Oldest Latino Rights Group on Harris Endorsement Amid TX Voter Fraud Raids

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Returning to our top story, now the country’s most prominent Latino civil rights organization has made an unprecedented move, choosing to endorse the Harris Waltz ticket for the White House. Their first official endorsement in nearly 100 years, from mass deportations to misinformation and bigotry, immigration is at the heart of this election, and the League of United Latin American Citizens warns against a second Trump term. Now, Juan Peranio is the head of that organization, and he’s joining Michel Martin to explain what motivated this decision.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Juan Proano, thank you so much for speaking with us.

JUAN PROANO, CEO, LULAC: Of course. Thank you for having me.

MARTIN: So, for people who aren’t familiar with LULAC, as briefly as you can, would you just tell us the story of the organization? How did it become one of these preeminent civil rights organizations?

PROANO: So, LULAC was actually founded in 1929 in Corpus Christi, Texas, and it is the country’s oldest and largest Latino civil rights organization. It really came out of, you know, the promotion of advocacy for Latino interests. You know, there was a lot of racism and disenfranchisement happening in the south and in the southwest. And so, a corollary really to the NAACP for Latinos. Black is the only membership, Latino membership organization in the country. We have over 535 councils. We have over 260,000 members in 33 states. And, you know, 207 cities.

MARTIN: It’s my understanding that LULAC has never endorsed in a presidential campaign before, and that you’ve organized a PAC, there’s LULAC Adelante PAC, which does have the opportunity to participate politically. Why was this the moment that when the organization felt that this is a step you had to take?

PROANO: Yes. I mean, LULAC has always been a nonpartisan or bipartisan organization. You know, we represent Latinos of all stripes and political backgrounds, and we certainly have a lot of Republican members as well, including in our leadership ranks. We’ve had several LULAC national presidents that are Republicans too. But, you know, this election was really different. You know, we wanted to create a vehicle in which we can continue to empower the Latino community. You know, typically, we’re doing that from a civil rights perspective where we’re filing lawsuits. But in most cases, it can take years and years to get any sort of outcome from filing lawsuits. And so, starting a PAC was a natural progression for this organization. And in regards to the endorsement, you know, it was something that our members were asking for. And as we watched the Republican National Convention on that Tuesday, when they passed out mass deportation signs, it really was an indicator for us that it was time for LULAC to step up. We could no longer sit on the sideline. Because it really is an attack on the Latino community.

MARTIN: I mean, it’s not a secret that, you know, Former President Donald Trump, from his earliest moments as a national candidate, homed in on immigration as an issue for him. So, I was just curious what is it about this campaign that made it a priority now when it wasn’t a priority in 2016?

PROANO: You know, look, we stood by and we heard the rhetoric, if you will, around immigrants around Latinos, and it was disgusting, even in 2016. But, you know, really, what we’ve been looking at is, you know, a one dot O version of Donald Trump 2016, a two dot O version of Donald Trump, which essentially started an insurrection in Washington, D.C. And this is a three dot O version. If we’re going to believe that, you know, when he says we’re going to cut taxes, we should also believe him when he says that he’s going to deport up to $15 million immigrants. I take him at his word. But, you know, when we look at it, you’re talking about Latino immigrants that may have been here 10, 20, 30 years, who may have married U.S. citizens, who have children who are U.S. citizens. How are you going to go about doing that, right? It would really tear this country apart and certainly, would have a devastating impact on the Latino community as a whole.

MARTIN: One of the interesting things that has happened is that your groups kind of move into this — the political space in this way has arisen in a moment when we are seeing, at least according to the polls, more Latinos attracted to Donald Trump, not in huge numbers, but there’s a definite shift, there’s certainly a definite focus on the Latino vote. Why do you think that is?

PROANO: Well, you know, Latinos are social conservatives by nature. You know, certainly in the household that I brought up, we were fiscal conservatives, you know, when it came to issues of reproductive rights as well. And so, you know, that’s, by nature, if you will, a big part of being Latino. What we’re seeing today, those are actually — there’s a very significant, you know, chasm that’s being created between older Latinos and younger Latinos. What I would point out in regards to your comment about more Latinos supporting Donald Trump is more Hispanic males, not necessarily Latinas, for example, right? And so, really what you’re hearing is a big part of the narrative around that, but it actually really does skew towards one segment of the Latino community.

MARTIN: Let me just give you my data that I’m operating from. This is from the Pew Research Center. Latino voters now make up nearly 14 percent of the electorate. In the 2020 election, 38 percent of Latino voters backed Donald Trump compared to 28 percent in 2016. That’s a real difference. So, what happened there in your view?

PROANO: It is. You know, there are certain things, obviously, that really do attract some voters and certainly some Latinos to Donald Trump, and a lot of it really was policy oriented. You know, we’re not monolithic from the context of from a policy perspective. There are some Latinos that, you know, want closed borders, right? You know, we are a huge tent. Latinos really come from different backgrounds, races, ethnicities, and we cut across socioeconomic strata, at the end of the day, but he obviously did a very good job of appealing to a certain segment of the group. But what I would also say is that Republicans have been investing in the Latino community for years, for years, and that’s something that the Democratic Party has actually not done. So, we’ve seen organization like LIBRE, for example, of Koch Brothers that have invested tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars, literally over a decade at this point. And the Democrats have not done the same.

MARTIN: And what does that look like? When you say investing, what are we talking about here?

PROANO: You know, different education programs, for example, out in their community, you know, different type of advocacy campaigns that they’ve effectively run on a regional basis, on a national basis as well. You know, politics is obviously, at the end of day, very local and you do have to invest at a local level, but I believe that a lot of folks really try and treat Latinos as general market consumers. Effectively that we act and respond like everyone else, when in some cases, really, there is a lot more fine tuning to the messaging that these campaigns and candidates have to be able to deliver in order to be effective.

MARTIN: Even having said that, you’re saying that despite this massive what you’re calling investment in, I guess what it would be voter outreach and, you know, high contact kind of messaging, I would say the most kind of prominent Latino public officials are still Democrats, even if the Democratic Party on the whole has not invested in the way that you’ve described that the Republicans have. Why do you think that is? How did that happen?

PROANO: Well, because there’s a lot being done to disenfranchise Latino voters, from voter suppression, voter intimidation, gerrymandering in certain states, certain parts of the country where there should be more Latino representation and there isn’t. And so, you end up kind of sort of shifting it to more Democratic strongholds, for example, like in South Texas and Harris County, for example, or a bear county, for example, where we do have really strong Latino representation as well.

MARTIN: What difference, do you think, that this endorsement will make? What will it mean for your organization and what do you think it’ll mean for the democratic ticket?

PROANO: Well, there’s no question that the endorsement rung wide. I mean, everyone really knows about the endorsement. It went international. The campaign certainly took note of the influence and reach of LULAC as an organization. And our hope is that, you know, it will send a clear message to Latinos that are basically on the edge, that haven’t necessarily made a decision that the candidate that really has their best interest in mind is Kamala Harris as opposed to Donald Trump who wants to deport 15 million Latinos.

MARTIN: Let me just wheel around to one other issue. Recently, the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton’s, office raided the homes of several Latino voting activists, including members of LULAC, part of his investigation into alleged election fraud and vote harvesting during the 2022 elections. I was interested in how LULAC became aware of these raids and, you know, what went through your mind when you heard about them?

PROANO: Well, we’ve been tracking it for some time. And so, we had seen that the attorney general had actually sued the Annunciation House, which provides — it’s a nonprofit organization that provides respite services for immigrants. He also sued the Archdiocese of Rio Grande Valley, Sister Norma Pimentel, which does absolutely incredible work in that area. And so, our expectation is that they were going to sue LUCAL next as a 501(c)(3) and as a 501(c)(4). So, we were certainly surprised when they started to go after Latino activists, Latino leaders, even some candidates that were actually running for public office. It took us a couple of days to actually find out about it because, in most cases, they had actually taken their phones and computers. They literally were told not to tell anyone about it. And so, it took about 48 hours for us to actually hear back from our members and back from the community.

MARTIN: Well, what are you going to do about this? I mean, I understand that you filed a civil rights complaint with the federal Department of Justice. What does that mean? What does that entail and what happens next?

PROANO: Well, we actually did meet with the DOJ last week, as a matter of fact. They were very responsive to the request. We sent in a letter to the assistant attorney general, Kristen Clarke, who’s in charge of the civil rights office. And so, I do believe that they took the inquiry seriously. They had folks both from the criminal division and also from the voting rights division as well present. We laid out the case in what we believe is going on with our voter intimidation and voter suppression. Obviously, you know, we probably won’t be notified if they actually do have an open investigation. And just given where we are in the election year, now less than 60 days, I don’t even know if they’re going to comment publicly. But we will continue to advocate. We have partnered with leading civil rights organizations, African American civil rights organizations. And so, for us, it’s a community response. This just does not impact Latinos, and it’s not specific to Texas, it impacts the African American community in Georgia and Virginia and other states alike.

MARTIN: So, we reached out to Attorney General Paxton’s office for comment about the lawsuit. But there’s a — we haven’t heard back yet. But there was a press release launching the investigation, and I’ll just read a quote from it. It says, in 2022, the Election Integrity Unit received a referral from the 81st Judicial District Attorney Audrey Louis regarding allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting that occurred during the 2022 elections. The subsequent two-year investigation provided sufficient evidence to obtain the search warrants in furtherance of the ongoing investigation. I mean, how do you respond to that? I mean, I think their argument is that they have evidence that these activities occurred. What do you say to that?

PROANO: I don’t believe that they have evidence, you know. I think from what we understand is that they have a phone conversation, but they don’t really have any material data that they can actually show that there is actually voter fraud or voter harvesting happening. As a matter of fact, they really undercut their own argument when they announced that they were purging 1.1 million voters from their voter rolls and specifically stated that only 6,500 of those people that were purged from the voter roll were non-citizens. 1,900 with load history. And so, it doesn’t necessarily even account for naturalized citizens. So, you’re talking about half of a percent and one-one thousandth of a percent of those 1.1 million people that may have been not citizens, for example.

MARTIN: So, why do you think they did it?

PROANO: Well, you know, they want to show that they’re going to be tough when it comes to election integrity. They do want to intimidate the Latino community from coming out to vote, but I believe that they’re actually setting the foundation for making the case of contesting the 2024 election. Before they had to contest it post-election, and now, they’re basically trying to lay the groundwork where they can contest it in 2024 in November.

MARTIN: What other steps do you think LULAC will take kind of going forward? This is a very unusual election year. I mean, at least as far as the top of the ticket is concerned. What are you and your members going to do in this time frame?

PROANO: Well, our membership has gone through kind of sort of like this range of feelings, right, from shock to anger, some fear and now resolution. You know, they are more resolved to actually be more engaged to get out there and do the voter registration to do our Geo TV campaign and to make sure that LULAC members certainly are going to vote and the Latino community is going to vote. LULAC is really interesting. So, we have 265,000 members at this point. 79 percent of them are registered to vote. 72 percent of them voted in 2020 and 66 percent of them voted in 2022. So, what we do know is if they’re LULAC members, they’re politically engaged, they’re registered vote and they do vote in elections. And so, we’re going to do our best to make sure that they’re informed and that they have all the information that they need to make the best decision for them on a personal level and also for the community as well.

MARTIN: But you’ve also pointed out that the Latino community, writ large, is not monolithic. And I think I heard you say that there are probably some people who do believe in mass deportation. I mean, there is some history for that. There was a mass deportation of Mexican Americans during the Eisenhower administration, right?

PROANO: That’s correct. That’s right.

MARTIN: I mean, I think maybe some people may be shocked to hear this, but it is a fact that historically, when a prior mass deportation did take place, there were people in the Mexican American community that did support it. Given that this difference of opinion has existed before, given that we do see a noticeable percentage of Latinos moving toward the Republican Party, what makes you think that that difference of opinion is going to be resolved by November?

PROANO: Well, you know, we’ve now had over 40 years of this conversation going back around comprehensive immigration reform. LULAC certainly is for common sense immigration reform, but we have to be able to separate out the issues of immigration at the border and the influx of immigrants that are coming in, but also the issues on the interior. You know, again, I talk about those Latinos that have been here for years, right, decades in some cases, and what they’re looking for is a pathway to citizenship, for example, they want to be able to have temporary protective status so they would actually be able to work legally in this country. It’s not an easy problem to solve, but we did see bipartisan legislation enacted. It was passed in Congress. It was thwarted by Donald Trump. And so, you know, we feel like that potentially could get passed. We certainly support it. Kamala Harris has supported it. She actually said that she would actually sign that bill if it comes to her desk, if she should be elected president. So, we do at least feel like there is some pathway to move forward.

MARTIN: You know, you’ve been a part of the organization for a long time and you joined it at a time when it was avowedly bipartisan — you know, nonpartisan. This is new for the organization. I’m just wondering, how is this for you? If you don’t mind my asking. It seems a little uncomfortable.

PROANO: It is. It — you know. Sometimes it feels like I’m walking on landmines, for example. I mean, you know, there’s a lot to factor in when you talk about the Latino community. Latino identity, for example, is really one of those big issues. You know, there’s no question that LULAC has its roots primarily in Mexican American culture in the Chicano movement. I’m Peruvian. I am Colombian by descent. But the organization is changing. And so, I’m looking to see what LULAC will look like as we move closer to our 100th year, but I’m also looking at what it’s going to look like for the next 100 years. And there’s no question, right, that, you know, Latino community is getting younger and younger and younger in the United States. LULAC’s own membership is also beginning to skew younger. And so, I believe that we are now at kind of this precipice where, you know, it will change. It will look different, but still honoring the history and the incredible legacy that the organization has. And certainly, obviously, you know, supporting our Mexican American community, but also Peruvians, Colombians, Venezolanos, all Latinos. And that’s really what we stand for, is all Latinos.

MARTIN: Juan Proano, thank you so much for speaking with us.

PROANO: Thank you, Michel. Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure.