Alejandro Serrano, Texas Tribune

The U.S. government detained and deported a 25-year-old man who says he’s a U.S. citizen to Mexico earlier this month, after police stopped the vehicle he was riding in near Fredericksburg, then called immigration authorities when he couldn’t immediately provide identification or proof of citizenship.

Brian José Morales García, who says he was born in Denver but grew up in Mexico, was living and working in Texas at the time of his arrest. In an interview with The Texas Tribune, he said he repeatedly told police and immigration agents that he was a U.S. citizen and that he had a copy of his birth certificate and his Social Security card at home in Austin that he could show them, but was denied the opportunity.

Still, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is disputing that he is a U.S. citizen and claims he admitted to entering the country illegally.

Morales, who doesn’t speak English and has dual citizenship in Mexico, was booked into the Gillespie County Jail before U.S. Border Patrol agents took custody of him.

He was held for five days and said he feared being detained for months, so he decided to sign documents agreeing to a quick deportation so he could rejoin his wife and newborn daughter, who live in Mexico.

“Eventually I told them what they wanted to hear because I wanted to speed up the process and return and see my daughter,” Morales said in an interview.

Morales and his lawyer provided the Texas Tribune copies of his Social Security card and his birth certificate, which shows he was born in Denver. They also shared a Denver hospital record showing that he was admitted to the hospital the day he was born.

A spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, which keeps records of births in the state, said the agency is prohibited by state law from providing or confirming the validity of anyone’s birth certificate.

The Tribune also reviewed Morales’ Mexican identification, which shows a different spelling of his first name and a different date of birth. His mother said that when she and her family returned to Mexico when Morales was 1 year old and registered him for Mexican citizenship, the clerk used the common Spanish spelling of his first name — Bryan — and changed his date of birth without checking his American birth certificate.

César Cuauhtémoc García-Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University and immigration attorney, said that it is common for dual citizens to have different versions of their names on different government documents.

The Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement that on April 3 one of its troopers pulled over a pickup truck in Fredericksburg for a window tint violation. The trooper called Gillespie County Sheriff’s deputies and officers with the Fredericksburg Police Department to help translate for Morales and another passenger in the pickup.

Officers then called ICE agents, who asked officers on the scene to hold the men.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security disputed Morales’ citizenship claim, saying in a written statement that its agents “did NOT arrest a U.S. citizen.”

“Agents determined Morales-Garcia was illegally in the U.S. through record checks,” the statement said. “Morales-Garcia also admitted he is a Mexican national and he entered the country illegally. He was subsequently removed to Mexico on April 7.”

Morales said he initially told agents that he entered the country legally through a port entry in El Paso, but they again accused him of lying “and they told me I could go to prison, so I just told them I entered illegally.”

“They asked me how many miles away from the city and what date I entered, so at this point I was just making up numbers,” he said.

Homeland Security didn’t respond after the Tribune asked about Morales’ U.S. birth certificate, Social Security card and hospital records.

Univision was the first to report Morales' arrest and deportation.

Starting a family in Denver before returning to Mexico

Morales’ mother, María del Socorro García, 44, said she and her sister moved from Mexico to Denver in 1999. She lived in an apartment complex and worked cleaning offices. She began dating a restaurant cook who lived in the same apartments, and two years later she gave birth to Brian. A year later they had another son, Miguel Morales García.

Socorro García said she returned to Mexico with her sons in 2002 because she wanted them to meet their grandfather, who had been struggling with diabetes. Her husband followed them later, and they agreed to stay and raise their sons in Mexico.

Miguel Morales, now 24, said when he became an adult he decided he wanted to know “his roots” and live in the country where he was born. He said he came to the U.S. three years ago with his Social Security card and told immigration agents that he didn’t have a copy of his birth certificate but that he was a U.S. citizen. After identifying him, immigration agents let him through, he and his mother said.

Once he reached Denver, he got a copy of his and his brother’s birth certificates and gave his brother’s certificate to him during a visit to Mexico.

In January 2025, a family friend who also has relatives in Denver drove Brian Morales from Aguascalientes to the border city of Ciudad Juárez, where they drove across the bridge into El Paso. Brian Morales said he showed U.S. Customs and Border Protection his birth certificate and they let them through.

“I wanted to come to the U.S. because I wanted to work and help provide for my wife who was three months pregnant at the time,” Brian Morales said.

He moved in with his brother, but said he struggled to find work in Denver and decided to move to Austin with a friend, where he found a job installing air conditioning units. He said his boss was driving him and another coworker to Fredericksburg for a job when they were pulled over.

Miguel Morales said his brother’s roommate called him in Denver with news of his brother’s detention by ICE.

“At first I thought, ‘Well he’s a U.S. citizen, they're going to eventually release him,’” Miguel Morales said.

Miguel Morales said he didn’t learn his brother was in a detention center until an Univision reporter called him. He and his mother began to worry even more, he said, because he had read that people were suffering in detention centers.

“I got scared,” said Miguel Morales, who works as a cashier at a McDonald's. “And in my case, I haven’t mastered speaking English yet, so I’m worried about … being questioned, too.”

Brian Morales said he was transferred to five different facilities before he signed the deportation papers and was placed on a plane to Mexico. He said he wants to return to the U.S.

“As a U.S. citizen, how can they treat me like this, just because I only speak Spanish?” he said. “I want them to take responsibility.”

Socorro García said she doesn’t understand why her son was detained and deported.

“I feel angry because he’s from there, so why was he so mistreated?” she said.

Report found U.S. officials detained 170 U.S. citizens

Morales’ deportation is evidence that the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown is leading immigration agents to racially profile Hispanic people and violate American citizens' civil rights, said Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, Morales’ lawyer.

“If you think about what this case means for every single other person living in this country, we should all be afraid because no passenger in any vehicle who's driving down the road in any part of the United States who is a U.S. citizen has any legal obligation to carry proof of their citizenship,” Lincoln-Goldfinch said. “The slippery slope is very obvious.”

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, said in a statement that he’s advocating for Morales’ return to the U.S.

“His arrest and deportation are the direct result of Trump’s cruel and haphazard mass deportation campaign,” Castro said in a statement. “The Administration’s immigration policies continue to threaten our constitutional rights, and it should raise alarms for everyone — including U.S. citizens. My office is in touch with Brian’s attorney, and I will continue to push for his legal entry into the country. He belongs here.”

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, the research arm of the U.S. Congress, found that immigration agents “arrested 674, detained 121, and removed 70 potential U.S. citizens” between 2015 and 2020, according to a July 2021 report.

A ProPublica investigation found more than 170 U.S. citizens were detained by immigration agents in the first nine months of President Trump’s second administration. The report didn’t identify anyone who was deported.

Late last year, ICE agents arrested 22-year-old Dulce Consuelo Diaz Morales, whose lawyers say is a U.S. citizen and provided ICE officials with her birth certificate showing she was born in Maryland. Homeland Security contested her citizenship, saying she entered the country illegally. She was held in an immigrant detention center for 25 days before she was released.

Recently, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a court order that during immigration stops, a person’s “apparent ethnicity” can be used by immigration agents as “a relevant factor” to question a person’s citizenship status. Kavanaugh wrote in his order that if the person is a U.S. citizen, “that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter.”

Immigrant rights advocates and immigration lawyers warned that this ruling would lead ICE agents to racially profile people, including U.S. citizens.

“This administration’s disdain for our fundamental rights has no bounds,” Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, a national immigrants rights advocacy group, said in a statement. “The continued examples of U.S. citizens being detained and deported are a built-in feature of” the Trump administration’s “mass deportation crusade and the culture that prioritizes speed and quotas instead of accuracy, accountability or dignity.”

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

People seeking a host of professional licenses in Texas, from electricians to dog breeders, will soon have to prove they are in the country legally after the state’s Commission of Licensing and Regulation on Tuesday adopted a new rule that could affect thousands of workers.

Commissioners unanimously approved the change after hearing from a parade of speakers who largely asked them to do the opposite because of worries that it will hamper the state’s economy and burden immigrants trying to make an honest living. The speakers also argued the move will push people to work without a license, and erode state oversight of crucial industries.

The commission oversees the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, which plans to implement the rule May 1. An agency spokesperson did not immediately respond Tuesday for comment.

Despite the agency’s stated intent to follow federal statute and the concerns raised by workers across the state, TDLR lawyer Derek Burkhalter told commissioners that some noncitizens will still be able to get licenses — so long they meet one of the qualifications under a three-decade-old federal law underpinning the rule change and provide required documentation.

People can qualify for benefits under the federal law if they were granted asylum, admitted as a refugee or are recognized as a victim of human trafficking, for example.

“The proposed rules do not impose a citizenship requirement,” Burkhalter said. “Individuals who are not U.S. citizens may still be eligible for licensure if they meet the eligibility criteria.”

TDLR argues that the federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 prohibits people in the country unlawfully from receiving certain benefits, including professional licenses administered by the state, unless they qualify for certain exceptions. The lists of documents that can be used to apply for a license will be posted on TDLR’s website, officials said Tuesday.

TDLR joins at least three other state agencies that have cracked down on immigration through administrative and regulatory procedures since President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year. The Texas Department of Public Safety has stopped issuing commercial driver’s licenses to many noncitizens, the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles imposed new strict photo ID requirements for vehicle registrations, and the Texas Secretary of State’s Office has been on the hunt for noncitizens registered to vote, at times erroneously flagging Americans as potential noncitizens.

The changes mirror a presidential executive order from February 2025, when Trump ordered federal agencies to crack down on the same 1996 law to “defend against the waste of hard-earned taxpayer resources, and protect benefits for American citizens in need, including individuals with disabilities and veterans.”

It remains unclear how many undocumented workers will be affected in Texas by the new licensing requirement. The state is home to an estimated 1.7 million people without authorization who work in numerous key industries such as construction, hospitality and an assortment of others under the purview of TDLR.

Steve Bruno, the agency’s deputy executive director for licensing and regulatory services, told commissioners that fewer than 2% of the licenses issued by the agency did not have a Social Security number attached to them.

But TDLR could not assume those individuals were running afoul of federal law, agency officials said, because there are a number of ways for noncitizens to live and work in the country through federal programs.

The agency issued more than 1 million individual and business licenses during the 2025 fiscal year.

TDLR’s website currently contains guidance to apply for occupational licenses for those who do not have a Social Security number. The page links to a form, last updated by the commission in January, that instructs applicants to attach supporting documentation, such as a green card, immigrant visa or refugee travel document.

To offer commissioners context, Bruno said the agency had issued roughly 19,000 new licenses and renewed another 39,000 in February alone.

The information did little to assuage concerns from a variety of industries.

Agency officials received 450 comments about the proposed rule; of those, all but 28 were against it.

Among those who testified in person Tuesday morning was Rocio Gomez, a 35-year-old Austin resident who holds an eyelash extension specialist’s license and instructs at a beauty school in the capital city. Some of her students without legal status have been in great distress since the agency proposed the rule in January, at times crying to her about the uncertainty of their future, she said in an interview after testifying.

“Seeing how this has affected the students affects us too, emotionally. It appears that everything is at the whim of them,” Gomez said in an interview in Spanish, gesturing at the dais where the commissioners sat.

Other speakers — salon owners, educators and beyond — reminded commissioners about the strict requirements already in place to earn some licenses. Industries that will be affected range from dyslexia therapists to used car parts recyclers to dog breeders, according to TDLR’s proposal filed with the state.

Some of the licenses require many hours of practice and safety education. For instance, earning a cosmetology operator license in Texas can take more than a year as applicants learn about chemicals and hygiene as well as hair technique.

In barring undocumented people from getting licensed, the state will force them into the black market and lead to a proliferation of people providing services without oversight or proper permitting, speakers told commissioners.

The issue has already captured the attention of elected officials and immigration hardliners, who welcomed the new rule.

"For too long, benefits to illegal aliens have served as a magnet to entice migrants to enter the United States illegally,” Andrew Mahaleris, a spokesperson for Gov. Greg Abbott, said in a statement after the vote. “Texas will not reward illegal immigration by issuing professional licenses to those here unlawfully. These changes protect the integrity of our licensing system, uphold federal law, and ensure jobs go to hardworking Texans.”

State agencies must run proposed rule changes by the governor’s office before they are made available for public comment.

Democratic state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt of Austin, who is running for comptroller of public accounts, submitted a comment to TDLR in opposition to the change. Using published estimates by a variety of groups, the senator calculated that the rule change could result in a reduction of the state’s skilled workforce by 8 to 10%.

“Texas cannot afford to lose qualified and skilled licensees in these high-demand jobs,” Eckhardt wrote, urging the commission to study the potential effect. “The impact of TDLR’s proposed rule is likely more far-reaching than what was initially assessed by the agency.”

In their formal rule proposal filed with the state, agency officials wrote that there would be no anticipated economic impacts or effects on small and microbusinesses. In response to questions about this on Tuesday, they told commissioners that it was difficult to assess potential impact because they did not want to assume a licensee was afoul of federal law simply because they did not provide a Social Security number.

Commission Chair Rick Figueroa asked for frequent updates to the commission as the rule is implemented, acknowledging the agency was entering uncharted territory perhaps only in the company of the Department of Motor Vehicles, which made its change months ago.

“This is a front-burner issue in regards to information back to the commission,” Figueroa said. “I'm sure we're building a plane and flying it a little bit.”

Ayden Runnels contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

by Alejandro Serrano and Apurva Mahajan, The Texas Tribune

February 6, 2026

Democrat Taylor Rehmet’s recent upset victory over a MAGA star to represent a reliably red Texas Senate district was, at least in part, due to a significant leftward shift by Latino voters. These maps help illustrate the point.

Precincts in Senate District 9 with a majority of Hispanic residents swung on average 34 percentage points toward Rehmet compared to the margin garnered by the Democratic nominee in 2022, when the seat was last on the ballot.

Across the entire district, VoteHub estimated that Rehmet captured about 79% of the Hispanic vote, a 26-point improvement on the 53% that went for Democrat Kamala Harris in 2024 — the biggest shift of any racial group in the district.

The upshot was a decisive 14-point win for Rehmet, an Air Force veteran and union leader, over GOP activist Leigh Wambsganss in last weekend’s special election runoff.

Rehmet’s victory will be short-lived. The contest was to finish the term of Kelly Hancock, who left the Senate seat to become Texas’ acting comptroller. Rehmet and Wambsganss will face each other again in November.

No less, the January election has garnered national attention because of Rehmet’s comfortable winning margin in a district that Hancock, a Republican, won in 2022 by 20 points — two years before Trump carried it by a similar margin.

It remains early to detect what the results suggest for November’s midterm elections, if anything. But they present a fresh reminder of the significance of the Latino vote in Texas — and beyond — and the political danger for down-ballot Republicans if they see their support erode among the state’s growing Latino voting bloc.

Following Trump’s 2024 victory — in which exit polls showed him capturing 55% of Texas’ Latino vote — much of the attention centered on the state’s historically Democratic and heavily Latino border counties. Trump won 14 out of the 18 Texas counties within 20 miles of the border, including all four in the Rio Grande Valley.

Less-documented, however, has been the inroads made by Trump and the Texas GOP with Latinos — who account for the largest share of the state’s population — in the state’s largest metro areas. The special election in Senate District 9, which covers about half of Fort Worth and many of its surrounding suburbs complicates the narrative some more, suggesting a contraction back toward Democrats among Latino voters.

A Texas Tribune analysis of precinct-level results shows that Rehmet won by an average margin of 59 percentage points in the voting precincts where more than 60% of the population is Hispanic. In 2022, the Democratic nominee, Gwenn Burud, carried those same precincts by a much narrower 26-point average margin.

Hispanic Texans account for slightly more than one in five eligible voters in Senate District 9, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Overall, roughly 83% of precincts in the district — 301 out of 364 — shifted to Democrats from the 2022 general election to Saturday’s runoff. Such swings are to be expected, to a degree, as midterm elections often favor the party that is not running the White House. But not to this level, according to political observers.

In 40 precincts, Democrats saw a surge of more than 50 percentage points their way. Fifteen of those precincts are majority Hispanic.

The apparent erosion of Latino support for the GOP has emboldened Democrats in Texas and Washington, at least for now.

Fresh off the runoff, Texas Democratic leaders are eyeing red-leaning congressional districts from the Texas-Mexico border to cities, including newly drawn districts in the Houston and San Antonio areas, with significant Hispanic populations.

”We are leaving no stone unturned in this election,” Texas Democratic Party Chair Kendall Scudder said on a press call this week. “Whether you were in Dumas or you were in Dallas, you deserve investment from our party, and we intend to show up and fight back.”

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

Head of Texas’ largest business organization accused of sexual assault in lawsuit

by Kayla Guo and Alejandro Serrano, The Texas Tribune
November 24, 2025

An unidentified woman accused Glenn Hamer, president and CEO of the Texas Association of Business, of sexually harassing and assaulting her before retaliating against her through his perch atop the powerful business group when she rejected his overtures, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in Travis County.

The woman, identified in her court filing as “Jane Doe,” was described on social media by her attorney, Tony Buzbee, as the founder and executive director of Texas Venture Alliance, an advocacy group for startups and entrepreneurs. She is seeking more than $10 million in damages.

The lawsuit alleges that Hamer pursued the woman using his status as head of the Texas Association of Business, or TAB, offering to help advance the woman’s advocacy group and connect her with important people. Hamer also serves as chairman of the Texas Venture Alliance, according to the group’s website, and the two organizations partnered in September 2024 to launch an initiative promoting entrepreneurship in Texas.

In a statement, TAB Board of Directors Chair Bill Jones said the organization was aware of the lawsuit and was putting Hamer on administrative leave “while it conducts a full internal investigation.” Jones added that Megan Mauro, TAB’s vice president and chief of staff, would serve as the group’s interim CEO.

In a 13-page filing, the unidentified woman’s lawyers cast Hamer as the latest in a long line of “unscrupulous men in power” who “have attempted to improperly use that power to coerce those with less power to get what they want.”

“In this matter, the prime perpetrator used his vaunted and respected status to engage in a sexual relationship with a much younger woman by offering incentives available to him by virtue of his position,” the lawsuit continues. “When she at some point refused his advances, he coerced, begged, harassed and ultimately assaulted her.”

Hamer did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The legal filing also names TAB as a defendant, arguing that the group was “vicariously liable” for Hamer’s actions by allowing him to remain in his position as CEO despite “knowledge of his prior behavior and complaints,” and by failing to adopt policies to prevent such actions.

The Texas Association of Business is among Texas’ most influential business groups, serving as the state’s de facto chamber of commerce and routinely lobbying members of the Legislature on a wide array of business issues.

Hamer often appears alongside the state’s top leaders at public functions; just last week, he moderated a “fireside chat” with Gov. Greg Abbott, during which the two discussed Texas’ economic future and TAB gave Abbott an award.

Spokespersons for the state’s top three elected officials — Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows — did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations leveled against Hamer.

The lawsuit alleges that Hamer “groomed” the unidentified woman and entered into a relationship with her beginning in 2022. He then “began to view Doe not as a colleague or someone working alongside him with similar goals for Texas, but as someone he could manipulate for his personal pleasure,” the filing says.

Hamer sexually assaulted and harassed the woman multiple times, the lawsuit alleges, including in May by attempting to remove her pants and “mount” her. When the woman pushed him away and left the room, the lawsuit states that Hamer “followed. He would not stop.” Hamer later apologized, according to the lawsuit, telling the woman that he was “disgusted with himself” and offering to go to an ATM to give her money so she would “forget about it.”

“She did not accept his monies; she did not forget,” the lawsuit continues.

Hamer is accused of making unsuccessful sexual advances on the woman on two other occasions after the May incident: in June in Denton, and in October in Washington.

When the woman rejected his overtures, the lawsuit states, Hamer launched a “smear campaign and actively tried to damage Doe’s reputation, credibility and professional relationships.”

“His message was clear; his intentions straightforward,” the lawsuit alleges. “If Doe would not give him what he wanted personally, he would use his status to make sure Doe did not advance professionally.”

Hamer allegedly retaliated against the woman by redirecting a planned donation to the Texas Venture Alliance from an unidentified “Texas organization,” ensuring the money was rerouted to other entities, including the Texas Association of Business. Hamer also helped form an “in-state competitor whose mission mirrored TVA,” then assisted that organization in competing for the same funding as TVA and “copied, stole and passed off Doe’s ideas and business plans” to the copycat group and to TAB, according to the lawsuit.

The filing also notes that the woman is TVA’s sole employee, and that her salary depends on the organization’s revenue and her boss — Hamer.

After the woman’s rejections, Hamer’s behavior turned into “sinister intimidation,” the lawsuit continues, accusing Hamer of “stalking Doe at conferences or events, following her in and out of hotels, following her throughout hotel hallways barefoot or in his pajamas and turning friends and business contacts against her.”

Aside from accompanying elected officials to public events, Hamer is a registered lobbyist who frequents the Capitol during legislative sessions, lending his support for or discouraging passage of proposed legislation.

This year, he testified in support of a measure — Senate Bill 30 — that sought to limit the amount of damages accident victims could claim. The bill died during the Legislature’s final hours, despite a lobbying campaign from TAB and other powerful business groups.

The first introduced version of SB 30 would have capped damages at $250,000 for mental or emotional pain resulting from an event that caused someone personal injury, such as sexual assault.

The allegations of sexual misconduct are the latest to rock the Capitol. In 2023, Rep. Bryan Slaton, R-Royse City, resigned on the eve of a Texas House vote to expel him after an investigation found that he had provided alcohol to a 19-year-old staffer before having sex with her.

Two years before that, a false date rape allegation cast fresh attention on a culture of sexual harassment under the Pink Dome. That culture was well-detailed in numerous media reports during the 2017 legislative session that led to reforms that the state’s elected leaders later acknowledged fell short.

Among the lawmakers accused of wrongdoing was Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, who gave up a committee leadership post after the University of Texas at Austin investigated allegations that he sent lewd messages and a sexually explicit photo to a graduate student. The university later said that evidence did “not support a finding” that Schwertner had violated Title IX by sending the messages.

Schwertner was once again elevated to hold a committee chair in 2021 and has since carried a number of major bills in the upper chamber. Among them was SB 30 — the personal injury lawsuit payouts cap.

Disclosure: Texas Association of Business has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

Mike Collier to challenge Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick again — as an independent

by Alejandro Serrano, The Texas Tribune
November 13, 2025

Mike Collier, a two-time Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, announced on Thursday that he is again running to be the state’s second-in-command — but this time as an independent.

Collier, an accountant and auditor, lost his previous bids to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the powerful Republican who presides over the state Senate, in 2018 and 2022. Running as an independent, he is branding himself as a protector of public education who also aims to “restore fiscal integrity” and return power to Texans from political insiders.

“Everything starts with our public schools,” Collier said in a statement. “But Dan Patrick is trying to dismantle them with vouchers and culture wars. I’m running to stop him and to fully fund our public schools, respect our teachers, and make sure every child in Texas has a chance to succeed.”

Patrick beat Collier by 5 points the first time the two went head-to-head and handily beat him four years later, claiming a third term with a 10-point margin.

Collier’s candidacy could complicate the path for the Democratic nominee if he ends up siphoning Democratic votes. State Rep. Vikki Goodwin, D-Austin, is the only major candidate to enter the primary to oppose Patrick.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.