Capturing the Courts: A Chilling Warning About Authoritarianism and Due Process

Friends:

I strongly encourage you to watch Jacob Soboroff’s sobering interview with Professor Margaret Satterthwaite, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers (see video below). 

The segment, titled “‘Capturing the Courts’: Chilling New UN Report Shows U.S. ‘More Vulnerable’ to Authoritarianism,” examines the Trump administration’s mass removal of immigration judges and the transformation of immigration courts into what critics describe as deportation machines.

Professor Satterthwaite is a professor of law at New York University and an internationally recognized authority on judicial independence. Together with Gehad Madi, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, she issued an extraordinary warning on July 16, 2026, about the politicization of the American immigration-court system. These special rapporteurs are independent experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council, rather than representatives speaking on behalf of the United Nations as an institution. That distinction is important, but it does not make their findings any less alarming.

According to the experts, at least 135 immigration adjudicators have been terminated since January 2025: 113 immigration judges, 13 assistant chief immigration judges, and nine appellate immigration judges. The removals reportedly occurred without cause or individualized explanation.

The pattern does not appear random.

Of the 78 removed immigration judges for whom public data were available, 65 had asylum-grant rates higher than either the national average or the average for their particular court. Judges with backgrounds in immigrant defense and humanitarian advocacy were disproportionately removed, as were judges appointed during the Biden administration. More than half of the probationary judges appointed in April and July 2023 were terminated. Only one judge appointed by a Democratic administration reportedly remains on the Board of Immigration Appeals.

This is not ordinary personnel turnover. It bears the hallmarks of court capture: removing adjudicators whose decisions displease the executive, intimidating those who remain, and replacing independent professional judgment with political obedience.

Immigration judges occupy a particularly vulnerable position because immigration courts are housed inside the Department of Justice. Unlike Article III federal judges, immigration judges do not enjoy life tenure or the same structural independence from the executive branch. They are civil servants working under the authority of the attorney general—the same executive branch responsible for pursuing deportation.

That arrangement has always presented concerns about impartiality. What is happening now appears to be the exploitation of that weakness on a mass scale.

At the same time that judges have been removed, the Department of Justice has reportedly issued more than 50 policy memoranda governing immigration adjudication. Some warn judges that they may face disciplinary consequences for being considered too slow or biased. The administration has also expanded “mega” calendar hearings in which a single judge may be expected to preside over the cases of hundreds of people during one half-day session.

No meaningful individualized hearing can take place under such conditions. A person fleeing political persecution, domestic violence, religious repression, torture, or death cannot adequately present a complicated life history as one face among hundreds moving through an administrative assembly line.

The Fifth Amendment does not say that no citizen shall be deprived of liberty without due process. It says that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Congressional legal analysis confirms that people physically present in the United States, including noncitizens facing removal, possess due-process protections and ordinarily must be provided a meaningful opportunity to be heard.

Those words mean little, however, when judges fear termination for carefully considering the cases before them.

The administration’s actions are particularly perverse given the immense unresolved docket. At the end of May 2026, a staggering more than 3.24 million cases remained pending in immigration court. More than 2.3 million of the people involved had already submitted formal asylum applications and were awaiting hearings or decisions (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, 2026).

Yet courts are also being dismantled.

San Francisco’s main immigration court began the Trump administration’s second term with 21 judges. By the time the court closed on May 1, 2026, only two remained. Most of its approximately 117,000 cases were transferred to a court in Concord that already carried about 60,000 cases and had itself lost more than half of its judges. The San Francisco court had one of the country’s highest asylum caseloads and historically granted relief at rates significantly above the national average (Rodriguez, 2026).

A system genuinely concerned with resolving its backlog does not eliminate experienced judges, close a major court, transfer tens of thousands of cases into an already overwhelmed courthouse, and replace seasoned adjudicators with less experienced temporary personnel.

This is not primarily about efficiency. It is about controlling outcomes.

Authoritarianism does not always arrive with soldiers standing at the courthouse door. It can arrive through administrative memoranda, personnel decisions, shortened hearings, unexplained dismissals, impossible productivity requirements, courthouse closures, politically selected replacements, and the gradual normalization of fear among those entrusted with applying the law.

That is why Professor Satterthwaite’s larger warning is so important. Immigration courts may be the testing ground, but they need not be the endpoint. The federal government employs administrative law judges who decide cases involving Social Security disability benefits, labor protections, veterans’ claims, environmental regulations, workplace safety, and other matters affecting millions of Americans. Satterthwaite warns in the Soboroff interview that these administrative adjudicators—including judges deciding Social Security cases—could eventually become targets of similar executive control.

Once a government establishes that judges may be fired because their rulings are considered insufficiently aligned with executive policy, the precedent does not remain confined to immigrants. It becomes a model for disciplining administrative justice everywhere.

This is one of the defining dangers of authoritarian governance: an unpopular or politically marginalized population is targeted first, allowing new mechanisms of state power to be constructed with limited public resistance. Once those mechanisms are accepted, they can be turned toward others.

We therefore cannot regard the removal of immigration judges as merely an immigration-policy dispute. It is an attack on judicial independence, constitutional due process, separation of powers, and the basic democratic principle that courts must decide individual cases according to evidence and law—not according to the political objectives of the president.

As the UN experts declared, efficiency cannot justify the erosion of due process. When the government controls which judges remain, pressures them to produce predetermined results, and eliminates the institutional capacity for meaningful hearings, what remains may still be called a court.

But it no longer functions as one.

Please watch Jacob Soboroff’s interview with Professor Margaret Satterthwaite and share it widely. Immigration courts may be where this experiment in court capture is most visible today. The question before us is how far we will allow it to spread considering that our democracy is truly at risk.

References

MS NOW. (2026, July 19). “Capturing the courts”: Chilling new UN report shows U.S. “more vulnerable” to authoritarianism [Video], MSN Now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDxDSe0A4Gs

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. (2026, July 16). USA: UN experts condemn arbitrary terminations of more than 100 immigration judges. https://independence-judges-lawyers.org/

Rodriguez, O. R. (2026, May 24). San Francisco immigration court shuts down after purge of judges, leaving asylum cases in chaos, Associated Press. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2026-05-24/san-francisco-immigration-court-has-shut-asylum-cases-in-chaos

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (2026). Immigration. https://tracreports.org/immigration/

Ward, J. (2026, July 16). UN experts concerned by Trump’s removal of immigration judges. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/un-experts-concerned-by-trumps-removal-immigration-judges-2026-07-16/

‘Capturing the courts’: CHILLING new UN Report shows U.S. ‘more vulnerable’ to authoritarianism

Jul 19, 2026 #Trump #Politics #UnitedNations

UN experts warn that the Trump administration is turning America's immigration courts into "deportation machines" through purges of its judges and using "administrative manipulation" to curb the courts' ability to carry out fair and impartial hearings. And it may not stop at immigration. Administrative judges – including those deciding Social Security cases – could be next, warns Margaret Satterthwaite, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers. MS NOW: My Source for News, Opinion, and the World. » Subscribe to MS NOW:    / @msnow   » Subscribe to MS NOW’s We the People Newsletter for exclusive content from your favorite MS NOW anchors. Sign up now for free at https://ms.now/joinus MS NOW is the go-to destination for domestic and international breaking news, and best-in-class opinion journalism. For more context and news coverage of the most important stories of our day click here: https://www.ms.now/ #Trump #Politics #UnitedNations

H-1B Crackdown Threatens America’s Universities—Just as Public Trust Returns, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

H-1B Crackdown Threatens America’s Universities—Just as Public Trust Returns

by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

September 29, 2025

Link to Emissary, Carnegie Endowment

On September 26, 2025, Emissary (Carnegie Endowment) published a sobering warning by Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav: “Trump’s H-1B Gambit Will Gut American Universities: The financial stakes alone are enormous.” They argue that the administration’s proposed $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas will devastate American higher education, already strained by research funding cuts and political attacks.

The numbers are staggering. In 2024, international students contributed nearly $55 billion to the U.S. economy, supporting 400,000 jobs—roughly a tenth of all positions in higher education (Kapur & Vaishnav, 2025). Their tuition subsidizes domestic students, their research drives innovation, and their presence enriches American classrooms. If that pipeline dries up, universities will face impossible choices: cut programs, lay off faculty, or raise costs for American families.

At the same time, Palmer (2025) with Inside Higher Ed reported that H-1B visas are not only essential for international graduates but also for the professionals who power our universities. In fiscal year 2025 alone, more than 16,700 employees at U.S. colleges and universities received approved H-1B visas, though they were concentrated at about 100 large research institutions (Knott, 2025). This illustrates how dependent our leading universities are on global talent to staff laboratories, research projects, and teaching positions. Without these visas, institutions risk losing the very scholars and specialists who sustain their reputations and research productivity.

Meanwhile, according to the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy, new survey data show that public trust in higher education is rebounding.  Specifically, 47 percent of respondents said they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in colleges and universities—a 13-point increase since 2023, and higher than trust levels in the police, the medical system, or large tech companies (Inside Higher Education, 2025). The irony is stark: at the very moment public trust in universities is rising, federal policy threatens to gut them from within.

This is not only an institutional crisis. It is also a human one.

For international professionals, the H-1B system is the bridge between education and livelihood. Families on H-1B visas often depend on dual incomes, with spouses on H4 visas authorized to work. If H4 work rights are rolled back, thousands of families will lose financial stability and face wrenching choices about whether to remain in the U.S. (Law Firm for Immigrants, 2025). Some families have already been split apart by the uncertainty—partners separated across borders, children pulled from schools, households forced to abandon mortgages.

Graduate students are equally vulnerable. Many take on massive debt to study in the United States, betting on the promise of post-graduation opportunities. As Reuters recently reported, students in India and elsewhere are already reconsidering or withdrawing from U.S. programs, fearful that their degrees will trap them in debt with no path to work authorization (Suresh, 2025). One student, after borrowing $80,000, confessed: “The only aim is to finish my degree, find an internship, and try to recover my debt” (Suresh, 2025). These stories are multiplying, and they reveal how quickly the American dream can curdle into a nightmare.

Kapur and Vaishnav (2025) rightly note that other countries—Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and even China—are eagerly opening doors to the same talent the U.S. is pushing away. If we retreat, they advance. We cannot afford to repeat Britain’s 2012 blunder, when restrictions on post-study visas caused enrollment to collapse until the government was forced into a humiliating reversal years later (Kapur & Vaishnav, 2025).

Public confidence is not abstract. It rests on the belief that higher education is a ladder of opportunity. If policy weakens that ladder, the damage will not be limited to international students—it will hurt American families, workers, and communities who depend on strong universities to educate, innovate, and create jobs.

And beyond our borders, there is a larger truth. As the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has long argued, openness to immigrants through pathways like the historic H-1B process is itself a form of global peacebuilding. When we welcome students, scholars, and professionals from around the world, we do more than strengthen our own universities—we cultivate mutual understanding, shared prosperity, and policies that acknowledge the realities of living in an interconnected world.

Protecting our universities protects all Americans. But it also affirms our role in building a more peaceful, collaborative, and globally minded future.

This is an evolving situation and there will be court challenges. To stay current, advocates and H-1B holders should:

• Monitor official US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and State Department news and alert pages, especially the USCIS “H-1B FAQ” and “Alerts” sections (USCIS.gov).

• Subscribe to trusted immigration policy organizations and legal blogs (e.g. American Immigration Council, Boundless, and trusted immigration law firms) that publish rapid analysis and updates.

• Follow reputable media coverage of legal and policy developments—especially from outlets covering immigration, higher education, and science & tech.

• Track court filings and Federal Register announcements for any injunctions, stays, or rulemaking that could suspend or modify the new fee.

• Engage with university, professional association, and immigration advocacy networks that often coordinate rapid alerts, memos, and “calls to action.”

If you are an H-1B visa holder, consider sharing your story—with your colleagues, your community, your representatives, and the wider public—so the human cost of these policies is impossible to overlook. Your experiences bring the data to life and remind us what is truly at stake. If you are a U.S. citizen, I encourage you to stand with those who make our universities thrive.

References

Kapur, D., & Vaishnav, M. (2025, September 26). Trump’s H-1B gambit will gut American universities: The financial stakes alone are enormous. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Emissary. https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2025/09/h1b-visa-trump-impact-us-universities?lang=en

Knott, K. (2025, September 24). Higher ed’s H-1B visas in 4 charts. Inside Higher Education. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/2025/09/29/4-charts-breaking-down-h-1b-visas-and-higher-ed

Palmer, K. (2025, September). Despite Trump’s attacks, confidence in higher education grows. Inside Higher Education. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/09/26/poll-public-confidence-higher-ed-growing

Suresh, R. (2025, September 24). Trump’s immigration curbs make Indian students rethink American dream. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com 

Villarroel, L. C. (2025). Trump 2025: Disaster for H-1B visa holders, their spouse, and employer. Law Firm for Immigrants. https://www.lawfirm4immigrants.com

I’m the Republican Governor of Ohio. Here Is the Truth About Springfield, by Governor Mike DeWine

Friends:

I'm happy to share such a beautiful, truthful, and factual statement on Springfield Ohio by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. Published in the New York Times, Gov. DeWine conveys the value that Haitian immigrants add toa Springfield, Ohio, while being compassionate toward Haiti itself and explaining why Haitians must leave to begin with, as follows: 

Haiti is one of the poorest, most dangerous places on earth. The government is in shambles, with machete-wielding, machine-gun-toting gang members taking over 80 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Read this in tandem with my next post by Greg Sargent who praises Gov. DeWine's statement illuminates the tired racist trope to stoke fears in the white population writ large so that they'll vote for him as the "fixer":

"The picture Trump is seizing on Springfield to invoke—that of a largely white, innocent heartland town getting ravaged by dark, alien hordes who basically constitute a subhuman species—simply cannot be a distraction from the immigration debate. To Trump, it is the immigration debate." (Sargent, The New Republic, Sept. 21, 2024)

I do sense that we are at a turning point in our nation. It behooves our leaders to actually begin to look deeply into the immigration and refugee crisis that spans so many borders beyond the U.S. and to think more imaginatively on how to do this without dehumanizing them. 

Republican leaders should follow Gov. DeWine's example and call out Trump and Vance for their hateful lies and rhetoric to manipulate people instead of an actual changing of conditions where nobody has to lose and everybody wins as Gov. DeWine puts out as not just a possibility, but a living, breathing example of what could be. When was the last time here in Texas that we've heard a governor praise our own immigrant communities? It's been a while. Geez, what a positive difference a governor can make.

-Angela Valenzuela

I’m the Republican Governor of Ohio. Here Is the Truth About Springfield.

By Mike DeWine, a Republican, is the governor of Ohio. New York Times,September 20, 2024

I was born in Springfield, Ohio. My wife, Fran, and I have lived our entire lives less than 10 miles from this city.

When we were dating in high school, we would go there to see movies at the Regent or State Theater or to eat fried clams at Howard Johnson’s. I remember Fran taking the bus about eight miles from our hometown, Yellow Springs, to Springfield to shop at Wren’s Department Store. Over the years, we’ve eaten countless doughnuts from Schuler’s Bakery, worshiped at St. Raphael Catholic Church and we logged many work hours there when I represented Springfield in the U.S. House and Senate.

Springfield has a rich history of providing refuge for the oppressed and being a place of opportunity. As a stop on the Underground Railroad, the Gammon House, which still stands, was a safe haven for escaped slaves seeking freedom. And, as a stop on the Old National Road, America’s first east/west federal highway, Springfield attracted many settlers both before and after the Civil War. Immigrants from Ireland, Greece, Germany, Italy and other countries helped build the city into what it is today.

For a long time, commerce and manufacturing flourished in Springfield, which earned the title “Champion City” after the founding there of the agriculture implement giant Champion Machine Company.

But the city hit tough times in the 1980s and 1990s, falling into serious economic decline as manufacturing, rail commerce and good-paying jobs dwindled. Now, however, Springfield is having a resurgence in manufacturing and job creation. Some of that is thanks to the dramatic influx of Haitian migrants who have arrived in the city over the past three years to fill jobs.

They are there legally. They are there to work.

It is disappointing to me that Springfield has become the epicenter of vitriol over America’s immigration policy, because it has long been a community of great diversity. Fran and I were reminded of this when we attended Mass at St. Raphael this past Sunday and stopped at the nearby Groceryland on our way home. We talked with community members from many backgrounds who are understandably concerned about the negative things being said about their city in news reports and on social media.

Bomb threats — all hoaxes — continue and temporarily closed at least two schools, put the hospital on lockdown and shuttered City Hall. The two local colleges have gone remote. I have posted Ohio Highway Patrol troopers in each school building in Springfield so the schools can remain open, teachers and children can feel safe and students can continue to learn. On the troopers’ first day in the schools, Fran and I visited Simon Kenton Elementary, where reassured teachers told us: “Yesterday was rough. Today was a good day.”

As a supporter of former President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance, I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield. This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there.

The Biden administration’s failure to control the southern border is a very important issue that Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance are talking about and one that the American people are rightfully deeply concerned about. But their verbal attacks against these Haitians — who are legally present in the United States — dilute and cloud what should be a winning argument about the border.

The Springfield I know is not the one you hear about in social media rumors. It is a city made up of good, decent, welcoming people. They are hard workers — both those who were born in this country and those who settled here because, back in their birthplace, Haiti, innocent people can be killed just for cheering on the wrong team in a soccer match.

Only about a two-hour flight from U.S. shores, Haiti is one of the poorest, most dangerous places on earth. The government is in shambles, with machete-wielding, machine-gun-toting gang members taking over 80 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Fran and I first traveled to Haiti almost 30 years ago as part of a congressional delegation when I was serving on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. We have since been there over 20 times and have supported a Catholic priest who runs a tuition-free school in a slum in Port-au-Prince.

We have always been amazed when, even in the poorest areas of Haiti, we see children coming out of homes made of rusting corrugated metal and cardboard with shoes shined and clothes neat and pressed. We know that the Haitian people want the same things we all want — a good job, the chance to get a quality education and the ability to raise a family in a safe and secure environment. Haitian migrants have gone to Springfield because of the jobs and chance for a better life there.

On Monday, I met with Springfield manufacturing business owners who employ Haitians. As one of them told me, his business would not have been able to stay open after the pandemic but for the Haitians who filled the jobs.

There have been language barriers and cultural differences, but these Haitians come to work every day, are fitting in with co-workers and have become valuable employees. As a teenager working in my parents’ seed company, I worked with the guys loading seed bags onto trucks and boxcars. Their acceptance of a co-worker depended on if they thought the person was pulling his own weight. What is happening today in these companies in Springfield with the Haitian employees is no different.

At the same time, the sudden surge in population has created challenges that no city could anticipate or prepare for. The health care system, housing market and school classrooms have been strained. There is a desperate need for more Haitian Creole translators. And ensuring that Haitians learn how to drive safely and understand our driving customs and traffic laws remains a top priority.

These are the real challenges. Mayor Rob Rue; the City Council; the county commission president, Melanie Flax Wilt; and others have been working tirelessly on these issues, and we are assisting them at the state level.

Fran and I have met with so many other dedicated people in Springfield, many of them teachers or volunteers from nonprofits and the faith-based community, who are doing the Lord’s work each day, teaching English to children who speak only Creole or Spanish or helping those who need health care, whether a new Haitian immigrant or someone whose family has been in Springfield for generations.

Their work will continue long after this fall’s election is over and the national spotlight turns away from Springfield. But in the meantime, our people and our history deserve better than to be falsely portrayed.

This isn’t just personal for a lot of us; it’s about our pride in America. When one of the nation’s biggest railroads built the Big Four Train Depot in Springfield, the city became a hub for passenger and express rail, with an average of 3,000 freight cars and 40 passenger trains speeding through the city daily in the mid-1920s. Located downtown, the Depot became the perfect campaign whistle stop for politicians. In 1960, when I was 13 years old, my parents and I went to see the Republican candidate for president, Richard Nixon, when his train came through Springfield, and four years later to see Barry Goldwater as his train also stopped in the middle of Springfield as he traveled across the Midwest. They both talked about the prospects for the future.

Springfield today has a very bright future. The people who live there love their families, value education, work hard, care about one another and tackle the challenges they face head-on, just as they have done for over 200 years.

I am proud of this community, and America should be, too.

This report on Texas metros among most uneducated in U.S. sadly aligns to another study by consumeraffirs.com reported by Alexis Simmerman titled, "Texas is 3rd-worst state to move to in 2024, recent study says. This tells me that Texas is underinvesting in public education, health and other areas. It also tells me that we need better leadership in government that's willing to fund our schools equitably and at a higher level. We are too big a state for us to rank at the bottom. Lastly, it doesn't mean that many among us haven't dedicated our lives and careers to make Texas a better state.

Neither report takes into account what could and should be a bright spot regarding the benefits that immigrants bring to Texas and our nation. Check out this helpful analysis by Benjamin Wermund in a July 26, 2024 article published in the Houston Chronicle titled, Recent wave of illegal immigration could net the federal government nearly $1 trillion, study says where he notes a report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

"The CBO estimates the immigration surge will create $1.2 trillion in federal revenue over the next decade, mostly from income taxes and spending by the estimated 8.7 million migrants living in the U.S. during that time. Those same migrants would cost the federal government just $300 billion in health care and other costs, according to the estimate, bringing the net benefit to $900 billion." 

Of course, neither Greg Abbott nor Lt. Governor Dan Patrick could care less about immigrants or the value they add when like Donald Trump, it gives them an issue to rile up their base. Again, we need different leaders. Elections matter. Voting matters.

When we consider all these immigrant newcomers entering our state, we need to consider the costs of not educating them or providing them with adequate health care—particularly since the CBO and other studies show that, on average, they give our country so much more than they receive in services. 

I hope that the Harris-Walz campaign gets messages like these across so that these folks aren't demonized or dehumanized, on the one hand. On the other, they should get recognized for the value they add to our state and nation. A pathway to citizenship is the least our country should do for this hard-working, frequently exploited, community.

-Angela Valenzuela

Study: With the exception of Austin area, Texas metros among most uneducated in U.S.

by Alexis Simmerman

Austin American-Statesman | August 5, 2024

Several Texas cities are among the least educated in the U.S., a recent survey shows. In a July 2024 study, WalletHub analyzed 150 of the country's largest metro areas and compared them across 11 factors related to education.

Education plays an important role in an area's economy. Those with higher levels of education generally receive higher salaries and can therefore contribute more tax dollars over time.

And those with more education tend to want to live somewhere with more opportunities to use that education. People tend to marry others with the same education level, which means cities with well-educated inhabitants are likely to welcome more people with degrees.

People are also reading:When does school start in Texas? An ultimate guide to 2024-25 start dates

However, education is only one of many factors that determine where someone wants to live. Other factors can be personal preferences or sociopolitical standing. In the recent study, WalletHub analyst Cassandra Hope shared some insight on the relationship between education and where people live.

"Higher education doesn’t guarantee better financial opportunities in the future, but it certainly correlates with it," Hope said. "The most educated cities provide good learning opportunities from childhood all the way through the graduate level. In addition to overall education, it’s also important to look at how well cities promote educational equality when it comes to race and gender."

So how did your area fare in the study? Here's a breakdown:

Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown is eighth most educated metro area

With a score of 78.12 out of 100, the metro area including Austin, Round Rock and Georgetown ranked eighth in educated population. It ranked sixth in the quality of education and attainment gap and 11th in educational attainment.

Education rankings: Texas metro areas

Other Texas metro areas did not perform as well in the study. Here's the WalletHub analysis for all Texas metro areas included in the study:

Overall Rank	Metro Area	Total Score	Educational Attainment Rank	Quality of Education & Attainment Gap Rank
8	Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown	78.12	11	6
72	Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington	54.92	73	67
84	Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land	52.85	97	16
103	San Antonio-New Braunfels	48.69	110	29
120	Killeen-Temple	42.32	120	116
136	El Paso	32.80	140	38
141	Corpus Christi	29.17	139	131
143	Beaumont-Port Arthur	27.35	144	83
148	Brownsville-Harlington	12.29	149	91
149	McAllen-Edinburg-Mission	10.46	150	80

Table by Alexis Simmerman/American-Statesman | Data by WalletHub

My Good Friday Reflections on Texas Bishop Slams Greg Abbott, Says Christians Have 'Duty to Resist'

The humanitarian crisis happening before our eyes along the U.S.-Mexico border is anguishing. Yes, there are a lot of people coming. No, they are not invaders "attacking" our country. Immigration scholarship always points to "push" and "pull" factors that motivate migration.

Push mechanisms can be significant, including threats to well-being or livelihood, and the impetus to survive difficult conditions and circumstances that individuals and families face back home, be they political, economic, or related to climate change, including factors that turn many families into "climate refugees." 

Pull factors include a need and desire to be with family living in the U.S., the pursuit of opportunities not available in the homeland, as well as work opportunities. Many seek asylum, including safe harbor fleeing violence and the pursuit of religious freedom. The lion's share would rather stay at home were this a viable option.

In virtually all instances, regardless, the treacherous journey into the U.S. is a significant hardship and our Christian values as a nation would seem to dictate mercy, tolerance, and respect for the dignity of all migrants.

After all, the Bible in Exodus 22:21 says "Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. Considering that today is Good Friday should not Galatians 3:28 have special meaning? "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

I'm not Catholic but nevertheless side with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on this one. Governor Abbott's anti-immigrant agenda—which is arguably part and parcel to his anti-diversity campaign, is soulless, cruel, and ungodly. 

When will we as humanity evolve toward a unity consciousness where we observe and honor every single person's right to respect and a life of dignity? Is this not the call for resurrection and renewal that rests at the heart of Easter and Christianity itself? I would certainly hope so. God bless us all.

Peace / paz,

-Angela Valenzuela

Texas Bishop Slams Greg Abbott, Says 

Christians Have 'Duty to Resist'

March 28, 2024 By Nick Mordowanec  | Newsweek

A bishop in El Paso, Texas, a popular U.S. entry point for illegal immigration,

said statewide efforts to villainize migrants is a sad sight and falls on the

shoulders of Governor Greg Abbott.

Abbott has arguably been the most outspoken public official in condemning

the claimed inaction of the federal government surrounding illegal immigra-

tion, which has soared under the Biden administration and hit a record high

during the 2023 fiscal year. He instituted Operation Lone Star in March 2021

to build more border wall and leverage additional National Guard soldiers to

deter migrants from entering unlawfully.

Total border crossings exceeded 988,900 between October and December,

following a record 2.4 million migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border

in fiscal 2023—up from about 1.7 million in 2021.

Texas officials like Abbott are trying to take their own action without federal


intervention, waiting to see if it can enforce its own immigration laws, including


arrests and deportation through legislation known as Senate Bill 4 (S.B. 4), which


was approved last year in an 88-4 vote.



Texas Governor Greg Abbott makes an announcement on the future of the space industry in Texas,

at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston on March 26. Abbott is receiving criticism from local clergy

for his migrant policies.

"You have seen the Humvees and the concertina wire and the national guardsmen on the television," Bishop Mark Seitz of the Diocese of El Paso said during a March 18 lecture at Fairfield University, a Jesuit institution in Connecticut, according to the National Catholic Reporter.

Seitz called Texas officials' efforts "transparently political" and part of a "broader, brutal, historical project in Texas to criminalize and police people who migrate."

"People of faith have a duty to resist these racist projects," he added.

Seitz is the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) Office of Migration, which sets broad policies and direction for the church's work in areas including advocacy, education, refugee resettlement, and providing specialized services to at-risk and vulnerable populations including victims of trafficking and unaccompanied minors.

The Diocese of El Paso was instituted on March 3, 1914, and covers roughly 26,700 square miles including nine Texas counties, 56 parishes, 18 missions and a Catholic population of 686,000.

Newsweek reached out to Abbott, the diocese and the USCCB via email for comment.

Abbott and other Texas officials received bad news on Wednesday, when the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied Texas' request to allow S.B. 4 to go into effect while the court considers its legality. It is being praised by civil rights groups as a victory in what has become a contentious court battle that has extended to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Chief Judge Priscilla Richman wrote in the ruling that "for nearly 150 years, the Supreme Court has held that the power to control immigration—the entry, admission, and removal of noncitizens—is exclusively a federal power."

The ruling allows a lower-court decision to remain in place. The Fifth Circuit will hear arguments on April 3 in New Orleans about whether the injunction should be upheld.

"The court did the right thing in preventing the implementation of S.B. 4," El Paso County attorney Jo Anne Bernal said in a statement shared with Newsweek. "We will continue seeking a court decision permanently enjoining this law that has already caused so much fear and divisiveness in our community."

Seitz also reportedly rebuked Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for his office's efforts to defund Annunciation House, a decades-old Catholic migrant shelter in El Paso that was alleged by the AG to have facilitated illegal entry to the United States, harboring illegal migrants, human smuggling, and operating a stash house.

This month, a district court judge in Texas said Paxton's efforts were presented "without regard to due process or fair play."

"The attack on Annunciation House represents an escalation in Texas' efforts in recent years to militarize the border and to enact legislation criminalizing migration and people who migrate," Seitz said.

The bishop told Crux, an online newspaper that focuses on news related to the Catholic Church, that the hypothetical situation of Texas officials deporting migrants without properly allowing for the asylum process to play out "saddens" him.

"I'm very disappointed in the narrative that is being promoted to this day that people who are fleeing to our border are a threat to us in the first place," Seitz said. "It's just a tremendous misunderstanding of what's happening."

My Great Grandfather was a Racist: Once we take down Confederate statues, Texans must still grapple with monsters in the past.

Gabriel Arana speaks candidly about discoveries he has made from researching his own family's history. I think everyone should do this so that we can learn about what has made us individually—as well as us, collectively—into who we are today. He speaks of the cringe-worthy, "Lost Cause" icons on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol in the form of flags, statues, and street signs that honor Confederate figures who, by definition, upheld racist policies.

Most telling is how their prevalence today on Texas Capitol grounds indeed aligns to the current cultural war with politics, policies, shrill rhetoric and propaganda that seek to whitewash Texas history that is further playing out at the highest levels of the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). The organization has been roiled by conflict over how Texas history is to get interpreted. Accordingly, read the following:

D'Amico, R. (2023, July). Traditionalists Protest What Some Consider a “Woke” Takeover of the Texas State Historical Association, Inside the arguments, lawsuit, and angry outbursts that are dividing a key authority on historical matters, Texas Monthly. Retrieved: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-state-historical-association-drama/ 

deGrood, M. (2023, July 18). Galveston billionaire, board to face off in mediation in case over how Texas history is taught, Houston Chronicle.Retrieved: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/trending/article/mediation-in-case-over-how-texas-history-is-taught-18205227.php

Dey, S. (2023, June 22).  A battle over who gets to tell Texas history is brewing into a war over the state historical association’s future, Texas Tribune. Retrieved: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/22/texas-state-historical-association-lawsuit/

I like how a personal narrative like this illustrates well the feminist notion that the personal is political. And boy is it, as you can see from the historic battle taking place within the TSHA.

What we can easily infer from these struggles is how for the dominant group, it's not sufficient to be politically and economically dominant. Rather, the intellectual, cultural, and what is construed as the moral sphere of our (in)glorious tradition must be so, as well, even if by force.

That said, history teaches us that grassroots struggles from below that challenge these symbolic orders matter enormously for the kinds of change those of us involved in such struggles seek, not the least of which is a truthful teaching of our state's and nation's history.

-Angela Valenzuela

My Great Grandfather was a Racist: Once we take down Confederate statues, Texans must still grapple with monsters in the past. by GABRIEL ARANA | Texas Observer 

SEPTEMBER 4, 2023, 11:47 AM, CDT A version of this story ran in the September / October 2023 issue.

My great-grandfather, José-María Arana, was a racist. 

After the United States barred Chinese men from immigrating under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, tens of thousands sought a new life in Mexico, where they faced no warmer a welcome as they established themselves. A former schoolteacher and businessman, José-María led a vicious campaign against the Chinese in the Mexican states of Sonora, Sinaloa, and Baja California in the early 1900s.  

Seeking “all legal means to eliminate the Asian merchant,” whose growing prosperity he viewed as a threat to the working class and Mexican national identity, José-María formed a junta of local businessmen in 1912 to address what he called “the tremendous calamity of the Chinese jaundice.” He launched a newspaper, Pro-Patria, whose masthead boldly proclaimed, “Mexico for the Mexicans and China for the Chinese.” Featuring racist jokes and caricatures, the broadsheet portrayed Chinese immigrants as carriers of disease and a threat to Mexican women. 

JOSÉ-MARÍA ARANA ORGANIZED TO EXCLUDE CHINESE IMMIGRANTS FROM MEXICAN LIFE AND PROSPERITY. JOSÉ-MARIA ARANA/SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA LIBRARY

“We cannot live together because there exists an absolute incompatibility in race, social customs, and economy,” José-María wrote in its pages. 

My great-grandfather carried his message throughout Northern Mexico, making speeches in working-class towns like Cananea—whose poor copper miners he thought ripe for radicalization—and urging city and state leaders to restrict the types of businesses that Chinese immigrants could run, relegate them to ghettos, and expel them de manera definitiva [in a definitive way]. 

I’ve thought increasingly about my great-grandfather and his ignoble legacy as I’ve settled into life in Texas, where the Confederate cause is memorialized on statues, flags, and street signs. Growing up on the U.S.-Mexico border in Nogales, Arizona—where José-María’s widow, my great-grandmother, settled after his death in 1921—I knew little about my family tree’s racist roots. Like a lot of gay kids who come from a small town, I left to find people like me in bigger cities and only much later started to contemplate my origins.

CHINESE IMMIGRANTS SENT JOSÉ-MARÍA POSTCARDS WITH DERISIVE POEMS IN SPANISH. TRANSLATION: OF YOUR ATTACKS I LAUGH / AND YOU EVEN GIVE ME COMPASSION / AND IT MAKES ME NEITHER HOT NOR COLD / YOUR RIDICULOUS ORATION. / AND THEY SAY FROM GRAND CHINA / THAT YOU’RE GOTTEN INVOLVED WITH THE DANCE / WITH YOUR GROSS PROPAGANDA / TO FILL YOUR BELLY. —JU KUN LEEJOSÉ-MARÍA ARANA, SPECIAL COLLECTION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

Afew months after moving here in the summer of 2022, I visited the Capitol grounds with my in-laws from London. The Texas State Capitol is an imposing Renaissance revival structure made of pink granite with a dome that, Texans remind you, is taller than the U.S. Capitol. But what impressed us all the most on that first visit was the enormous Confederate Soldiers Monument on the right as one walks up to the entrance from 11th Street. 

A bronze statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis stands atop one of five pillars, the other four support figures representing the branches of the Confederate military. The inscription on the pedestal below commemorates the 437,000 soldiers who “died for states [sic] rights guaranteed under the Constitution” and asserts that “the People of the South, animated by the spirit of 1776, to preserve their rights, withdrew from the federal compact.” 

“It’s Texas,” I said preemptively, feeling defensive and embarrassed at the same time as my in-laws looked on in horror. It’s the same way I feel when an outsider mentions the state’s abortion ban or attacks on LGBTQ+ people. 

The Confederate Soldiers Monument is one of 12 memorials on the grounds that perpetuate the “lost cause”—the historical myth that the Confederate cause was heroic and not about slavery. 

It is a lie easily debunked by looking at Texas’ Ordinance of Succession, which laid out the state’s own reasoning for withdrawing from the union. The document declares that Blacks were “rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race” and that “the servitude of the African race … is mutually beneficial to both bond and free” as well as ordained by God. Even the monument’s Confederate death count, scholars have pointed out, is inflated. 

The endurance of the Confederate cult here does not, of course, reflect the prejudices of most Texans, which is what makes these symbols so corrosive to a shared sense of state identity. An implicit endorsement of white supremacy, they most directly exclude Black Texans, whose struggle for freedom offers a far more edifying narrative to rally around—one that embodies our national values and unity rather than doubling down on a lost war. But they set up an identity conflict for anyone of good conscience who wants to claim Texas as their own: Every assertion of Texas identity must come with a “but.” 

Reminders of the Confederacy abound here in Austin, considered the state’s bluest city: In the Texas State Cemetery, civil rights hero and Congresswoman Barbara Jordan and former Governor Ann Richards lie yards away from Albert Sidney Johnston, a slave owner and Confederate general whose Gothic tomb looks out on the Confederate Fields on the cemetery’s southeast side, where 2,200 Confederate veterans are interred, each plot marked by a white cross. 

Some of my Southern friends have said that when you grow up in the South, the paraphernalia is so commonplace, it can blur into the background. But if you’re new to it, it’s striking to see the resentments of the 1800s enshrined in what are supposed to be shared expressions of our civic ideals. 

It was perhaps easier to dismiss them before the Obama and Trump presidencies brought the Nazis and white, Christian nationalists out of the woodwork, when it was at least a bit more plausible to reassure oneself that “America is getting better.” It’s become harder to think of racism as a healing wound on the body politic when white nationalists demonstrate openly in public and Republicans in the Legislature try to ensure K-12 students only get taught a sanitized fairy tale about Texas history. 

“Most Texans do not support erasing our history … out of political correctness,” ​​Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick wrote in an August 2022 letter to Senate Democrats who had urged the Legislature to remove Confederate monuments on the Capitol grounds. 

The irony is that whitewashing Texas history is the very purpose of Confederate propaganda—and the impetus behind state Republicans’ attacks on education. Last year, Governor Greg Abbott signed a law that limits how K-12 teachers can talk about racism and slavery; it bans educators from discussing the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which reframes the nation’s founding as inextricably linked to the arrival of slaves on American shores in 1619. 

Since the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, and the George Floyd protests in 2020, some Texans have begun to change their minds about memorializing the Confederacy. While a bare majority once opposed their removal, now 52 percent say they should be taken out of public view or relocated to museums where they can teach us about the past rather than help keep its prejudices alive. 

Amid our national reckoning about race, reminders of the Confederacy have started to come down in Texas. In 2017, the Texas State Preservation Board voted to remove the Children of the Confederacy plaque, which proclaimed that “the War Between the States was not a rebellion, nor was its underlying cause to sustain slavery,” from the Capitol. The University of Texas at Austin relocated four Confederate statues on its campus in 2015 and 2017. But this only scratches the surface: Statewide, only 34 of 240 Confederate symbols have been removed, including nine monuments, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

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My great-grandfather has no monuments dedicated to him, nor do I think he deserves any. What he represents is too corrosive to memorialize. 

I don’t have trouble condemning José-María as racist and acknowledging the harm he caused the Chinese community in Northern Mexico. I have come to take a qualified pride in my Mexican heritage, but to the extent it is synonymous with the racism José-María espoused, I must condemn it. Being members of a pluralistic society requires us to put our civic ideals, like the belief in human equality, above allegiance to our ancestry. 

I never heard about José-María as a kid. My grandparents died when I was young, and my father never spoke of him. One Christmas when I was home, I happened upon a collection of my grandfather’s writing about our family history. His father, he wrote, had been mayor of Magdalena, Sonora, and his papers were preserved in a collection at the University of Arizona. 

CHINESE IMMIGRANTS SENT JOSÉ-MARÍA POSTCARDS WITH DERISIVE POEMS IN SPANISH. TRANSLATION: FOR [BEING] SHORT AND FAT / AND YOUR ENCHANTING ORATION / WHOEVER HEARS IT / AND WITH FERVOR ADORES YOU / BECAUSE OF THAT, AT YOUR FEET PROSTRATED / I IMPLORE YOUR COMPASSION / OR YOU GO FUCK YOURSELF. —SEÑORITA HING LUNGJOSÉ-MARÍA ARANA, SPECIAL COLLECTION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

I looked up the collection online, which featured speeches, newspaper clippings, and correspondence, including hate mail from Chinese Sonorans. A quick trip to Google Scholar filled in his biography. 

José-María was indeed elected mayor of Magdalena in 1919 after running twice, his first campaign derailed by a stint in prison for inciting violence against Chinese immigrants. As mayor, he was only able to pass laws taxing Chinese businesses, but his advocacy helped inspire the Sonoran legislature to relegate Chinese immigrants to ghettos and expel them in 1919—a move later overruled by the federal government. He died in 1921, supposedly from being poisoned, after which his widow moved to Arizona with my grandfather, where the family was reduced to poverty. 

Though I think it is good to have learned about the monster in my bloodline, I’m glad that ultimately, his name will only exist only for those who want to discover it. That’s where I think my great-grandfather’s shameful legacy belongs—in the historical record, the subject of debate and reflection about the mistakes of our ancestors, as a warning of what happens when one is too proud of one’s identity.

A CARTOON DEPICTION OF THE SUPPOSED “THREAT” JOSÉ-MARÍA AND OTHERS BELIEVED CHINESE IMMIGRANTS POSEDJOSÉ-MARIA ARANA/SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA LIBRARY

GABRIEL ARANA is a queer, Mexican-American, progressive journalist who grew up on the border in Nogales, Arizona. A writer-editor passionate about longform journalism and narrative storytelling, he has served as an editor at legacy progressive publications like The Nation and The American Prospect, as well as digital outlets like The Huffington Post and millennial news site Mic. He has written about LGBTQ+ issues, media and diversity, Latinx politics, and mental health for The New York Times, The New Republic, Salon, The Atlantic, and then won awards for his coverage of the fight for marriage equality and the epidemic of violence against trans women of color.