Houston ISD pays its state-appointed superintendent, Mike Miles, a base salary of $462,000, and the district also gave him a bonus of $173,660 approved by its state-appointed board in September. Yet, all along, the leader of Texas’ largest school district has also been moonlighting—earning another $190,000 over the past three years, according to receipts obtained by the Texas Observer, as a consultant for Third Future Schools (TFS), the Colorado-based charter school network he founded and previously led. 

In February, he renegotiated his TFS consulting contract to receive $30,000 per quarter—a 58 percent raise over his prior pay, based on documents the Observer obtained from a source. 

Miles’ contract with Houston ISD allowed him to do outside consulting. But his February agreement may have violated a 2025 state law that restricts moonlighting by administrators. 

House Bill 3372, which took effect June 22, 2025, bans public school administrators from moonlighting for companies that do business with their districts. It also bans superintendents and assistant superintendents from moonlighting for other school districts, charter schools, or education companies that provide curriculum or administration services to any district. (The law allows lower-level administrators to moonlight for the latter group of entities if their school board approves.) 

In response to a question about Miles’ February consulting agreement with TFS, an HISD spokesperson initially told the Observer in an April 7 email that Miles had complied with the new law: “Superintendent Miles has disclosed his prior affiliation with Third Future Schools, and all related matters have been reviewed to ensure compliance with HB 3372, District policy, and applicable legal requirements, with no impact on his duties leading Houston ISD.”

But after the Observer emailed questions to members of Houston ISD’s appointed school board, including a copy of the February agreement, the Houston ISD spokesperson emailed again, saying that Miles had cancelled the contract after it had “been carefully reviewed for compliance with HB 3372.” On April 8, the spokesperson wrote: “Following that review, Superintendent Miles proactively canceled his contract and will not accept any financial benefits from Third Future Schools, ensuring full alignment with the law. He remains fully focused on leading Houston ISD and delivering results for students.” No member of the Houston ISD board responded to the Observer’s questions. 

Protesters against the Houston ISD takeover (Courtesy of Community Voices for Public Education)

HB 3372, which was pushed by lawmakers in response to complaints about a different moonlighting superintendent in Willis ISD, forbids school district administrators from “receiv[ing] any financial benefit for the performance of personal services” for “any business entity that conducts or solicits business with the school district that employs the administrator.” It allows some administrators—excluding “a board of managers, superintendent, or assistant superintendent”—to receive benefit for services for “an education business that provides services regarding the curriculum or administration of any school district” or “another school district, open-enrollment charter school, or regional education service center” only if their school board votes to approve it.

TFS does not do business with Houston ISD. But TFS is the Colorado-based parent nonprofit of Third Future Schools-Texas (TFS-Texas), also a nonprofit. TFS-Texas does not do business with HISD either, but it does provide curriculum and administrative services to other Texas school districts.

State Representative Christina Morales, a Democrat who voted for HB 3372 and is a participant in the Commission on the HISD Takeover, a group that addresses grievances with the state intervention, told the Observer: “Mike Miles is running the largest school district in Texas like it’s his personal consulting firm. Houston families deserve better. …This is what HB 3372 was intended to stop.” 

Republican state Representative Will Metcalf, the bill’s author, said during an April 2025 hearing: “Concerns have been raised about administrators engaging in consulting work or other paid services that very well may be a conflict of interest or create the appearance of a conflict of interest. This undermines public trust and risks shifting focus away from the needs of students and our taxpayers.” 

Beyond the 2025 state law, Miles’ moonlighting with outside organizations during his time as the leader of Texas’ largest school district poses other ethical questions, said Brett Geier, a former superintendent who teaches K-12 educational leadership at Western Michigan University. Even as leader of a smaller district, Geier told the Observer, he spent 10 to 12 hours a day, often seven days a week, fulfilling his regular duties. “It baffles me how he has the amount of time that he has invested in that charter. It does seem to me to cross an ethical line.” 

The February agreement said Miles would “provide advice and counsel to the Core Team,” including to “connect via phone with Core Team members weekly to help solve problems, anticipate challenges, and suggest courses of action,” “provide input and suggestions on key initiatives and expansion,” and “provide advice and guidance on finance and overall network health.” Before February, Miles received $19,000 per quarter from TFS, based on a June 24, 2023, agreement the Observer obtained. 

Miles’ 2023 and 2026 agreements with TFS were signed by both Miles and Dwight Jones, TFS’ board president. According to the Houston Chronicle, Jones also leads a consulting business, Education Partners, which struck a deal worth nearly $1 million with the charter network International Leadership of Texas that Miles helped broker in July 2025. The Chronicle further reported that International Leadership of Texas received use of Houston ISD’s curriculum but that neither Miles nor the district received any payment.

Geier told the Observer that he thought Miles’ participation in brokering that contract represented another conflict of interest—particularly since the International Leadership of Texas operates three campuses in Houston ISD boundaries. “We’re in an age in education where we’re competing for students. His primary responsibility is increasing student achievement and enrollment in Houston,” Geier said. “It seems like there’s a huge conflict of interest there, because in a sense, it’s almost working against your own district.”

The state’s installment of Miles as Houston ISD superintendent and the deposing of its elected board members in 2023 has brought upheaval for the past three years. Miles has implemented TFS curriculum and strategies and touted improved academic ratings. But parents, students, and teachers in Houston ISD have complained that classroom learning has turned into round-the-clock test prep. ​Principals, teachers, and students have left in droves. 

Prior to her interview with the Observer, Morales met with Spanish-speaking parents who she said told her that children at White Elementary School, in the Latino and Chinese community of Sharpstown, were being taught by inexperienced, uncertified teachers without bilingual skills under Miles’ leadership. Morales is also worried that the board has decided to shutter 12 schools in predominantly poor Black and brown neighborhoods. 

“I believe that Mike Miles needs to stay focused on what’s best for the students, and not what’s best for his checkbook,” Morales said. 

Miles has used his tenure as Houston ISD superintendent to trumpet a curriculum that he’d coined the “New Education System” at TFS. In the meantime, TFS-Texas has attracted more business in the state. Under 2017’s Senate Bill 1882, which allows Texas public school districts to turn struggling schools over to private operators to avoid state takeovers, the organization currently runs SB 1882 partnerships at six campuses in five Texas school districts. Starting next school year, the nonprofit is set to run at least 19 campuses across 13 districts, as the Observer previously reported. 

According to TFS-Texas’ IRS 990 forms, the nonprofit earned more than $100 million in revenue in the 2021 to 2024 fiscal years from these 1882 partnerships. 

“This just feels like extortion,” said Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers. “How can we be paying [Miles] $400,000 or something in tax dollars for him to then use his position to enrich himself and this other company. That seems to be not only condoned by the Texas Education Agency, but actively supported by the agency itself. That seems wrong to me. Why are our state reps and our elected officials not questioning this and not calling the [TEA] commissioner to task for it?” 

The post Mike Miles Cancels Moonlighting Contract with His Former Charter School Network appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Last month, Meenu Batra, 53, who has lived in the South Texas border colonia of Laguna Heights since 2002, was on her way to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to work another case. She’s been a court interpreter for over twenty years, the only one licensed in Texas for Hindi, Punjabi, or Urdu. Her language skills are requested nationwide, where she’s contracted to help people making their way through the immigration court system, just as she did for herself 35 years ago when she immigrated from India to New Jersey before settling in Texas.

She planned to meet with her adult children in Austin after the Wisconsin trip, the only difference she foresaw in an otherwise typical trip. Her routine for years included flying from either Harlingen or Brownsville to far-flung parts of the country where South Asian immigrants needed language access. For this trip, the flight was out of Harlingen.

But, around 5 p.m. on March 17, Batra was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents after passing through security at Harlingen International Airport. In a sworn deposition that was filed as part of a petition for habeas corpus—a legal request to be released on the grounds that the detention is unlawful—Batra said the people who arrested her did not have visible badges nor were they wearing uniforms. One of those agents had asked Batra if she knew she was in the country illegally and that she had a deportation order. She replied that her work authorization status, which she applied for regularly after being granted a legal status called withholding of removal by a New Jersey immigration judge decades ago, was good for another four years.

“That doesn’t mean you can be here forever,” the agent replied. Two more plainclothes agents would join the two that detained her, bringing her down the escalator and to the front of the airport.

“Having watched and read enough news, I know that the moment you say something, they accuse you of evading arrest or whatever other things,” Batra told the Texas Observer. “So, being mindful of all that, mindful of the whole line and being embarrassed in front of everybody, I just complied.” 

Batra’s attorneys say the agents were targeting her. “This is someone who maybe had one speeding ticket in the last 30 years and [is] being treated like a notorious criminal,” Deepak Ahluwalia, a California and Texas-based immigration attorney representing Batra, told the Observer. 

Meenu Batra (right) with her children at the top of the Port Isabel lighthouse in the early 2000s (Courtesy/family)

One of the several executive orders the Trump administration issued early last year was for the Department of Homeland Security to target anyone in the country with a final deportation order. 

People who are granted withholding of removal—a status that lacks a path to a green card—are generally immigrants who face persecution in their home countries but, for one reason or another, are ineligible for asylum. Batra, who is Sikh, left India after her parents were murdered during a state pogrom against Sikhs in the 1980s. But she missed a one-year application deadline and her chance to become an asylee.

Though people with her protection still have deportation orders, they cannot be removed to where they came from. If they are deported, the United States must send them to a “third country” that will accept them. The United States has agreements with at least 27 nations, a list the Trump administration has grown, that it’s paid up to $1 million a person to accept deportees. Many of these deportation flights leave from the Harlingen airport where Batra was detained.

ICE has not said where it plans to send Batra, according to her habeas filing.

After placing her in handcuffs, she said, two of those four agents at the airport drove Batra to ICE’s field office in Harlingen in an unmarked van. She had been there many times over the years to renew her work permit and to help attorneys with translation. Office staff recognized her as she was being processed. Agents posed for photos with her handcuffed, which they said for “social media,” according to the habeas filing.

Batra was moved through various holding cells for 24 hours without food or water, first in Harlingen then in the El Valle Detention Center outside of Raymondville, in neighboring Willacy County. As of mid-April, she remains there without access to the consistent medical care she needs following surgeries she had in December. Within days of being in the facility, she caught a respiratory illness and lost her voice. She was supposed to see her doctor, in Harlingen, the week she was detained. 

“I think it’s a real example of what the administration is doing in terms of its mass deportation plan and who it’s targeting,” Edna Yang, the co-executive director of American Gateways, an Austin-based legal services nonprofit, told the Observer. “It’s not targeting criminals, it’s not targeting dangerous people, it’s targeting individuals who are members of our community, who have a lot to offer and continue to offer a lot of positive things for our entire country and our society.”

Batra’s habeas petition included dozens of letters from people in her community and beyond asking for her to be released from detention. Cameron County Precinct 1 Constable Norman Esquivel, a Republican elected official and fixture in Laguna Madre-area politics, and several judges across the country are among those who authored a letter. 

Batra’s attorneys argue that in the decades she’s had her legal protection the U.S. government never told her that it was planning to deport her, and that her detention violated her right to due process. One of Batra’s children recently enlisted in the military and filed a parole application for her. If granted, Batra could remain in the country in one-year increments. Her attorneys have also filed a temporary restraining order seeking to prevent ICE from moving her to another detention center. 

In response to an Observer request for comment, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson noted that Batra had “a final order of removal from an immigration judge in 2000” and said “She will remain in ICE custody pending removal and will receive full due process.”

The spokesperson continued: “Employment authorization does NOT confer any type of legal status in the United States,” adding that the department is encouraging all “illegal aliens” to “self-deport.”

Nationwide, Texas is leading in habeas petitions from people detained by ICE. Most federal judges are siding with detained people, ordering them to be released or to receive a bond hearing before an immigration judge. 

Batra, who has spent nearly half her life working in immigration courts, stopped working for the government’s side in immigration proceedings—instead helping only the immigrants seeking status—after seeing the conditions in detention facilities and how detained people were treated. Now, on the other side herself, she’s seeing people at the Raymondville facility who don’t speak English or Spanish, who are without the same knowledge and connections she has after so many years of helping people like them through the same system.

“I am grateful also, because something bad has to happen in life for you to truly appreciate what you have,” Batra said. “But I am getting this experience, and I’m watching the other women and just realizing how much help they need. At least I have awareness. I know my rights.”

DHS has until April 21 to respond to Batra’s habeas petition, according to court filings. 

The post Longtime Immigration Court Interpreter Arrested by ICE at South Texas Airport appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Nestled about a foot deep in a makeshift well of sand on the no-man’s-land of shoreline between dunes and waves, about 75 eggs laid bare, vulnerable to the dangers of the Texas coast. But not for long. Within hours of the nest’s arrival, members of the Nueces County Coastal Parks Turtle Patrol cordoned the area off, protecting dozens of Kemp’s ridley sea turtle eggs on North Padre Island. 

That nest, the first of the 2026 season, was recovered April 2—one of the earliest starts on record. Kemp’s ridley are the most endangered species of sea turtle on the planet and the only one native to Texas. Padre Island National Seashore is one of their only consistent nesting sites. They’re not alone: the Gulf of Mexico is home to more than two dozen species on the endangered list, each of which endured rigorous scrutiny and scientific analysis to determine if they met the high standards to qualify for protection under the Endangered Species Act. 

Now, under a new decision rendered by the Trump administration, every one of those species’ protections have been made largely optional. The Endangered Species Committee, made up of six cabinet level officials, convened at the request of U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who asked that oil and gas drilling companies operating in the Gulf be exempted from mandates under the law requiring them to take steps to protect species vulnerable to extinction. Hegseth claimed the exemption was necessary for “national security.” 

Often referred to as “The God Squad” because of its power to alter the fate of entire species and ecosystems, the group is led by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, a Trump appointee with strong ties to the oil and natural gas industry. The meeting was only the third time that an exemption has been granted since the endangered species law was enacted in 1973; the decision was rendered in just 17 minutes behind closed doors. 

A Kemp’s ridley sea turtle on the beach.

“In each instance prior to this, [the committee] either voted to deny an exemption for an activity, or it voted to limit or at least come up with alternatives and ways to save the species that would allow the activity to go forward,” Steve Mashuda, the lead attorney for the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice’s oceans division, told the Texas Observer. “I’ve never seen anything like this, and the National Security justification has never been invoked until last week.”

Previous deliberations have lasted days, welcoming spectators and public comment from scientists and ecological experts. When those exemptions were issued, they were narrowly tailored to minimize the impact on vulnerable ecosystems. This time, drilling in the Gulf was given a blanket pass in the name of national security.

“Energy security is national security, directly enhancing our operational readiness and ability to project power globally,” Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson said in an emailed statement to the Observer. “A resilient, domestic energy supply of oil is essential to safeguarding our nation’s interests and maintaining our strategic advantage.”

Environmental advocates, however, say this exemption won’t help that cause because the Endangered Species Act has never been used to prevent drilling operations in the Gulf. Instead, they say it just reduces costs for companies that would otherwise have to employ protocols to protect vulnerable species.

“The decision … is not going to result in any more oil production, it’s not going to result in lower gas prices. It will result in real harm and the potential extinction of one or more species in the Gulf,” Mashuda said. “There is no indication that the Endangered Species Act is currently, or even will in the future, be responsible for halting oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico.”

The U.S. is the world’s leading producer of both oil and natural gas. Of American oil production, 15 percent comes from the Gulf with Endangered Species Act protections in place.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department did not comment on the decision, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration referred the Texas Observer to the Department of Defense. 

On April 2, Earthjustice sued the “God Squad” in federal court on behalf of four environmental nonprofits, alleging the national security reasoning was “arbitrary” and unfounded.

Without the legal mandate to take measures to protect endangered species, like slowing vessel speeds in habitats where animals sleep close to the surface or strategically permitting drilling in line with habitat protection, advocates worry the companies won’t opt-in to those practices.

There are only 51 Rice’s whales—another endangered species in the Gulf—left on Earth. With such limited numbers, each loss is detrimental to the species’ long-term survival, disrupting the genetic diversity of an already limited group, according to Doug DeMaster, a Marine Mammal scientist and expert who worked with the National Marine Fisheries Service for roughly three decades. After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, 22 percent of the whales’ population at the time are estimated to have been killed. Activists fear a Gulf free of restrictions could lead to more damage toward the fragile species.

“Any vessel strikes, any oil spills that can potentially happen, the seismic activity that is necessary when they begin exploring leases for setup, drilling and platforming—it disrupts everything,” said Joanie Steinhaus, the Ocean Program Director for the Turtle Island Restoration Network, which is one of the plaintiffs Earthjustice is representing. “It disrupts [Rice’s whales’] communication. It disrupts their feeding habits, their breeding habits. This is a species that dives deep, but at night, it rests close to the surface, so the impact for vessel strikes is very high. … Without any ESA protections, we can potentially see them extinct in our lifetime.”

BP, Chevron and Shell—which have major operations in the Gulf—all declined to comment on the decision’s potential benefits for domestic oil production and referred the Texas Observer to the American Petroleum Institute (API). While API says they did not advocate for this decision, they reiterated that industry operators will continue to employ conservation practices, though they did not specify further.

“Our industry has a long track record of protecting wildlife while developing offshore energy responsibly,” API Spokesperson Andrea Woods said in an email statement. “Over the long term, American energy leadership depends on getting that balance right through reasonable, science-based protections while meeting growing energy demand.”

One of the most pressing concerns activists have raised are the long-term implications of the exemption beyond the end of the Trump administration. Joseph Manning, a staff attorney at Defenders of Wildlife, said while the exemption is only active through 2029, any new drilling platforms that start operating within that window will be protected even after the exemption expires. Manning says those platforms’ 40-to-50-year lifespan would be allowed to continue with minimal oversight, even in vulnerable habitats, if they act fast and drill while the exemption is in place.

“That means that for a lease that sold in 2029, the oil company will have to go out, they’ll have to do exploration—that might be seismic exploration, things like that—and once they determine, the best places to put wells, they’ll actually go out and they’ll do the initial drilling, the construction of the rig,” Manning said. “That rig will operate for a certain period of time, generally about 40 years at least, and then they’ll be decommissioned. So that entire lifespan is what is exempted here.”  

Commercial fishing could also be impacted if the ecosystems fishermen rely on suffer a disruption to the food chain. The Galveston Bay Estuary is one of the highest producing estuaries in the nation, a status that requires a delicate balance between industry and environment. For the animals, the impact could be just as permanent. 

“One of the scary things about an exemption from the Endangered Species Act is that the decisions that we make today can be irreversible,” said Beth Lowell, vice president of Oceana, an international ocean conservation group. “The Endangered Species Act is the safety net for wildlife that’s on the brink of extinction. Once they’re gone, they’re gone forever. … Extinction is forever.”

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