El Magonista | Vol. 11, No. 23 | August 3, 2023

Aspiring staffers stuck in limbo as lawmakers go ‘round and round in this circle’

Edgar Vazquez came to D.C. in the summer of 2021 with a plan: complete his congressional internship and turn it into a full-time job on the Hill.

Vazquez, who grew up in the Houston area, wasn’t especially political as a kid. But it was a dizzying time in Texas for state and national politics. President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, and two years later, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke nearly unseated Republican Ted Cruz in one of the most closely watched Senate races of the cycle.

“There was just a lot of noise,” Vazquez said in an interview. “I had an idea of what the parties were, but I wasn’t actively involved.”

On a whim, he decided to intern for John Culberson’s campaign, as the longtime Republican congressman made his final bid for reelection. He learned the fundamentals of block-walking and phone-banking and began what would be a series of internships, culminating with one in the office of Texas GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales.

Vazquez was riding high until, about halfway through his three-month assignment, he learned his days on the Hill were numbered.

That’s because Vazquez isn’t an American citizen. He was born in Mexico and came to Texas as a child with his family. Like roughly 580,000 other young adults living in the U.S., he’s a beneficiary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program that the Obama administration created in 2012 via executive action.

DACA provides protection from deportation and certain other benefits for eligible young people. But it does not provide a pathway to citizenship. And, as Vazquez learned, most noncitizens, including DACA recipients, are prohibited from working for the federal government or Congress thanks to a little-known provision tucked into annual appropriations bills since before the program existed... READ MORE

California State University, Northridge, Fullerton, and LA are also among the top schools enrolling Latino students, Excelencia in Education report says.

At first, Los Angeles area resident Melissa Becerra Amador didn’t know if she would go to college. But through her peers and mentors, she started to realize the value of having a degree.

Now, the Cal State Northridge graduate is pursuing a master’s degree in education. Amador believes that representation in higher education helps her and other students feel a sense of belonging.

But a new report shows that, across the U.S., the gap between Latino and White, non-Hispanic students who complete their college degree has widened over the last four years, in part because of the coronavirus pandemic and resulting economic hardships.

The analysis was done through Excelencia in Education, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit whose mission is to accelerate Latino student success in higher education.

While more Latinos students are enrolled in schools overall, graduation rates have seen “little progress” over the last few years, researchers said.

This year’s Latino College Completion study, conducted every few years, looks at national and state student enrollment in higher education institutions from the 2021-22 school year, and degree completion data from the school year prior, 2020 to 2021. It draws on data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, or IPEDS.

Nationwide, just 30% of Latino adults earned an associate degree or higher, compared with 53% of White, non-Hispanic, 39% of Black and 66% of Asian adults, the report said.

In California, just 22% of Latino adults age 25 and up earned an associate degree or higher, versus 56% of White, non-Hispanic adults.

Until 2018, U.S. Latinos had been earning college degrees at an accelerated rate for about ten years, researchers from Excelencia in Education said.

Latino students were overall more likely to drop out of school when compared with their White peers, the report found. Nationwide, at two-year institutions, 45% of Latino students were no longer enrolled at any school after three years, compared to 38% of White, non-Hispanic students in 2021. At four-year institutions, 31% of Latino students were no longer enrolled at any school after six years, compared to 20% of White, non-Hispanic students in 2021... READ MORE

Of all the ways that Donald Trump desecrated his office as president, the gravest — as outlined in extraordinary detail in the criminal indictment issued against him on Tuesday — was his attempt to undermine the Constitution and overturn the results of the 2020 election, hoping to stay in office.

The special counsel Jack Smith got right to the point at the top of the four-count federal indictment, saying that Mr. Trump had knowingly “targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.”

Bedrock. It’s an apt word for a sacred responsibility of every president: to honor the peaceful transfer of power through the free and fair elections that distinguish the United States. Counting and certifying the vote, Mr. Smith said, “is foundational to the United States democratic process, and until 2021, had operated in a peaceful and orderly manner for more than 130 years,” since electoral counting rules were codified. Until Mr. Trump lost, at which point, the indictment makes clear, he used “dishonesty, fraud and deceit to impair, obstruct and defeat” that cornerstone of democracy.

The criminal justice system of the United States had never seen an indictment of this magnitude. It’s the first time that a former president has been explicitly accused by the federal government of defrauding the country. It’s the first time a former president has been accused of obstructing an official proceeding, the congressional count of the electoral votes. Mr. Trump also stands accused of engaging in a conspiracy to deprive millions of citizens of the right to have their votes counted. This fraud, the indictment said, led directly to a deadly attack by Mr. Trump’s supporters on the seat of American government.

It’s the third criminal indictment of Mr. Trump, and it demonstrates, yet again, that the rule of law in America applies to everyone, even when the defendant was the country’s highest-ranking official. The crimes alleged in this indictment are, by far, the most serious because they undermine the country’s basic principles.

The prosecution’s list of false voter fraud claims made by Mr. Trump and his associates is extensive: that 10,000 dead people voted in Georgia, that there were tens of thousands of double votes in Nevada, 30,000 noncitizens voting in Arizona and 200,000 mystery votes in Pennsylvania, as well as suspicious vote dumps and malfunctioning voting machines elsewhere... READ MORE

Mexico has been one of America’s closest allies for years under both Democratic and Republican administrations, even Donald Trump’s.

That may be changing. Republican officials and voters have not only expressed criticisms of Mexico but also outright hostility against America’s southern neighbor.

The starkest example involves repeated calls by Republican presidential candidates to bomb Mexico or unilaterally send troops there to stop the illegal drug trade, which would be an act of war.

Trump led the way: He asked defense officials about striking Mexico with missiles while he was president, and during the 2024 presidential campaign he has supported military action. Ron DeSantis has called for using deadly force and a naval blockade of Mexican ports to stop drug traffickers. More moderate candidates, like Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, have also backed using the military against drug cartels in Mexico.

“You know what you tell the Mexican president? ‘Either you do it or we do it,’” Haley said in March. “But we are not going to let all of this lawlessness continue to happen.”

These calls haven’t become a major focus of national attention because the Republican campaign remains in its early stages. But as the campaign picks up — including at the first debate, on Aug. 23 — you will probably hear more about this issue.

Taking cues from Trump’s 2016 campaign playbook and presidency, other Republicans have already translated his disparagement of Mexicans and other Latinos into policy, particularly on immigration. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott put razor wire, floating barriers and state troopers along the U.S.-Mexico border to deter people from coming into the country illegally. The federal government sued Texas last week to try to stop him... READ MORE

NASHVILLE — She sat on the edge of a picnic table outside the Comfort Inn and waited for the hearing to begin.

“Hello?” Magdalena Hernández Pérez said into her phone. “Can you hear me?”

On the screen flashed the face of a judge in California, the man deciding whether she would see her daughter again, more than five years after they were separated by U.S. Border Patrol agents.

“Hello?” she tried again. She wore a blue work uniform and pink lipstick that she hoped would make her look more American.

There was no response. Her hand trembled, then the screen turned black.

The Biden administration had brought Magdalena from Guatemala to the United States to reunite with her daughter, a reversal of the Trump administration’s policy of family separation that had torn them apart.

But now a county judge’s question loomed over their future: Was Magdalena the right person to raise her own child?

In between shifts at the hotel’s laundry room, she had written a statement to read at the hearing. She held the paper in her right hand so it didn’t blow away in the wind.

“I promise I can take care of my daughter,” she wrote.

“I have permission to be in this country legally,” she wrote.

“I have permission to work here.”

But the call wasn’t connecting. Somewhere in California, Magdalena knew, strangers were discussing whether her child was better off with a foster family.

“In the matter of Mildred Analy Hernández Pérez,” the case file began.

“Fifty-fifty,” is how her social workers had described Magdalena’s chances at the hearing.

Outside the Comfort Inn, across the street from the Tennessee Titans’ massive football stadium near downtown Nashville, Magdalena shook her phone. The screen was still frozen.

U.S. Border Patrol agents had taken her 9-year-old daughter from her in December 2017 at an immigration detention facility in Arizona. They were among the first migrant families to be separated by the Trump administration — and now had endured one of the longest separations... READ MORE

Despite nominal support for transfers from lawmakers and university officials, transferring to four-year state schools is an unrealized goal for too many.

With 1.8 million students at its 116 campuses, the California Community College system is the nation’s largest higher-education institution. Its low cost and ease of enrollment make it the single best way for a wide range of students of all ages in the Golden State to get the education and training they need to build successful lives and better communities. Helping California Community College students with solid records to realize their goals by simplifying transfers to California State University and University of California campuses should be something everyone in state government can agree on.

This isn’t just the case because of the value of promoting economic mobility through higher education. Students taking classes, often remedial in nature, that don’t get them closer to two-year degrees or offer any help in getting them to four-year schools is a resource-devouring problem at community colleges. This inefficient waste of taxpayer dollars was targeted — with limited success — by a law the Legislature passed unanimously in 2017. In general, California Community College students transferring to CSU or UC schools need at least 60 credits. Yet according to the Campaign for College Opportunity, transfers average having around 90 credits.

Sadly, no consequential reforms have resulted from the rhetorical support for making the transfer process much easier that’s long been offered by governors, state legislators, and CSU and UC leaders and board trustees. “I’ve never heard anyone say, ‘I don’t want to improve transfer,’” former California Community College President Eloy Ortiz Oakley told EdSource in May. “But yet here we are.”

Many of the obstacles are obvious and long-standing and stem from the autonomy each college has on key issues. Transfer acceptance policies vary, sometimes widely, depending on which of the 23 CSU or nine UC schools that a community college student hopes to attend... READ MORE

The peso’s soaring value means the money that Mexicans in the United States send home doesn’t go as far as it used to.

Most of the money that Antonio Solis makes delivering food on his motorcycle in New York City will eventually make its way to Monterrey, Mexico, where it will pay for his family’s mortgage, his daughter’s college tuition and daily expenses like groceries.

But covering those costs is getting harder. Mr. Solis, who earns about $3,500 a month delivering for apps like DoorDash, used to send about $1,500 monthly. Since the spring, he has had to send more than $2,000 to cover the same expenses, something he does by working longer days.

The culprit is a sharp appreciation of the Mexican peso over the past year, a product of high interest rates and foreign investments in Mexico, among other factors. That means each dollar Mr. Solis sends covers less of the budget back home. He, like hundreds of thousands of other Mexicans abroad, has contributed to the billions of U.S. dollars that flood into Mexico each year — money that families there rely on to make ends meet.

Mexico is the second-biggest receiver of remittances behind India. In 2022, those working abroad, primarily in the United States, sent more than $61 billion to Mexico. The largest portion of that money goes to food and clothes, followed by health care, according to the Wilson Center, a Washington research organization.

Relying on money from the United States means Mexicans are especially sensitive to large swings in its currency like this one. Remittances amounted to 4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product in 2021. Analysts say the falling purchasing power of each dollar sent to Mexico could discourage spending on big-ticket items — like homes or weddings — as families focus on their basic needs.

The value of the peso has climbed about 20 percent against the dollar since last fall, and is now the strongest it has been in about seven years. A dollar currently exchanges to about 16.7 pesos, down from about 20 when Mr. Solis first came to the United States in 2019. Although the amount of remittances in May was up from a year earlier, the spending power of that money declined more than 7 percent when adjusted for the peso’s surge as well as inflation, according to a report from Grupo Financiero BASE, a Mexican financial services firm... READ MORE

The U.S. Justice Department has asked a federal court to dismiss a case challenging Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Key Points:

• In an 8-1 ruling in United States v. Texas in June, the Supreme Court held that Texas and Louisiana lacked standing to challenge federal enforcement priorities related to arrest and deportation.

• Earlier this month, the Justice Department and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund both filed motions with the district court hearing the DACA case, saying the Supreme Court’s ruling calls into question the district court’s previous findings on standing.

• Texas and the other states challenging DACA dispute that the United States v. Texas Supreme Court ruling is applicable; instead, they say a separate recently decided Supreme Court case, Biden v. Nebraska, which struck down the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program as exceeding the Secretary of Education’s statutory authority, reinforces their position that the Secretary of Homeland Security lacked the authority to create DACA.

Additional Information: District Court Judge Andrew Hanen is hearing the DACA case after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the memorandum that created DACA in 2012 was unlawful but also asked the district court to consider the legality of a Biden administration rule to protect DACA. The Biden administration constructed the rule to “preserve and fortify” DACA, but the states challenging the program say it “suffers the same flaws” as the 2012 memorandum.

Currently, the Department of Homeland Security continues to adjudicate renewal applications (both DACA and employment authorization) and advance parole requests for existing DACA recipients; the agency remains prohibited from granting initial DACA requests and accompanying requests for employment authorization. BAL will continue to monitor the ongoing litigation and will provide updates on important developments related to DACA... READ MORE

As California’s population exploded in the 1950s and 1960s – surpassing New York to become the nation’s most populous state in 1962 – its political leaders responded with sweeping plans to satisfy burgeoning demands for public services.

New freeway routes were plotted to carry millions of additional cars. State and local bond issues were drafted to build schools for the baby boom. New dams and canals were designed to increase water supplies. And, a master plan was written to unify California’s colleges and universities.

Six decades later, California’s population is nearly three times larger, but stalled at just under 40 million and has been declining slowly.

Many of those once-planned freeways never got past the planning stage, public school enrollment is declining, the California Water Plan has mostly been built (but still has a bottleneck in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta), and the much-vaunted Master Plan for Higher Education remains on the books but never achieved the seamless pathway to low-cost, universal student access it envisioned.

While the demand for higher education is huge, and while the state’s economy rests on having a highly trained and educated workforce, the state’s three collegiate systems – the University of California, California State University and more than 100 locally managed community colleges – remain more competitive than cooperative.

If anything, friction among the systems has been increasing as they squabble over academic turf and compete for financing in a state budget that struggles to pay for all of its spending.

The 1960-vintage master plan, whose two political fathers were UC’s legendary president, Clark Kerr, and then-Gov. Pat Brown, delineated the roles that all three would play... READ MORE

Isaac Alarcón joined the Cowboys in 2020, thanks to the NFL's International Player Pathway (IPP) program.

DALLAS — Versión en Español: ‘Sigue tus sueños’: Un aspirante de los Cowboys espera ser el primer jugador nacido en México enlistado en la NFL

Less than one month until the loyal throng of Dallas Cowboys fans engulf the practice fields at training camp.

Kids cling to the fences like primer with Sharpies secure in their clenched fists.

Hoping to see Dak. Hoping for an autograph. Hoping to one day wear “The Star” themselves.

For 44 years, the Cowboys have held training camp in southern California -- 17 of them in the city of Oxnard.

Every summer, the Pacific breeze waves in faithful supporters from around Golden State and south of the border for a chance to see their favorite team up close.

Once again bound for Cowboys camp this year is the Alarcón family, who will travel more than four hours from Monterrey, Mexico, to see their beloved Cowboys -- and their beloved son, Isaac.

Isaac Alarcón joined the Cowboys in 2020, thanks to the NFL's International Player Pathway (IPP) program.

The IPP is a league initiative to grow the game globally, by providing NFL opportunities for non U.S. and Canadian Citizens.

Teams are permitted an exemption spot on the practice squad for IPP players, if they're not picked for the 53-man roster.

Since coming to America's Team, Alarcón has played in a few preseason games before spending the duration of the regular seasons on the practice squad.

To this point, the most national exposure he's received in the NFL came in 2021 when the Cowboys were featured in HBO's hit TV series "Hard Knocks."

The IPP program is temporary, though. Alarcón is no longer eligible for the practice squad exemption spot.

"I was getting ready to go back to Mexico, man. Finish my college degree and everything,” Alarcón admitted. "It was like praying for the impossible, you know?"

On January 25, Alarcón received a call from Cowboys Vice President of Player Personnel Will McClay, one of the men in charge of the roster construction... READ MORE

In the spring of 1979, Roberto Rodriguez was on assignment for Lowrider Magazine in East Los Angeles. The film “Boulevard Nights,” which dramatized the life of Chicano gangs in the neighborhood, had just debuted, and law enforcement officials across Southern California were arresting people for simply cruising in their barrios.

On Whittier Boulevard, where Rodriguez had gone to interview and photograph people, he saw L.A. County sheriff’s deputies beating up a man who had wandered onto the street waving a serape. Rodriguez documented the assault, until the deputies demanded he leave.

“Next thing you know,” Rodriguez wrote in his subsequent article, “I got pushed from behind and then I heard [a deputy] say, “Get against the f— car.”

Four deputies kicked, punched and beat Rodriguez with a baton before arresting him. He spent three days in the hospital, got 14 stitches for a gash between his eyebrows, then found out that charges would be filed against him for allegedly assaulting the deputies with his camera.

“The sad part is ... things like this happen every weekend — like it was nothing,” Rodriguez concluded.

Rodriguez went on to become one of the most prolific Chicano writers of his generation. He authored poems, books and a nationally syndicated column with his wife, Patrisia Gonzales, while lecturing nationwide on everything from police brutality to ethnic studies, Aztec teachings and contemporary politics.

He died Monday of heart failure in Mexico, where he had lived near Teotihuacan for the past three years while working on his next project and continuing to write his own bimonthly column. He was 69.

“Robert always kept his heart and soul with la gente,” said Felix Gutierrez, a retired USC journalism professor who first met Rodriguez when the latter was the editor-in-chief of UCLA’s Chicano newspaper in the 1970s. “He wasn’t looking for a fight, but he was always standing up for the people and issues that other people didn’t stand up for as consistently as they should’ve.”

Prosecutors eventually dropped the charges against Rodriguez, but he still sued, alleging that the deputies had violated his 1st Amendment rights and civil rights. In 1986, a jury awarded him $205,000. He used the money to start a bilingual magazine, telling LA Weekly the following year that “it would’ve been like drinking my own blood” to use the money just on himself. “And that victory represents a lotof blood,” he added.