration

Oct. 20, 2020, 5:22 PM CDT / Updated Oct. 21, 2020, 4:52 PM CDT

By Julia Ainsley and Jacob Soboroff

WASHINGTON — Lawyers appointed by a federal judge to identify migrant families who were separated by the Trump administration say that they have yet to track down the parents of 545 children and that about two-thirds of those parents were deported to Central America without their children, according to a filing Tuesday from the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Trump administration instituted a "zero tolerance" policy in 2018 that separated migrant children and parents at the southern U.S. border. The administration later confirmed that it had actually begun separating families in 2017 along some parts of the border under a pilot program. The ACLU and other pro-bono law firms were tasked with finding the members of families separated during the pilot program.

Unlike the 2,800 families separated under zero tolerance in 2018, most of whom remained in custody when the policy was ended by executive order, many of the more than 1,000 parents separated from their children under the pilot program had already been deported before a federal judge in California ordered that they be found.

"It is critical to find out as much as possible about who was responsible for this horrific practice while not losing sight of the fact that hundreds of families have still not been found and remain separated," said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project. "There is so much more work to be done to find these families.

"People ask when we will find all of these families, and sadly, I can't give an answer. I just don't know," Gelernt said. "But we will not stop looking until we have found every one of the families, no matter how long it takes. The tragic reality is that hundreds of parents were deported to Central America without their children, who remain here with foster families or distant relatives."

The ACLU and other organizations that are part of a court-appointed "steering committee" learned that more than 1,000 families were separated in 2017 based on data provided by the Department of Homeland Security. Of those, the committee has been able to contact the parents of more than 550 children and believes about 25 of them may have a chance to come back to the U.S. for reunification.

Gelernt said some of the families that have been contacted have elected to keep their children in the U.S. with family members or sponsors "due to fear of what will happen to their child if they return" to their home countries.

The group Justice in Motion is physically searching for the separated parents in Mexico and Central America. "While we have already located many deported parents, there are hundreds more who we are still trying to reach," the group said in a statement. "It's an arduous and time-consuming process on a good day. During the pandemic, our team of human rights defenders is taking special measures to protect their own security and safety, as well as that of the parents and their communities."

Parents of 545 Children Separated at the Border Cannot Be Found

A new report shows hundreds of cases in which the deported parents of migrant children who were taken from their families cannot be located.

A border fence near Brownsville, Texas. Attempts to find separated parents have been going on for years, but the number of parents who have been deemed “unreachable” is much larger than was previously known.

Credit...Matthew Busch for The New York Times

By Caitlin Dickerson | NY Times Oct. 21, 2020

Radio spots are airing throughout Mexico and Central America. Court-appointed researchers are motorbiking through rural hillside communities in Guatemala and showing up at courthouses in Honduras to conduct public record searches.

Their efforts are part of a wide-ranging campaign to track down parents separated from their children at the U.S. border beginning in 2017 under the Trump administration’s most controversial immigration policy. It is now clear that the parents of 545 of the migrant children still have not been found, according to court documents filed this week in a case challenging the practice.

About 60 of the children were under the age of 5 when they were separated, the documents show.

Though attempts to find the separated parents have been going on for years, the number of parents who have been deemed “unreachable” is much larger than was previously known.

Under court order, the government first provided an accounting of separated families in June of 2018, reporting that about 2,700 children had been taken from their parents after crossing into the United States. After months of searching by a court-appointed steering committee, which includes a private law firm and several immigrant advocacy organizations, all of those families were eventually tracked down and offered the opportunity to be reunited.

But in January 2019, a report by the Health and Human Services Department's Office of the Inspector General confirmed that many more children had been separated, including under a previously undisclosed pilot program conducted in El Paso between June and November 2017, before the administration’s widely publicized “zero tolerance” policy officially went into effect.

Under that policy, the Trump administration directed prosecutors to file criminal charges against those who crossed the border without authorization, including parents, who were then separated from their children when they were taken into custody. Some parents who crossed the border at legal ports of entry were also among those separated from their children.

The Trump administration fought for months against providing documentation on the additional families, arguing that it was not necessary because the children had already been released from federal custody into the care of sponsors, who are typically relatives or family friends. The parents of the children had already been deported without them.

But in June 2019, under court order, the government eventually acknowledged that an additional 1,556 children had been separated from their families; 200 of them were under 5 years of age at the time they were taken into custody.

When that information came out, the search efforts started again, but were made significantly more difficult by the amount of time that had passed between when the children were released from federal custody and when volunteer researchers began trying to find them. The effort hit another roadblock with the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, during which travel through the Central American countries where most of the families live has been severely restricted.

“The Trump administration had no plans to keep track of the families or ever reunite them and so that’s why we’re in the situation we’re in now, to try to account for each family,” said Nan Schivone, legal director of the organization Justice in Motion, which is leading on-the-ground search efforts for separated families.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is leading the court challenge to the family separation policy, said it had also been unable to find 362 of the children, many of whom are likely living in the United States, whose parents were deemed unreachable.

“The fact that they kept the names from the court, from us, from the public, was astounding,” said Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney in the A.C.L.U.’s case over family separations. “We could have been searching for them this whole time.”

In some cases, members of the steering committee have had only names and countries of origin to go on in trying to locate separated parents. Even after conducting public record searches to identify the cities where the families were from, they faced additional hurdles. Many of the families had fled their homes because they were escaping violence or extortion, and intentionally withheld information from friends and neighbors about where they were going.

Researchers are presuming that about two-thirds of the parents now being sought are back in their home countries.

As part of the legal case over family separations in the Federal District Court in San Diego, overseen by Judge Dana Sabraw, the search efforts will continue and the government will be required to provide information about any additional families that are separated at the border.

As of October 2019, the government had provided contact information for more than 1,100 additional parents who had been separated from their children, but argued that it would not disclose information about some 400 of the parents because those individuals had criminal records that prevented the United States government from reuniting them with their children under Homeland Security Department policies.

Of the more than 1,100, the steering committee has been able to locate the parents of 485 additional separated children. The rest have not been found.