Masked Men, Revoked Visas, Vanishing Rights: A Stark Warning by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Masked Men, Revoked Visas, Vanishing Rights: A Stark Warning

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

On May 21, 2025, a fiery exchange between Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio lit up the House Foreign Affairs Committee — and the internet. With over a million views and counting, the viral clip is more than a headline-grabbing moment. It’s a warning shot across the bow of American democracy (see video below).

At the center of the clash was a disturbing case involving a university student — a legal visa holder — who authored an op-ed critical of the Trump administration's position on Gaza. That piece, which expressed a dissenting but constitutionally protected opinion, apparently drew the ire of someone high up. 

What followed reads like something from a surveillance-state dystopia: the student was reportedly taken from the street by masked agents, held without due process in a Louisiana detention center, and had their visa revoked under orders signed by none other than Secretary Rubio.

Jayapal was unflinching in her rebuke. Her voice rose not just in volume, but in defense of civil liberties, demanding accountability for what she called a blatant violation of the Constitution. Rubio, now tasked with carrying out foreign policy in an increasingly hardline administration, offered little reassurance — instead deflecting, denying, and ultimately defending the administration’s actions under vague "national security" justifications.

Let’s call this what it is: authoritarianism. The idea that expressing dissent, especially as a non-citizen, now puts you at risk of indefinite detention without a hearing — it’s chilling. The Constitution doesn't evaporate at the border, and certainly not for students attending American universities who use their voice to engage in public discourse.

This isn’t about left vs. right. It’s about the foundation of our democratic values. We don’t disappear people for disagreeing with the government — or at least, we shouldn’t.

Secretary of State Rubio may claim national security. Congresswoman Jayapal calls it what it is: a betrayal of everything the U.S. is supposed to stand for. Free speech. Due process. Human dignity.

For those watching closely, this moment isn’t an outlier — it’s a pattern. From escalating surveillance of student activists to legislative efforts that criminalize protest, the space for dissent in this country is shrinking. The Jayapal-Rubio clash just exposed how far we’ve already slid.

Attorney Heide Plummer

To this, we also add the recent arrest of Heidi Plummer, an attorney and U.S. citizen in Orange County who recently got swept up by ICE agents and put into a detention center for about an hour-and-a-half after getting caught up in a park raid near her home (Saunders, 2025). So bizarre. 

This is not the time for silence. This is not the time for neutrality. Call it authoritarianism, call it fascism — the label matters less than the urgency.

We cannot normalize this.

I’m also deeply concerned about what this means for people from other countries who are hoping to migrate to the U.S. The Saunders (2025) piece notes that Trump has already deported over 100,000 individuals—fewer than Biden had at a comparable point in his presidency. 

But as one immigration expert pointed out, many of Biden’s deportations occurred immediately at the border, largely involving recent crossings. What’s clearly different now is not just the numbers — it’s the tone. There’s an unmistakable cruelty in how this administration approaches peaceful, non-criminal immigrants who are simply trying to build lives and contribute to our country.

God help us if all it takes to be expelled from the U.S. is writing an op-ed or taking a quiet walk in the park — only to be stopped and arrested by ICE. If that’s the bar, who’s next?

Reference

Saunders, D. (2025, June 19). OC attorney says she was detained in ICE Raid at Santa Ana Park, Daily Journal. https://www.dailyjournal.com/articles/386228-oc-attorney-says-she-was-detained-in-ice-raid-at-santa-ana-park

From Dystopia to Texas: Let's NOT Let Fiction Become Our Reality—Hands Off our Colleges and Universities!

 Friends:

I owe this post—and my refusal to stay silent—to my grandchildren. They are the reason I continue to show up, speak out, join in community, build community-based institutions and resist the authoritarian drift we are witnessing in Texas. Yes, grandma is busy, but she has a special purpose in life and she is living it.

I just saw the movie, 2073, that features a grandmother that the viewer never sees because she was taken up, disappeared, for openly challenging the system. It was her work. It resonated. 

You can watch the movie on Max, Fandango, or Prime. It's definitely a doomsday, dystopian vision of what could be if we do not seriously work together across difference—not just locally, but globally—to address the current climate crisis we're in and the extreme, undue influence of the "Tech Bros"—the billionaire class—on democracy.

This is what we see playing out right now in the Texas legislature. There was a voucher amendment that would have submitted the vote to all Texans and advocates were hoping that seven or so Republicans would vote against, but that what allegedly happened is that they all got a call from President Trump (I heard this from two sources), and except for two Republicans, Dade Phelan and Rep. VanDeaver, they voted this bill to passage. 

After all, they, like the rest of us already knew that if vouchers were submitted to a vote by the public, Greg Abbott and pro-voucher Republicans would lose. Never mind democracy or what should be the democratic purposes of government. These rural Republican representatives, in particular, just sold their communities down the river. 

Now, here we are fighting against censorship, legislative takeover, and the Texas House panel cut us out from testifying!

What the dystopian film 2073 imagines as speculative, futuristic fiction—a regime that silences dissent through surveillance, bureaucratic control, and ideological conformity—is no longer fiction for those of us in Texas fighting for academic freedom. Senate Bill 37 operates with the same chilling logic: it punishes educators for teaching uncomfortable truths, strips faculty of shared governance, and closes public testimony before most people even have a chance to speak. 

In a press conference last Thursday afternoon, many students a faculty spoke up. Texas AFT’s Amanda Garcia, a recent graduate from UT Austin, lays out SB 37’s harm in stark, unequivocal terms: 

“This is not a bill we can risk cleaning up in the next legislative session. It will impact our students and teachers for the worse forever.”

See Texas AFT press conference coverage:
This Week in Higher Education: Educators, Students, & Community Members Tell Legislators ’Hands Off’ Our Colleges & Universities

Glad to see the Austin American-Statesman cover this as well:
Professors, advocates hold rally against SB 37, curriculum limitations

Like the state in 2073, this legislature justifies censorship in the name of order and efficiency, but we know better. These are not neutral decisions—they are calculated efforts to control knowledge, erase histories, and shut down the very conversations that make education meaningful and genuinely helpful to a racial/ethnic and gender-diverse society.

What is happening in Texas is not just an attack on faculty—it is an attack on democracy itself. And we cannot afford to meet this moment with silence. We must name it, challenge it, and refuse to comply with the slow drift into authoritarianism. 

All of this is unfolding at a time when we face overlapping crises—none more urgent than the accelerating climate emergency. Instead of silencing educators and dismantling democratic institutions, our leaders should be confronting the existential threats that endanger all of us, especially our children and grandchildren.

On a positive note, there is still time.

-Angela Valenzuela

Faculty and students blast Texas House panel for limiting testimony on bill that targets state universities

The House's higher education committee closed registration to testify on Senate Bill 37 less than half an hour after the hearing started. About 20 people said they didn't get to address lawmakers.

By Jessica Priest

May 15, 202510 PM Central

University students and faculty gather at the Texas Capitol’s outdoor rotunda on May 15, 2025, to speak against Senate Bill 37, which would reshape how schools pick new courses and hire administrators. 

Credit: Lorianne Willett/The Texas Tribune

Pauline Strong wanted to speak to lawmakers last week about how a bill they’re considering would make her think twice when discussing sensitive topics with her anthropology students at the University of Texas at Austin. But she had to drop off her grandchildren at school first.

Despite rushing to the Texas Capitol afterward, she missed the window to register to testify against Senate Bill 37 by a few minutes.

Strong, who testified last session in opposition to a bill banning diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in higher ed, didn’t expect registration to end so early this time.

“It was disappointing, it was surprising, it was disheartening,” Strong said. “And I’m someone who came from Austin. There were lots of people who were driving from Houston or other parts of the state who left very early in the morning and arrived too late to testify.”

Dozens of students and professors like Strong, who were unable to testify against a bill they fear could limit the free exchange of ideas on college campuses, voiced their frustration on Thursday over losing one of their few chances to address lawmakers directly.

“This is not a bill we can risk cleaning up in the next legislative session. It will impact our students and teachers for the worse forever,” said Amanda Garcia with the Texas American Federation of Teachers.

SB 37 would limit faculty’s influence on academic decisions and give university systems’ regents, who are political appointees, more power to decide what curricula are taught, as well as which administrators are hired at the state’s public colleges and universities.

It would also establish another way for universities to be investigated for breaking state law — and potentially lose funding at a time when they are already facing significant financial headwinds.

SB 37, which was passed by the Senate last month, was one of 10 bills scheduled for a public hearing in the House Higher Education Committee on May 6. During committee hearings, lawmakers debate the contents of a bill and invite witnesses to comment on the proposal. They also give the general public an opportunity to share their thoughts on the legislation.

Rep. Terry M. Wilson, the Georgetown Republican who chairs the committee, started the hearing just after 8 a.m. with an announcement — the committee would not accept any more people registering to testify for or against SB 37 after 8:30 a.m.

As chair, Wilson may limit testimony. He didn’t do so with another controversial proposal brought before his committee, House Bill 232, which would make it more difficult for undocumented students to qualify for in-state tuition. When HB 232 was considered on April 30, Wilson allowed people to register to testify until just before the hearing concluded at 1:06 a.m. the following day.

Wilson did not comment Thursday on his decision to close early the witness registration window for SB 37.

To Garcia, limiting testimony on SB 37 was a clear attempt to silence overwhelming dissent. To others, it was typical for a part-time Legislature that hurries to pass new laws in a 140-day window every two years — work that must conclude by June 2.

“They have to hustle in a way that doesn’t always lend itself to having many voices heard,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

Texas allows anyone to register to give testimony during committee hearings to go over proposed legislation, but the process can be cumbersome. People must register at kiosks in the Capitol by a deadline that each committee’s chair or clerk has broad discretion to set. The hearings can last all day and have long interruptions whenever members must leave to debate and vote on legislation in their chambers.

This makes it harder to participate for Texans who have jobs they can’t step away from or who don’t live near Austin. This session, farmers from Johnson County waited 18 hours to testify for a bill to limit toxic chemicals in fertilizers, and public school advocates waited 20 hours to testify against a bill to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

Sometimes, public testimony can result in more measured legislation, Rottinghaus said. He pointed to Senate Bill 3 as an example. Originally written in the Senate as a ban on THC, the House proposed only tightening regulations after hearing testimony that was both technical and emotional.

“Whether that will ultimately change the bill, I don’t know, but I think just as a general kind of notion that this is really important, that having people make their voice heard and giving legislators more information about what is going on is a big part of the process,” he said.

One of the concerns the professors and students who didn’t get to testify on SB 37 brought up on Thursday was that the proposal could limit the teaching of race and inequality.

Jaime Cantú, an assistant professor of biology at Austin Community College, said the bill could keep future medical professionals from learning about health disparities. He worried that under SB 37, he could be fired for teaching his students about how Interstate 35 has historically served as a dividing line between those who have access to health care in Austin and those who do not. He said he often mentions this to his students, who are mostly low-income people of color making sacrifices to become nurses.

Aihanuwa Ale-opinion said she’s thankful to have learned about how public health structures have and can perpetuate inequality as a biology student at UH.

“Rather than instill feelings of guilt, this has empowered me with the knowledge necessary to create better structures that are more inclusive and has inspired me to be a better peer, a better professional and a better advocate,” she said.

State Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, who authored SB 37, said faculty have too much control over schools’ curricula, which has led to liberal bias in the classroom and many students taking classes that ultimately don’t serve them in their careers.

State Rep. Matt Shaheen, a Plano Republican carrying the legislation in the House, has proposed a version of the bill that removes some of the most controversial parts, such as a requirement that regents approve the hiring of faculty in certain disciplines and a provision to eliminate degree programs with a low return in students’ investment.

But the bill still has its detractors.

Both versions of the bill limit the number of faculty who can be elected to serve on bodies that advise the university or college administration. Both also contain a provision that says faculty who engage in political advocacy can be immediately removed from these bodies.

On May 6, the House Higher Education committee heard public testimony for about two hours before it recessed at about 10 a.m. They reconvened 11 hours later at 9 p.m. and adjourned at about 1 a.m. the next day. In the end, more than 80 people testified about SB 37.

Although Strong was one of 20 people who missed the deadline to register, she stayed at the Capitol all day, helping her colleagues whittle down their remarks and practice so they could maximize the time allowed to speak: two minutes.

In her 32 years at UT-Austin, Strong has developed curriculum and been on search committees to hire deans. She said she wanted to tell lawmakers that the bill’s premise is faulty.

Faculty who take on these responsibilities don’t do so lightly, and their goal is not to indoctrinate students, she said. In fact, she added, those students serve as one of several checks on faculty. They fill out surveys after every course, and any complaints they make are investigated and addressed through mentoring and discipline, which can include termination, Strong said.

“Faculty are not getting away with teaching that is shoddy, out-of-date, or ideologically narrow,” she said. “Our colleagues, administrators and students make sure of that.”

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Manufactured Outrage Is Big Business, by Allison Hantschel

Friends,

Thinking about manufactured crises. In a July, 2018 piece appearing in Dame Magazine, journalist Allison Hantschel writes of how so much of the outrage we see in America is not just fomented, but purchased and thusly, contrived to make you think you or your country is under attack. She does well to call out the press itself by being wittingly or unwittingly party to this outrage. She cites a specific example of manufactured rage that you can read for yourself here the the Palm Beach Post titled, "Libs of TikTok creator backed by Babylon Bee CEO of Juno Beach." 

This CEO sponsors a social-media agitator to defame LGBTQ people as pedophiles. The added step of sharing LGBTQ individual's posts for purposes of targeting them, is exactly how this quickly turns to violence. Hence, this is pre-meditated violence and regular media play into this by treating dishonest people like these as "news." And then members of the press wonder where this animus against gays and others started?!

It's all so disturbing and our youth, in particular, need to be literate about such things and to not get overtaken by these paid-for, truly hostile and vicious manufactured messages of hate that result not just in civil violence, but state violence via campaigns and the filing and passage of defamatory anti-trans laws.

If we as a polity are silent about such things, incipient authoritarianism finds fertile ground. This is anathema to democracy and democratic principles, my friends.

-Angela Valenzuela 

Manufactured Outrage Is Big Business

ALLISON HANTSCHEL JUL 18, 2023

Last month was one of the most frightening in recent memory for the LGBTQIA+ community. Pride events across the country were canceled out of safety concerns, with violent anti-LGBTQIA groups disrupting and menacing previously safe havens like libraries, bookstores, and bars.

GOP-led legislatures across the country have passed nearly 80 anti-trans laws, from banning gender-affirming medical care to defunding libraries that carry books about sexual and gender identity. In Arizona, teachers have to use the pronouns correlating with a student’s assigned sex at birth regardless of how they identify. In Alabama, trans students are forbidden from competing in sports. In Indiana and Florida, teachers may not speak about “human sexuality,” even to refer to a same-sex spouse in day-to-day conversation.

That drumbeat is echoed on social media as a parade of outrages, minor situations or events knitted together—like a trans influencer drinking a beer, a store displaying a rainbow shirt, or a teacher reading a story about diversity—to give people the false idea that their way of life is under attack.

The influencer, the store, the teacher—they’re not forcing anyone to do anything. People can scroll on by, walk past, shrug. They can go back to their jobs, their hobbies, their concerts, their churches, their board games and bike rides and sports leagues, without being affected by the teacher or the store or the influencer ever again.

But posted, memed, re-recorded and TikToked, dishonest right-wing media figures turn these things into calls to arms—they claim that these people are out to corrupt and recruit our children, knowing full well that it isn’t true. Protest the influencer! Ban the teacher’s book! Smash the store windows and burn the rainbow shirt!

These bad actors, funded through Republican think-tanks and donor organizations by billionaires who see anti-gay hate as a way to sway votes, are being well compensated to produce anger. It’s their major product:

And this:

They’re being paid to make you think there’s a war and you have to enlist immediately, lest some amorphous idea of “your way of life” or “your children’s future” or “America as we know it” dies without your action. To make you feel like violence is the best and only answer to these “groomers” and “monsters,” whom they characterize as subhuman.

These are like lessons taken from the oldest fascist playbook on Earth, but they’re playing louder now, on social media, with the sources of these attacks on marginalized people harder to trace for the average person. Following a widely shared online misconception back to its origins isn’t something most consumers have time to do, so cautioning people to be careful about sourcing their information has limited impact, and those pushing these rage-bait stories know that.

They know that between work and kids and hobbies and obligations most people don’t have time for a more than cursory glance at something that looks official. For example, The Daily Wire certainly sounds like a real news source! You’d have to read more than just one story that someone you know shared in passing to understand that it’s a GOP-donor-backed bigot page dedicated to quarter-truth conspiracies about books turning your kids gay and trans, and liberals hating on the flag.

Something shows up at your house that looks like a newspaper, you might be inclined to read it not knowing that it’s produced to push the same anti-equality framework favored by Republicans in Congress.

So it’s all the more critical now that professional reporters, editors, and producers dedicate themselves to providing context to their audiences. Real news outlets’ reach on social media far exceeds that of even the most popular activists, and they’re uniquely positioned to educate people as to why they’re being asked to become outraged now, and who might benefit from that outrage.

This is actually a moment when the press might do work that opens eyes and rouses minds to a deeper understanding of the modern world. Tragically, most corporate media seem satisfied to cover this campaign of terror as a tit-for-tat checkers game between the usual two “opposing sides.”

Teachers reading kids a story or singing a song “trade barbs” or “clash” with unhinged screamers accusing their classrooms of harboring pedophiles. Activists helping AIDS patients are depicted as the equal opposite of an anti-abortion group using those same activists as an excuse to sign up new supporters and gather emails for coming political campaigns.

GOP organizations printing signs and busing in protesters to school board meetings are characterized as having “heated exchanges,” as though the tenor of the words was the most interesting facet of this story. Local TV news covers the “shouting” and “tension” before even beginning to reckon with what anyone was shouting about.

The national press is failing at this moment as hard as they ever have in the past. The New York Times, America’s preeminent traditional news source, spent the past year interviewing prominently dishonest anti-trans activists pushed at them by God knows who and then had the audacity to ask how an anti-trans GOP campaign “happened.”

The Washington Post, which proclaims that “democracy dies in darkness,” stated that trans rights “emerged” as a “political flashpoint,” a pair of words that means absolutely nothing and enlightens no one as to the cause of said emergence.

With each new attack on marginalized people, editors and producers have an obligation to outline the right-wing media pipeline that takes a random social video, launders it through a popular Twitter feed, incites some low-level conservative columnist to make it the topic of the week, which launches it onto the toxic fake news channel, Fox and thus into the dentist’s offices and airport lounges of the world.

How did some individual’s TikTok become so urgent that if we don’t discuss it we risk the downfall of the country? Who keeps asking every minor celebrity to provide some cringeworthy quote about “woke ideology” for the entire right-wing media to amplify and dunk on?

When a group of screamers show up on a bus with pre-printed signs at the municipal meeting, even the busiest local stringer can ask who t told them to be there and provided them with their signs. Journalists can extrapolate bus costs, FOIA protest permits, and query participants about the poisoned game of telephone that led them to a place where they’d accuse school boards of sex crimes.

Describing the origins of these flash mobs of rage will do more to serve audiences than merely repeating the lies told by propagandists, even to debunk them. People don’t just need to know that something they’ve shared isn’t true.

They need to know who had an interest in showing it to them in the first place. Who wanted them to be mad about it, and who’s getting something out of that anger.

Without that understanding, people seeing anti-gay riots on TV or reading a hateful meme online might imagine these campaigns of bigotry are homegrown and normal, examples of the prevailing sentiment of the day. They’ll see the created, coordinated response of a political party on the wrong side of history as the attitude of their friends and neighbors, and far too many people will give in to societal pressure to go along with it, or at least keep silent.

And that’s how authoritarian campaigns win.

"Undercover With the New Alt-Right," by Amanda Moore in The Nation

Journalist Amanda Moore went undercover for 11 months and demonstrated her point that the extremism that's playing out currently in our country is more dangerous than the press has fully grasped. That said, in days of late, I am hearing more mainstream news media specifically using the word "fascism" to describe Donald Trump and his followers. Yes, long overdue. 

For example, Joe Scarborough in Morning Joe recently said, "It's way too late to call this fascism." Absolutely. It's a good thing to call this out as it's leading to the rise of violence in our country, against Jews, Muslims, immigrants, and U.S. minorities.

Amanda's story is riveting and illuminating of not only the expansiveness of this far-right ecosystem, but also an animated youth movement within doing all they can to infiltrate, and ultimately take over, the GOP. 

I appreciate Amanda's work in Texas where she identifies a link between anti-Semitic white supremacist holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and an anti-immigrant group, Texans for Strong Borders, that as previously posted to this blog. is entangled with Texas Republican Party leadership and GOP Chairman Matt Rinaldi himself. These dynamics have fostered a serious divide within the Texas Republican Party that you can learn about in this October 9th Texas Tribune piece by Robert Downen titled, Conservative PAC leader’s meeting with white supremacist Nick Fuentes leads to condemnations, escalates GOP infighting.

These are troubling times in our state and nation, no less.

-Angela Valenzuela

AUGUST 22, 2023 | The Nation

 Undercover With the New Alt-Right

For 11 months, I pretended to be a far-right extremist. I discovered a radical youth movement trying to infiltrate the Republican Party.

AMANDA MOORE

Going to a Proud Boys riot with a neo-Nazi is not something I ever expected to do. But in August 2021, I found myself driving through downtown Portland, Ore., with an avowed white supremacist named Alex Nelson. We were on our way to the abandoned K-Mart parking lot that the Proud Boys had commandeered for their “Summer of Love” rally. The event marked the one-year anniversary of a “Back the Blue” demonstration that had become a brawl between the Proud Boys and militias on one side and anti-fascist counterprotesters on the other.

Earlier that week, Nelson, a man in his late 20s who was fond of discussing his “Anglo heritage,” had invited me to join him to watch what he assumed would be violent clashes. “Portland has canceled all parades and markets for the past year and a half. This is the only culture in Portland now. There will probably be a thousand spectators or more lining the bridges and sidewalks,” he assured me.

By then, I had been undercover with the far right for nine months, motivated by my belief that the fascist threat to the country was misunderstood by much of the press and far more dangerous than what was being reported. At first, I had planned only to sell the audio from “Stop the Steal” rallies to a podcast and write a couple of blog posts. But I found myself wanting to get a behind-the-scenes look at the far-right movement—to go to events from which the press was barred and observe extremists when they felt they were in their “safe space”—so the project grew into something far bigger: a long-term infiltration of the network of young white nationalists in America.As we cruised the city, Nelson said, “The people who go to that parking lot, they’re highly violent, unhinged, very angry older Gen X or boomers. You can’t just show up—they have to know you. And they don’t know anyone under the age of 35.”

By contrast, he added, last night he had been to an Oregon Young Republicans meeting that was “full of normal, healthy, attractive young people.” As we pulled up to a red light, Nelson looked over at me and smirked. “But none of those people are going to be in the K-Mart parking lot.”

People in the political center and on the left tend to have a monolithic view of the far right. In reality, it is an expansive ecosystem that includes neo-Nazis, Christian nationalists, conspiracy theorists, anti-government militias, and white nationalists. These groups have some beliefs that conflict, but they are generally willing to overlook their differences. Still, not every group uses the same tactics to try to gain power.

House OKs Racial Profiling, anti-immigrant SB 4 along party lines & Donald Trump is Headed to the U.S.-Mexico border this weekend

Tuesday night's vote for Senate Bill 4 (SB 4) was disheartening. When we say that Texas is very much looking like a fascist state, this is not at all hyperbole but increasingly a lived dystopian reality. 

In brief, this is a border criminalization bill that imposes harsh consequences for individuals entering the nation, with penalties ranging from misdemeanors to felonies, contingent on factors such as the frequency of reentry.

This follows the passage this week of SB 3, a $1.54 billion plan to construct 50 miles of a state border wall. However, the Senate must give approval to the House's version of the bill that incorporated several amendments.

Governor Abbott will surely sign this premeditated abuse of power embodied in SB 4, potentially, and very likely, violating individual rights under the U.S. Constitution while simultaneously getting enacted in defiance of federal immigration policy. “The power to enforce immigration is unquestionably exclusively a federal power," expresses State Rep. Victoria Neave Criado (D-Dallas). Republicans don't care as they think they can win this in the Supreme Court. And if it hurts innocent people in the process, so be it. They're all "aliens" anyway, they must reason—which is how the see many Texans, by the way.

Gov. Abbott and House and Senate Republicans will most surely characterize this as one of their crowning achievements. It's racist and white supremacist, of course, especially considering how as per this New York Times piece published this week titled, What It Means to Be a Texan Is Changing in Surprising Ways. The piece is about the ascendancy of Black, Latina/o and Asian people in our state astride the declining population of white people with leadership that seeks and wants Apartheid. 

The irony is that the people that their bills target— including tomorrow's HB 1 voucher bill that will get taken up on Friday—are overwhelmingly people's who are either of this continent of hemisphere. In contrast, those doing the legislating are exact same colonizers of old, of overwhelming Western European descendancy.

This is the kind of history and knowledge that Republicans banned via House Bill 900 in the context of the regular 88th (2023) Texas Legislative Session. Add DEI (SB 17) that passed last session to the list of yet another attack on diversity and the diverse knowledge in higher education to which DEI attaches.

And to top all of this off, because our governor just can't get enough of Donald Trump who currently has 91 charges against him per the Washington Post, check out this notice of his upcoming visit to Edinburg, Texas, on Sunday, Nov. 19th at noon. Read today's piece in the Houston Chronicle: Donald Trump heading to the Texas border this weekend for campaign event with Gov. Greg Abbott.

 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, right, listens to former President Donald Trump's address during a tour 

to an unfinished section of the border wall on Wednesday, June 30, 2021, in Pharr, Texas.

Brandon Bell/TNS

The advocacy community isn't giving up and rolling over, my friends. And yes, there are people of color, including Blacks and Latinas/os that support all this animus against their own communities. If we understand white supremacy as an ideology, then this redounds precisely to the "color" of one's ideology—much of which is an artifact of manufactured self hatred in some measure created both by what is taught and learned in our schools, as well as by what is not taught or learned.

My main point here is that it all connects. And ultimately, that we need to vote these so-called state leaders out of power. 

-Angela Valenzuela

#SayNoToFascism #Fascism #SB4 #SB3 #SayNoToVouchers

“My task is to get this bill out of here and on the
governor’s desk as soon as possible,” Rep.
David Spiller, R-Jacksboro, said
 of Senate Bill 4. JAY JANNER/
AMERICAN-STATESMAN

IMMIGRATION

House OKs SB 4 along party lines

Measure to let state arrest, deport suspects

by Hogan Gore

Austin American-Statesman

Nov. 16, 2023

---

Austin American-Statesman USA TODAY NETWORK

The Texas House has approved Senate Bill 4 — a proposal to create new state penalties for people who illegally cross into Texas through the state’s southern border and that allows magistrate judges to order those accused of illegally entering the U.S. to return to Mexico or face prosecution.

The House on Tuesday night passed the bill — which has been debated several times in both legislative chambers in recent weeks — by an 83-61 party line vote despite opposition from Democratic lawmakers and rights advocates over concerns the legislation is too broad and it could potentially affect everyday Texans through the state’s attempt at immigration enforcement.

“Senate Bill 4 is the broadest, most invasive piece of legislation to ever potentially challenge the very nature of our federal and state power,” said Rep.

Victoria Neave Criado, D-Dallas, during the debate over the bill on the House floor Tuesday. “The power to enforce immigration is unquestionably exclusively a federal power.”

“Senate Bill 4 is the broadest, most invasive piece of legislation to ever potentially challenge the very nature of our federal and state power,” said Rep. Victoria Neave Criado, D-Dallas. JAY JANNER/AMERICAN-STATESMAN

SB 4 would require people accused of illegally crossing the state’s southern border outside of a port of entry to accept a magistrate judge’s order to return to Mexico or face prosecution, with possible penalties ranging from a Class A misdemeanor to a second-degree felony.

Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro, who sponsored the bill by Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, which advanced to the lower chamber after a late-night Senate session last week, defended the legislation as necessary to address the immigration crisis at the border.

Spiller, who rejected two dozen proposed amendments, said he felt it was important to advance the bill without any changes from the Senate version to not delay it getting to Gov. Greg Abbott to sign into law.

“My task is to get this bill out of here and on the governor’s desk as soon as possible,” Spiller said. “Because if I’m wasting my time and know that it’s going to be a delay, I’m going to have trouble sleeping tonight.”

On Wednesday, Abbott signaled his intent to sign the bill into law, calling the legislation “historic progress.” He and Lt. Gov Dan Patrick congratulated and thanked Spiller and the House for passing the bill, calling it the one of the strongest border security proposals ever passed in Texas.

“SB 4 will require criminal background checks and the collection of fingerprints and photographs of those arrested for crossing the border illegally,” Patrick said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter. “The illegal crosser can be jailed or ordered by a magistrate to be returned to the border. If they violate the order and return to Texas, they will face even harsher penalties.”

Opponents of SB 4 argue the legislation is an affront to federal law, gives nonfederal law enforcement officers broad permission to arrest and deport those living in the state who might be accused of having illegally crossed the border, and is an invasion into the lives of the state’s Hispanic and migrant communities.

Neave Criado, who chairs the House Mexican American Legislative Caucus, argued that the bill is a political avenue to challenge U.S. Supreme Court precedent on immigration law.

“SB 4 intends to challenge the decade-long holding of Arizona vs. United States given the new makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court,” Neave Criado said.

Around 6:15 p.m. Tuesday, after more than 6 hours of debate, Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, made a parliamentary motion to cut discussion on the bill, allowing the legislation to jump forward to its first vote by the full House.

“This is the same bill that we debated until 4 a.m. just a couple of weeks ago,” Patterson said before the motion was approved along party lines. “Hours and hours and hours of debate on a bill that is critically important to the future of the state.”

Neave Criado, who argued against ending debate on the bill, said: “We won’t be able to have an opportunity to lay out amendments because you’re cutting off our time. You’re cutting off our hands; you’re cutting off our feet; you’re trying to silence our voices.”

After the House moved the bill forward with an initial vote Tuesday, the members then paused and began a new legislative day, allowing the chamber to take a second and final vote on SB 4 that night and advancing it to Abbott to sign into law.

Using the same parliamentary procedure, House members also passed SB 3 — a $1.54 billion proposal to build 50 miles of state border wall — though the Senate will have to sign off on the lower chamber’s version of the bill.

‘Inaccurate arrests may occur’

Despite SB 4 carving out certain locations where law enforcement officers could not target people believed to have illegally entered the country — including in schools, churches, hospitals and facilities that provide forensic medical examinations for sexual assault survivors — Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, tried to codify an amendment to allow an undocumented person to be exempt from arrest while attending a medical treatment or a forensics exam with a family member.

“This is going to prevent people from getting the forensic exam because their family member cannot be there with them, and that is a horrific thing to have to go through,” Howard said before her amendment was rejected along party lines. “We’re willing to send a bill that has this damaging impact without considering adding this amendment, even if it means it delays things a bit. I can’t quite understand that.”

Rep. Salman Bhojani, D-Euless, in a last-ditch effort to limit the bill’s authority, asked lawmakers to include an amendment to require peace officers to verify a person’s immigration status before making an arrest.

He said that without that amendment, the onus is on everyday Texans to prove they belong in the country as opposed to law enforcement officers having the burden to prove that there has been an offense.

The amendment, which Bhojani said was needed to avoid possible instances of racial profiling, failed along party lines with Democrats proposing several changes to the bill before it was finally passed.

“Without proper verification of an individual’s legal status, inaccurate arrests may occur,” Bhojani said. “I would hate to penalize anyone who has followed our laws and has done everything right.”

In closing arguments, many Democrats rose to plead against the bill. Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, reflecting on the many immigration and border fights during his tenure, said Tuesday night’s vote weighed heavily on him and communities across Texas.

“Members, I’ve walked off this floor defeated many times,” Moody said. “And I was telling myself and others around me that I have enough hope to keep fighting, and I’m going to try to tell myself that tonight; I don’t know if I believe it.”