Grading Texas

Luis Fernando Cabrera, 18, a senior at Northeast Early College High School in Austin, attended his classes, played on the school soccer team, took his nephew to daycare every morning and still had time to manage the 40-plus-hour-a week night shift at a fast food restaurant as he prepared for his approaching high school graduation.

In the words of his soccer coach, Cabrera’s potential “to be a productive member of our society was very high.”

But Cabrera is now confined to the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center about 100 miles south of Austin, another victim of a cruel, racist-driven immigration policy that is the antithesis of what this country is supposed to stand for.

According to the Austin American-Statesman, Cabrera’s nightmare began when a state trooper pulled him over for an expired vehicle registration on his way home from his night job. Following a state policy demanded by Gov. Greg Abbott, the trooper then turned him over to federal immigration agents.

Although President Trump would like Americans to think that his aggressive deportation program is all about deporting violent criminals – and many of his MAGA supporters may believe that — studies have shown that most deportees are people like Cabrera, immigrants with no criminal record, many of whom are awaiting asylum hearings and pose no danger to public safety.

Cabrera was 11 when his Honduran parents brought him to the U.S. from Mexico seven years ago. The family asked for asylum, the American-Statesman reported, seeking refuge from a death threat from a Mexican legislator.

Cabrera and his older sister, with whom he was living, were awaiting a December hearing in their asylum case. They were playing by the rules, as have many other detained and deported immigrants.

Meanwhile, the perpetrator of this immigration reign of terror, the only convicted felon to be elected president of the United States, continues to pick and choose which laws and rules to obey. With his capricious, often illegal actions, President Trump poses a greater threat to the security of the United States and the well-being of Americans than most of the everyday, hard-working people he continues to try to dehumanize.

Austin high school senior detained by ICE after traffic stop rattles Northeast campus

Clay Robison

President Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter declaring a “wall of separation between Church & State” was written in response to a group of Connecticut Baptists, a religious minority in their state seeking Jefferson’s support in their fight for religious freedom. At the time, Congregationalism was the established state religion in Connecticut, a distinction that was later abolished.

Now, there is a Texas Baptist, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, working overtime to tear down that wall, declaring in a recent political email blast: “It is time to set the record straight: there is no such thing as ‘separation of church and state’ in the Constitution.”

One thing about Patrick. He is always adamant, even when he is wrong.

Patrick, of course, wasn’t there at the birth of our nation, but Jefferson was one of the more prominent founders. And Jefferson would have disagreed with Texas’ lieutenant governor, noting in his letter to Patrick’s Baptist ancestors that the “wall of separation” was built by the First Amendment’s language providing that Congress shall “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

But Jefferson is gone, the “establishment clause” is being reinterpreted by some judges, Christian nationalism is on the rise and Patrick is very much alive and politically active. Aided and abetted by Gov. Greg Abbott, the state education commissioner, the majority of the State Board of Education and most Republicans in the Legislature, he continues promoting Christianity and increasingly stamping it on our public education system, which is supposed to equally serve children of all religions or no religion, not substitute for Sunday school.

Within the past few years, we have seen the Texas Education Agency develop and the State Board of Education adopt the Bluebonnet reading curriculum with Bible stories and passages scattered throughout it. The State Board of Education also has given preliminary approval to required reading lists for grades K-12 that include biblical material.

Then there is the new law pushed by Patrick requiring copies of the Ten Commandments, the Christian version, to be displayed in public school classrooms. A closely divided 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld this law as constitutional with a majority opinion that the San Antonio Express-News, in an editorial, described as “tortured and oppressive.”

And, sad to say, many Christian schools, including some Baptist institutions, will soon begin receiving millions of dollars a year in tax funds distributed among students participating in Texas’ new private school voucher program. The schools will be allowed to continue discriminating in admissions policies, including giving preference to members of their own faiths or refusing to accept LGBTQ applicants.

Initially, the state refused to allow Islamic schools to participate in the voucher program, under an unproven, Republican claim that some of the schools could be linked to terrorists. The state relented and admitted a handful of Islamic schools only after being sued.

This is what you can call a selective view of the “religious freedom” that Patrick and his Christian nationalist allies allegedly are promoting.

“We have faith voters will one day feel moved to check a state government that has gone too far,” the Express-News wrote. “Perhaps that day will come in November.”

The problem is which November. This November would be great. Abbott, Patrick, about half the state Senate and all the Texas House will be on the ballot.

So far, teachers and other educators are more affected by these laws than most people, except for concerned parents. Educators can lead the way to change if they all make public education their top voting issue this year.

If they don’t, there is no telling what Patrick, Abbott and their allies will come up with next.

Mandatory chapel attendance in the school cafeteria? Anyone want to bet?

Appellate court: Thou shalt violate the separation of church and state, Texas

Clay Robison