Advocacy groups held a press conference outside the Hays County Courthouse on July 3 to release details and documents surrounding the April 1 raid in Dripping Springs.
The conference, organized by Austin Sanctuary Network and LatinoJustice PRLDEF, came just over three months after the raid, which resulted in 49 individuals, including minors, being detained by state and federal law enforcement. According to an FBI press release, the raid was conducted because the detained individuals were believed to be members of Tren De Aragua (TdA), a Venezuelan gang that President Donald Trump has declared a terrorist organization. However, documents provided to The Star by the Caldwell-Hays Examiner make no mention of (TdA).
“For months we have seen law enforcement cry ‘Tren De Aragua’ to justify detaining, deporting and disappearing Venezuelan immigrants and refugees without ever producing evidence of gang affiliation at all,” associate counsel with LatinoJustice PRLDEF Karen Muñoz said. “We don’t know how this operation was planned for how long, what surveillance technologies were used or where many of our neighbors were taken.”
Both the affidavit and warrant from the raid make mention of drugs, weapons and other illegal items, however, they never mention TdA, which the FBI’s press release did. The return and inventory report for the raid shows that some suspected drugs were recovered, but there were no weapons, client lists or anything else seized during the raid.
“If the sensationalized concerns around Tren De Aragua were so significant that it was mentioned and emphasized in every single public statement,” Sam Benavides, the managing editor for the Caldwell-Hays Examiner said. “Why is it not mentioned even once in the document where they explain why they need to violently raid a child’s birthday party?”
The affidavit was only recently acquired, as it had been sealed after the arrests were made.
According to Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra, both state and federal officials did not inform him about the raid before or after it happened. He said that multiple requests from his office were ignored, instead he was given a brief three sentence statement from law enforcement.
“I am the highest local elected official, after me, you’re going to the Capitol, and I know no names of who was taken, where they were taken, or why,” Becerra said after the press conference. “I stood here in this courtroom, and I swore an oath to defend and protect our Constitution, and this is 100% counter to that.”
Becerra said the lack of communication from state and federal law enforcement was unprecedented.
“I am the binding signature to all [county] government documents, generally speaking, when I ask a district court, a county court, a JP or any other system in our government for information, they share it with me, whatever it is, as serious as it may be, but when I asked about picking up these people with no process? Nothing,” Becerra said. “I couldn’t get anything from it. So this is very unprecedented. This is very secretive, and this is very un-American.”
Becerra made it clear that he had no problem with law enforcement arresting criminals, but that arrests need to be made for legal reasons and detainees given due process.
“You want to grab criminals, real criminals, not a dishwasher, grab criminals, grab murders. Go for it. I will help you,” Becerra said. “But don’t lie about people picking our strawberries, grabbing our watermelons and calling them criminals, and we got to deport them quickly, sending them to private for profit concentration camps.”
Becerra’s comment about concentration camps was referring to immigration detention facilities such as “Alligator Alcatraz,” a detention facility built in the Florida Everglades.
During the press conference, Becerra also spoke against the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which passed just an hour after the conference ended. He criticized the bill for cutting welfare programs and giving tax breaks to the wealthy, while increasing the budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to over $100 billion, higher than the budgets for all other federal law enforcement agencies combined and higher than the United States Marine Corps’ budget.
“They’ll pour billions into hunting, dishwashers and roofers, but your kids at school can’t afford textbooks. The textbooks are critical to what we do here,” Becerra said. “They’ll buy drones, armored trucks, SWAT teams for neighborhoods like ours, but they’ll cut Medicare and food assistance when we need it most. Who does all this money protect? Not you, not me.”
The press conference ended with a statement being read aloud on behalf of the families that were impacted by the raid.
“Our families deserve answers for why they were taken away. We don’t know where they are, where they are being detained, and when we ask for those answers, we are told no one can help us. Many of us are fleeing those same gangs they’re accusing us of being in,” the statement read. “Some of us are fleeing government kidnappings only to come here and suffer the same fate. Please, we deserve answers.”
After the conference, organizers handed out 49 red roses. Each rose symbolized one person that was detained in the raid.
