The raid on 87-year-old Lidia Martinez’s home was carried out by nine armed storm troopers from the office of Ken Paxton, Texas’s Christian fascist Attorney General. Paxton is a leading fascist nationally. He and his wife spoke at a fascist rally in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2020, shortly before a violent mob assaulted the Capitol claiming the presidential election had been “stolen.”

The police invasion of Lidia Martinez’s house was part of a series of middle-of-the night raids on the homes of at least a dozen people—mostly members of LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens) in three heavily Latino counties in South Texas. Along with Martinez, homes of the former Bexar County (San Antonio) Democratic Party Chairman and a Democratic candidate for a hotly contested seat in the Texas legislature were raided. 

The marauding pigs ransacked homes, seized phones, computers, and documents, and swabbed for DNA. The raids occurred in the midst of a year-long series of attacks on Chicanos and other Latinos and immigrants across the entire state. Texas fascists have been: investigating immigrants’ rights and support groups from Houston to El Paso; driving more than a million names off voter registration rolls; maintaining armed troops along the border; passing a law that enables all police in the state to arrest anyone they suspect of being “illegal.”

After the raids, LULAC leaders held a small rally/press conference in San Antonio, and called for investigations of Paxton and his office by the FBI and the federal Department of Justice. LULAC president Roman Palomares said, "We believe that (Paxton’s) conduct constitutes a direct attempt to suppress the Latino vote through intimidation and harassment, in violation of the Voting Rights Act and other federal civil rights law."

Meanwhile, Paxton has vowed to continue the raids and vote suppression. Paxton and Texas’s Christian fascist leaders in general claim they are out to ensure “voter integrity.” This is deranged fascist bullshit. Going back to 2004, of the nearly 94 million votes cast in Texas, charges of “fraud” were filed against 154 people. 

Paxton claims his office had “sufficient evidence” for the South Texas raids. One problem though—it has yet to produce any. He also said his office is “… investigating every credible report we receive regarding potential criminal activity that could compromise the integrity of our elections. The Biden-Harris Administration has intentionally flooded our country with illegal aliens, and without proper safeguards, foreign nationals can illegally influence elections at the local, state, and national level.”

These raids are intended to terrorize millions of Latinos—the state’s largest single ethnic group—and to intimidate people from voting, even from registering to vote. They are intended to whip up racist hatred of immigrants from Mexico and Latin America, and blame immigrants in advance for the possibility of Trump and other fascists losing in November, should there be elections at all. 

This must be exposed, and opposed. It is possible—and necessary—to fight attacks on the right of Latino, Black, and other oppressed people to vote. As Bob Avakian wrote:

There are continuing moves, including with the threat or use of violence, to once again prevent Black people and other oppressed people from even exercising what are supposed to be basic rights, such as voting. (With a scientific method and approach, it is both possible, and important, to actively oppose attempts to deny people the right to vote, and at the same time win people to see that their efforts need to go, not into voting for representatives of this system that is oppressing them, but working to build up the basis to overthrow this whole system.)” (From SOMETHING TERRIBLE, OR SOMETHING TRULY EMANCIPATING: Profound Crisis, Deepening Divisions,The Looming Possibility Of Civil War—And The Revolution That Is Urgently Needed, A Necessary Foundation, A Basic Roadmap For This Revolution)