Guide on 17 Texas proposed constitutional amendments on the November 4, 2025 electon ballot – pros, cons, and potential impacts on racial/ethnic and economic equity for all Texans. Be an informed voter.
Tag: Public Policy
Debates about immigration, crime, and deportation in Texas have been markedly hostile for some time and growing more so each day. Unfortunately, the information most Texans receive about this issue is short-sighted, repetitive, and misguided. The premise on which the current deportation binge is based, “Latino immigrants are crime-prone”, is not only false, the opposite is true.
By Mike Tapia, PhD, LTPC Fellow
Texas hosts the largest immigration detention footprint in the U.S, with detainee counts and facilities disproportionate to its estimated undocumented population share. The detention capacity reflects political and institutional choices—border proximity, state–local cooperation with ICE, and a private-prison industry—more than it mirrors objective immigrant reality. Lawfully present immigrants and U.S. citizens have been detained – revealing that racial profiling and weak verification systems have led to wrongful detentions, disproportionately affecting Latinos and other communities of color.
By Juan Flores
Texas’ ultra-right and regressive political and policy environment is worsening the social, cultural, and economic mobility for many Latino families – it echoes and has similarities to the Jim Crow era. Despite progress, disparities and inequities remain, with structural similarities emerging to systems that marginalized African Americans, Latinos, and low-income Whites. All emerging under an undemocratic and exploitive Texas vision. It must be resisted with equitable human capital investment in all Texas families.
Inflicting mental health and education harm on school children, causing teachers stress, and weakening their effectiveness.
High school students have encountered barriers in finding helpful college information, funding opportunities, key student services, and staff personnel to help them access and succeed in college.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in higher education are under assault through racist DEI distortions and harmful legislation. It’s threatening an ever-widening campaign of racial/ethnic, cultural, and linguistic suppression. It will reduce Latino faculty leadership and enrollment and graduation of the majority workforce for a future Texas.
Operation Lone Star has led to a troubling escalation in the criminalization of Latinos, particularly American citizens of Mexican origin residing in towns along the U.S.-Mexico border, coupled with the racially laden anti-Latino immigrant messaging, creating divisiveness and marginalization.
The state has for decades failed to provide affordable coverage opportunities or expand Medicaid to uninsured adults—the health and financial costs to Latino families continue to be disproportionately harmful. Over 3 million Latinos are uninsured, cutting across all areas of employment and occupations. Texas’ purported economic miracle is an absurdity for Latino families.
Texas consistently performs poorly in redistricting research compared to other states. Partisan gerrymandering is not the only mechanism that negatively impacts Latino voters – racial gerrymandering and vote dilution serve as other forms of political marginalization. By Guadalupe Cantu, MPA and Stacy Hernandez, MGPS