Lawyers outraged as Ken Paxton runs 'wild' immigration scheme during Senate bid

Two legal analysts were outraged on Wednesday by recent reporting about the immigration crackdown that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is undertaking while he is running for the Senate.

Attorneys Brian Kabateck and Shant Karnikian discussed a recent New York Times report on Paxton's efforts to disrupt Latino voting groups in Texas in a new episode of their podcast, "Civil Action." That scheme included criminalizing acts such as providing stipends to volunteers to drive elderly and disabled voters to the polls, and investigating people who run organizations that offer bilingual voter registration services.

They described Paxton's efforts as a "clear First Amendment violation," given that the state passed a law criminalizing acts such as volunteering to help the elderly and disabled complete their voter registration paperwork.

Kabateck said the scheme likely set the GOP back by "generations" with Latino voters in the state. Karnikian described the scheme as "crazy stuff."

Kabateck noted that a federal court found the scheme illegal in late January, but Paxton appears to have taken a page from the Trump playbook and defied the order.

"Paxton doesn't care," Kabateck said. "He goes out, and he says, 'That's fine. I'm going to keep doing it. I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing,' because the ultimate goal here isn't the individual who's served with an indictment or a search warrant or whatever. It's the chilling effect."

Paxton recently defeated incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in the Texas Republican Senate primary, a move that sent shockwaves through the Republican Party because Cornyn is known for his fundraising prowess. Paxton will face Texas state lawmaker James Talarico, a Democrat, in the November election.