Texas Civil Rights Project

Background

James Harrington, a native of Michigan, moved to South Texas in 1973 to help efforts by the United Farm Workers in the Rio Grande Valley as a community organizer and lawyer. The Texas Civil Rights Project says Harrington’s legal work helped the farmworkers gain workers’ compensation coverage, unemployment benefits, and handwashing facilities. He went to Austin in 1983 to promote public policy and eventually worked as the legal director for the Texas Civil Liberties Union (now ACLU of Texas), the state’s affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. Harrington had previously founded Oficina Legal del Pueblo Unido, Inc. (OLPU) in 1978 as a legal foundation serving South Texas farm workers and border communities. He started the Texas Civil Rights Project in 1990 in Austin as a program of OLPU and retired in 2015. TCRP continues to operate under OLPU’s legal name and EIN. ^{2  3}

In February 2016, Mimi Marziani became the organization’s president. Marziani came to the job with experience supporting left-wing positions on election administration laws at a time when the organization was opposing election integrity legislation. She worked as president until the end of 2022, after nearly seven years of leadership. ^{4  5}

The Texas Supreme Court created the Texas Access to Justice Foundation to pay out fees collected from lawyers to support access to legal defense. Since 1991, this quango was the largest contributor to the TCRP. In July 2017, Texas Access to Justice Foundation stopped funding TCRP, which lost grants equivalent to 40 percent of its budget, or $900,000 in funding. The TCRP accused the foundation of being political over immigration and voting rights matters. ⁶

Politicized Shift

Texas Civil Rights Project has sued the state of Texas over laws to combat illegal immigration, such as SB 4 that penalized sanctuary cities. The organization has also fought state laws to promote election integrity. ⁶

Texas Civil Rights Project founder James Harrington retired in 2015 and in 2017 criticized the organization for becoming too political. Harrington told the Texas Observer: “We were very controversial … but everything we were doing was always related to the community [. . .] It wasn’t picking up these sort of hot-button liberal issues like redistricting or SB 4.” Harrington said that organization should have let other organizations handle more political litigation. ⁶

In 2018, after the TCRP closed its El Paso office, citing budget concerns, Harrington said when he retired the group had $1.2 million in the bank. “The really sad thing about this is this was an office that we put there because the community asked for it, and it did tremendous work,” Harrington told the Austin Chronicle. ⁷

Programs

As of 2026, the Texas Civil Rights Project was organizing its work around three program areas: Beyond Borders, Criminal Legal Program, and Voting Rights. ⁸

At that time, Beyond Borders focused on immigration and border communities, operating in two areas: humanitarian advocacy for migrants and state and local advocacy for border communities. The program stated its goal was the elimination of policies allegedly perpetuating “militarization, cultural erasure, imprisonment, and exclusion” along the Texas-Mexico border. ⁹

The Criminal Legal Program focused on prison conditions, constitutional rights, and opposition to what the organization described as criminalization. Activities included conditions-of-incarceration litigation, prison heat and solitary confinement advocacy, and opposition to what it characterized as criminalization of free speech. ¹⁰

The Voting Rights program stated its aim was to “protect and expand the power of underrepresented communities,” specifically “communities of color, workers, and people with disabilities,” using litigation, legislative advocacy, and grassroots organizing. Activities have included election protection, poll monitoring, and voter education. ¹¹

Leadership

Rochelle Garza became president of the Texas Civil Rights Project in 2023. A fifth-generation Tejana and attorney from the Rio Grande Valley, she was the Democratic nominee for Texas Attorney General in 2022. Prior to joining TCRP, Garza worked as a staff attorney for the ACLU of Texas, focusing on immigration, family, criminal, and constitutional law. Her work in that role resulted in the “Garza Notice,” a federal court order in the case Garza v. Hargan (2017) that blocked the Trump administration’s policy preventing unaccompanied minor immigrants in federal custody from obtaining abortions. In March 2023, the Biden administration appointed Garza to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an independent agency created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957, where she was serving a term through 2028. She also sat on the board of Jane’s Due Process, a Texas organization that assists minors seeking abortions without parental consent through the judicial bypass process. According to TCRP’s 2024 tax return, Garza received total compensation of $290,952. ^{1  12  13  14  15  16}

As of the 2024 tax year, other key staff listed on TCRP’s tax return include David Sanchez (chief of staff), Dustin Rynders (legal director), Tamara Goodlette (director of litigation), Chanel Davis Hall (director of finance), and Miranda Jimenez (director of strategic partnerships). ¹⁶

Mimi Marziani was president of the Texas Civil Rights Project from 2016 to 2022, after practicing election law in New York City. She came to Texas as the legal director of the Democratic gubernatorial campaign of Wendy Davis in 2014. After leaving TCRP, Marziani joined the faculty at the University of Texas School of Law and was appointed to the board of directors of the Public Rights Project in September 2025. ^{4  17}

As of the 2024 tax year, James Nortey was chair of the TCRP board of directors, a position he had held since September 2021. Nortey is the chief executive officer of San Antonio for Growth on the Eastside (SAGE). Other board officers include Carlos Carrasco (vice chair), Steffanie Evans (secretary), and Kris Beaulieu (finance chair). Additional board members include Jessica Cisneros, Alan Dettlaff, Ina Minjarez, Jim Hurd, and Salina Mostajabian. ^{18  19  16}

Advocacy

Election Integrity Measures

The TCRP joined a coalition of legal groups in 2018 to defend a Rendon, Texas woman named Crystal Mason for illegal voting. Mason was a convicted felon on supervised release, but cast a provisional ballot in the 2016 election. She was sentenced to five years in state prison. (The ballot was not counted.) The TCRP was joined by the ACLU Voting Rights Project in defense of Mason. Mason initially convicted for federal tax fraud in 2011 was later charged with violating her parole. Mason claimed she did not realize felons could not vote in Texas. ²⁰ In March 2024, the Texas Second Court of Appeals reversed Mason’s conviction, resulting in acquittal. The Tarrant County District Attorney appealed the acquittal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. ^{21  22}

The TCRP issued a report in March 2019 claiming that 277,000 Texans faced problems with voting in the November 2018 election. It cited voting machine malfunctions and a lack of polling stations at Texas university campuses. The report also blamed “antiquated election infrastructure” that would create problems for the 2020 elections if not addressed. ²³

In 2021, TCRP joined a coalition filing a federal lawsuit challenging Texas Senate Bill 1, a restrictive voting law. Co-plaintiffs included the ACLU of Texas, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Disability Rights Texas, and OCA-Greater Houston, with co-counsel from the law firm Jenner & Block. In October 2024, a federal court struck down key provisions of SB 1. ^{24  25}

Immigration

The TCRP issued a report in February 2019 claiming that the Trump administration continued to separate parents from children even after the administration announced in summer 2018 it had discontinued the “zero tolerance” policy at the southern border. The report examined the McAllen, Texas border sector from June 22 to December 17, 2018, spanning the time after the policy formally ended. The report claimed to find 38 cases of parents and legal guardians separated from their children.  ^{26  27}

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the TCRP “published a flawed report without asking for or including input” from the federal agency. CBP added that the report used bad data to draw its conclusion, including “all types of familial relationships without regard to the statutory definition.” ²⁸

Financials

In 2024, the Texas Civil Rights Project reported total revenue of $7,266,800 and total expenses of $8,630,242, resulting in a net loss of $1,363,442, according to its tax return filed with the IRS under the legal name Oficina Legal del Pueblo Unido, Inc. Total assets were $17,002,925, with total liabilities of $447,078 and net assets of $16,555,847. ¹⁶

Revenue in 2024 consisted primarily of contributions and grants ($6,293,852, or 86.6 percent of total revenue), investment income ($324,134, or 4.5 percent), and other revenue ($653,387, or 9.0 percent). Salaries and wages accounted for $4,493,444, or 52.1 percent of total expenses. Executive compensation totaled $290,952, or 3.4 percent of expenses. ¹⁶

The organization reported net losses in both 2024 and 2023. In 2023, TCRP reported total revenue of approximately $6,726,000 and total assets of $17,486,476, with liabilities of $207,594. In 2022, total revenue was approximately $7,832,000 and total assets were $17,322,955. By contrast, total assets stood at $9,474,067 in 2018, reflecting substantial growth over the intervening years, a period during which TCRP received several large multi-year foundation grants. ³

Major institutional funders in the 2024 tax year included NEO Philanthropy ($1,050,000 program grant), Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors ($635,000 for civil rights and social action advocacy), and the Heising-Simons Foundation ($600,000 specifically designated for coalition work around Operation Lone Star). In total, TCRP reported 63 grants received in the 2024 tax year, totaling $6,804,457. Historical funders have included the David Rockefeller Fund, which awarded TCRP $100,000 in 2022, and Hispanics in Philanthropy. ^{29  30  31}

The Ford Foundation has been a significant multi-year funder, awarding TCRP a $2,000,000 grant in November 2020 for general operations through October 2025, and an $815,000 grant in September 2025 for general support and institutional strengthening through August 2026. ^{32  33}

In the 2024 tax year, TCRP also made grants to other organizations, including the Immigrant Legal Resource Center ($70,000), Border Workers United ($50,000), and the Border Organization ($50,000), each described as support for “social justice programs,” along with eight additional grants not itemized in available public filings. ¹⁶