A Latino civil rights group is asking the Department of Justice to open an investigation into a series of raids conducted on Latino voting activists and political operatives as part of a sprawling voter fraud inquiry by the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton.
The League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organizations, said that many of those targeted were Democratic leaders and election volunteers, and that some were older residents. Gabriel Rosales, the director of the group’s Texas chapter, said that officers conducting the raids took cellphones, computers and documents. He called the raids “alarming” and said they were an effort to suppress Latino voters.
In a statement last week, Mr. Paxton, a Republican, described the raids, carried out in counties near San Antonio and South Texas, as part of an “ongoing election integrity investigation” that began two years ago to look into allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting. His office has said that it will not comment on the investigation because it is still underway.
That investigation is part of a unit, the election integrity unit, which was created as Republican-led states sought to crack down on supposed voter crime after former President Donald J. Trump began making false claims of fraud in the wake of the 2020 election. Experts have found that voter fraud remains rare.
