Texas
Criminal cases in South Texas are unraveling because of a Texas Ranger’s suspension after the Uvalde shooting
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Late within the afternoon on Sept. 8, simply hours after hammering out a plea deal for a teenage shopper accused of capital homicide, protection legal professional Leigh Cutter acquired a textual content from Uvalde County District Lawyer Christina Mitchell: “I must disclose one thing to you. Name me when you possibly can.”
On the telephone, Mitchell had a bombshell revelation: Christopher Ryan Kindell, the Texas Ranger who’d led the investigation of Cutter’s shopper, had been suspended whereas the Texas Division of Public Security — the company that oversees the Rangers — investigated his function within the regulation enforcement response to the horrific mass taking pictures at Robb Elementary Faculty that left 19 college students and two lecturers useless.
So far as Cutter was involved, the suspension — which the prosecutor was required by regulation to open up to the protection — meant that Mitchell’s key witness was tainted. She instructed Mitchell that her shopper would reject the plea deal and go to trial on costs that, when he was 12 years previous, he shot and killed Uvalde boxer John VanMeter in 2019.
5 days later, as potential jurors waited within the courtroom, Cutter and her co-counsel, Mary Pietrazek, held tense negotiations with Mitchell. Ultimately, they agreed to a six-year sentence — one 12 months lower than the unique deal. The change was vital as a result of it could permit the defendant — whose court docket file is sealed as a result of he’s a juvenile — to be launched earlier than he turns 18 and keep away from being transferred to an grownup jail. The plea deal was first reported by the San Antonio Specific-Information.
“She appeared like she actually needed to resolve the case,” Pietrazek mentioned of Mitchell.
Lower than a month later, Mitchell dismissed aggravated sexual assault of a kid costs towards a husband and spouse whom Kindell had additionally investigated. In an electronic mail to The Texas Tribune, the district legal professional mentioned she had a number of causes for dismissing these circumstances, “certainly one of which was Ranger Kindell’s suspension,” however she plans to re-indict them.
Because the Texas Ranger based mostly in Uvalde, Kindell is liable for aiding native regulation enforcement companies in Uvalde and neighboring Actual County with main crimes. He has 50 open investigations in 10 counties, in accordance with Division of Public Security information. In Uvalde, his open investigations run the gamut from official oppression to tried capital homicide.
In an interview, Mitchell mentioned she’s ready on the end result of the DPS investigation earlier than she asks a grand jury for indictments in a few of Kindell’s circumstances. She mentioned she’s frightened about going to trial in two homicide circumstances Kindell helped examine.
“I’m involved,” she mentioned. “I’ve obtained another circumstances that if his state of affairs doesn’t get resolved quickly they could be dismissed.”
The unraveling of circumstances he investigated exhibits how the disastrous regulation enforcement response to the Robb Elementary bloodbath is reverberating by means of the area’s legal justice system.
“That basically hurts the prosecutor’s case, lots of them, as a result of they’re not going to have the ability to depend on his testimony,” mentioned Alfonso Cabañas, a San Antonio legal protection legal professional.
Mitchell added that she will’t know whether or not Kindell is tainted as a witness till she learns the end result of the DPS investigation.
“Typically, any suspension of a regulation enforcement officer calls into query a prosecutor’s capacity to sponsor that officer as a witness in a case,” she mentioned.
A whole bunch of regulation enforcement officers — together with 91 from DPS — responded to Robb Elementary on Could 24, and the pictures and movies of them ready within the faculty’s hallways and stopping dad and mom from getting into the constructing prompted nationwide outrage.
DPS wouldn’t say what number of officers have been suspended on account of the company’s inner investigation. The company didn’t reply to questions on Kindell and wouldn’t say if it had an active-shooter coverage earlier than the Uvalde taking pictures.
Mitchell and different regulation enforcement officers have raised questions on whether or not DPS adopted its personal insurance policies in suspending the Ranger.
“It’s particularly alarming when there was no documented and buttressed purpose for the suspension or the suspension is predicated on a doubtlessly new coverage being retroactively utilized,” Mitchell wrote in her electronic mail to the Tribune. Mitchell mentioned she couldn’t elaborate as a result of she doesn’t know the main points of the DPS inner investigation.
A letter from the division’s inspector normal, apparently an try and reassure Mitchell that Kindell’s work as a legal investigator had not been referred to as into query, has raised extra questions. Within the letter, DPS Inspector Normal Phillip Ayala wrote that his investigation into the Robb Elementary taking pictures response “doesn’t embrace any obvious misconduct or issues associated to Ranger Kindell’s integrity.”
Kindell mentioned he couldn’t remark. DPS refused to launch details about Kindell’s suspension in response to a request made below the Texas Public Info Act, saying DPS Director Steve McCraw hadn’t decided about whether or not he’ll face self-discipline.
Former regulation enforcement officers and police administration specialists who reviewed the letter, the DPS normal handbook and the restricted paperwork associated to the suspensions that DPS has launched mentioned they don’t perceive how Kindell’s actions at Robb Elementary may very well be severe sufficient to warrant suspension however not name into query his conduct or integrity.
“You possibly can’t say anyone did one thing fallacious, then say they’re not being suspended for misconduct or integrity,” mentioned G. M. Cox, a lecturer in regulation enforcement administration at Sam Houston State College who has served as police chief in a number of Texas cities. “That’s incongruent.”
Cox raised the chance that DPS leaders rushed to droop officers to indicate elected officers and the general public that they had been taking motion after the horrific taking pictures, but in addition doubtlessly to keep away from dealing with scrutiny themselves.
“They’ve obtained a fame to guard,” Cox mentioned. “They usually’ve obtained their very own purse strings to guard. Not solely that, McCraw’s obtained to cowl his ass because the commander, the colonel of DPS. He’s definitely not going responsible himself.”
Mitchell, the district legal professional, mentioned she’s needed to inform crime victims that their circumstances are in limbo till DPS decides about Kindell.
“You possibly can’t inform one household that one other household’s loss is bigger than theirs,” she mentioned. “I feel the query is, was the dealing with of Ranger Kindell applicable?”
Ranger has main function in legal circumstances
In rural Uvalde and Actual counties, the place many of the native police lack the expertise to analyze main crimes, Kindell is in observe the lead investigator for nearly each murder, intercourse crime and public corruption case within the area.
“On the whole, the Ranger for that space is the end-all, be-all,” mentioned Laredo protection lawyer Joey Tellez, a former assistant district legal professional in Webb County. “They make all of the calls. They’re often those that interview the defendant. They’re those who choose and select what proof goes to the lab for testing. In rural counties, they function as a detective would in main metro areas which have common police forces.”
Kindell joined DPS in 2006 and labored within the legal investigation division earlier than turning into a Ranger in 2016. As a ranger, Kindell was routinely assigned to high-profile investigations in close by counties, and information present he’s nonetheless the lead investigator on open circumstances from his previous posting in Kingsville.
His present circumstances embrace a sexual assault in Zavala County, possession of kid pornography in Jim Hogg County, a sexual assault in Kleberg County, an officer-involved taking pictures in Kinney County and a homicide in Edwards County.
He’s additionally main the investigation of Dimmit County Sheriff Marion Boyd, who’s accused of interfering within the investigation of a visitors accident involving a county automobile. Boyd was indicted this 12 months on costs of tampering with a witness, stalking and tampering with proof.
The Texas legal professional normal’s workplace, which is prosecuting the case, mentioned the case stays open and declined to reply questions on Boyd.
Kindell additionally performed a central function within the investigation of VanMeter’s high-profile slaying. The 24-year-old boxer’s fianceé instructed reporters the 12-year-old accused of taking pictures VanMeter had lived with them. Police alleged the boy killed the boxer whereas attempting to steal a gaming system, mentioned Cutter, the boy’s lawyer.
After a state trooper drove the boy to Uvalde’s juvenile probation workplace, Kindell questioned him for a number of hours till the juvenile admitted to killing VanMeter and instructed Kindell the place he might discover a rifle that police later mentioned was used within the killing, Kindell testified in a 2021 court docket listening to. The boy grew to become one of many youngest capital homicide defendants within the nation.
Cutter requested a decide to declare the confession inadmissible in court docket as a result of Kindell by no means provided to let her shopper’s grandmother, who was his authorized guardian, be current in the course of the interrogation, as required below Texas regulation. In the course of the 2021 listening to, Cutter famous that the boy struggled to know the which means of the phrase “waived.”
State District Decide Camile Dubose dominated that whereas Kindell violated the Texas Household Code by not notifying the grandmother, the 12-year-old “knowingly and intelligently waived his Miranda rights” and prosecutors might use the confession at trial.
Had the case gone to trial, Cutter mentioned she would have once more tried to suppress the confession and would have requested Kindell about his suspension to attempt to undercut his credibility earlier than the jury.
“We’d have annihilated him,” she mentioned.
Mitchell mentioned she wouldn’t touch upon the case as a result of the defendant is a juvenile.
Kindell’s function in Robb Elementary response stays unclear
Precisely when Kindell arrived at Robb Elementary on Could 24 is unclear. The gunman entered the varsity at 11:33 a.m. At 12:50, a Border Patrol tactical group entered the room and killed him — 77 minutes after he entered the varsity.
Faculty surveillance video first exhibits Kindell on the scene at 12:45 p.m., in accordance with DPS information. An investigation by The New York Instances discovered that Kindell appeared on surveillance footage delivering keys to officers huddled close to the classroom door 9 minutes earlier. CNN reported Kindell was in a faculty hallway earlier than the gunfire stopped.
Within the days that adopted, a DPS regional commander gave a bumbling press convention riddled with false details about the regulation enforcement response. The company falsely blamed a instructor for leaving an exterior door open. Studies trickled out that college students and lecturers within the school rooms with the gunman referred to as 911 whereas police crouched exterior.
State legislators launched an investigation and located that not one of the 23 responding companies arrange a command heart amid “an apparent ambiance of chaos” whereas police debated how and when to enter the classroom.
After the taking pictures, McCraw, the DPS director, referred to as the regulation enforcement response an “abject failure” however sought to shift blame to native police, primarily Pete Arredondo, the previous Uvalde faculty police chief who was among the many first officers on the scene.
Arredondo later mentioned he didn’t think about himself the on-site incident commander, regardless that the varsity district’s active-shooter coverage said he was. Arredondo made the essential resolution to deal with the gunman as a barricaded suspect, not an lively shooter, which might have required officers to enter the room and get rid of the menace as shortly as potential.
In early July, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin accused McCraw of “overlaying up” for his company’s missteps by blaming the locals.
When the Texas Home investigating committee launched its report on July 17, it didn’t single out DPS however leveled criticism at police who “had acquired coaching on lively shooter response and the interrelation of regulation enforcement companies” however didn’t take cost of the state of affairs.
On July 20, McCraw despatched a memo to the complete division, updating its active-shooter coverage. It learn partly, “DPS Officers responding to an lively shooter at a faculty can be approved to beat any delay to neutralizing an attacker. When a topic fires a weapon at a faculty he stays an lively shooter till he’s neutralized and isn’t to be handled as a ‘barricaded topic.’ We are going to present correct coaching and tips for recognizing and overcoming poor command selections at an lively shooter scene.”
He additionally introduced that Jeoff Williams, DPS’ deputy director for regulation enforcement companies who’s recognized for being effectively versed in active-shooter response, would oversee an investigation into the division’s response.
5 days later, McCraw despatched a listing of 5 staff to the DPS Workplace of the Inspector Normal, instructing the company’s inner watchdogs to analyze potential coverage violations and failure to observe Superior Regulation Enforcement Fast Response Coaching, a extensively accepted protocol when dealing with an lively shooter. A lot of the names are redacted. One sergeant has been fired on account of the investigation, and a state trooper resigned earlier than DPS determined whether or not to self-discipline her.
Nevertheless it wasn’t till September that DPS began to face severe questions on why, because the better-funded, better-trained company, it hadn’t taken management of the state of affairs. The Uvalde faculty police drive had solely six members, and whereas the town police division has a SWAT group, it hadn’t taken the state’s normal active-shooter coaching, in accordance with the Home committee report.
On Sept. 6, the Tribune and ProPublica printed a narrative asking these questions, and CNN confronted McCraw with a tape of him telling freeway patrol captains that “nobody is dropping their jobs.” Later that day, McCraw suspended Sgt. Juan Maldonado. Data point out Kindell was suspended about the identical time.
Maldonado was fired Oct. 21. Lower than every week later, McCraw instructed the Texas Public Security Fee, “DPS as an establishment, proper now, didn’t fail the group — plain and easy.”
Jesse Rizo, the uncle of 9-year-old Jackie Cazares, one of many college students who was killed at Robb Elementary, has been important of McCraw. He mentioned he was happy to see that the DPS director was transferring ahead on disciplining officers who responded to Robb Elementary, however mentioned he desires to see officers fired and has considerations in regards to the timeline.
“What occurred between Could 24 and [July 20] for McCraw?” Rizo requested. “Did he solely do this as a result of the Home committee [report] got here out?”
Tina Quintanilla-Taylor, who was on campus for her third grade daughter’s end-of-the-year awards ceremony, mentioned all of the officers who didn’t attempt to instantly cease the killing ought to be fired.
“In the event that they’ve been recognized in a video that they had been there they usually didn’t reply, not solely ought to they be fired, however they shouldn’t have the ability to observe anyplace else,” she mentioned, including that she doesn’t perceive why the investigations are taking so lengthy.
DPS stays tight-lipped about causes for suspension
Particulars in regards to the taking pictures response and the suspensions have trickled out slowly as a result of DPS and Mitchell have refused to launch most information. As a result of the Rangers are investigating the regulation enforcement response to the taking pictures and the district legal professional is contemplating legal costs towards responding officers, DPS has requested the Texas legal professional normal’s workplace to let it withhold data that may in any other case be public, together with details about Maldonado’s suspension. The Tribune and different information organizations are suing DPS to get entry to these information.
However the information that DPS has launched present Maldonado was initially suspended for violating a chapter of the DPS handbook that requires staff to “preserve adequate competency to correctly carry out their duties and assume the tasks of their positions.”
A portion of Kindell’s suspension letter obtained by the Tribune exhibits he was accused of violating the identical chapter, in addition to a chapter of the Texas Rangers Division handbook overlaying investigations that directs Rangers to take motion “for the detection, prevention and prosecution of violators of any legal regulation … not a part of their common police duties” if “the exigencies of the state of affairs require instant police motion.”
Three days after the suspension, the DPS inspector normal despatched the letter to Mitchell, the Uvalde district legal professional, telling her that Kindell’s suspension doesn’t contain misconduct or problems with integrity.
Cox, the Sam Houston State teacher and former police chief, mentioned regulation enforcement companies often give a way more detailed purpose for disciplining somebody.
“If I’d written that to an officer in my command, I’d have [outlined] particular behaviors, telling them the precise parts of their habits I’d have used to maintain the grievance,” he mentioned.
Tellez, the previous Webb County prosecutor who’s now a protection legal professional, mentioned the imprecise allegations will assist protection legal professionals assault Kindell’s credibility in court docket.
“Incompetence opens up the door to the protection legal professional significantly better than cowardice … as a result of they’re saying you don’t know how you can do your job,” he mentioned.
Cox mentioned each officer who confirmed as much as Robb Elementary had an obligation to attempt to get into the classroom as shortly as potential and cease the killing.
“Someone ought to have gone in,” he mentioned. “It ought to have been the primary three who obtained there. And in the event that they didn’t, it ought to have been the subsequent three.”
However he mentioned McCraw’s July memo means that wasn’t DPS coverage on the time.
“It reads to me like they’re disciplining Maldonado and presumably [Kindell] for following a doctrine that they beforehand established and at the moment are suspending,” Cox mentioned. “One might conclude that maybe DPS personnel are being held to a regular that has been modified after Robb Elementary.”
“DPS just isn’t being clear on this course of in any respect,” he added. “Inform us what it’s that Maldonado particularly did that helps your conclusion of incompetence. Inform us immediately, not in legalese however in layman’s phrases, what it’s that Maldonado did or didn’t do. Inform us what the Ranger [Kindell] did or didn’t do.”
Patrick O’Burke, a regulation enforcement marketing consultant and former DPS commander, mentioned the companies that responded, and regulation enforcement normally, want to have a look at the massive image of what went fallacious. He mentioned it’s unlikely punishing a handful of officers goes to immediate these conversations.
“I agree with Director McCraw’s evaluation that that is an abject failure,” O’Burke mentioned. “And being an abject failure, that doesn’t imply that one individual did one thing that’s problematic. It factors to a better breakdown in construction, both in administration or in coaching or in total understanding of what their mission was. So you possibly can’t maintain a single individual liable for that. To terminate a trooper is myopic to suppose it’ll remedy this downside.”
Rizo, the uncle of Jackie Cazares, agreed DPS must have a bigger dialog about who’s accountable.
“The larger-picture merchandise is what did you be taught from this? How did your management fail you?” he requested.
Jason Buch is a contract author based mostly in Austin.
Disclosure: Sam Houston State College and The New York Instances have been monetary supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan information group that’s funded partly by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Monetary supporters play no function within the Tribune’s journalism. Discover a full checklist of them right here.
Texas
Trump demonizes immigrants. So why is he winning so many Latino votes?
Back in 2015, when Donald Trump first descended from his golden escalator in New York City, Alexis García was attending high school in the Texas border town of Rio Grande City. In those days, it seemed, everyone in his classes hated Trump. The town of 15,000 serves as the seat of rural Starr County, which is 97% Latino and has voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election for the past 100 years. García was too young to vote in 2016, but he supported Bernie Sanders. That year, Hillary Clinton destroyed Trump in Starr, winning 79% of the vote.
But after Trump took office, García began to find himself drawn to Trump’s bombast. He liked the nicknames Trump came up with for his opponents — they reminded him of his own nickname, Pelón, meaning baldy for his buzzed hair. “Trump is like a schoolyard bully,” García tells me, meaning it as a compliment. By the end of 2017, as a high-school senior, he’d become a full-fledged Trump supporter.
At first, seeing how his classmates went after other Trump fans, García chose to keep his political conversion to himself. “Tienes nopal en la frente,” his friends would tell Trump supporters — you’ve got a cactus on your face. The meaning of the insult was clear: You’re only Mexican on the outside. When García finally told people he liked Trump, he was denounced as a racist. “How can you do this to your own kind?” people would ask.
“Coming out as a Republican was probably worse than coming out as an LGBT person,” says García, who works at a local supermarket. “They would shame you for it.”
At the time, García felt like he was part of a minority in South Texas. MAGA was a sort of counterculture among Latinos, a tiny band of provocateurs who enjoyed pissing off the dominant Democrats. But beneath the surface, a seismic shift was underway. When the results were counted on election night in November 2020, García was as shocked as everyone else to discover that Republican turnout in Starr County had nearly quadrupled from 2016. Joe Biden still won, but barely — 52% to Trump’s 47%. Trump had gained more ground in Starr than in any other county in America.
Since then, political analysts have been questioning whether Democrats are losing their long-standing advantage among Latino voters. How had a candidate who once called Mexicans “rapists” done so well in a Mexican American county? In July, before Biden exited the race, polls found his support among Latinos had fallen below 50%. And even since Kamala Harris won the nomination, polling has indicated she’s likely to win no more than 58% of Latino voters — a far cry from what Democrats used to muster. That’s especially significant this year because Trump doesn’t need to win a majority of Latino support to retake the White House. If he can peel off enough of the 36 million Latino voters, especially in hotly contested swing states such as Arizona and Nevada, it could prove to be the margin of victory.
In late July, after Biden dropped out of the race, I traveled to Starr County to see why this longtime Democratic stronghold has been shifting steadily to the right. To be sure, Starr differs from other border towns in some significant ways, especially in its relative dearth of recent migrants. But the county underscores how being Latino is becoming less predictive of how someone will vote. The area is working class, and its politics are similar to much of rural America. There’s a reverence for law enforcement and the military, a sense of economic instability, and a nagging suspicion that liberal elites in Hollywood and on Wall Street think of locals as ignorant hicks. In Trump, they see a man who offers something different. “People tell me they’re going to vote for him,” García says. “Trump is going to win.”
On a humid July morning, Benito Treviño, 77, is walking along the dirt road of his ranch, nestled among the thickets of Tamaulipan thornscrub that grow north of Rio Grande City. Reaching up, he grabs a bean pod from one of the large mesquite trees. “We can grind these into flour with a hammer mill we built,” says Treviño, a biochemist and botanist by training who now runs a native-plant nursery. Like the mesquite and huisache that thrive in this arid climate, he has deep roots in Starr County.
Treviño traces his family’s ancestry back to the earliest Spanish colonists, who made their homes on thin ranches along the Rio Grande. When the US annexed half of Mexico in 1848, those Mexican ranchers suddenly became American. Instead of them moving to America, America moved to them. Today, many South Texans like Treviño see themselves as more Tejano than Mexican American.
This explains, in part, why Biden’s campaign struggled to get traction among many Starr residents. His 2020 playbook for Latinos was built around celebrating immigrants and affording them a sense of belonging — one of his slogans was “Todos con Biden.“ But many here don’t identify as immigrants. Treviño was born in 1947 and grew up helping his parents work the lands his family had been on for generations. He’s American.
Like almost everyone in his generation, Treviño was raised as a Democrat, he says, for one simple reason: There were no Republicans in Starr County. “I never heard the word ‘Republican’ growing up,” he says. “There was no Republican Party here.” For more than a century, Democrats enjoyed complete control of local government, often running unopposed in general elections. That dominance, at its worst, led to graft and corruption as powerful families passed down elected offices like heirlooms. When Treviño’s father spoke out against the local leadership in Starr, the Democratic bosses found a way to show their displeasure: Treviño claims that when officials decided to improve a dirt road that ran through the county, they left the stretch in front of the Treviño home unpaved.
The machine politics compelled Treviño to turn away from the Democrats. He was also prodded by his wife, Toni, a chemist turned lawyer who moved to Starr from Houston. As an outsider and self-identified libertarian, she was shocked by the county’s rampant cronyism. “Why are you a Democrat?” she asked her husband. “You’re a hard worker. You’re very conservative in your values.” The Treviños became Republicans, and today Toni serves as the chair of the Starr County GOP.
While the worst instances of machine politics were eradicated by the 1980s, many old-timers like Treviño remain deeply suspicious of the Democratic Party. In South Texas counties where Democrats have controlled local politics for generations, Republicans can offer themselves as the party of something new. And polls indicate the same shift taking place across the country: Latinos are much more likely to see Trump, rather than Harris, as the candidate offering a chance at major change.
If any place embodies the dual identity among Latinos in Starr County, it’s the Rancho Cafe in the tiny town of Roma. On the outside, the restaurant has the wooden facade of an Old Western saloon, complete with a covered wagon in the dirt parking lot. Inside, however, it’s classic Tex-Mex. Traditional Mexican dresses hang for sale along the walls of the café, and the servers greet you in Spanish.
At lunchtime, Aliriam Perez sits sipping a bowl of caldo. Both her parents are from Miguel de Alemán, a Mexican city across the border that would blend in seamlessly with Roma if it weren’t for the heavily patrolled river separating them. Perez grew up mostly on the US side, though she crossed over frequently to spend time with family. Her mother was adamant that Perez never lose touch with her culture — she didn’t want her daughter to become “pocha,” Americanized. Though Perez at times rebelled against her mother’s wishes, at 34 she’s come to appreciate the importance of her Mexican heritage. Now that she has two boys of her own, she’s raising them bilingual. “It’s part of their history,” she says. “It’s where they come from.”
Growing up, Perez wasn’t very political. But that changed when she married a local police officer. In 2020, during the Black Lives Matter protests that followed the murder of George Floyd, Perez was deeply offended by the way Democrats supported calls to “abolish the police.” It felt like an affront to her husband, who was “out there putting himself in danger,” she says. Breaking with her mother, who believes that it’s crucial for Mexican Americans to vote against Trump, Perez began volunteering with the local Republican Party. As she sees it, a vote for “law and order” Trump is a way to both honor and protect her husband and other first responders.
In one recent poll, only 9% of Latino voters cited immigration as their top priority.
Democrats maintain a significant advantage among Latinos like Perez’s mother, first-generation immigrants who speak Spanish as their first language. But that advantage weakens among the second and third generations — not because American-born Latinos like Perez are more distant from their heritage but because they’ve started to prioritize other issues in the voting booth. The top two concerns among Latinos this year are the same as those for their fellow Americans: the economy and healthcare. In one recent poll, only 9% of Latino voters cited immigration as their top priority.
Starr’s economy is propped up not only by law enforcement, including the Border Patrol, but also by the oil and gas industry. During García’s childhood, he recalls, his immigrant father would make the long drive out to the Permian Basin in West Texas, where he worked as pipe fitter. Oil production has grown under Biden, and Harris says she has no plans to ban fracking. But to García, it’s obvious that Republicans are far more keen to expand drilling. Voting for Trump, as he sees it, is his best bet to keep his dad employed.
To be sure, “oil worker” is not a big part of Latino identity in swing states like Arizona and Nevada. Democrats, in fact, have long played to Latino voters by emphasizing the discrimination they face in the energy industry and law enforcement. But that appeal is beginning to lose its appeal. Perez says she knows racism exists in America — a white worker in an Alabama Dairy Queen once refused to serve her because she’s Mexican. But she doesn’t see discrimination as the province of any one political party. “There are Democrats who are racist and there are Republicans who are racist,” she says. Latinos still tell pollsters they consider the Democratic Party more welcoming to them than Republicans. But there are signs the political cohesion of “Latinidad” is beginning to fracture. Across the country, Latino Republicans say they feel more able to wear their politics on their sleeve. When people give them a hard time about voting for Trump, they’ve adopted a proud and defiant comeback. “¿Y qué?” they reply — “So what?”
In his home on his ranch along the northern edge of Starr County, Rick Guerra keeps one room as a sort of museum of his time in the Army: his vest from his days as a tank gunner during the invasion of Iraq, his boots from his deployment in Afghanistan. On one wall, there’s a collection of medals and challenge coins. As a teenager, Guerra helped his father and brothers build this very house. After he retired from the Army, he moved in with his wife and two children.
Leaning conservative since he was a kid, Guerra became a dedicated Republican during his time in the Army — and he’d like to see America return to the days of George W. Bush, when the military was flush with cash. Like many Latino-majority counties in Texas, Starr sends a higher percentage of its young men and women to the military than the rest of the country. Most families have at least one veteran in their family tree, and that has contributed to the fiercely pro-military tenor of the local political culture.
There’s another dynamic at play on Guerra’s ranch: This is rural America, where Democrats have been hemorrhaging support for over two decades. Today, the political gulf between urban and rural areas is a greater divide than the split between North and South. While three-quarters of rural Americans are white, huge swaths of rural counties in Texas and other states are majority Latino. As a result, millions of Latinos are beginning to experience what demographers call “rural resentment” — like other MAGA supporters, they feel disrespected by politicians and the media on the urban coasts. And efforts by Democrats to counter such perceptions, like passing the Inflation Reduction Act to create energy jobs in rural areas, have had little effect on attitudes among Latinos and other rural voters.
“If you’re blue collar, you’re blue collar — it doesn’t matter where you’re from,” Guerra says. “And if you’re blue collar, you want a president who is going to get his hands dirty and do stuff for the country and its people.”
Trump’s working-class support in Starr has been most visible in the string of “Trump Trains” that have been taking place across South Texas. In June, at the first rally of the summer, I speak with a professional portrait photographer named Roel Reyes as he’s adjusting the flags on his motorcycle on the southern edge of Route 83. He’s flying the Texas Lone Star flag next to the Stars and Stripes; on the front of his bike are two signs that proclaim “TRUMP 2024.” Reyes smiles as pickup trucks and other bikes pull over behind him, all of them flying Trump banners. Before long, the parade of vehicles snakes 15 miles southeast from Roma to Rio Grande City.
In 2020, during the early days of the pandemic, Reyes helped organize the county’s first Trump Train. At the time, the riotous parades felt like a protest as much as a rally, a way to openly flout the COVID shutdowns being enforced by local Democrats. Reyes recalls getting plenty of “single-finger salutes” from townspeople. But the trains also gave him the sense that Trump was more popular in Starr than the polls might indicate. During the rallies, he’d get waves from local folks he knew would never admit to supporting Trump in mixed company.
“Trump puts the country first. He puts God first — he’s for border control,” Reyes says. Next to him, an off-duty Border Patrol agent who has joined the Trump Train nods in agreement.
Local Democrats and Republicans agree that the trains gave Trump an electoral advantage in 2020. During the pandemic, Democrats — following strict instructions from the Biden campaign to avoid spreading the virus — stopped knocking on doors and focused instead on their digital strategy. Republicans, meanwhile, kept staging the Trump Trains, knocking on doors, and throwing well-attended barbeques and “asadas.” Democrats have become accustomed to hemorrhaging support from working-class white voters. But now it’s clear that more and more Latinos — who are overrepresented in the working class, especially in South Texas — are flocking to the Republicans. Being Latino, it appears, no longer dictates how someone will vote.
The Trump Train being held is small, but Reyes already has plans to hold larger rallies all across the border lands. This first train, he says, “will be like the trailer before the movie.” But it’s hard to hear him. Every few minutes, passing trucks honk their horns, their drivers waving out their windows at the sea of MAGA flags blanketing the dry, thorny landscape that once belonged to Democrats.
Jack Herrera is a freelance journalist who reports on how immigration and demographic change impacts individual lives. He was previously a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and senior editor at Texas Monthly.
Texas
‘We Weren’t Loud Enough!’ Texas A&M Proves That ‘Talking Down’ Kyle Field is Personal
COLLEGE STATION, Tx. — Standing along the back end zone as the Missouri Tigers attempted offense at Kyle Field, Texas A&M Aggies yell leader Kyler Fife kept it simple.
“Oh hell yeah,” he said when asked if the crowd at Texas A&M took Missouri’s challenge personally. “Oh hell yeah. I thought we weren’t loud enough!”
His arms outstretched for the latter statement, it was clear that Fife was among the crowd who did take it personally. And the aforementioned challenge?
Kyle Field was not as loud as the Tigers’ practice sessions.
“At some point it can only get so loud,” Missouri quarterback Brady Cook said during the week. “In my opinion, the noise at practice is actually louder. They put these big speakers pretty much two feet right behind me. You can’t hear anything.”
Evidently, The 12th Man made sure such was the case for Cook and company throughout the contest. By the end of the game, the Tigers were forced into a delay of game penalty, two false starts — back to back, no less — and a snap that came too early on a fourth-and-long they certainly needed.
Interestingly enough, the fans didn’t need much help getting pumped up, but they got some anyway. On a critical possession that would have given Missouri some momentum to chip away at the early 17-point lead the Aggies crafted, all it took for the student section to make a difference was a Sheck Wes song.
“Mo Bamba” rang through the speakers three times in a row on three straight plays. And the result was exactly what Texas A&M hoped for. Another failed offensive possession.
“It was kind of like playing the NCAA game,” Aggies edge rusher Nic Scourton said. “Going out there, having fun. Kyle Field’s rocking. We got them backed up. It’s something you dream of as a kid. Like, it’s crazy. It’s just this place is so special to play.”
With how special it’s seen, it made sense that the Maroon & White didn’t take kindly to any outsiders talking down on it, as Scourton explained. Especially not the noise factor.
“It has been interesting that we’ve had people call out Kyle Field a little bit,” Aggies coach Mike Elko said on The Aggie Football Hour. “I heard their quarterback say today that it’s louder in practice than it is at Kyle Field. To me, that’s a challenge to the 12th Man.”
“They kind of lit a fire on us,” Aggies edge rusher Nic Scourton added. “Coming into our place … talking down on Kyle Field. I think guys were really motivated to go out there and be dominant.”
That’s what happened. Texas A&M out-gained Missouri through the air, on the ground, in time of possession and everything else in-between. In the books, the win goes down as a complete domination. To the fans, it was a lesson taught to the Tigers.
And to the players? It was a personal statement.
One they felt good about making.
“What I took personally (was) them saying that their practice would be louder than our stadium,” Aggies leading rusher Le’Veon Moss said. “I took that personal because our 12th Man supports us to the end, no matter what happens.”
Texas
Texas High School Football Team In Trouble For Whipping Opponents With Belts After Blowout Victory
A Texas High School football team is facing criticism after not only putting a beating on their opponents 77-0, but also taking belts and whipping some of the opposing team’s players afterward in the handshake line.
Players at the Houston-based Willis High School were seen on a video posted on Facebook taking large belts and swinging them at members of the Cleveland High School team during the customary postgame sportsmanship handshake. At one point, one of the Cleveland players jumps out of the way in order to avoid getting whipped while Willis’s players laugh at their opponent.
WINNING FOOTBALL TEAM TOOK BELTS AND SPANKED / WHIPPED OPPONENTS
Yikes.
If being shut out by 70+ points wasn’t humiliating enough, imagine having your opponents then haze you in front of your teammates, family and school? Not a laughing matter, according to some of the Cleveland player’s parents.
“That’s just shady and there’s no point in doing that. It’s just very childish for them to do that,” Melanie Gonzales told KRHO TV.
“I just don’t get it. I don’t, and I’d be very pissed off if I’m scrolling on my phone, and I see my son getting hit with the belt,” Mary Almaguer also told the outlet as she said that the whole situation was ridiculous. In a statement, Willis High School said that the players involved in the whipping would be suspended for the first half of their next game, partake in community service and receive other disciplinary measures.
For Almaguer, that’s not enough.
PARENTS ARE CALLING THE SCHOOL DISTRICT TO FILE A COMPLAINT
“I think more than just half of a game suspension, maybe the rest of the season, some counseling,” the player’s mom said. Meanwhile, Cleveland High School released their own statement saying that Willis’s actions were uncalled for and they have contacted the proper district and league officials to file an official complaint.
How times have changed! Back when I was playing sports, the biggest thing we had to worry about was if someone spit on their hand before we all lined up. But to have to maneuver your way around the line so that you don’t get whipped and spanked is absurd.
Also, where were the coaches of either team while all of this was going on? How does nobody step up in that situation ?
Unfortunately, the whipping doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon as more Gen Zers are partaking in the trend for some unknown reason.
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