By JACK BROOK

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested upward of 80 people unlawfully in the country during a raid at a southwest Louisiana racetrack, the agency announced Tuesday.

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ICE said it raided the Delta Downs Racetrack, Hotel and Casino in Calcasieu Parish on Monday alongside other state and federal agencies, including the FBI and the U.S. Border Patrol. The raid angered one racehorse industry group and comes at a time when the Trump administration is pursuing more arrests.

Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and the main architect of Trump’s immigration policies, has pushed ICE to aim for at least 3,000 arrests a day, up from about 650 a day during the first five months of Trump’s second term.

ICE said authorities had “received intelligence” that businesses operating at the racetrack’s stables employed “unauthorized workers” who were then targeted in the raid.

Of the dozens of workers detained during the raid, “at least two” had prior criminal records, according to the agency.

“These enforcement operations aim to disrupt illegal employment networks that threaten the integrity of our labor systems, put American jobs at risk and create pathways for exploitation within critical sectors of our economy,” said Steven Stavinoha, U.S. Customs and Border Protection director of field operations in New Orleans, in a written statement.

But some racing industry leaders were livid.

“To come in and take that many workers away and leave the horse racing operation stranded and without workers is unacceptable,” said Peter Ecabert, general counsel for the National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, which represents 29,000 thoroughbred racehorse owners and trainers, including at Delta Downs.

“If they (ICE) were willing to come in and try and work with us, we are willing to make sure things are done in an orderly way,” Ecabert added. “But what they have done here leaves everyone in a bad situation.”

Groomers and other stable workers are essential and allow horses to receive round-the-clock skilled care, Ecabert said, noting that the work is grueling and it can be very difficult to find people willing to do the job.

David Strow, a spokesperson for the racetrack’s owner, Boyd Gaming Corporation, said that the company “complies fully” with federal labor laws and that “no Delta Downs team members were involved.”

“We will cooperate with law enforcement as requested,” he added in an emailed statement.

In the past few weeks, ICE has engaged in other large-scale raids across Louisiana. On May 27, the agency raided a federally funded flood-reduction project in New Orleans and reported arresting 15 Central American workers. And the agency said it arrested 10 Chinese nationals working at massage parlors in Baton Rouge during a June 11 raid.

Rachel Taber, an organizer with the Louisiana-based immigrant rights group Unión Migrante, criticized the raids as harmful and hypocritical.

“Our economy runs on immigrants,” Taber said. “And when we let ourselves be divided by racial hatred, our economy for everyone suffers.”

Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Barrels of ink were spilled for interviews with white working-class voters after President Donald Trump first captured the White House in 2016 as the press rushed to report why this coveted constituency had embraced the Republican Party. But the shift among working-class Hispanics has been even more dramatic — and has received only a fraction of the attention.

In 2024, Trump won 55% of Hispanic voters earning $50,000 annually or less, an income cohort commonly defined as working class, defeating then-Vice President Kamala Harris by 11 percentage points , according to CNN exit polling. For the president, that’s 22 points better than the 33% he received from blue-collar Hispanics in 2020, while topping the 50% he garnered from working class voters across all demographics last November.

Democrats have been losing support among this cohort for years: Among Latino voters without a college degree, support for Democrats plunged from 69% in 2012 to just 53% in 2024, according to Catalist, a progressive organization that analyzes precinct-level voting results. Among Latino men, support for Democrats fell from 63% to 47% over the same period.

Democrats have largely themselves — and their faulty strategic choices — to blame, political analysts and operatives have told me.

“There are a lot of reasons why these voters have swung right over the last few cycles, but I think that a major one is that Democrats assumed that these voters were going to stick with their party on identity issues, while Republicans wooed them with cultural and economic issues,” said nonpartisan elections guru Amy Walter, publisher and editor-in-chief of The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter.

Trump won 46% of the overall Hispanic vote nationwide, holding Harris to just 51%. That solid performance was up from an abysmal 32% in 2020 and an even worse 28% four years prior.

Here’s another way to view the dramatic move rightward by Hispanic voters in 2024: Seven of the 10 most Hispanic counties in the United States voted for Trump over Harris after backing former President Joe Biden in 2020. In these counties, all in Texas and mostly working class, Hispanics are an overwhelming majority, constituting 88% to 98% of the electorate.

Figuring out why blue-collar Hispanics abandoned the Democratic Party after decades of reliable support is the charge of the Working Class Project, an initiative established by American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic super PAC. What the effort has learned about working class Hispanics, via extensive polling and focus groups, is eye-opening. This cohort has the same reasons for supporting Trump as blue-collar whites.

“They think Democrats are prioritizing what they see as niche and liberal social and cultural issues over real ideas to make life more affordable,” wrote Working Class Project spokesman Ian Sams in a Substack memorandum detailing the findings from focus groups with working-class Hispanics in McAllen, Texas, a border community in the once deep-blue Rio Grande Valley.

According to Sams, the sessions also found that blue collar Hispanics believe “Democrats were too soft on border security and immigration and cared more about letting people into the country illegally than helping people already here legally.”

In reading voters’ comments from the McAllen, Texas, focus groups, it’s clear Sams isn’t overstating Democrats’ problems with this growing voting bloc.

“With the past four years of Biden, they were pretty lenient and they were giving thousands of dollars to people, immigrants that couldn’t work,” an unnamed Hispanic woman said during a discussion about illegal immigration. “Since they’re getting amnesty because they come from a country that has a lot of violence, they’re letting them stay here but they’re supporting them with money from hardworking people.”

“I’ll still take a bad economy over the social war stuff about, like, trans, trying to shove stuff down our throats to make it okay,” added an unnamed Hispanic man, during a discussion about culture. “It’s like: ‘Hey, yeah sure bro, you can do whatever you want, you don’t have to be showing me 24/7.’”

Democrats can perhaps be forgiven for landing in this predicament. Historically, Hispanics tended to support Democrats because they backed comprehensive legislation linking border security and interior enforcement measures with a pathway to regularization, possibly citizenship, for the millions of illegal immigrants living in the US. Latinos typically opposed Republicans in part because the GOP demanded securing the border first, after which certain illegal immigrants might be regularized.

But the Hispanic electorate has evolved, Republican strategist and prominent Trump critic Mike Madrid explained to me last week. Madrid, who specializes in Hispanic messaging and turnout, said this voting bloc is more assimilated than earlier this century, is filled with more native-born Americans, and has therefore taken on the political character of any other ethnic or racial group that has spent decades (or longer) in the U.S.

It’s therefore quite natural, Madrid said, that working-class Hispanics have started behaving politically like blue-collar whites, which in 2024 meant voting Trump over Harris because of concerns about inflation, border security and various cultural issues.

“This has been happening, demographically, for the better part of a decade. It’s just people realizing it because, it was basically — you couldn’t ignore it anymore. Democrats have been ignoring it for a very long time,” said Madrid, author of The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority is Transforming Democracy. “Ten years ago, this was a more racially, ethnically focused group. Immigration was much more of a touchstone issue because more of us were immigrants.”

“There was this assumption during the Obama years that all nonwhite people vote a certain way. That’s not how this works. This is all very dynamic,” Madrid added, emphasizing that American-born Hispanics are not focused on immigration. They view themselves, he said, “as Americans first — because they are.”

It’s a good reminder that politics is never static. But that cuts both ways. The focus groups were conducted in May, weeks before the recent federal raids to round up illegal immigrants and the resulting unrest in Los Angeles County. Harsh immigration policy has hurt Republicans with Hispanics before, including during Trump’s first term.

In 2012, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney positioned himself as a border hawk to burnish his conservative credentials. The effort was costly. Romney received 27% of the Hispanic vote to Obama’s 71% in what was described as a consolidation, by Democrats, of this crucial minority.

Romney was criticized for being too hardline by no less than a certain New York businessman named Donald Trump, who told Newsmax in a November 2012 interview: “The Democrats didn’t have a policy for dealing with illegal immigrants, but what they did have going for them is they weren’t mean-spirited,” he said. “What they were is, they were kind.”

David M. Drucker is columnist covering politics and policy. He is also a senior writer for The Dispatch and the author of “In Trump’s Shadow: The Battle for 2024 and the Future of the GOP.”

Officials in Oakdale are accepting applications for the vacant seat on the Oakdale City Council following the resignation of council member Susan Willenbring.

Willenbring, who had served on the council since January 2019, resigned June 6. No reason was cited in her resignation letter.

Oakdale City Council member Susan Willenbring (Courtesy of the City of Oakdale)

“I would like to express my gratitude for the opportunities and experiences I have had while serving on the council,” Willenbring wrote. “It has been a privilege to work alongside dedicated individuals committed to improving the quality of life in Oakdale.

The Oakdale City Council has declared a vacancy and will fill the vacancy by appointment until a special election is held; the appointee will serve the remainder of the current term. Willenbring’s term was slated to run until the end of 2027.

The deadline for residents to submit an application (including required supplemental questions for consideration) is 4 p.m. July 2.

For more information, go to www.oakdalemn.gov.

It’s the end of another school year. Is it the end of American public schools?

Some in Texas think so, following the recent passage of a statewide voucher program. Starting in the 2026-2027 school year, parents will be able to use vouchers to offset tuition costs at participating private schools.

Despite the dire predictions of critics, who accuse the programs of draining taxpayer money from public schools, research shows that the programs deliver on their promises. At the same time, after decades of advocacy from conservatives, perhaps it’s time to admit that they are no educational elixir. More is needed on questions of funding and curriculum, especially these days, given how far American students have fallen behind.

In a comprehensive review of the academic literature, voucher programs correlate to higher standardized test scores and lower rates of absenteeism and suspension — including, perhaps surprisingly, for the students who remain in public schools. A 2020 NBER study of private vouchers in Florida found particularly sizable benefits for students from comparatively lower socioeconomic backgrounds in the public schools facing the highest levels of competition. Similarly, a 2024 NBER paper found that the creation of charter schools increased reading scores and attendance rates of students who remained in the traditional public school system.

But cultivating more school options is not the end-all-be-all. As of 2019, 25 states had voucher programs of some type in place, but only 2% of K-12 students are in private school with public vouchers. Only 7% of public school students are in charter schools.

The reality is that most kids end up staying in the public schools they are zoned for a variety of reasons: some private schools don’t take vouchers and some charters are oversubscribed or on the other side of town. School choice is particularly ineffective in rural environments, and vouchers can hurt outcomes when parents perhaps inadvertently choose lower performing private schools, as a recent AEA study showed.

Worse, school choice can become an excuse for policymakers to skirt hard and immediately needed conversations about an ineffective public-school curriculum, classrooms that have morphed into screen zombies, or unaccountable teacher and student performance.

Here, there’s much work to do.

Indeed, the most meteoric change in student achievement this last decade wasn’t from vouchers. It was from a statewide investment in the basics.

Since 2013, Mississippi has gone from one of the worst elementary school literacy rates in the country to above average from investing in third-grade reading. That included better training for teachers, using a phonics-based curriculum and hiring reading coaches.

These investments have been paired with steep accountability: if kids are not literate, they repeat third grade. Instead of falling behind, those kids were further ahead academically by 6th grade for having gotten the basics right.

We need more of this, shoring up the foundation. Instead, our education system functions the other way around. Higher education arguably commands too much — roughly a third — of the government’s cumulative spending on education. This makes little sense considering that the majority of kids cannot read or write at grade level by the time they hit double-digits.

The Trump Administration is exploring tweaking this ratio, floating the idea of diverting money from Harvard to trade schools. But taking resources from top-tier research institutions seems ill-advised. (Might I suggest the colleges that churn out dropouts instead?)

And if anything, the investment is needed much earlier than trade or vocational school during high school. Consider that in 2025, only 1 in 3 students are able to read or write proficiently in fourth grade, according to the most recent Nation’s Report Card. Among students who are poor enough to qualify for free lunch, less than 1 in 5 are proficient. By 8th grade, a third of all students are unable to identify basic elements in a text, such as the order of events or the main idea.

A third of all 8th graders qualify as “proficient” in math. It’s down to 1 in 8 if you’re eligible for free lunch. In 8th grade, being “proficient” means understanding the difference between parallel and perpendicular lines, for example. This isn’t just the pandemic’s lingering scars; the decline in student learning — especially for our most vulnerable kids — was happening long before.

The way we are educating our children isn’t working. A generation of kids unable to do basic math and reading bodes poorly for our nation and economy, irrespective of what happens with the rest of public policy.

More school choice helps, but we should also be committed to getting the basics right — regardless of where kids end up.

Half of American adults — the largest share this century — are “very dissatisfied” with the quality of public education in the nation, according to Gallup. One-quarter of kids no longer feel the need to attend school: According to one estimate by the American Enterprise Institute, 25% of students were considered chronically absent in 2022-23, up from 13% in 2019-2020.

Those who fear vouchers are the end of public school should look again. Based on student scores in 2025, public education is already flailing. The question is what we will do to fix it.

Abby McCloskey is a columnist, podcast host, and consultant. She directed domestic policy on two presidential campaigns and was director of economic policy at the American Enterprise Institute. She wrote this column for Bloomberg Opinion.