Could you say more about that?

Yeah, I mean, I think the shootings were very different in the sense that one was fatal, the other was not, but also local officials and activists and residents in Austin really came out hard and were kind of like jumping up and down and saying like, hey, ICE is really surging here, whereas that was not really the case in Houston, but also the mayor in Houston when Lorenzo Sergada was killed a few months ago in July, didn't want to pick a fight.

It seemed like he was very calculated, whereas Mayor Kirk Watson was... immediately calling for investigation and got the attention of DHS.

We saw Secretary Mullen not name-check him, but saying that Austin was pretty much a sanctuary city, which is not true.

So I think that was part of it.

I think we found that distinction very fascinating, and we're going to continue to cover the story.

What do you make of that decision? That sounds like quite a lot of money, and I think it's like a $30 million increase in what they had originally planned, no?

Yeah, I think it's fascinating how much leadership is coalescing around Mr. Paxton and spending here.

But Alejandro, can you sort of summarize for us the Republican response to this?

Sure.

Yeah.

It was kind of like, I would say, a mix of straight up calling it racist.

We've had some state lawmakers be directly tweeting about French, delete this.

Then you had people who were, I guess, a little more eloquent in why it's a bigger problem for the Republican Party.

Then you had defenders, people being like, yeah, this is a massive problem.

weed him out of the party, they just stopped trying once he won the primary in March.

What seems to be the difference this election cycle?

Yeah, I think that's right.

I think Democrats have been hopeful that they could finally capture a statewide victory for the first time since 1994.

So what's different this time? I think it's like this perfect mix that Democrats are feeling really optimistic about.

You have a really unpopular war in Iran.

You have a really tough economy.

People feel the squeeze at the grocery store, at the gas pump.

What's happened?

How common are these kinds of detentions and deportations of U.S. citizens? Not

very common, but also it's important to remember that it's not very documented.

I guess there's little oversight, but one of the last congressional watchdog reports is now five years old, and it looked at a period from 2015 to 2020.

Okay.

or so, and it identified that there had been several hundred people arrested who were likely Americans, detained even fewer, and then actually removed, it was 70 people.

So that just offers like a little window for Publica.

The investigative news outlet has tried documenting these instances since President Trump returned to office.

What type of documentation did he have and how was he eventually able to get that to authorities?

Say more about what he's doing here.

Yeah, I think before we get to Mr. Collier, it's important to understand how independent candidates get on the ballot in Texas.

So they have to wait for the runoffs to be over, and then they have to start gathering signatures.

And there's a mechanism to the math of the number of signatures they need, but it's a lot, a couple thousand, and it has to be from people who didn't vote in either primary.

So Mr. Collier is saying that is a really onerous task, especially after we had runoffs that have just wrapped up.

So he's filing this federal lawsuit trying to to overhaul the system.

And I'm reading in the Texas Tribune that there might be another Republican convention coming up before the midterm elections.

Yeah, that's right.

But, but before we dive into all that stuff, can you talk about what the lay of the land is right now in terms of where the vast majority of Latino voters are in po- in, you know, as part of this, uh, political coalition?

Yeah.

So I think, um...

Thank you for having me.

I think one of the, um, the big, uh, reasons that this special election for the Texas Senate seat has gotten so much attention is because people are kind of pining for a, a measurement of what you just described.

You know, how- what would- how will voters react to the president's policies? And it's, it's difficult to assess that with, specifically with Latinos, because, you know, it's a, [chuckles] it's a big group.

It's not a monolith, as we often like to say, and any number of Latinos will do any number of different things.

Yeah