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It’s the day after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to revive her lawsuit against the local officials who orchestrated her arrest nearly a decade ago, and Laredo citizen-journalist Priscilla Villarreal is on Facebook Live to deliver a much-awaited statement.

For several minutes, viewers are treated to little more than the radio playing in the background and a scowl that would be the envy of an old-school cop shop reporter. The delay is a tactic; Villarreal is waiting until enough people have started watching to begin her stream-of-consciousness diatribe. Then, the music changes to English band Chumbawamba’s 1997 hit “Tubthumping,” with its on-the-nose refrain of “You’re not ever gonna keep me down.” 

Despite the dire concern about press freedoms that the ruling in her case has created among mainstream journalists and First Amendment experts, the social media personality and provocateur known as “La Gordiloca” is defiant, as she explains the prosecution had only managed to raise her profile.

“I’m already in the lawbooks; that’s enough for me,” Villarreal said on the March 24 livestream before switching into expletive-filled Spanish. “This was a fucking nine-year squeeze that had everybody shitting themselves. And if you mess with me again, we’ll go back to fucking court.”

Villarreal’s oft-recounted origin story is that in 2015, she livestreamed the aftermath of a murder-suicide on her Facebook page, garnering her attention across Laredo and unexpectedly launching her journalism career. As La Gordiloca, which translates to something like “the chubby, crazy lady,” her Facebook following has topped 200,000 as she operates in a border city of only 250,000. But her penchant for inventively foul language isn’t all that separates Villarreal from more buttoned-up journalists. She often violates industry ethics: The disturbing video of police carrying dead children out of a building that launched her career is something most outlets would think long and hard about publishing, and she openly casts her lot for or against local officials.

This has put her crosswise with some of those officials, including in 2017 when, after she’d  criticized the Laredo Police Department and the Webb County district attorney, she called a police officer to confirm the names of people who’d died in very public incidents. For this, she was arrested under a state law that makes it a crime if someone “solicits or receives from a public servant information that: the public servant has access to by means of his office or employment; and has not been made public” and the person does so “with intent to obtain a benefit.” A local judge tossed out the criminal charges, but Villarreal filed a civil suit in federal court. 

In 2024, a majority opinion throwing out Villarreal’s case, written by Fifth Circuit appeals court judge Edith Jones, raised concerns among First Amendment advocates across the country. Jones wrote that the officials were entitled to qualified immunity, a judicial doctrine that protects most government employees from lawsuits related to their on-the-job actions, because police and prosecutors were reasonable in thinking Villarreal broke the law. The Texas Observer reported on Villarreal’s story and highlighted the implications for journalism of Jones’ opinion in 2024.

The U.S. Supreme Court then told the Fifth Circuit to reconsider Villarreal’s case in light of the top court’s decision in favor of a former Castle Hills City Council member who was arguing she’d also been arrested as political retaliation, another case the Observer covered in depth, but in April 2025, the Fifth Circuit stood by its decision to grant qualified immunity. Then, last month, the high court declined to hear Villarreal’s appeal.

First Amendment experts say this decision sends the message that if police make a bad-faith or far-fetched interpretation of a law in a way that violates someone’s constitutional rights, including those of journalists or protesters, the courts will protect the cops and prosecutors from consequences.

“It is kind of crazy that a journalist can be arrested for doing her job, and there’s nothing she can do about it in terms of bringing officers who arrested her into the court and having to answer for what they did,” said Anya Bidwell, a senior attorney at the libertarian-leaning public interest law firm the Institute for Justice. “It’s a bit disturbing, especially in the context of what’s happening in America today, where we do have ICE agents across the country, exercising excessive force, but also punishing people for recording them and punishing people for criticizing them.”

In response to an Observer request for comment, Webb County District Attorney Isidro “Chilo” Alaniz said: “Qualified immunity is critical in order for law enforcement and prosecutors to do their job. Everything that was done by law enforcement and prosecution on this case was proper and within the law.”

Increasingly, Americans are getting their news from alternative sources, with the border region especially being a wild west of influencers and indie media, and—though they’re entitled to the same protections as anyone else whether they follow traditional journalism ethics or not— Villarreal and her local nontraditional competitors are some of the most exposed by the Supreme Court ruling, added Daxton “Chip” Stewart, a journalism professor and assistant provost at Texas Christian University. 

“Until a journalist is actually able to bring a civil rights lawsuit to trial against the government for violating their First Amendment rights, it’s open season on anyone doing journalism, and especially those without an in-house lawyer handy,” Stewart said.

Though Jones’ 2024 opinion never explicitly stated that what the officials did was constitutional, she wrote that the government has an interest in preventing Americans from learning certain information, and that the officials who arrested Villarreal were acting reasonably in believing Texas law could criminalize asking questions of public officials. The decision is currently limited to the Fifth Circuit, which covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, but the Trump administration recently used a similar argument elsewhere.

In a March filing, as part of a Washington, D.C., federal court lawsuit against the Pentagon’s restrictions on reporters covering the Defense Department, Justice Department lawyers wrote that a journalist “does solicit the commission of a criminal act, and that solicitation is not protected by the First Amendment, when he or she solicits (classified information) or other non-public information from individuals who are legally obligated not to disclose that information.”

Both Jones’ opinion and the Trump administration’s argument are trying to work around a 1970s Supreme Court ruling that found “Reporters remain free to seek news from any source by means within the law.” JT Morris, Villarreal’s lawyer and a senior attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told the Observer: “To have officials in Laredo do that is bad enough, but now that federal attorneys are echoing that same line of thinking, that’s a really dangerous result for the First Amendment.”

Still, local observers in Laredo think Villarreal’s defiant response to the Supreme Court’s decision is probably well-founded. Her drawn-out legal fight with the officials who had her arrested was embarrassing and time-consuming for them. 

“Regardless of what the Supreme Court said, or what they didn’t do, [local officials] looked bad for doing it,” said Joey Tellez, a Laredo attorney who helped Villarreal fight the criminal charges after her 2017 arrest. “At the local level, I think everyone thinks you put your hand on the hot stove and you got burned.”

The local judge who threw out Villarreal’s criminal charges also declared the statute used to arrest her unconstitutional—though that ruling is limited to Webb County. Villarreal’s relationship with the current Laredo police leadership has also vastly improved. She attributes that in part to department brass acknowledging that, to update an old journalism adage, it’s best not to pick a fight with someone who gets Facebook views by the barrel. 

Still, in an April interview, Villarreal struck a more nuanced tone than in her initial bombastic video.

“Now that I had a couple of days to think, it was disappointing obviously,” she said. “It not only affected me, it affected everybody nationwide … because that only makes people think cops can do as they please and not get punished for it.”

These days, Villarreal isn’t as journalistically active as before. She’s raising four children, the oldest of which is five years old. She lost access to her old Facebook page with 200,000-plus followers, and her new profile, “Lagordiloca fan club,” has a more modest 44,000 followers. Local police news and invectives against Laredo politicians make up less of her Facebook feed than they used to, while there are posts about national news, used vehicles for sale, and an ad offering “Promote with Lagordiloca!”

Meanwhile, she’s spawned a wave of local competition, including Laredo Hood News and Hammrod News.

“I’m not going to lie, she opened the door for a lot of us,” said Abraham Rodriguez, who runs Hammrod News and posts content across multiple social media platforms. “She took the biggest bullet out of all of us. If it wasn’t for her, then the police department would be a lot more strict on us independent journalists.”

The post ‘La Gordiloca’ Lost at the Supreme Court but Won in Laredo appeared first on The Texas Observer.

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. 

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