The Biden Administration is still separating immigrant kids and their families.
By JOHN WASHINGTON & ANNA-CATHERINE BRIGIDA
By KATHRYN JONES
01 EDITOR’S LETTER
02 POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE
Who besides Beto O’Rourke can progressives in Texas now hang their hopes on? by JUSTIN MILLER
04 EYE ON TEXAS
The “red wave” fizzled nationwide but swept Texas as expected.
What now? by ERNIE MORÁN
06 THE INTERVIEW
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023
EDITOR- IN - CHIEF Gabriel Arana
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Ivan Armando Flores
SENIOR WRITER & EDITOR Lise Olsen
EDITOR-AT- LARGE Gayle Reaves
DIGITAL EDITOR Kit O’Connell
SENIOR WRITER & ASSISTANT EDITOR Gus Bova
SENIOR WRITER Justin Miller
STAFF WRITERS Delger Erdenesanaa, Michelle Pitcher
EDITORIAL FELLOW Arman Badrei
INTERN Ikram Mohamed
POETRY EDITOR Naomi Shihab Nye
STAFF CARTOONIST Ben Sargent
COPY EDITOR Adam Muro
FACT CHECKERS Zein Jardaneh
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Anna-Catherine Brigida, Matt Byers, Kathryn Jones, Andrew Logan, Ernie Morán, Roberto Ontiveros, John Washington, and Byrd Williams IV
CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS
Sarah Bell & Drue Wagner
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
Fred Ramos, Christopher Lee, Mathew Busch, and Shelby Tauber
MANAGING DIRECTOR James Canup
DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Lauren Benavides
SPECIAL ADVISOR Bob Frump
TEXAS DEMOCRACY FOUNDATION BOARD
Children and their guardians are being cleaved apart in Texas—and elsewhere—two years into the new president’s term.
By JOHN WASHINGTON & ANNA-CATHERINE BRIGIDANewly elected Democratic caucus leader Trey Martinez Fischer of San Antonio on what the opposition has in store for the next legislative session by GUS
Laura Hernandez-Holmes (president), Lize Burr, Carlton
Carl, Saneta Devuono-Powell, Kate Donaho, Carrie James, Vince LoVoi, Cari Marshall, Ronald Rapoport, Peter Ravella, Lizette Resendez, Ronnie Dugger (emeritus), Abby Rapoport (emerita)
FOUNDING EDITOR Ronnie Dugger
OUR MISSION
We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are dedicated to the whole truth, to human values above all interests, to the rights of humankind as the foundation of democracy. We will take orders from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit.
The Texas Observer is a progressive nonprofit news outlet and print magazine covering the Lone Star State. The Observer strives to make Texas a more equitable place through investigative reporting, narrative storytelling, and political and cultural coverage and commentary. We dig
President Joe Biden promised to end the cruel, Trump-era policy of tearing immigrant kids away from their families. But as Contributors John Washington and Anna-Catherine Brigida’s investigation documents in our cover story, family separation is alive and well in this country. As one advocate told the reporters, “We said, ‘Never again,’ but here we are.” And in the next installment of our series on Texas rivers and the threats that endanger them, “Drifting Toward Disaster,” Contributor Kathryn Jones wonders how much longer the Brazos River can provide what a skyrocketing state population is going to need.
With midterm elections behind us, progressives in Texas have yet another session of the Legislature to dread. Senior Staff Writer Justin Miller takes inventory of the damage while Contributor Ernie Morán offers a postelection salve and call to action. Looking ahead, the staff of the Texas Observer consider how legislators could address the myriad social problems facing Texas denizens—and what they’ll likely do instead.
In our culture section, Contributor Roberto Ontiveros heralds the rebirth of pre-eminent Chicanx literary magazine Huizache , named for the resilient tree that grows everywhere in South and East Texas. Much as queer families are being run out of Texas by the charlatan in the Governor’s Mansion, Huizache had to flee to California to flourish. In books, Digital Editor Kit O’Connell reviews a new legal and social history of Lawrence v. Texas —the Texas-born Supreme Court case that decriminalized sodomy nationwide. In a stunning photo collection, Byrd Williams IV examines how Texas workers speak to posterity across four generations of his family of photographers.
beyond the headlines and contextualize news events. Our essays, reviews, and criticism seek to create a new cultural canon and challenge existing mythologies.
Since our founding in 1954, the Observer has focused on communities whose stories are too often ignored or poorly told.
We seek not only to inform, but to empower our readers, as we work to hold public officials and corporations accountable. Our reporters recognize that oppressed people are experts on their own lives and trust their expertise. Our journalism is factbased and rigorous, and we prize writing
that entertains as it informs. We value history as a reporting tool that allows us to interrogate the origins of policies and to correct narratives that whitewash exploitation, dispossession, and genocide. Our founding mission statement continues to guide our work.
Who will carry the torch now that the Democratic phenom’s star has fallen?
by JUSTIN MILLERIn the fall of 2021, a national reporter from Politico was in Austin writing another profile of Beto O’Rourke as the El Paso Democrat geared up to follow a failed presidential campaign with a run for governor. The reporter asked Mayor Steve Adler whether it was a sustainable political strategy for Texas Democrats for O’Rourke to keep running for statewide office again and again—in 2022 and beyond.
“Why not?” Adler said. “Just for a while.” At the time, the logic was clear. No one else had the name recognition, the fundraising abilities, the talent, or the political will to run against the state’s incumbent Republican Governor Greg Abbott. If not Beto, then who?
But after a dismal defeat by 11 points in November, O’Rourke probably does not hold the key to breaking the Democrats’ longest statewide electoral drought in the country.
While O’Rourke helped reinvigorate the liberal cause in Texas and is sure to play a significant role in party politics going forward, it’s time to move on from the “Beto or Bust” mentality.
But who else is there? The GOP’s long domination of the state means that the Democrats’ bench is rather bare. Many of their most prominent and experienced leaders in the state Legislature or in Congress represent safe blue districts and have come to enjoy the creature comforts of incumbency and seniority—even if it’s in the marginal minority. Only in the past few years has a new generation of Democrats begun to make its mark, largely in local government, but this cohort of younger rising party stars is still largely untested and unknown.
So who will carry the torch forward? What’s the future of Democratic politics in the 2020s, not just statewide but at the local level, in the Legislature, and in Congress? The next big statewide political contest will be in 2024 against Senator Ted Cruz should he run for another term.
For years, San Antonio’s Castro brothers have been flirting with runs for statewide office without pulling the trigger. This would be the perfect time for San Antonio Congressman Joaquin, who’s thus far been second chair to brother Julián’s political career, to finally make the leap.
Colin Allred, the former Baylor football star-turned-Dallas congressman, is another possibility. While he’s kept his head down during his two terms in Congress, Allred has more recently been working to build up his statewide profile in Texas. Congresswomen Lizzie Fletcher of Houston and Veronica Escobar, who succeeded O’Rourke in El Paso, could also be contenders. The traditional incubator for political talent is at the local level, and right now that’s especially true in Harris County. There, Lina Hidalgo overcame Texas Republicans’ all-out attempt to oust her from the county judge’s
office as she narrowly defeated Republican Alex Mealer in November.
Already an up-and-comer, Hidalgo has proven able to hold her own against foes from within her own party in Houston, like District Attorney Kim Ogg, as well as top Republicans like Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick in Austin.
That easily puts Hidalgo on the Dems’ shortlist of possible statewide candidates. Another young progressive, Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, is also carving out a name
for himself using his post to go after corporate polluters and do battle with state Republicans.
Still, the political promise of Texas’ big cities— ostensibly the laboratories of progressive power—remains in question. In Houston proper, Mayor Sylvester Turner was first elected back in 2015 with the support of a progressive coalition. However, many of his promises have failed to come to fruition, and his office will be up for grabs in 2023.
Moderate Dem John Whitmire, who has
represented Houston in the Texas Senate for 40 years, announced his bid in December with backing from local casino mogul Tilman Fertitta and other Republican mega-donors from the Bayou City’s ruling class—most of whom backed Hidalgo’s opponent.
The 73-year-old Whitmire is a political institution and the automatic frontrunner for the mayoralty, but he won’t be uncontested. So far, there are at least two other challengers who are part of the city’s younger generation: former City Council member Amanda Edwards and former County Clerk Chris Hollins.
Up in Dallas, Eric Johnson’s tenure as mayor has been a disappointment to many progressives. He’s been divisive within city hall and has a penchant for playing footsie with Abbott. But so far, he has no clear challenger for a second term. Fort Worth remains
under the thumb of the local GOP establishment. December’s mayoral runoff in Austin was between former state Senator Kirk Watson, who was mayor once before back at the turn of the century in the early 2000s, and state Representative Celia Israel. Neither are what you’d call political visionaries.
Elsewhere in the big cities, San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg was easily reelected to another term in 2021, as was longtime Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins this year. Jenkins frequently made headlines for battling with Abbott during the height of the pandemic, while Nirenberg has been a more low-key operator. Both have been eyed as potential candidates for higher office.
But with a firmly Republican-dominated Legislature that’s made a mission of restricting progressive power at the local level, ambitious Democrats in Texas are increasingly opting for the national stage.
Just a couple of years ago, Austin City Council member Greg Casar considered running for a seat in Dan Patrick’s Texas Senate; instead, he’s now headed for the U.S. House in Washington. In a punishing single term in the state House, Dallas Representative Jasmine Crockett made noise as a rabble-rouser. She also promptly opted to run for Congress, successfully winning the seat of the legendary Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson. As part of the state’s freshman class in Congress, Casar and Crockett will have to cut their teeth under a new Republican majority, but they could be important figures in the House’s growing Progressive Caucus—and part of Democratic Party’s long-term future back in Texas.
Of course, it’s quite possible someone else—currently off the state’s political radar—will become the next beacon of hope for Texas Dems. Part of O’Rourke’s fleeting success was that no one saw him coming. He emerged into political celebrity from obscurity, famously jumping into the 2018 U.S. Senate race with little support from traditional party apparatchiks while snubbing his nose at conventional campaign wisdom.
O’Rourke rewrote the playbook for how to run, if not win, in Texas. Now, some other fresh face needs to figure out how to get over the top.
by ERNIE MORÁN
Watching the national media’s reaction to last fall’s midterm elections made my head spin. While the cable news pundits and legacy media headlines spoke of the failure of a “red wave” to materialize, we here in Texas had to swallow the fact that our neighbors had chosen to reelect a governor who took no meaningful action to shore up our energy infrastructure after more than 200 fellow Texans died in an ice storm; who made guns easier to carry after the mass shootings in Sutherland Springs, at Santa Fe High School and the El Paso Walmart and leading up to the Uvalde elementary school tragedy; and whose version of “securing the border” meant sending busloads of migrants to faraway states with false promises. Oh, and we also reelected an attorney general who’s been under indictment for the past seven years.
And in Tarrant County, where I live, Tim O’Hare was elected county judge. As a Farmers Branch city councilmember, he had tried to make it illegal for undocumented persons to work or even rent a place to live. In the GOP primary, he won by running to the right of a conservative and popular former Fort Worth mayor.
It reminded me of how I felt in the summer of 2020, when two years of activism on the part of myself and hundreds of others in Fort Worth seemed to have done nothing for those we were trying to help. But it also made me want to tell people what I’ve been doing here in North Texas rather than throwing in the towel.
In May 2018, as the Trump administration’s policy on family separations at the border took shape, I led an effort to get my representative in Congress to halt it. As the son of immigrants and a bilingual teacher, I care deeply about the issue.
U.S. Representative Kay Granger, a Republican in Congress since 1997, had worked her way into senior leadership positions on various committees and task forces. I felt if anyone was going to be able to get the White House to listen to our pleas for humanitarian action, it would be her.
I started a weekly sidewalk protest near her office that grew from six people to a couple dozen, then 40, then 80. The press covered our actions and more people joined each week, culminating in more than 200 protesters during the week of the Texas State Democratic Convention that June. It was remarkable to get that kind of consistent turnout in Tarrant County, where for decades Republicans have run unopposed in far too many local races. We kept at it for two more years. But then we had to stand down. The COVID outbreak made it too dangerous to get together in such groups, and our numbers dwindled. We faced a heartbreaking reality: All those hours of trudging up and down in all weather, visiting her office and logging our complaints with her staff hadn’t reunited a single child with their parents nor
nudged Granger into action.
What’s more, by 2020, progressives and people of color in Fort Worth were seething over two police abuse cases that seemed to show nothing had changed here, including one in which a black woman, Atatiana Jefferson, had been killed by a police officer responding to a request for a wellness check at her home. Then came the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, and the Summer of Justice, and protests through downtown Fort Worth, outside City Hall, and in the popular West 7th Street district. By the end of that summer, I knew I had to do something
beyond marching in the streets. I wasn’t ready to give up fighting for real change in Tarrant County.
About that time, a young science educator and nonprofit leader named Jared Williams announced his candidacy for Fort Worth City Council in my district in southwest Fort Worth.
Donald Trump won a little less of the vote in my precinct in 2020 than he did in 2016: 49 percent to 54 percent. But John Cornyn won reelection to the U.S. Senate with 52 percent of the vote in my precinct, and Granger took 54 percent on her way to another term.
So I reached out to Jared directly and offered to volunteer for his campaign. That’s where I thought I could have an impact on my community: the city council race in my district.
Over the next several months, we phone banked, we texted voters, and we knocked on doors—virtually every door in the district.
Despite being outspent 4-to-1, we forced a runoff in the three-way general election.
So we kept knocking on doors and calling and texting voters. And despite being outspent 6-to-1 in the month leading up to the runoff election, we finished the job and made a little Fort Worth history, unseating 16-year incumbent Jungus Jordan and electing the first person of color to the District 6 seat in the city’s history.
Elsewhere, Tarrant County has become ground zero in the school board culture wars. Opponents of racial and gender equity work, backed by the resources of political action committees, have gone after superintendents, school board trustees, and teachers who seek to improve policy and curriculum for underrepresented students. They have organized and drawn media attention—at times flattering coverage. These PACs are laser-focused on school boards.
But while awful things have happened in Southlake and Grapevine, to say nothing of some rural school districts in neighboring counties, the Fort Worth Independent School District has held steadfast in its commitment to equity work, replacing its ousted superintendent with one who has a track record of championing such work.
That is due in no small part to the support that citizens showed for those values through emails to trustees and speaking up at forums and school board meetings.
The ultimate takeaway for a progressive such as myself—a husband, dad, teacher, and advocate—is this: In order to create the world we want, the one we envision, we have to find allies and encourage them to get in the fight. Right here, where we live.
Our efforts can’t be limited to complaining on our social media accounts. If you have the means financially, pick a candidate or cause and support them. Donating has never been easier. Make regular contributions every few weeks.
If you can’t give money, find time to devote to the candidate or cause. Get involved. Stay involved. Go to city council meetings or school board meetings. Sign up to speak or give words of support to those who do. Write your local leaders and tell them what matters to you, how you want them to govern. Make these things part of your weekly or monthly routine.
Little by little, we’re making it happen in Fort Worth with small victories. Doing that across the state, we could build a Texas that is a model of progressivism for the nation. If that sounds unlikely, remember that nothing in Texas politics should be taken for granted. The Republican margins of victory in Texas are getting smaller. Democratic strength is growing in many major cities.
This is the struggle of our lives. We have to spend our lives winning it.
Or, better yet, try for change. It worked for this North Texas activist.Illustration Credit: Ivan Flores, Gus Bova, AP Images
San Antonio political pugilist Trey Martinez Fischer will lead the state House Democratic caucus in yet another bleak year.
For what feels like the hundredth year running, Democrats in 2023 will hold no positions of structural import in Texas state government. As such, the party is left only to decide what sort of opposition it will be—loyal or defiant, supplicant or obstructionist, scheming or strident? Enter Trey Martinez Fischer.
On December 7, House Dems elected Martinez—who’s served 10 terms in the lower chamber representing a majorityLatino swath of San Antonio—to chair the party caucus in the 88th legislative session. Martinez beat out Austinite Gina Hinojosa along with Williamson County Representative John Bucy, who withdrew before the vote. Over two decades, Martinez has established a reputation as a legislative brawler, unafraid to derail GOP bills with aggressive parliamentary maneuvers. He will succeed Chris Turner, an Anglo lawmaker from a diverse chunk of Tarrant County, and will inherit a Democratic caucus that’s shrunk to 64 members (out of 150) following the loss of three Hispanic-majority seats since 2021.
The Texas Observer spoke with Martinez about life in the minority, quorum breaking, and democracy.
TO: How did the caucus vote go down? There is nothing more humbling than to be evaluated by your peers. This is the ultimate job interview. And we had fine candidates.
I’m a huge fan of Gina Hinojosa. We’re partners. We’ve worked very well together. John is a younger member who has really come a long way in a short amount of time, and everybody ran a good campaign. This wasn’t a campaign based on ideology or one camp versus another. I mean, relationships are very personal in the Texas House.
If you think about it, we don’t have any statewide officeholders. When it comes to being the front line for the Democratic Party across the state, we are it, and we are the closest folks on the ground. We represent the smallest districts. So we’re in the proverbial foxhole, and when you’re in a foxhole fighting a battle for progressive principles, you want to know who
you’re in that foxhole with. And so I think this race was, you know—we clearly need a fighter.
Did it come down to a sort of “San Antonio versus Austin, which city has the better tacos” debate?
You’re damn right it was a taco debate, man—it was like come and take it, man. No, look, again with John out of the race my heart was warm because I knew that Gina and I work very well together, and nothing would make me more proud than to be by her side, letting her lead. And then, of course, I felt that if I was at the helm, I would bring just a few more years of experience and a few more battles that I have been tested in.
How would you rate House Democrats’ effectiveness as a minority over the last 15 to 20 years?
You always have to improve. You can always do a better job. So people think and believe that Leader Turner and I don’t get along. We actually get along fine. We have
a different style, and we have different tactics. But Chris worked very hard for this caucus and really has built it up to a level that it’s performing as one of the best caucuses I’ve seen since we’ve been in the minority.
What’s that stylistic difference between you and Turner?
Just the way we engage, how we approach legislation, how we build coalitions. I’ve got nothing critical [to say]. Chris did a good job. Chris left everything on the field. But we are very different. We come from different places. I’m a Latino from inner-city San Antonio. So my life experience is much different from his.
Democrats fled Austin to D.C. in 2021 to try to stymie voter suppression legislation, but the bill ended up passing anyway. So was that quorum break successful?
I think it was. Number one, if you just look baseline, they changed the freaking legislation. So for those who say we should just sit at our desks
and take our medicine, we would have had one of the crappiest voter suppression bills in the country. And we would have done nothing other than give speeches and push [voting buttons] to change that. Walking out and telling people that we’re not going to take that BS, and identifying real problems publicly that they knew privately, forced them to change. And so I know now we can have a “souls to the polls” program
Would you consider the tactic again? And if so, what would your red line be?
You know, they have this saying about Fight Club that the first rule to it is that you don’t talk about it. So I don’t talk about what I’m going to do or what I’m thinking. But you’ll know when the time comes.
In the November election, there were two House seats, HD 118 in San Antonio and HD 37 in the Cameron County area, that were winnable seats for Democrats. Republicans won them both by three points. And the Democrats were outraised financially. I don’t hear Democrats really talking about why these winnable Latino-majority seats were lost.
I like: Every single day, this state changes. Every single day somebody turns 18 and is eligible to vote. And those people who are turning eligible to vote are a very diverse group. So where we go forward for the next 10 years, I’m very bullish about that for Texas Democrats.
What is the path back to a House majority and how long will it take?
because they had to answer to the public about that. And taking it a step further, [we went and told] our friends in Washington to proverbially get off their ass and get to work. I think that meant something. Even to this day, you hear the president talking about our democracy being under attack and the need to have new voting rights, and I think that we contributed to that.
You know, I don’t know that I’ve ever been asked. A lot of us worked very hard in San Antonio. That district [118], you need to know, was strategically drawn to guarantee a Republican outcome.
It was still winnable for Democrats.
I mean, it’s easy to say, sitting on this call, you and I. Let’s talk to Frank [Ramirez, the Dem candidate] about that, who did all the hard work. But your point is well taken. There are seats out there that are competitive, no doubt about that. That being said, here’s what
With partisan gerrymandering and with a partially functioning Voting Rights Act, it is really hard to have justice for redistricting purposes. It’s very difficult for districts to be drawn fairly and respect communities of interest and the voting rights of minorities. Technology has done a lot to really draw districts to maintain political majorities. And so it’s hard to win those fights. But I think the number-one strategy is to not give up. I think the number one goal of Republicans in this state is to force us to wave the white flag. And we’re not going to do that. If you have the ability to fight, you have hope. I’ll take those two things over anything else when it comes to rebuilding our party, rebuilding our brand, and taking back our majority. So I’m gonna start with those.
UPS has thrown the higher education plans of dozens of El Paso High School students into disarray. The young people had just taken the SATs and handed their answer sheets to school officials, who handed them to UPS. En route to the College Board, the papers flew out of an unsecured truck. UPS and the school district salvaged most of the exams, NPR reported, but 55 unfortunate students’ work was lost to the wind.
The unreliable Texas grid could not stop one man’s pursuit of reliable family planning. When his urology clinic suddenly lost power, Dr. Christopher Yang thought he would have to cancel a patient’s impending vasectomy. But a staffer reminded the doctor about his brand-new electric truck parked outside. WGLT reported that Yang ran an extension cord out to the vehicle, which had plenty of battery juice to power a cautery device for the 15-minute procedure.
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An opportunistic black bear has been helping itself to leftovers in dumpsters outside a barbecue joint and a taqueria, leaving steaming scat behind. Neither noise from business owners nor rubber bullets from a sheriff’s deputy have deterred the ursine gourmand, so state officials have resorted to shooting the poor creature with paintballs, reported the Big Bend Sentinel . Black bears, extirpated from the area decades ago, returned to Big Bend country in the 1980s.
A debate over energy efficiency and equity in the nation’s seventh-biggest city was derailed by the siren call of petty drama. In September, City Councilman Mario Bravo publicly berated council colleague and exgirlfriend Ana Sandoval for disagreeing with his suggestion to use public utility revenue to weatherize low-income homes, saying her lack of support showed why he broke up with her. Bravo brought his parents and current girlfriend to defend his character. Unmoved, the council voted to censure him, according to the San Antonio Report
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She left her conservative community to make a difference, only to find she could make the biggest impact at home.
by ANDREW LOGAN Photography by SHELBY TAUBERWhen the U.S. Supreme Court overturned almost 50 years of legal precedent last June by stripping away the constitutional right to abortion, Destiny Adams was horrified. She foresaw devastating consequences for her community in Wolfforth, a tiny West Texas suburb of Lubbock with little access to contraception. She couldn’t stand by and do nothing.
“Women that aren’t prepared to have a child should have the right to say, ‘Hey, I can’t give this child the best life it could have. I need an abortion,’” Adams told the Texas Observer. “It shouldn’t be anyone else’s choice except for the mother.”
At Tumbleweed + Sage Coffeehouse, the bustling little shop Adams owns across the street from the Frenship High School football stadium, she started distributing free reproductive kits including Plan B pills, pregnancy tests, condoms, and informational pamphlets. In response, conservative members of her community have protested at her store, called the police on Adams, and are organizing to change city laws to stop her advocacy. “Initially, I was scared,” she said. “I’m putting my business and my livelihood on the line to help others. Was it really worth it?”
Adams says she’s not a troublemaker. She just wants to create a safe space for people who might otherwise feel alienated in her conservative, rural town. As the Observer previously reported, Tumbleweed + Sage hosted the first drag queen story time in Wolfforth last summer, sparking what the local police chief said was the only protest he’d seen in the city in three decades.
Before opening Tumbleweed + Sage in June 2020, Adams—a Lubbock native—had left her hometown to travel with her husband, Cole Adams, fighting for health care reform, civil rights, and women’s equality. For six years, she labored as a field director for the Texas Democratic Party and as an organizer for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The chaotic world of political activism was invigorating, but eventually the pull of family became overwhelming.
“Our parents were getting a little bit older,” Adams said. “My mom had health issues, and I wanted to come home and be with her.”
Having given up their political aspirations, the couple returned to Lubbock. As they evaluated their career options, they knew they wanted to do something that made a difference. Inspired by the sense of community in the local coffee shops they’d frequented on the campaign trail, Destiny
wanted to provide an accepting and inclusive space in her own hometown.
Tumbleweed + Sage opened for business three months into the COVID-19 pandemic. During its first year, the coffee shop offered only drive-through service. When the location finally opened its doors to the public, it hosted quirky, pop culture-themed events—Harry Potter Movie and Trivia Night, Mean Girls Shop Takeover, Twilight After Hours PJ Party, etc.—along with accompanying specialty drink and pastry menus.
”We’re a true mom and pop shop. You get what you get when you come here because it’s a resemblance of me and Cole,” Adams said.
The shop’s events also reflect the Adamses’ past as political activists. Despite the public outcry, Tumbleweed + Sage has continued to host drag events in recent months. And so far, they’ve distributed around 150 free reproductive kits, which are provided by Jane’s Due
Process, a nonprofit organization that helps teens access reproductive health services.
The backlash from conservative members in the community has been swift. Phone calls flood the office line so often that Destiny rarely keeps it plugged in, and protesters have held demonstrations outside of the shop. But Adams is resolute: “To enact change you have to make people feel uncomfortable,” she said.
Even though Adams is not breaking any laws by providing over-thecounter contraceptives, right-wing evangelicals are organizing to take drastic measures against her. Mark Lee Dickson, the radical anti-abortion advocate who lobbied for Lubbock to become a “sanctuary city for the unborn,” led a recent meeting at Flatland Bible Church in Wolfforth to discuss how to draft city ordinances to prevent the activism at Tumbleweed + Sage. The first ordinance discussed would ban the distribution of Plan B by anyone in Wolfforth. The second would ban all-age drag queen story times unless the venue hosting them is licensed as a sexually oriented business.
“We don’t want [Tumbleweed + Sage] to go out of business, per se,” said Jim Baxa, president of West Texas for Life, who attended the meeting. “We want them to repent, and we want them to stop doing the evil deed [of providing Plan B] and just provide coffee.”
Others in the community, meanwhile, note how important access to free contraceptives is, especially in a city like Wolfforth, where Adams said Plan B is not available in any store. When Evangelina Zubia—who attended high school in Lubbock—became pregnant at age 16, she was afraid to ask her mother for help. A cousin gave her the information for Jane’s Due Process, which provided Zubia with the same reproductive kit that Destiny distributes.
“It was really comforting to just know that someone’s putting in the effort to make sure that I don’t have to deal with teen pregnancy in the state of Texas. It made me feel like these people have my back,” said Zubia, now a first-year student at Texas Tech who volunteers for Jane’s Due Process as a reproductive kit deliverer, occasionally refilling the kits at Tumbleweed + Sage. ”At the end of the day, the most meaning we’re getting from this is that we’re educating our community and actually providing a service that is truly needed,” Adams said. “Yes, you can get free Plan B here. Yes, you can get free condoms here. Yes, you can get high quality coffee and pastries here. We’re just like the cool, big cities but in the middle of two dirt fields.” However, Adams’ advocacy has taken a personal toll. After she and Cole hosted the first drag queen story time event, Cole’s parents severed ties with them. “I almost got blindsided by it all. It was really depressing and really hurt my feelings,” he said.
Despite the personal ramifications and community backlash, Adams said there’s been an overwhelming swell of support too, and she has no plans to slow down.
“When I came home, I realized ... the right answer is to stay at home and actually enact change in a place I actually care about,” Adams said. “I know about the history. I know the people’s stories from here. I could have gotten more done here than I could have in politics ever. And I can see the people that it actually affects.”
Few rivers can claim as strong a connection to Texas’ natural and cultural history—and its very identity—as the Brazos.
It drains the second-largest river basin in Texas, meandering for 840 miles from the Llano Estacado near Lubbock, cutting across prairie and limestone hills to woodlands, through farms and ranches, cities, towns, and coastal marshes before finally merging with the Gulf of Mexico south of Freeport’s giant petrochemical plants.
Spanish explorers named it Los Brazos de Dios, “the Arms of God,” because of the river’s many tributaries and lifesaving waters. Texas’ first capital, when it was a colony authorized by the Spanish government, was founded on the Brazos at San Felipe de Austin. When it won its independence and became a short-lived republic, Texas established its capital at Washington-on-the-Brazos. The river has inspired poetry, art, and music. Perhaps most importantly for the Brazos’ own survival, it inspired an enduring book.
Fort Worth native and author John Graves wrote Goodbye to a River about a three-week canoe trip he had made on the Brazos in fall 1957. He wanted to memorialize the river he had hunted, fished, and paddled before it could be changed forever by a string of dams that had been proposed from Possum Kingdom to Whitney. Graves wrote of the beauty of the free-flowing river; the stories of the Comanches and Anglo settlers who had lived on its banks; and even mentioned the encroachment of industry in the form of a gravel pit.
The book—still in print since its publication in 1960—sparked a conservation movement and helped lead to the abandonment of plans for all but one of the downstream dams. In 2005, the Texas Legislature created the John Graves Scenic Riverway on the segment of the Brazos from below Possum Kingdom Lake to just above Lake Granbury and gave it stronger protections from rock mining.
The legislation tightened rules so that any quarry operating within a mile of the river must obtain a special permit. It banned new quarries or expansions located within 200 feet and those between 200 and 1,500 feet of the river unless they could
meet specific criteria set to control erosion and protect wildlife habitats. The criteria also required a reclamation plan and the use of best-available technology.
Many quarries shut down as a result of the new restrictions, but tourism has flourished. Thousands of people a year kayak, canoe, fish, and swim in one of the state’s most picturesque stretches of river, framed by high rocky bluffs.
However, the rules that created the riverway are set to expire in 2025 unless activists can convince the Legislature to renew them. In the meantime, a much tougher fight faces the Brazos—and not just on the scenic section.
That’s the Gordian knot of development in the Brazos basin. Urban, suburban, and industrial growth is creating everincreasing demands on the Brazos’ finite supply of water. It’s also adding to pollution as cities, farms, ranches, and industrial complexes return the Brazos’ water—sometimes clean, often polluted—to the river once they’ve used it for drinking, cooking, cleaning, raising livestock, watering crops, lightcommercial to heavy-industrial processes, recreation, and watering hundreds of thousands of lawns.
And, as the federal Clean Water Act turns 50, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is again taking fire from various directions for not better protecting the state’s water resources. A staff report by the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission this year called TCEQ commissioners “reluctant regulators.” In 2021, more than 20 environmental groups filed petitions asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to force Texas to fix its “broken” water system and accused the state agency of giving developers and other polluters a “green light to a huge contamination” of Texas’ public waterways.
Throughout Texas, more than 460 stream segments are classified by TCEQ as “impaired,” meaning they fall short of water quality standards because of pollution. Of those, 75 flow in the Brazos River Basin, which has more impaired streams than any other river basin in Texas. The reasons those streams are classified as impaired, according to TCEQ, include too much bacteria in the water,
toxic sediment, excessive algae growth, impaired fish communities, and mercury found in edible tissue, meaning in fish or shellfish.
Alex Ortiz, an attorney and water resources specialist for the Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter, said the Brazos—and other Texas river basins for that matter— are “really strained. They’re under a lot of pressure from pollutants that really don’t have the regulatory oversight the Clean Water Act intended.”
That strain shows in once-clear parts of the Brazos now muddy with sediment, its flow interrupted by islands of sand and vegetation. It shows in massive fish kills, especially during periods of drought such as one that occurred in Lake Granbury in 2011 and one in 2022 around Waco. It is evident in numerous algae blooms in the middle Brazos around Glen Rose, and one in 2021 at Belton Lake that produced toxins strong enough to kill several dogs that drank from it. It shows in more than 60 segments of the river basin considered too polluted for safe swimming, boating, and other recreational uses.
These days, protecting the Brazos is an uphill struggle against powerful industries,
monied developers, and expanding cities that view the river as a natural resource to be exploited. The Texas Water Development Board estimates that by the time the Brazos reaches the Gulf, it has served almost 4 million Texans who need water for their daily lives, homes, businesses, industry, and agriculture.
As Texas’ population continues growing, the bottom line is, “How much can the river take and absorb?” said Nick Dornak, president of the nonprofit group Friends of the Brazos and director of watershed services at Texas State University’s Meadows Center for Water and the Environment. “That’s the question, because I feel like the Brazos, like so many rivers in Texas right now, is at a potential breaking point.”
The Brazos’ beginnings in some way presage its current problems: human habitation, mining, many-timesused water. It starts in the high, dry plains of the New Mexico-Texas border, where the land drains into draws that eventually create the Brazos. There, between Portales and Clovis, lies one of the most significant sites of
early human occupation in North America: Blackwater Draw, the uppermost tributary of the Brazos, which flowed in the ancient past but went dry as the climate changed thousands of years ago.
After unusual, fluted projectile points— now called Clovis points—were discovered there in 1929, archaeologists arrived and uncovered animal bones and artifacts showing that humans had lived in North America as far back as the Ice Age 13,000 years ago, hunting animals like bison, mammoth, and ground sloths.
The Clovis discoveries eventually put a stop to gravel mining that had been going on there since the 1920s. The federal government stepped in in 1982 to protect the draw as a National Historic Landmark. The draw runs north of Lubbock to Yellow House Canyon where the North Fork of the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos begins. Here, effluent discharged from wastewater treatment plants in Lubbock County contributes to the river’s flow.
The Brazos’ main stem begins downstream in Stonewall County near Old Glory where the Double Mountain Fork meets the Salt Fork, so named for its
natural salty quality. The river picks up the Clear Fork in Young County and heads south to Palo Pinto County, site of the basin’s first dam at Possum Kingdom.
The Morris Sheppard Dam was built in 1941 for hydroelectric power, water supply, and recreation. The dam held back silt from upstream runoff so the Brazos below the dam ran crystal clear and drew people to its scenic beauty.
By the dawn of the 21st century, however, those who lived near the Brazos in Palo Pinto and Parker counties noticed the river’s quality was deteriorating. After heavy rains, tons of dirt and clay surged down the river, threatening fish and wildlife habitats. The once free-flowing Brazos turned shallow and brown, and sediment formed islands of silt overgrown with vegetation like cattails and weeds.
Residents complained that fish were disappearing. The white sandy beaches and blue waters were replaced with thick, brown mud and tea-colored water. Much of the mud was coming from illegal quarries mining stone for building purposes.
Tiffany Malzahn was the Brazos River Authority’s (BRA) upper basin environmental planner. She was working in the field when she witnessed quarry miners dumping what they didn’t want into the river. “I observed some [mine workers] taking those layers and just shoving those materials into the riverbed,” recalled Malzahn, now the BRA’s environmental and compliance manager.
Concerned residents banded together to form the nonprofit Brazos River Conservation Coalition. They asked TCEQ for help, but nothing much happened until Walmart heir Alice Walton, who owned a Palo Pinto County ranch along the Brazos, got involved. TCEQ sent inspectors into the county and shut down a quarry for stormwater violations. Other quarries closed.
In 2004, TCEQ launched a statewide “Clear Streams Initiative” that enforced quarry regulations, examining 316 sites in 62 counties and even using helicopters to inspect remote areas. Inspectors found dozens of mines operating without permits. The investigations resulted in 128 notices of violations (most of them for construction sand and gravel operations), 38 notices of enforcement, and more than $1 million in penalties. Six cases were referred to the attorney general
for prosecution. The AG’s office issued temporary restraining orders against three quarries, prohibiting discharges, and two temporary injunctions requiring modifications to plant sites; another quarry shut down.
A year later, the John Graves Scenic Riverway was created and a pilot program was launched by TCEQ and other state agencies to respond to citizen concerns about water quality.
“Closing the hole in the regulations and the permitting process that came out of it have been the greatest successes” of the scenic riverway legislation, Malzahn said. “The strongest thing was stopping the bad actors.”
TCEQ currently lists six pits operating under general permits in the John Graves Scenic Riverway. At times, facilities have applied for the more stringent individual permit and then withdrawn because they could not meet the requirements.
The scenic riverway designation was significant because it set a precedent for future river protections, Dornak said.
“While it wasn’t easy and has not been easy to duplicate, it showed what can be done when stakeholders stand up and work together to protect critical lands and waters,” he noted.
The result is visible—clearer water that has made the John Graves Scenic Riverway one of the state’s most popular areas for canoeing, kayaking, and fishing.
It’s a different story downstream where the Brazos doesn’t have the same protections from mining.
East of Glen Rose in Somervell County, a sand mining pit operated by minerals and materials giant Covia Holdings Corp. racked up 19 permit violations from 2013 to 2019, according to EPA data. Most were for exceeding the amount of total suspended solids discharged. Total suspended solids are a concern with mining facilities, TCEQ has said, because excess sediment can destroy aquatic habitat.
Also east of Glen Rose, the MW Ranch, where for years Friends of the Brazos held annual fundraisers, has leased part of its property to Vulcan Materials Company, the nation’s largest producer of construction aggregates, to crush rock several hundred feet from the Brazos. Worried residents formed a group called SCRAM—Somervell
County Residents Against Mining—and protested, but by March 2020 the rock crushing operation was up and running.
Ralph Hawkins, a Dallas architect who has been involved with SCRAM, bought land adjacent to MW Ranch where he lives part time and raises hay along the river. TCEQ required only an air quality permit for the MW Ranch mining site, but Hawkins objected that the site was within the Brazos floodplain and wetland areas that potentially could pollute the river. TCEQ’s response was that “issues regarding water use, water quality, or water availability are not within the scope of this permit review.”
“I would absolutely think they need a stormwater permit,” said Dornak, whose family owns property nearby on the Brazos. “At bare minimum.”
SCRAM’s research found that 60 percent of the river in Somervell County had rock crushing, sand, or gravel operations. TCEQ said it cannot limit the number of surface mines or deny an air quality permit application as long as it meets rules and requirements.
“There’s so much history with the Brazos and to have so much of it being excavated … it’s really kind of sad to see such a recreational draw for Somervell County be treated like that,” Hawkins said.
Sorrow for what has been happening to the Brazos and rivers in general resounds in Don Henley’s song “Goodbye to a River,” released on his 2000 solo album, Inside Job. It’s a collective, universal cry against “killing everything divine.” The captains of industry, Henley sings, “Put that river in a box/ Well, it was running wild/And men must have control.”
That control takes the form of dams and 11 reservoirs that make up the Brazos River Authority’s water supply system and another eight owned and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for flood control. The BRA, established in 1929 as the first state agency in the United States to develop and manage water resources for an entire river basin, leases water supply storage from the federal reservoirs.
Already, the demand for water in the Brazos basin is exceeding the estimated supply in some areas. In less than 20 years,
demand is expected to outpace supply along the whole river.
At the same time, drought is having a palpable impact on the Brazos watershed.
In November 2021, the basin’s reservoirs were collectively almost 94 percent full. A year later, they were about 72 percent full, according to data from the Texas Water Development Board.
The biggest supply pressure in the future won’t come from industry, but from cities and towns. Lubbock, Abilene, Temple-Belton, Waco, and Round Rock in the upper-middle Brazos basin all had populations of more than 100,000 as of the 2020 census. Those cities and others not only draw water out of the Brazos basin but return it in the form of effluent—also called wastewater.
“Everything can be tied back to the fact that our population is exploding,” Malzahn said.
As demand for water is forecast to outpace supply by 2040 and beyond, many options are being considered to augment it, from building more reservoirs to aquifer storage, desalination plants, and more creative ways to reuse wastewater and conserve potable water.
Population growth also means that as more water is being requested from the river, more effluent is being put back into it. As Malzahn put it, wastewater is a “doubleedged sword”—it’s necessary for water flow in the river, but accidental wastewater spills and discharges beyond what is permitted are common in the Brazos River basin. A few have been massive.
In 2021 a City of Waco wastewater treatment plant dumped 4.5 million gallons of untreated household sewage into the Brazos. The city blamed the spill on heavy rains and a mechanical failure at the plant. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s (TPWD) Kills and Spills Team, which investigates fish and wildlife kills after spills or natural events, explained that sewage spills can cause fish kills when bacteria consume the organic matter in the sewage and use up all the dissolved oxygen in the water, causing fish and other aquatic organisms to suffocate.
Farther downstream, Texas A&M University discharged illegal levels of E. coli into the Brazos River from a wastewater treatment plant on its main College Station campus a dozen times over
a 21-month period ending in September 2017. Some of the releases were five times the maximum allowable amount under the law. The university blamed the discharge on an “operational issue” at its wastewater treatment plant and flooding from Hurricane Harvey. It was fined once for $12,600.
TPWD’s Inland Fisheries Division staff found no reports in their files of fish kills in Waco or in College Station after the sewage spills. That doesn’t mean a fish kill didn’t occur, an agency spokesperson said, but “if fish kills did take place, they were not reported to TPWD.”
When a treatment plant failure is due to heavy rains and flooding, the agency said, “the volume of water may be high enough, and the flow fast enough, that the sewage spill doesn’t impact fish.”
In addition to equipment failures due to weather, unintentional discharges while upgrading equipment also happen. Among Texas municipal wastewater dischargers, the City of Lubbock had the most exceedances of any city from December 2019 to July 2022, EPA data show. The violations included excessive amounts of E. coli, nitrogen and ammonia, phosphorus, and high biochemical oxygen demand, which is measured over five days and indicates polluted water.
Aubrey Spear, Lubbock’s director of water utilities, said the city began installing more efficient equipment in 2020. “Anytime you have to upgrade any of your wastewater treatment facilities, it’s like working on your Ford pickup while it’s running down the road,” Spear said.
“So during that process we have had some exceedances that were discharged.”
Although it was one event, it was counted as multiple violations in the data, he said. The city also had some equipment fail in early 2021 because of icy weather from Winter Storm Uri.
“We’re working with TCEQ on all of this,” Spear said. “Our goal is to have zero [problematic discharges].”
Comprehensive federal standards for water didn’t exist until the Clean Water Act passed in 1972. Under it, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES, permit program authorizes state governments—TCEQ, in Texas’ case—to handle
permits and enforcement.
Environmental groups, though, have taken TCEQ to task for being too lax in regulating air, water, and land pollution. Since the groups filed their petitions in 2021, the EPA has repeatedly asked for more information and documentation of TCEQ deficiencies, as recently as November 2022.
Also in November, the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission, which periodically evaluates state agencies for their effectiveness and recommends changes to lawmakers, agreed. It found TCEQ needed to be more transparent and do a better job of enforcing compliance by increasing penalties on polluters. Lawmakers will take up the recommendations at the next legislative session that begins in January.
Section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act authorizes the EPA to assist states, territories, and authorized tribes in listing impaired waters and developing what is called Total Maximum Daily Loads, or TMDL. They establish the maximum amount of a pollutant allowed in a water body and serve as the starting point for plans to restore water quality.
The lists of waters impaired by a pollutant and in need of a TMDL and the lists of water quality status of all waters in the state are combined into a single “Integrated Report,” an important document that gives a snapshot of the health of Texas rivers, creeks, lakes, and other bodies of water. Once a body of water is listed as impaired, it remains there until the state develops a TMDL and the EPA approves it.
“When a segment of a stream, lake, river, whatever becomes so impaired from a particular pollutant, there’s supposed to be a rehabilitation plan,” Ortiz explained. “That’s something the Clean Water Act requires, that you actually have a plan to get impaired waters off the impaired waters list. And for the most part, TCEQ kicks the can down the road. It’s a very backlogged system.” In other words, TCEQ hasn’t developed those plans, or even developed TMDLs, for lots of these streams.
The fact that so many streams in the Brazos basin don’t even have TMDL scores worries environmentalists because that means “there are no pollution caps on Texas’ already most vulnerable waters,” Ortiz said. “That’s kind of frightening to think about.”
The list of so-called “impaired” waters in the Brazos River basin includes segments of major tributaries—the Leon, Lampasas, Little, and North Bosque rivers and Double Mountain, Clear, and Salt forks of the Brazos. Numerous creeks made the list, as did lakes Somerville (impaired for pH levels since 2002); Pat Cleburne and Graham (both for excessive algae growth); and Lake Alan Henry, which has been impaired since 2010 for mercury in edible tissue. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has placed a fish consumption advisory on that lake, recommending limits on eating catfish, crappie, and bass, and advising that children and pregnant women should not eat those fish at all.
TCEQ, through a spokesperson, responded that streams may remain on the list for various reasons—other strategies, such as water quality standards evaluations, can also take a long time to develop.
“It also takes a long time to develop TMDLs or watershed protection plans, which can contribute to the length of time a waterbody is on the list,” the agency added. “Waters with watershed protection plans, rather than TMDLs, remain on the list until water quality standards are attained. In some instances, it may take many years after implementing a strategy or several different strategies before water quality improvements are documented and a water body is delisted.”
Even the Brazos segment above Possum Kingdom Lake has been on the impaired waters list since 2008 because of too much bacteria in the water.
That segment is, in TCEQ parlance, a “Category 5c” for impairment, meaning that, for 14 years, the agency has been collecting data and information and evaluating it for a plan to manage the stream.
“They’re not close to selecting a management strategy, and that’s sort of one of the clear failures,” Ortiz said. “There’s a lack of thinking on TCEQ’s part in terms of the real interconnectedness of Texas waters. And there’s no environmental nonprofit that has the staff or funding to really take a holistic look at statewide water quality.”
Conservationists and environmental activists have scored some impressive wins when it comes
to protecting the upper to middle Brazos.
Dallas restaurateur and river paddler
Ed Lowe founded Friends of the Brazos after he grew alarmed by the BRA’s action in 2004. The river authority had asked the state to more than double the BRA’s water rights, adding about a million acre-feet of water to the 700,000 acre-feet it already held in reservoirs. (An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, or enough water to cover an acre of ground with one foot of water).
Lowe, Graves, and other conservationists hired scientists and lawyers to challenge the plan. They claimed it would give the BRA power to take possibly every drop from the river for future sale to cities, industries, and others without having to reveal at what points it would be taken or the potential impacts on water quality or fish and wildlife.
TCEQ rebuffed the BRA’s request.
Lowe was not as successful in convincing legislators to extend the John Graves Scenic Riverway protections to the Brazos in Hood and Somervell counties.
The Texas House’s Natural Resources Committee, many of whose members accept campaign contributions from the
and, recently, into a controversy that makes it a microcosm of what is happening in the Brazos basin.
Friends of the Brazos supported a group of concerned citizens who formed Granbury Fresh to fight that city’s plan to build a new second wastewater treatment plant and discharge 2 million gallons of effluent daily into the Rucker, a scenic creek lined with boat ramps and where residents routinely kayak, canoe, swim, and fish. The new plant would add capacity that the fast-growing city, now a retirement and recreation refuge for people from all over urban North Texas, badly needs.
City officials said that if it does not build the new plant, they have no choice but to prohibit new development. The city in 2020 issued a moratorium on approving new plats and construction permits. It estimated that the city would lose hundreds of jobs over the next decade if the plant isn’t built. “This creates spinoff consequences of loss of state and local tax revenues, which will negatively impact local government services,” city officials said in documents filed with TCEQ.
as “absolutely symbolic” of the clashes taking place around Texas between growth and conservation.
“Clearly, the Brazos is a resilient river. It’s a large river, so it can absorb a little more,” Dornak said. “The canaries in the coal mines will be a lot of these streams like Rucker. ... Do you flip that pretty, pristine stream to ‘impaired’ and change the aquatic ecosystems and do long-term impacts to the health of those streams?”
In May 2021, the Texas House passed a bill banning the dumping of wastewater into stream segments deemed “pristine” because of their low phosphorus levels. The so-called “Pristine Streams Bill” received bipartisan support and passed by a vote of 82 to 61, but a companion bill died in the Senate.
Most of the 22 streams identified as “pristine” are in the Hill Country. (Rucker didn’t qualify as an official pristine stream.) The only bodies of water in the huge Brazos River basin considered to be pristine were the north and south forks of the San Gabriel River in Burnet and Williamson counties.
Canoe Rental by the bridge, couldn’t contain his excitement that the BRA had released water from the dam that morning—the authority said it was doing so to balance the drawdown levels between lakes Possum Kingdom and Granbury. Rochelle said he thought it was done because of Granbury’s swanky new lake developments and wealthy, politically influential people.
Regardless, the release would give his customers who rent canoes and kayaks plenty of water and even some rapids to enjoy.
“I’ve heard all kinds of little horror stories downstream from us about the Brazos being completely dry in some places,” he added. “We’re just in a bad state right now.”
Rochelle’s family has lived here since 1928 and has owned and operated the business near Graford since 1969. Many of their customers have read Graves’ book or even bring it with them, Rochelle said. “I’m talking about a lot of people,” he added, pointing at a copy of Goodbye to a River on his office shelf.
aggregate industry, killed the bill to extend protections in 2013 before it ever made it out of the committee.
Graves died in 2013 at his home in Glen Rose, and Lowe died in November 2018 during a paddling trip to Big Bend. But Friends of the Brazos is carrying on without the two men who did so much to make so many people care about the river. Both men’s families are still involved.
Dornak is Lowe’s son-in-law, and Sally Graves Jackson, one of Graves’ daughters, contributes to Friends of the Brazos. Its current mission is one of stewardship— keeping water in the Brazos, keeping trash and pollution out, and holding an annual river cleanup.
“What kind of permanent damage are we doing in the long term and how climate change will impact all this is really important,” Dornak said. “So that’s what gets me going every day. This conservation effort must go on.”
East of Granbury, Rucker Creek runs through wooded areas and past affluent housing developments like those springing up all over Hood County. It eventually flows into the Brazos and Lake Granbury
Victoria Calder, a Friends of the Brazos board member and president of Granbury Fresh, said that if a storm and power outage caused a spill in Rucker Creek such as happened in Waco, it would be devastating to residents and the environment.
“It’s a matter of when, not if, a spill happens,” she said. “The severity of consequences in a high recreational, narrow, shallow creek is over the top. It really ruins the public welfare, which is supposed to be protected under the Clean Water Act.”
The contested case went to the State Office of Administrative Hearings.
Last June, administrative law judges recommended that the TCEQ issue a draft permit. In October, TCEQ commissioners voted unanimously to grant the permit.
Granbury city officials declined to comment on the new wastewater treatment plant because of “possible future litigation.” In a news release, they said that once the new plant is built and begins operating, the wastewater system issues “will be resolved,” implying that’s when it would lift the moratorium.
Dornak described the Rucker Creek case
Even though it didn’t become law, the bill made it further than any previous proposed legislation on wastewater discharge. Conservationists filed a petition with the TCEQ to create a rule against issuing wastewater discharge permits on pristine streams. The commission received more than 1,200 comments and in March heard over an hour of in-person comments but denied the petition. However, it left the door open for continued stakeholder talks on how to better protect Texas’ last few pristine streams.
“We need leaders at the state and national level that can inspire and move the needle on how we’re managing our land and our water resources,” Dornak said. “That Pristine Streams legislation getting through the House shows we can achieve some really good bipartisan solutions on water if it’s done right.”
The “John Graves Scenic Riverway” sign appears just before Farm Road 4 crosses the Dark Valley Bridge in Palo Pinto County. On a sunny day last October, the Brazos flowed steadily, rippling over rocks under the bridge.
Buddy Rochelle, co-owner of Rochelle’s
Sally Graves Jackson said her father’s book “encouraged people to pay attention and perhaps feel responsibility for a landscape that has a history and a value that’s not just recreational, or agricultural, or industrial. The Brazos has a past that mattered.”
Its future matters, too.
Before he died, Lowe left what now sounds like an ominous warning on Friends of the Brazos’ website. Lowe said he was worried that the river, especially the part from Possum Kingdom to Glen Rose, has suffered “significant ecological damage—stream fragmentation, channel sedimentation, frequent golden algae blooms which devastate fish populations and significantly reduced instream flows.”
He added that before you can save a river, you first have to fall in love with it. “That’s what John Graves did more than 50 years ago,” he wrote. “Now it’s our turn to save this wonderful place before it’s too late.”
Kathryn Jones, a veteran journalist, author, and longtime Texan, has also written for The Dallas Morning News, Time magazine, The New York Times, and the Texas Monthly She has been inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.
Elections have consequences. This political bromide is overused for a reason—it’s reliably true. And this year, the fallout for vulnerable Texans could be particularly destructive.
After something approaching a blue wave swept across Texas in November 2018, a chastened Republican majority in the Legislature kept its focus in the 2019 session on serious policymaking— school finance and property tax reform—while largely forgoing their typical red-meat fare.
Republicans thwarted expectations of another Democratic surge in November 2020, and the next year the GOP ignored the problems laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic crisis, instead focusing on passing as much right-wing legislation as possible over the course of a regular session, plus three painful specials.
The final outcome was ugly: Abortions were effectively banned by threat of bounty, handgun permits were done away with, voting laws were made more restrictive, transgender kids were targeted with statutory bigotry, and school curricula on race and history was whitewashed. Profound policy problems, meanwhile, were left to fester.
Critically, the state’s electoral districts were redrawn for the next decade to ensure incumbent Republican majorities will be insulated from electoral backlash while the state’s growing numbers of people of color and Democratic-aligned voters are kept at bay.
This fresh gerrymander set the table for another Republican rout last November as the GOP maintained strong majorities in the state House and Senate and easily
swept the state’s high-powered executive offices—led by Governor Greg Abbott’s 11-point defeat of Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke.
Firmly in control, Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, and GOP lawmakers are now free to do as they please—to pick up where their vengeful 87th legislative session mercifully left off just over a year ago.
Some top Republicans hinted during campaign season that they might want to soften the sharpest edges of their draconian and unpopular ban on abortion or pull back on the most extreme parts of their so-called “election integrity” laws. But there’s little reason to think this legislative session will yield moderation. The party’s activist base is eager to continue the march toward one-party authoritarianism, punishing political enemies and catering to political patrons as they go.
Many bills have already been filed to further expand prosecution under Texas’ abortion ban, along with measures to concentrate power over elections in the office of GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton and to continue persecution of transgender children and their families.
Lawmakers will also be charged with allocating a projected massive surplus of state revenue—over $25 billion—from inflation-fueled sales tax receipts and huge oil and gas production taxes. Republicans are salivating as they plan to shovel money into tax relief for homeowners, likely without alleviating the fundamental problem of soaring property taxes. Many other political pet projects, like Abbott’s bloated Operation Lone Star border scheme, are likely to get a taste too. But that shiny surplus figure contains plenty of smoke and mirrors, budgetary gimmicks, and external uncertainties that can only be resolved by transparent fiscal governance—not hide-the-ball, kick-the-can budgeting. Meanwhile, there is plenty of serious work to be done. There are billions in once-in-a-generation federal funds for infrastructure and energy projects that could set Texas up for the future. The electric grid still needs fixing. The public school system still needs help recovering from the pandemic. Government
agencies and public services are crying for significant reform and investment.
Ahead of every new legislative session in Texas, there’s always a glimmer of hope that lawmakers will rise to the occasion, that reason will at least get a public hearing. This is usually coupled with the well-earned suspicion that, instead, the next race to the bottom will take us to parts previously unknown and unimaginable. Here, we do our best to survey what we believe will be some of the most highprofile policy topics facing Texas—what could and should be done, and, more likely, what will happen instead. —
Justin Miller
For years, lawmakers have failed to heed warnings from leaders of Texas’ biggest and most important state agencies about a growing inability to provide critical services to a booming population, often due to depleted workforces and antiquated technology.
Instead, legislators have repeatedly cried poverty, demanding departments do more with less. Now GOP policymakers are confronted with the consequences of their indifference and hostility toward the state’s moribund bureaucracy.
The roughly 150,000 state government workers who administer food stamp and Medicaid benefits, ensure vulnerable youth are living in safe homes, regulate the most powerful industries, and guard one of the world’s largest incarcerated populations are underpaid, overworked, and increasingly heading for the exits.
From the 1970s well into the 21st century, the state regularly funded pay increases for its government employees. But now workers haven’t seen a wage bump since 2014, when lawmakers approved a modest 3 percent raise over two years, accompanied by heavier
WHAT TEXAS LAWMAKERS SHOULD DO TO MITIGATE THE STATE’S CASCADING CRISES—AND WHAT THEY ARE LIABLE TO DO INSTEADPhoto illustration: Texas Observer ; Photo by Matthew Busch
workloads. Employees in the lowest-paid positions are predominantly people of color, who are hit the hardest by these stagnant wages.
The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic upheaval prompted a nationwide surge in people leaving their jobs, whether in the public or private sector, a phenomenon dubbed “The Big Quit.” Texas government has been particularly hard-hit, facing catastrophic staffing shortages in major agencies that run the state prison system, the juvenile justice system, and foster care and child protective services.
Agencies like the Texas Attorney General’s Office and the Public Utility Commission, charged with protecting the public from unscrupulous actors and regulating essential industries, can’t maintain the sort of white-collar workforce—attorneys, analysts, investigators—needed to perform their duties.
In 2021, the turnover rate among state workers was 21 percent, according to the state auditor’s office—the highest level seen in at least 20 years.
Nearly half of the Texas Juvenile Justice Department workers who resigned that year cited unsafe working conditions and a poor work environment. The department stopped accepting new juveniles, who had to remain in overcrowded local facilities because state centers were so understaffed. The agency is struggling to hire guards because they’re competing
with service-sector employers like Bucee’s, where workers can make the same money in safer conditions.
At the Health and Human Services Commission, frontline workers charged with administering social services earn an entry-level salary of just below $28,000, low enough for a single parent of two to qualify for the same government benefits they deliver to other families.
Ahead of the 2023 legislative session, almost every state agency is calling for more funding to pay workers better. In their legislative budget request, Texas’ largest agencies are asking for $1.9 billion in new funding for salary increases and incentives, according to the state Legislative Budget Board, along with over $6 billion for IT improvements and capital projects.
While that may sound pricey, those demands represent the cost of years of neglect. And they are coming as the state trumpets surprisingly rosy revenue projections, with the Legislature likely to have at least $25 billion in surplus funds to spend.
After years of belt-tightening, agency heads finally have an opportunity to go big. “If you don’t ask for it now, then when?” said Eva DeLuna Castro, a longtime budget analyst in Texas. “If not now, then it’s basically never going to happen.”
But agency pleas will be competing with
higher-octane political priorities. Governor Abbott, for example, has already pledged to use at least half the budget surplus on short-term “tax cuts” for property owners.
Texas Republicans have faced no electoral punishment for the myriad crises born of their crumbling government. So, even in a year of financial abundance, the bureaucrats who merely serve the most vulnerable among us will likely be sent to the back of the line. —
Justin MillerThere is a policy that would likely have prevented the deadliest school shooting in Texas history. It is an uncomplicated measure, one that would probably have saved some or all of the 21 kids and teachers who perished on May 24 at Robb Elementary in Uvalde. Three of the nation’s four most populous states— California, New York, and Florida—already have it on their books. It is supported by some three-quarters of Texans as well as a majority of Texas Republicans. It is simply this: Raise the minimum age for buying an assault-style rifle—a weapon that literally pulverizes human bodies—to the same age generally required for handguns, alcohol, and cigarettes.
This policy has emerged as the principal demand of the Uvalde families who lost their fourth-grade children last spring. That’s because the killer, a high school dropout who’d been labeled by friends “the school shooter,” was legally able to purchase two AR-style rifles and 2,000 rounds of ammo shortly after turning 18. Killers under 21 also carried out the school shootings in Santa Fe; Parkland, Florida; Newtown, Connecticut; and Columbine, Colorado. Shootings with assault-style rifles are far deadlier than those carried out with other weapons.
“We have to have an age limit on
having access to militarized weaponry. … I mean, I’ve had Republican colleagues contact me and say, ‘Look, we need to do this,’” Democratic state Senator Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde, told the Texas Observer. Gutierrez filed a bill in November to raise the minimum age, and Representative Tracy King, a moderate Dem representing Uvalde in the House, said in October the specifics of the shooting had convinced him to support the age limit.
response to mass shootings. In 2019, following the tragedies in Santa Fe and Sutherland Springs, Abbott signed laws making it easier to carry guns in public places; in 2021, after the massacres in El Paso and Midland-Odessa, Abbott approved legislation creating so-called constitutional carry, which allows Texans to carry handguns without a permit.
Bursey fears the 2023 Legislature will reduce remaining limitations on firearms in certain locations. These include courts, bars, and polling places. The state could also expand 18-year-olds’ ability to carry handguns. As for school shootings, the Legislature is likely to repeat its 2019 gambit of funding “school hardening,” an expensive solution of dubious effectiveness that can leave schools militarized yet still vulnerable to mass shooters. Bursey particularly worries about further efforts to arm ill-prepared school staff.
Rather than updating the grid and electricity market so that Texas reaps the benefits of clean energy, state Republicans are primarily interested in propping up the oil and gas industry. Given massive federal investment in renewables and efficiency through the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the transition to clean energy is inevitable. The question is how long and how painful Texas will make it.
The most glaring issue is that the Texas grid is largely cut off from the rest of the country, unable to import electricity in times of need. But if Texas insists on going it alone, there’s another immediate fix: curbing our hunger for electricity.
Meanwhile, Abbott avoids addressing the popular proposal head-on, instead claiming—falsely—that recent court rulings “have made it clear” the measure would be unconstitutional. Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan has similarly sidestepped the proposal’s substance, saying “the votes aren’t there” in the GOPcontrolled Legislature.
Democratic lawmakers have also filed “red flag” legislation that would allow judges to remove guns from dangerous individuals and other bills to establish universal background checks on gun buyers. But, as Texas gun control advocates know bitterly well, the same proposals have perished in recent sessions.
“We would hope that the pain and suffering that the families in Uvalde went through would push some widely agreedupon gun safety legislation through the Texas Legislature,” Molly Bursey, volunteer state legislative lead for the gun control group Moms Demand Action, told the Observer. “In reality, I would say, if you think that [gun policy] can’t get worse … think again, it can definitely get worse.”
Depressingly, Texas GOP leaders have a record of loosening gun laws in
Texans resoundingly reelected Republican leaders in 2022, Bursey notes, so she’s prepared for radical progun lawmakers to simply forge ahead. “We’re going to keep raising the voices of my neighbors, of myself, of the vast majority of Texans,” she said. “But, no, I don’t hold out a lot of hope that they will find the courage and do the right thing.” —
Gus BovaTwo years after hundreds died and millions lost power during Winter Storm Uri, the state’s electric grid remains a problem. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has warned that, faced with another deep freeze, Texas won’t be able to cope. State leaders have made improvements, like requiring essential energy infrastructure to be weatherized, but they are willfully ignoring the fundamental threats posed by climate change and endlessly consuming fossil fuels.
Energy wonks say the cheapest kilowatt is the one we don’t use. Despite Texas having cheaper electricity than most states, a Census Bureau survey recently found a shocking 45 percent of Texans are sacrificing food and medicine to pay energy bills. Helping people weatherize their homes and get efficient appliances would save households money and free up electricity when it’s needed most—during scorching summer days and winter cold snaps. Efficiency measures could shave Texas’ peak electricity demand by as much as 15 percent, according to one estimate by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Lawmakers need only tighten the state’s energy efficiency standard, and utilities would expand existing initiatives like weatherization assistance programs and rebates for appliances. Lawmakers could also help ensure Texas claims its full share of the billions of federal dollars available from the Inflation Reduction Act for energy efficiency.
But Republican legislators treat saving
energy as the elephant in the room.
“Energy is an equation. You’ve got to balance demand on one side, and supply on the other side. The fact that we’ve been talking about this for almost two years with absolutely no discussion of the demand side is insane,” said Adrian Shelley, director of Public Citizen’s Texas Office. “It just cannot be stressed enough that it is entirely because Texas is still obsessed with this idea of selling fossil fuel energy. And everything else, including the public’s right to affordable, reliable electricity, comes second.”
Instead of embracing efficiency, the Legislature is likely to spend the year dancing with the Public Utility Commission over a complicated overhaul of the state’s electricity market. The commission recently hired consultants to evaluate several redesign proposals.
One favored proposal would pay generators a premium for keeping extra fuel around and providing power during peak demand. But the plan doesn’t guarantee greater reliability, and it could cost more than $460 million per year. Commissioners want the redesign to exclude wind and solar facilities, potentially even those with battery storage, from getting the same credits. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle disagree on the details, but the Republican majority shares the commission’s overall goal: incentivizing energy companies to build more fossil-fueled power plants. Many conservative legislators still claim— misleadingly—that renewables make the
grid unreliable, despite ample evidence that it was natural gas that failed us most during Uri.
If the Abbott-appointed public utility commissioners have their way, this market redesign would not fix the grid. Instead, it would stymie renewable energy development in Texas in favor of putting the fossil fuel industry on life support. While the state Legislature is unlikely to hand the utility commissioners everything they want, plenty of lawmakers will support their overarching, retrograde mission.
— Delger ErdenesanaaFor “school choice” proponents, the upcoming session could be a stampede, with public schools getting trampled in the process. For decades, the push for school vouchers—which allow parents to use public education dollars to enroll students in private charter and religious schools—has been a fringe issue across the country. In Texas, Democrats and many Republicans, especially from rural districts, have stood with public education
advocates to block such legislation. But the emboldened right-wing policy movement has gained ground in the past year, with Abbott expressing support for school choice in his reelection campaign. GOP lawmakers have already filed several pieces of legislation to that end. If provoucher legislation passes, education advocates warn that taxpayer funding would bleed out of public schools across the state.
“The one thing that [voucher proponents] may be right about is this may be the one and only chance that they actually have to pass it,” said Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers. “I do think that they’re going to put an all-out effort into it. And people who actually care about real public education … are going to have to stand up and make their presence known.”
This all comes amid a growing teacher shortage exacerbated by low pay, the pandemic, unsafe working conditions, and political attacks from Republicans. If public school funding shrinks, educators would be forced to work with even smaller budgets. For every seven students opting out of a public school district, that district would lose the equivalent of a teacher’s salary and benefits, according to the public education advocacy group Raise Your Hand Texas. The group is in favor of school choice—including in-district magnet schools or transferring within or between districts—but it is opposed to vouchers and other programs that leech funding out of public schools. “We want to make sure that wherever we’re spending our public tax dollars, that there’s a way that we can account for where the money is going and what it’s being used for,” said Will Holleman, Raise Your Hand Texas’ senior director of government relations.
Support for traditional public schools remains resilient within both parties. In November, the majority-Republican State Board of Education advised lawmakers not to pursue school choice efforts. The board voted to oppose all forms of school choice measures, including vouchers and all tax credits that effectively divert funding from public schools. But Republicans including Dan Patrick are trying to drown out skepticism with promises to rural Republicans that their districts won’t be
affected by voucher programs.
It’s still unclear what form of school choice will emerge as the favorite this session, and whether there will be more support in the Texas House of Representatives, which has roundly blocked school choice bills for decades. But savvy activists and legislators are capitalizing on the growing controversy around public school curricula, which has reached a fever pitch as anti-critical race theory and anti-LGBTQ+ candidates have found success in many local school board races. Just on the first day of bill filing, lawmakers submitted more than a dozen bills that sought to either hamstring or expand what teachers are permitted to teach—from a Republican bill requesting that students be taught that life begins at conception to a Democratic bill creating a compulsory ethnic studies curriculum. At least one bill, filed by San Antonio Representative Diego Bernal, will attempt to undo recent attempts to ban educators from teaching students about the extent of racism in U.S. history and current events. The anti-voucher coalition has held firm in the Legislature for years, keeping Texas from joining the ranks of other red states like Florida that have implemented sweeping school choice policies. But that opposition force is likely to come under more pressure than ever as vouchers become fully integrated into the broader conservative culture war against public schools. Will 2023 be the tipping point?
— Michelle Pitcher
Queer people have come to expect the worst from the state’s Republican leadership, but ahead of the upcoming legislative session they’re bracing for what could be a record-breaking wave of attacks on their rights.
Some of the most dangerous bills filed as of November target parents and medical professionals who support trans kids and teenagers with gender-affirming medical care. It’s a continuation of a shockingly vicious policy instituted early in 2022 by Paxton and Abbott that forced child welfare agents at the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) to investigate families with trans kids as if they were potential child abusers. Even though the American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal, and Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays went to court and halted these abuse investigations, the directive sent DFPS into disarray and caused some families to flee the state.
Representative Bryan Slaton, the most staunchly anti-transgender legislator of the 2021 session, is back with a bill to redefine gender-affirming care provided by medical professionals as child abuse, and other GOP legislators have joined the effort to enshrine into law what Paxton and Abbott failed to achieve through executive decree and legal maneuvers. For example, a bill from Representative Cole Hefner would set prison sentences for parents who support their child’s gender-affirming health care, while Representative Steve Toth filed two bills penalizing insurance companies for paying for that care.
Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law’s Cyberlaw Clinic who specializes in the intersection of gender and the law, called the situation “beyond dystopian.”
“Teachers, doctors, first responders, therapists, social workers—anyone who has a mandated reporter role around child abuse—would be required to turn in friends and family and their patients, their students, to the state,” she told the Observer .
Other bills attempt to capitalize on the moral panic around drag queens, simultaneously using it as a way to attack both LGBTQ+ culture as a whole and the ability of transgender people to participate in public life. HB 643 from Representative Jared Patterson broadly seeks to ban anyone from “performing” in public when children are present if the performer’s clothing doesn’t match conservative norms for their assigned gender at birth.
It’s so broadly written, in fact, that experts are concerned it could even ban trans people from performing at major league sporting events or all-ages concerts. Venues found to be in violation would face misdemeanor charges.
“That could literally mean a trans
person doing comedy standup at a comedy show would then turn it into a sexually oriented business,” Caraballo said. These measures just scratch the surface of the attacks on bodily autonomy coming down the pike. Senator Charles Perry introduced a bill to prohibit trans young people from changing the gender marker on their birth certificates, and Patrick has promised to attack the rights of teachers to educate students about LGBTQ+ people.
Just as in past sessions, bills aimed at actually protecting LGTBQ+ Texans almost certainly will go nowhere. Once again, the 88th legislative session will force activists to focus on playing defense. Activists have had success killing, or at least weakening, the worst elements of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in recent years by coming together with some of Texas’ major corporate employers.
“The optimist in me is hoping that [Republicans] come out swinging with this,” said Ash Hall, a legislative consultant who’s tracked anti-LGBTQ+ legislation at the Texas Capitol for years.
“And then it’ll die down, and they’ll focus on things that are more specific to their districts.” — Kit O’Connell
Children and their guardians are being cleaved apart in Texas— and elsewhere—two years into the new president’s term.
By JOHN WASHINGTON AND ANNA-CATHERINE BRIGIDA
Photography By FRED RAMOS Joseph Mejia Vallecillo and his grandmother, Raquel Andrade watch videos on a cellphone at her mother’s house in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
The persecution for her work as a lawyer in Colombia had gotten so bad that Victoria and her husband, Anton, decided they needed to start lying to their son. They couldn’t stay in Colombia any longer, but they also recognized the dangers of fleeing—especially with their son, Felipe, who was 10 at the time. So they told Felipe the family was taking a vacation to Mexico. Maybe they would even get to go to the United States, they said.
It was all a ruse to keep their son calm, to protect them from people who might target them as they traveled through Mexico.
(Editor’s note: To protect the family’s identity for fear of further repercussions, we have omitted Victoria’s last name from this story; Anton and Felipe are middle names.)
Once they hit U.S. soil in late May, the family found Border Patrol agents and gave themselves up to ask for asylum, after which they were placed in detention to await processing.
“I’m sorry, my beautiful child,” Victoria recalled telling Felipe.
He was upset with his parents—they had lied to him; this was no vacation—but couldn’t contain his excitement about
being in the United States.
“We weren’t running or hiding,” Victoria later said. “I brought evidence to show immigration officials in support of our asylum application and told the immigration officials about why we fled Colombia to save our lives.”
Despite her preparations, Victoria became nervous when, a few days into their detention, agents took Felipe away, saying that they were taking him to an appointment. He was gone most of the day. That evening, another agent brought him back; his mother hugged him tightly.
One or two days later, on or about May 29—the exact date is unclear—Victoria and Felipe were taken to another room from which they could see, but not speak to, Anton. After some paperwork and an interview, an officer told Victoria that they were taking Felipe to have a snack.
“They opened the door, took him away, and then closed the door,” Victoria said. She had heard about family separations, but didn’t think the U.S. government was still taking kids away from their parents.
Victoria sensed something was amiss and began asking officials where her son was. “I don’t know,” immigration officials told her repeatedly. Almost six months
later, she hasn’t seen him. More than 5,500 children, including breastfeeding infants, were forcibly separated from their parents during the Trump administration’s family separation policy, which began as a pilot program in El Paso in early 2017.
On June 20, 2018, former President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials to stop separating families, but the practice continued. In 2019, the Texas Civil Rights Project documented 272 cases of family separation. Most of those cases—223—involved extended family members, including siblings, aunts, uncles or grandparents, or legal guardians or step-parents.
In January 2020, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) established select criteria under which children can in fact be separated from their families: Immigration authorities may only do so if they deem the parent unfit, if the parent is going to be prosecuted for a felony, if the parent is hospitalized, or other specific circumstances.
The incoming Biden administration promised to stop such separations for
good and offer reparations for the previous administration’s harms.
But as the case of Felipe shows, immigration officials have continued to separate parents and children in violation of the policy. From the start of the new administration to August 2022—the latest month for which data has been published—U.S. authorities have reported at least 372 cases of family separation.
“We said never again, but here we are,” said Kassandra Gonzalez, an attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project.
The Texas Observer has identified further cases not included in this count—including that of Felipe, whose case is not included in the tabulation from May. Felipe remains apart from his parents. The failure to account for the true scope of the problem means that not only is the public left without a complete understanding of the breadth of ongoing separations, but some cases—some children—have ended up lost in the system.
The Observer reached out to the White House and DHS for comment. The White House directed the request to DHS, which did not respond by the time of publication.
“This administration came in really trying to distinguish themselves on immigration policy. The main pillar of distinguishing themselves was that they would not carry out family separation,” said Jesse Franzblau, a senior policy analyst with the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC). “They just have completely failed to actually live up to that promise to stop this—the most abusive, traumatic practice that can be carried out in immigration enforcement.”
The Biden administration has neither halted family separations nor compensated past victims of the practice. Some of the architects of family separation have been promoted or continue in high-level positions under President Joe Biden in Texas and other states.
“The Trump administration began cruelly ripping babies and toddlers away from their parents and, unfortunately, there’s still an enormous amount of work to be done even to begin to repair the damage,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, told the Observer. “We must provide the separated families with a pathway to
remain here and to ensure that safeguards are in place so this horrific practice never occurs again.”
“Those safeguards are not in place yet,” Gelernt added.
Family separations have continued, although at a slower rate, despite the Biden administration’s professed approach. Under Title 42—a Trump-era public health policy that allows for the immediate expulsion of migrants to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic—immigration officials need not adhere to the guidelines established to limit family separations.
In February 2021, unaccompanied minors were declared exempt from Title 42 expulsions, although families were not.
In practice, this has allowed immigration officials to separate children from their relatives and guardians with impunity. Title 42 has been stretched far beyond its medical mandate.
“Under Title 42, it’s much more kind of just Wild West,” Franzblau said. On November 15, a federal judge vacated the ongoing use of Title 42, but then stayed that decision for five weeks. With appeals likely, its fate is still undecided.
Since the beginning of 2021, Immigrant
Defenders Law Center has tracked more than 300 cases of non-parental relatives separated from children at the border. The minors were categorized as unaccompanied and exempt from Title 42, which allowed them to remain in the United States. Their adult guardians were sent to Mexico. Since the center only tracks cases of minors who end up in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in California, the true number of these cases could be much higher.
This is what happened to Raquel Andrade and her 8-year-old grandson, Joseph Mejia Vallecillo, who arrived at the U.S. southern border in Hidalgo on April 23, 2021. They had left their home in Honduras a month earlier after losing most of their belongings in two of the worst hurricanes to hit Central America this century.
Joseph had lived with his grandmother in San Pedro Sula since the murder of both his parents when he was an infant. After spending four months drifting between shelters and the homes of friends and family, Andrade thought migrating might provide Joseph a better life and spare him from the fate of his parents and so many other young Hondurans.
“I thought the president [Biden] was giving opportunities to enter to work, and since I had my daughter’s death certificate, I thought that I could apply for a permit to enter the U.S.,” Andrade told the Observer. But Andrade did not receive the warm welcome she had imagined for her grandson, who calls her “mom.” Instead, she said Border Patrol agents accused her of “stealing” Joseph.
Andrade presented birth certificates to prove her relationship with her grandson, death certificates and media reports to document his parents’ murder, and school documents showing that she is his guardian. But the Border Patrol agent didn’t care, she said.
“They told me that the child was staying with them, and I said, ‘No, you have to deport me with him,’” she recalled. “He started to cry, and he hugged me, but they practically took him from me by force.”
After desperately begging officials to keep her and Joseph together, she realized her pleas were being ignored. So she turned to Joseph and prayed for the best.
“Papi, in the name of Jesus, nothing bad is going to happen to you,” she told him. Andrade was sent to Mexico. Days later, she was back in Honduras. She didn’t know where Joseph was.
When children are separated from their parents because they are to be prosecuted for a crime, typically it is for the crime of “illegal entry” or “illegal reentry.” The crime that Victoria and Anton are being charged with is a violation of 19 USC 1459(a), a U.S. code that requires people entering the United States—except if they are entering by plane or ship—to enter through a designated port of entry.
The other reasons immigration officials use to justify the separations don’t seem to apply in their case: health problems, questions about maternity or paternity, or criminal allegations against the parents.
The Texas Civil Rights Project has worked with six other families separated under the Biden administration. Three
of the separations occurred because the parents faced prosecution under 8 USC 1326, or “illegal re-entry.” One family they worked with had a 3-year-old separated from her parents from October 2021 until May 2022. Another client they worked with abandoned his asylum claim, opting to face the danger in his home country rather than continue apart from his child.
“It’s basically the criminalization of immigration,” Gonzalez said. “That’s the only reason these families are being separated.”
Peter Schey, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, commented that “to keep a parent detained solely to face a misdemeanor charge is utterly irrational. The trauma that it causes is extreme. We know that from interviewing hundreds of children who were separated under Trump.”
Schey added: “It’s like using a nuclear weapon to target one person in a pup tent.”
In May, the same month Felipe was separated from his parents, the Department of Health and Human Services documented 15 cases of family separation. The reasons for separation include lack of “parent fitness,” “parent criminal history,” and parent “referred for prosecution.” Four of those separations occurred because the parents were referred for prosecution. Biden administration officials were separating families using the same justification that the Trump administration used during the zerotolerance policy.
According to Rebekah Gonzalez of NIJC, family separations continue partly because Border Patrol agents—the first point of contact for most families crossing the border—still don’t have the knowledge and training to handle these cases. They don’t take time “to really understand the family unit and understand the best interests of a child.” Instead, they default to separation.
“We still have a system in which individual agents who have no background in child welfare are making these decisions without any sort of oversight,” said Jennifer Podkul, an attorney with Kids in Need of Defense. “There’s no check on their decisions at all.”
Franzblau of NIJC said that the problem goes much deeper. A lack of institutional overhaul—both among top-level
decision-makers and the bottom-level CBP officials who encounter families at the border—means that the overall mentality toward immigration policy has not changed.
“As long as they have this deterrence approach of trying to scare families from seeking refuge in the U.S. through punitive programs, they’re going to have separation,” Franzblau said.
Enacted by President Trump and rescinded by President Biden, “zero tolerance” was another iteration of the longstanding Border Patrol policy, in place since the 1990s, of “prevention through deterrence.” The idea is that forcing people into dangerous or “hostile terrain” or delivering “consequences” such as criminalization for unauthorized border crossings will dissuade people from migrating. But, especially for asylumseekers, the risks of danger or prison time are worth it. Decades of studies have shown that people fleeing persecution, hunger, extreme violence, or seeking to reunite with families will continue to cross borders despite hardship or possible punishment. The months following the most publicized outrage over family separation in 2018 actually saw an increase in families attempting to cross the border. “‘Zero tolerance’ was a very clear policy and practice in order to deter individuals from coming to the United States. And so I think because it was a clear directive and the intent was clear, individuals saw it as a more cruel act because of the intent,” said Margaret Cargioli, directing attorney at the Los Angeles-based Immigrant Defenders Law Center. “The effect and impact of family separation that we see in smaller numbers does not gain the same amount of attention. However, it should gain the same amount of sympathy because it has the exact same impact that zero tolerance had on the children that were separated from their families.”
Andrade describes the time that Joseph was in U.S. custody as “agony.” Some days, she couldn’t eat or sleep. Joseph doesn’t like to talk much about his time in the United States. Mostly, he complains about the strange food like the cold, gray shrimp he had never
seen before. He missed his grandmother’s tripe soup.
Communication between the two was sparse. They would usually talk on the phone once every eight days. But, Andrade recalled, when Joseph didn’t do his chores, like making his bed, sometimes officials would punish him by not allowing him to call his grandmother.
“He was always asking to talk to me, and the [man in charge] told me to tell him that it wasn’t possible because he wanted to talk every day,” Andrade said. A family friend was willing to be Joseph’s sponsor in the United States, so he could be released and try to stay there. But since she wasn’t a blood relative, a lawyer explained to Andrade that there was a possibility Joseph would be released to foster care instead.
“How is someone else that he doesn’t know going to raise him?” Andrade asked. “I said, if there is a chance that they give me permission to return to the U.S., then he can stay, but if not, then he should return here.”
Ultimately, Joseph had a say in his decision. He could start over in the United States, free from the gang violence his grandmother wanted him to escape. But he would have to do it without the woman he called mom.
Joseph said he wanted to be with his grandmother, so the lawyers requested voluntary departure, the fastest way to get him back to Honduras. But even that often takes months, and Joseph had to wait in a shelter he didn’t like very much. “We spent all our time shut inside,” he recalled.
In July 2021, after three months spent separated from his grandmother, Joseph finally boarded a plane to return to Honduras. He was excited to fly and look at all the tiny houses “small like ants” down below. It was a happy day, he recalls. “Because I had come back to my family,” he said.
But he was also returning to danger. Since the family has been back home, another relative has been murdered.
Although they’re happy to be together again, the experience changed Joseph, his grandmother said.
“Before we left, he was a very charismatic and happy kid,” Andrade said. “He only thought about playing
and singing.” Now, he has moments of depression that make his grandmother worry that he might want to hurt himself. “It scares me,” she said.
Other families have an even harder time reuniting.
Once the U.S. government separates a child from their family, it must then reunite the child with a responsible guardian or relative as soon as possible, according to policies stipulated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement—the HHS sub-agency tasked with protecting migrant children who are either alone or are taken from their parents. That can end up being a strenuous months- or years-long process for families.
It took a month for the ORR to even realize that Felipe still had parents from Colombia who were being detained in the United States. After more than 30 days of no contact, an ORR official called Victoria and asked if she had crossed into the United States with a child. If it weren’t for Felipe himself explaining what had happened, attorneys at NIJC, which took on his case, wouldn’t have known he had arrived with his parents.
“There was confusion that ORR thought he was found alone in Mexico,” said Daniela Velez, an attorney with NIJC. “This is such a big deal. This is Felipe being taken away from his parents, and no one can explain why or how.” The government has yet to be able to tell her why they separated the parents.
The Observer reached out for comment to ORR, which did not respond by the time of publication.
A DHS Office of Inspector General report from September 9 found that the department had failed to properly institute previously recommended protocols to track children who were separated from their parents. The report found one 10-month-old who was erroneously listed as “unaccompanied” despite having crossed with both parents. NIJC believes this misclassification is common.
For leaders of nonprofits like Justice in Motion, which has been working to identify and reunite families that were separated under Trump, it’s hard to believe that an administration that has promised
to reunify families continues to tear them apart. Their network of lawyers and defenders sometimes only have a name and country of origin to start their search. From there, they trek through Central America’s mountains and dusty roads to find deported parents.
Most of the cases they track began in 2018, the most “chaotic” time in family separation, according to Justice in Motion legal director Nan Schivone. The government had no systematic way of keeping track of these families. They didn’t prepare a standardized set of basic questions—such as an address, phone number, and close family members—that would help them identify deported parents down the line. When kids were sent from the Border Patrol to other agencies, such as ORR, the agencies didn’t share basic information about the children’s parents or caregivers that would allow them to establish contact.
“They had no intention to reunite the families, and you can tell that by the way that they effectuated the separations,” Schivone said of the Trump administration.
This year, Justice in Motion’s work expanded to include a new element. The Biden administration launched a task
force on the reunification of families, which states, it is “the policy of my Administration to respect and value the integrity of families seeking to enter the United States.” Now, when immigrantrights advocates find parents, they can explain to them that they have the option of legally migrating to the United States to reunite with their children who already are there.
“I credit the Biden administration for creating this task force to have a hand in repairing the harm,” Schivone said. The Biden administration also recently launched a pilot program at a Border Patrol station in Texas to reunify adult relatives and children more quickly. Congress also allocated $14.55 million to DHS to hire child welfare professionals to work alongside CBP officers in its FY 2022 budget.
A DHS spokesperson told NIJC attorneys that when children are separated from their parents, “We provide parents with information about how to locate and contact their children once they are released or transferred to the custody of a different agency.”
That didn’t happen in Felipe’s case. His parents had no contact, explanation, or even knowledge of where Felipe was or
separation, nor have any charges been brought against her other than the one relating to manner of entry. Put simply, this devastating separation persists with no justification whatsoever provided to the family.”
Not only has communication been sparse or broken between Felipe and his parents, but also between attorneys and his parents. Colleen Kilbride, senior attorney with NIJC’s Family Integrity Project, described the extraordinary efforts she’s had to go through to speak with her clients. GEO Group—one of the largest private prison companies in the world, which manages the detention center where Felipe’s parents are being held— has repeatedly canceled, rescheduled, or been “super slow” or unresponsive to her attempts to schedule attorney calls. After futile back-and-forth with a secretary and a GEO “caseworker” when she was trying to reach Anton, she was finally told to contact the U.S. Marshals.
telling administrators that he was really sad, she explained, that he wanted to get out, that he kept seeing other kids who could leave. “I just tell him to be strong, that we’ll be together again soon. That we love him so much. That he’s not there because we don’t love him.”
Reflecting on his experience after four months of separation from his parents, Felipe told his lawyers in late September, “I’ve been away from my mom and dad for around four months. I don’t understand why I cannot be with them. I am filled with sadness.”
He added that he was struggling with “wanting to be alive.”
When asked how Victoria was doing during the few attorney-client calls Kilbride was able to set up with her client, she said, “Not good. She was just weeping.”
“My suffering is so large I struggle to put it into words,” Victoria said.
but it’s another thing when you’ve come to ask for asylum.”
In mid-September, before one of their weekly 15-minute phone calls, Victoria had forgotten to put on a white sweater that she wears for video calls with Felipe. She’s still trying to keep yet another fantasy alive for her son: that his parents are not in prison.
When Felipe saw her, he asked about the jumpsuit. You’re in prison, he challenged her. She tried to play it off and say that it was just a uniform they gave out in the shelters where she is staying, but she noted that Felipe is a smart kid. A few days later, he drew a self-portrait in which he is wearing an orange jumpsuit with a number.
how he was doing for more than a month. Since late May, Felipe has been living in an ORR shelter in Chicago, while his parents and uncle remain in U.S. Marshals’ custody in a privately run Texas prison. More than a thousand miles away from the only family he has in the United States, Felipe has been struggling to cope with his new surroundings. When his attorneys first met him at the shelter, they found him energetic and determined: Despite the difficulty, he was sure he would soon be reunited with his parents. But as the months dragged, he began to lose his spirit.
“Felipe was the brightest, most bubbly 11-year-old you’ve ever met,” Velez said. (Felipe had turned 11 in custody.) She added, “Now I’m seeing the transition of what a detention center can do to you.”
“He’s all about being brave. ‘I’m really tough,’ he says. But you can see the sadness, the hopelessness,” Velez said. She said she struggles to explain to him why he can’t be with his parents when they are all here, in the same country.
According to a declaration submitted on Victoria and Anton’s behalf by NIJC, “To date, neither DHS nor DOJ has provided Victoria or her attorney with any written explanation as to the basis for the
The answer from them, however, was that she could discuss anything she wanted with her client after his next court date at the end of January.
Biden’s Family Reunification Task Force hasn’t been much more helpful. Kilbride reached out to them on September 26 for help reuniting the family or at least facilitating communication between them and their attorneys. Almost a month later, on October 21, they responded curtly, encouraging her to file a complaint with the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) branch. Kilbride had already filed a CRCL complaint almost a month prior, but has received no substantive response.
Since they were first able to speak by phone in June, Felipe’s parents have only been permitted 15-minute phone calls once a week. By early September, Felipe has stopped wanting to speak with his parents. He feels abandoned.
“You can’t even imagine how painful it is,” Victoria said. “I’m so down, sometimes I can’t eat. I never imagined I’d have to go through something like this. We came to ask for asylum.”
As Victoria described her son not wanting to speak to her anymore, she began breaking down. Felipe had been
Reflecting on her stint so far in prison, Victoria said, “I have never been detained before in my life. We are a law-abiding family. No one in my entire family has ever been in jail. I’ve helped people in jail as an attorney in Colombia, but this is a totally different experience of helplessness. It’s one thing to be put into prison when you’ve committed a crime,
Unless his parents are unexpectedly released, he will have to wait until late January, at the earliest, when Victoria and Anton have their court hearing, before he’s let out of his own prison.
Democracy is a word on a lot of lips lately, but I’m not sure what it means: The right to vote? Freedom of speech? All of it together forms this numinous enterprise of democracy that we can’t see or touch. But we can see and know workers, who to me are the fabric of democracy.
Over the decades, I’ve done studio and commercial photography, photojournalism, landscape pictures, and art photography. My dad and I used to do crime scene photos for the Fort Worth Police Department. Here and there, I’ve also worked for the excessively affluent million and billionaires who seemed to know little about us mid-level workers. Their cultural currency was built on watching people’s behavior in the presence of great wealth.
But for the most part, us Byrds—I’m the fourth generation of photographers by that name in my family—don’t watch the rich. We document the great, squirming mass of humanity that has worked for a living since our Neander neighbors shared the planet with us. Our trade is the folks who trade their living moments for food and shelter.
These days, I am obsessed with the anthropology of it all—the part my images play in capturing the lives of those around me who build, invent, educate, preach, cook, and strip.
The peasants and hunter-gatherers who walked the road before us had few means of documenting their lives. Yet proof of those lives is available to us: tools discovered in East Africa’s Olduvai Gorge, primitive business emails etched in stone by Sumerian laborers.
Current-day image tools offer ever-increasing verisimilitude. Black-andwhite photographs introduce us to mid-19th century presidents. Color photographs describe mid-20th century family life. Documentaries tell us about societies already gone.
Despite all the truthiness of our modern images, however, there is a problem: their lack of permanence compared with the archival longevity of, say, a painting, whether on a canvas or a cave wall. You walk into a display of 3,000-year-old Egyptian images of Nefertari or Khufu, and there they are. You can see how they dressed and what they labored at, try to understand their beliefs. Digital images, inkjet prints, and color photographs can’t compare.
That’s why, these days, I make precious metal-based photographs. Scientists estimate that a black-and-white photograph printed with gold, silver, platinum, or palladium may last 500 to 2,000 years, maybe more if stored properly. I’m working to keep my window to posterity open as long as possible
Photographs are the artifacts of now. With them, we can solidify the “present” to make the numinous appear—in this case, the workers of one time period speaking to the future.
unexpected development.”
On August 17, 1982, LGBTQ+ Texans celebrated “Gayteenth,” as activists called it at the time—a reference to Juneteenth, which commemorates news of slavery’s end reaching Texas. On that day in Dallas, a district court judge ruled in favor of plaintiff Don Baker in Baker v. Wade, declaring our state’s sodomy law unconstitutional. Baker, who lost his job with the Dallas Independent School District after coming out on TV, had sued the state for violating his right to privacy and equal protection under the laws.
“I want gay people in Texas to understand that this is their victory—that they should internalize this and feel good about themselves,” declared Baker, who became a figurehead of the struggle to decriminalize queer relationships.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the decision. The Supreme Court, which had recently ruled such
laws constitutional in Bowers v. Harwick, declined to hear the case. Anti-sodomy laws in Texas and elsewhere would remain on the books and in effect until Lawrence v. Texas 21 years later.
The history of Lawrence represents LGBTQ+ people’s struggle to be fully seen as human rather than as criminals and deviants, argues Wesley G. Phelps in Before Lawrence v. Texas: The Making of a Queer Social Movement, to be published this February by the University of Texas Press. Phelps, an associate professor of history at the University of North Texas, links the legal saga to the human struggle that inspired it and in the process sketches out a path for civil rights battles to come.
In the June 26, 2003, ruling, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned Texas’ anti-sodomy law, thereby striking down all similar remaining laws around
the country. This massive civil rights victory freed queer people from being presumed criminals simply because of their sexual practices—a proxy for queer identity itself. Phelps places that legal decision within a web of linked historic events, from the Stonewall riots to the AIDS crisis, from Roe v. Wade to more recent victories like Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015.
“While Lawrence marked a pivotal moment,” Phelps writes, “the case should be viewed as the culmination of a social and legal revolution that had been building for nearly three decades, rather than an
Phelps has a gift for connecting historic turning points to familiar places within our state, including foundational gay clubs like Dallas’ Village Station and Mary’s in Houston, which became hubs of community organizing during the fight for queer equality. He invokes other figures who will be recognizable to Texas readers, including Ray Hill, the iconic gay civil rights leader who died in 2018, and former Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade of Roe v. Wade, known for supporting high-profile raids on both abortion providers and LGBTQ+ gathering places. Phelps even explores the role Texas media played in advancing or limiting progress—the Dallas Morning News editorial page, for instance, warned that overturning sodomy laws would result in “the ‘normalization’ of a practice deeply opposed by society,” while the Texas Observer (naturally) advocated for repeal.
For Phelps, the story starts in the late 1960s, when the Texas Legislature impaneled a committee to modernize the legal code. In the preceding years, a combination of the nascent LGBTQ+ rights movement and the Kinsey Reports— landmark studies of human sexuality that revealed practices like masturbation, oral and anal sex were natural and commonplace among the human species— had put pressure on legislators to reform sodomy laws.
Although the law was rarely enforced, anyone—even married couples—could face a felony charge with a sentence of two
to 10 years in prison if caught engaging in anything other than penile-vaginal intercourse. However, many politicians and police couldn’t stomach the idea of explaining to small-town constituents why they’d legalized “gay sex.” In 1968, Bexar County District Attorney James E. Barlow warned that loosening sodomy laws would lead to “every deviate in the United States coming to Texas.”
After multiple delays (some engineered by Wade) and years of negotiations, in 1973 the Legislature adopted a reformed penal code with far worse sodomy laws. The new version spared consenting heterosexuals, married or otherwise. Same-sex partners, meanwhile, faced a class C misdemeanor with a $200 fine for engaging in oral or anal sex.
With the 1973 changes, for the first time Texas law singled out LGBTQ+ people as a distinct class deserving opprobrium. Phelps documents the far-reaching effects of this change, which included an increase in brutal police raids, gay bashing, and murders while also inspiring community defense patrols, fundraising for court cases, and other activism.
Phelps closed the book with some cautionary notes for the next generation of civil rights heroes. “The struggle for equality waged by queer Americans … would not end with a revolutionary decision by a court of law,” he wrote. Instead, it will be an ongoing struggle fought simultaneously in the courts, legislative bodies, and the streets.
Before Larence v. Texas: The Making of a Queer Social Movement
By Wesley G. Phelps University of
Houston’s 1971 temple to art and contemplation is still revealing its magic to visitors.
By ARMAN BADREI
In a part of Houston famous for its giant live oaks, museums, and million-dollar homes, 3900 Yupon Street looks out of place. With its bland brown brick facade, it could be just another building that schoolchildren throw balls against during recess. But the Rothko Chapel—next to a stone pyramid sculpture balancing a broken obelisk at its apex—has inspired both bewilderment and meditation in its visitors for more than 50 years. Outside the chapel, dusk had hit the humid city. Inside, the crowd sat, prayed, and cried. The occasion was an event titled “A Time of Remembrance.” Fifty or so visitors contemplated cycles of life and death in one short hour on November 2.
Open to the general public, the gathering included reflections by hospice workers, a Vedic priest, and a poet, as well as musical
performances by a guitarist and a music therapy group from nearby Rice University. The chapel is a non-denominational place of worship and the permanent home to a world-famous set of canvases created by Mark Rothko. Born Marcus Rotkovitch, the Latvian-American abstract painter of the post-war era known for his color field paintings never saw the chapel’s completion or its use as a spiritual space and forum for world leaders like the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and former President Jimmy Carter. But an estimated 100,000 people experience it every year. “It” isn’t the fact that you’re sitting next to paintings by a man whose works regularly sell for upward of $50 million. “It” is the quiet, the awe, and the reverie.
gradually and live open to it, trusting that we have nothing to fear?” Nouwen wrote in his book titled Our Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying and Caring. “Is it possible to prepare for our death with the same attentiveness that our parents had in preparing for our birth? Can we wait for our death as for a friend who wants to welcome us home?”
Juan R. Palomo, a retired Houston journalist and current poet, spoke about the failure of the ego to accept the circumstance of death. He wondered aloud about his legacy and whether he will be remembered. Is that a selfish or egotistical thought? he asked. Well, yes. “I am a human being, after all,” he said. He read from his poem “Las Tres Muertes,” or the three deaths, which refers to the final breath, the burial, and the last time someone utters your name. He read a poem about an older brother who died before Palomo was born. The poet and his surviving siblings “cling to the sepia print of you staring down the camera. We hold onto blurred stories—faded secondhand memories patched together from others’ washed out recuerdos.”
than bone hung 14 large canvases of deep purple. Dominique de Menil, who with her husband commissioned the chapel and its art, once wrote that “his colors became darker and darker, as if he were bringing us to the threshold of transcendence, the mystery of the cosmos, the tragic mystery of our perishable condition,” according to a book by author Annie Cohen-Solal.
From where I was sitting, the brushstrokes were Turkish coffee grounds, abstract and
Noticing the hum of air conditioning. The rustling of sleeves and shuffling of shoes on the floor. The repositioning of bums in seats. Men evacuating their throats of stray particles. Someone getting a hurried cough out of the way before the quiet gets too loud and, perhaps for some, too uncomfortable. But then, collectively, the silence is made. And for brief moments—only in spurts because we are human beings, after all— you realize you’re in a room with dozens of people and not a sound is being made. A harmony of nonexistent notes produces a feeling of pleasure. On that day, I tried to control my breath going in and out, the small twitches of my body. Because to break the silence we’d made together would have been to destroy something beautiful.
“Of course, the artist must have sufficient means at his command to achieve his objective so that his work becomes convincingly communicative,” Rothko wrote roughly 30 years before his work on the chapel finished. “But clearly it is something else which the art must communicate more than this before its author is seated among the immortals.”
That the event was taking place on the second half of Día de los Muertos and a day after All Saint’s Day was no coincidence. The Mexican holiday celebrates the return of departed souls to the land of the living with parties, bright colors, and marigolds. All Saints’ Day honors saints, known and unknown. Held during National Hospice and Palliative Care Month, the event honored those who deal so often with death—nurses, home care aides, therapists, and social workers—and those who are mourning.
Diana X. Muñiz, a chaplain with Bayou City Hospice, said that remembering those who have died is a moral duty, not just an exercise. She also referenced Dutch Catholic priest and author Henri Nouwen.
“Is it possible to befriend our dying
Then, the community remembrance ritual began. Jesus Lozano, an avuncular, pony-tailed Houston Independent School District music teacher, played the somber ballad “La Llorona” in Spanish on the guitar. When he began, the altar for the ofrenda—a small mahogany coffee table— stood bare in the middle of the chapel. For a few minutes, no one budged. Then, slow to stand but determined once moving, an elderly woman rose through the song’s chorus and placed a memento. With that, a tide followed. Attendees placed photos, trinkets, and letters—one with a sketch of an oak tree, another with the mark a of kiss—in remembrance. One woman took off her left earring and pinned it to her card. Another dropped a dark purple rose, the same hue as Rothko’s works that encircled us.
All the while, Lozano’s guitar ballads continued. The next song, Lozano’s rendition of “Amor Eterno” by Juan Gabriel, began.. “Tú eres la tristeza de mis ojos que lloran en silencio por tu amor,” he sang. You are the sadness of my eyes that cry in silence for your love.
And in the chapel, people cried. Around us on walls a few shades darker
imperfect enough to permit interpretation. Up close, they disappeared. At that time of evening, they didn’t show as much nuance as they do under the daylight that comes through the geometric skylight of octagons, triangles, and rectangles.
After Lozano strummed his final chords, a bereavement counselor read aloud “We Remember Them,” a Jewish call-andresponse poem. “At the rising of the sun and as it’s going down,” she said. “We remember them,” the chapel echoed. “At the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter”; “At the opening of the buds and in the rebirth of spring”; “When we are weary and in need of strength”; “When we are lost and sick at heart”; “We remember them.”
The program concluded with a moment of silence. I find these all start the same.
As Palomo had said earlier, “The quest for immortality is part of being human.”
In Rothko’s chapel, it seems, Rothko found that “something else which the art must communicate.” Gathered before his canvases the color of bruised flesh, participants that day found “it” through silence as much as through words and music—in a chapel that embodies the beauty and power of abstract expressionist art, of contemplation. A temple with no iconography, no reference, no suggestion of anything explicitly divine.
Rothko died by his own hand, never seeing the realization of his vision. A year before Rothko’s suicide, writer and art critic Dore Ashton visited him in New York City. He was “wearing slippers and he shuffled, with a vagueness to his gait that I attributed to drinking. … His face, thin now, is deeply disturbed, the eyes joyless. He wanders. He is restless (he always was, but now it is frantic),” she recounted in Cohen-Solal’s Mark Rothko: Toward the Light in the Chapel. Somewhere in that chapel—perhaps on one of the wooden benches, or in a corner of the room, or maybe inside one of those supernatural paintings—is Rothko’s seat among the immortals.
When Dagoberto Gilb came to serve as writer-in-residence at the University of Houston-Victoria and found a literary center, he was assured he’d only have to teach one course per semester.
“I had a contract, an agreement whose validity all academics take for granted based on academic traditions and guarantees that are honored across the country,” Gilb told the Texas Observer After eight years and under new leadership, the university asked Gilb to teach two more classes. Gilb sued for breach of contract and discrimination in state court, characterizing this as part of a campaign to “bully and force [him] into either retirement or a complete alteration of his agreement with UHV.”
“When the president of the university was responding in his communications with Dago, instead of saying ‘Professor Gilb,’ he says: ‘Senor Gilb,’ you know— without the tilde,” said Gilb’s attorney, Joe Crews.
UHV pushed the case to federal court, where it was dismissed based on sovereign immunity—which, as Alice-inWonderland as this sounds, means that no one can sue the state-funded school unless the university permits it. Gilb filed another lawsuit in state court, which is still pending.
UHV declined to comment on the allegations.
Gilb described this treatment he and his literary journal Huizache received as an “aggressive, dismissive stupidity, arrogance, ignorance that I’d call racist in its absence of awareness at its minimum.”
Huizache, a Chicano-focused literary magazine that received immediate national attention from media outlets like the Los Angeles Times and the New Yorker, could not make it in Texas. Gilb seems to blame his own naïveté when he sarcastically writes in the latest issue: “Is it surprising that Texas didn’t respect such a premiere MexAm mag? With its wonderful history of treating us so lovingly along the long border and inside all its cities, legal and penal system, and government bodies?” Mocking his early optimism, he adds, “I really believed the old Texas and its bigoted disregard for our historical value was over. I really believed in a new Texas, that a new history was being made.”
For a moment, Gilb considered the possibility of having the University of Texas at Austin take over the magazine but, encountering no enthusiasm when he brought the idea up to the director of the Center for Mexican American Studies, he dropped the dream of keeping the
journal in Texas.
“Enthusiasm and excitement are never slow,” said Gilb, who could easily think of at least three places in California where a journal like Huizache would be appreciated. So the magazine—named after the notoriously resilient Mexican tree that grows everywhere in South and East Texas—survives now as a literal transplant in California, where, as Gilb said, “Chicano is an institutional word.”
In a torch-passing forward to the latest issue of the journal that had been on hiatus since 2019, Gilb addressed the sudden lack of UHV’s interest in both him and Huizache, which he linked to the changing political climate and rise in unabashed racial discrimination coming from administrations across the land: “The country was Obama’s when I took this job,” he wrote. Gilb was not prepared for the Trump presidency, when he received an email in the fall of 2017 letting him know UHV wanted to end his appointment.
Things were very different in 2009, when Gilb was vigorously recruited by UHV to leave his tenured position as a creative writing professor at Texas State University and join the school as a writerin-residence whose duties would include teaching a single class and creating a
literary center of his choice. Having just edited the much-lauded anthology Hecho en Tejas, Gilb elected to keep illuminating the role Latinos play in literature by creating CentroVictoria, a center for Mexican-American literature and culture, a program that launched the acclaimed Latinx literary magazine Huizache: The Magazine of New American Writing, which aimed at a wider readership than historically significant precursors like El Grito and Revista Chicano-Riqueña
“There was great support initially for whatever I did,” Gilb explained. “This president was ambitious and wanted UHV to grow, and he listened to me.”
Huizache’s eight years at UHV—a university that for a brief time under then-President Tim Hudson not only had Gilb heading CentroVictoria, but hosted the avant-garde publisher Dalkey Archive Press and the literary journal the American Book Review—can now be seen for the anomaly it was. The school’s brief experiment in fostering the experimental makes clear that at UHV, the literary arts
were considered a liability to the business of higher learning.
“The art kill wasn’t ‘announced,’” said Gilb, referring to the way the leadership lost interest in his literary contributions.
“You just see what happens, who gets let go, the redirection of their ideas.”
Charles Alcorn, the former editor of the American Book Review, who suggested to Hudson that he hire Gilb, recalled the initial support he received.
“We wanted to recruit the right kinds of professors” to create “a liberal arts haven in South Texas.”
According to Alcorn, who named a character from his upcoming novel Beneath the Sands of Monahans “Archie Weesatche” in twain tribute to both the magazine and the unincorporated community near Victoria, the leaders who came after Hudson didn’t think a small university like UHV needed to be that involved in liberal arts and quickly shifted focus to job training.
“It’s just a shame,” Alcorn lamented. “It is so unfortunate because it really galvanized the Latino community of
Victoria. It was a point of pride for them. We had great attendance from the Hispanic community, you know; it was a golden era.”
Gilb, whose work has appeared several times in the New Yorker and Harper’s and who frequently contributes to literary journals like the Threepenny Review and Zyzzyva, is arguably the best-published living Mexican-American writer, and he knows exactly what he brought to UHV.
“Of course, they hired me as a MexicanAmerican writer of national stature; of course, they wanted CentroVictoria to represent a major part of their humanities department,” he said.
Gilb was asked to recruit instructors as well. “When they no longer wanted me, they were not talking only me,” he said, alluding to some of the hires made during his tenure who are no longer teaching at UHV.
When Gilb knew he would no longer be able to keep Huizache going at UHV, he reached out to Maceo Montoya, a past contributor and an associate professor in the Chicana/o
There’s a temptation to see it as deterioration, a shift from perfection, the descent of long days to long nights, darkness intruding on the morning, low clouds obscuring the sunrise, now a matter of faith.
It creeps in, gradually, then all at once like the drizzle that has fallen throughout the night, until now: the moment sleet becomes snow, gray suddenly turning white, the sky no longer falling but floating.
but rather a label imposed upon creativity that might otherwise be hard to market.
“There is often this expectation of what Chicano or Latinx literature should look like, and Huizache is looking for work that defies those expectations, that feels truly new,” Montoya said, adding: “It might be a familiar story, but it’s told in a way that takes us into new territory.”
Montoya, the son of Chicano visual artist Malaquais Montoya and nephew of Chicano poet and artist José Montoya, appreciates the responsibility yoked to Chicano literature. Given that MexicanAmerican writing is no longer suffering from scarcity, Montoya feels that discernment is required and that not everything that appears under the guise of Chicanx is worth championing.
“I understand why there’s a desire to celebrate our work no matter what,” stressed Montoya, whose own fiction often combines visual and textual elements into not-easily-classifiable assemblages. “We are so often overlooked and ignored and not published and not reviewed, but it does our literature a disservice if we are not clear about the quality of the work, how it’s crafted, or its complexity.”
studies department at the University of California, Davis, to take on the role of managing editor.
“I chose Maceo because he is serious and smart and not a ‘me me me’ person. Which I believe you must be to be an editor—someone willing to treat the mag as the end and purpose, not [to serve] your buddies or agenda or your own career, not certain writers only, but all of us,” Gilb enthused about Montoya. Full disclosure: This “all of us” Gilb talks about includes me, too. My story “Red Lines Drawn in the Blue Room” appeared in issue 7. Getting into Huizache was an absolute honor, but it was never anything I assumed would happen. I have known Dago on and off since 1997, when he invited me to join him and a few other
writers, including Christine Granados and Oscar Casares, for Friday night fiction exchanges in his garage apartment that he was calling the “illegal, undocumented workshop.” Nine years later, he reprinted my story “They Let Me Drive” in Hecho en Tejas. But despite Gilb’s encouragement, sending anything to his magazine— with its contributor list of writers like Juan Felipe Herrera, Héctor Tobar, and Benjamin Alire Saenz (writers I might admire but knew I shared little actual aesthetics with)—felt like a test to see if my kind of writing was Huizache material. That initial trepidation about submitting to a Chicano-focused journal speaks to the categorical issues of Chicano literature itself—and my own uncomfortable suspicion that that category is never really up to the writer,
Chicano literature, which can claim the quasi-absurdist autobiographies of Oscar Zeta Acosta and the mirage-like border meditations of Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa, is perhaps only in its adolescence; it is not served by easy assumptions regarding what its style and subject matter are supposed to be. A poem in the current issue of Huizache by José Olivarez addresses the touchy territory of employing Chicanx literary tropes: “apologies to all of the sad Mexicans i know and all of the sad Mexicans i’ve been. but i can’t write another poem where we show up to work at the steel mill for 20 years straight with no days off just to get laid off on a Wednesday by a man with more mustache than face.”
“There are a lot of assumptions about what Latinx literature is,” said Huizache’s first editor, Diana López, whose latest fiction, Felice and the Wailing Woman, is a middle school-level, feminist reframing of the la llorona myth. “One of the things that made me so proud of Huizache is that it really did show that whatever people
think Latino literature is—you know, and I am just going to say that for a long time, a lot of it was the recent immigrant story, the migrant worker story, the gangbangers story, the poverty story, the stereotypes that a lot of people have. Huizache did such a good job of showing that, no, it’s a lot more than that.”
Carribean Fragoza, the author of the experimentally savvy collection Eat the Mouth that Feeds You, is ready to use her position as Huizache’s newest prose editor to invite contributors to address this contemporary cultural complexity with genre-blurring works. As both an artist and critic, Fragoza sees Huizache as “a space for a conversation about whatever we want as long as it’s somehow related to Latinx or Chicanx sensibilities and concerns.”
“I think this is an interesting moment for literature by all writers of color, not just Latinx or Chicanx writers but just like this sort of interest in the speculative and even a somewhat return to, like magical [realist] sensibilities or fabulist,” said Fragoza, who encourages “slightly weird, slightly altered” submissions that explore the liminal plight of a new Latinx generation for whom “the connection to Latin America might be a little bit different.”
“I did not grow up on Mango Street,” Gilb said, regarding the publishing trend that seems to want to keep Latino literature in a juvenile category.
“And publishers push [‘young adult’] at us because of Mango Street love— elementary school to high school textbook material—they believe is our
strong area.”
As Gilb observes, the problem with publishers focusing on promoting clones of familiar Latinx titles is that the strategy obscures other, more consciously mature and complex voices, thus bracketing the literature into a category that must be handled with kid gloves. “To me, the biggest issue with it is that it is the only us allowed or considered and, even by our own [writers],” Gilb said. “It is the children’s menu, and the adultmoney adults get to try a large, diverse menu. We don’t even let ourselves try other cuisines. My favorite is Mexican, but I love French food, I love veggies, I love Texas beef when I let myself eat it.”
Gilb—whose most intricate writing often displays obvious influences of Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett, Paul Bowles, and
Juan Rulfo—knows something about the frustration of categorical labels. “We mostly get lit version of the sleepy Mexican or the fast-shooting and talkingback bandido,” he said.
A glance at the disparate crew of Huizache’s past contributors—a list that includes a mordant memoirist like Domingo Martinez and the sly and sage work of Carmen Tafolla—makes any prejudice about what to expect with Chicano literature fruitless.
Without a journal like Huizache (and really, there is only Huizache) to point a curious but uninformed reader to, belittling and stereotypical labels might happen to even your most celebrated Latino writer.
Due to what can only be a very shallow reading of his subject matter, which is male-oriented and often about working-class struggles, Gilb’s thematic reputation has too often been reduced to some kind of macho man-of-letters. The underlying assumption seems to have even influenced journalists. In 2011, when Gilb was being interviewed by Texas Monthly reporter Christopher Kelly for a piece that first ran in the New York Times, Gilb said that people had described his writing as “brainy and strong.” Somehow, the reporter heard “brawny and strong” and somehow also thought Gilb was using this paper towel-selling adjectives to describe himself.
“Brawny’ was 100 percent his ‘hearing’ and ‘preconception,’ which he overdubbed as if from my mouth,” Gilb remarked about the unfortunate misquotation.
The latest issue of Huizache—which contains Daniel Chacón’s recollection of witnessing his father shrink into submission while trying to get credit at an appliance store, and concrete poetry by Yaccaira Salvatierra that reconfigures the pejorative concept of “anchor baby” into mythic language—makes ignoring the nuance of contemporary Chicanx writing an act of willful ignorance.
Elaborating on the risk-taking writing he wants to see in Huizache, Gilb is blunt: “The goal is no boring shit. No clichés, stereotypes, tropes. No didactic yawns for high school and even younger students. A real mag for a larger community,” said Gilb, who wants “real
literature” that is “daring, dangerous, fun, driven, obsessive” and on a level with “Dostoevsky and Collete.”
Huizache is a literary magazine, like Zyzzyva, like the Paris Review. Poems and stories accepted under Gilb’s editorship were at the mercy of some hard-won taste informed by close readings of the Gnostics, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Albert Camus.
ire’ne lara silva, the Austin-based poet and fiction writer who spells her name in lower case as a visual reminder that her work is about “honoring silent ancestors,” described how gratifying it was to have two poems published in the discerning journal: “You know you always get the sense that the editors were very, very careful, very selective about what they chose but it was still a space I think that embraced a lot of writers that embraced and embraces a lot of writers.”
“Huizache always felt like a possible home,” said lara silva, whose last submission was too long to appear in the latest issue without significant editing, which the e.e. cummings and bell hooks-inspired prose stylist declined
to make. “From the very beginning, I thought it was something that was desperately needed,” she said, adding: “If I had to pick a favorite tree, it would be a huizache since I was a kid, a tree that’s fascinated me.”
Anticipating the editorial changes that are sure to come to Huizache in its move to California, lara silva said: “It might take a while for the aesthetics to change because I don’t think Dagoberto is going to be willing to let go. He might not completely be willing to completely step back from it.”
As far as issue 9 is concerned, lara silva’s suspicion regarding Gilb’s remaining influence as editor emeritus is confirmed.
Gilb personally solicited new fiction from María Isabel Alvarez, a firstgeneration Guatemalan-American writer whose story “Ears in the Radish Field” is in the current issue.
“I had a story I’d been tinkering with a few years about two Guatemalan teenagers who discover a magical ear, but the piece needed work,” Alvarez said. “Dagoberto gave me a deadline, and that pressure forced me to sit down and commit to the revision I’d been avoiding.”
A few hours later, Dagoberto reached out to tell her he loved it.
“He has been nothing but supportive and encouraging. I’m thrilled to be part of a journal that welcomes both emerging and established voices,” Isabel Alvarez said.
With litigation ongoing, a collection of essays “on hold,” and an entirely new book of stories titled New Testament done but still awaiting a green light from the right publisher, Gilb is keenly aware of how inattention and underappreciation can oppress the arts.
Singing the praises of the up-and-coming author, Gilb said María Isabel Alvarez “has all the brush strokes to be not just a star in our narrow and confined world of Latinas/Latinos, but to be in the footstep and stature of a García Márquez,” adding: “I hope the powers that still are controlling art and lit allow her to bust out of the dull boxes they confine us to.”
Roberto Ontiveros is an artist, critic, and fiction writer.
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