In the late 70s, five young Catholics started Annunciation House, a nonprofit that shelters and aids migrants. Its mission is “to provide hospitality and accompaniment for the poor in migration,” says a member of the board offering “shelter, food, and clothing” to the city’s “poorest of the poor.” Annunciation House says it has provided aid to “hundreds of thousands of refugees” since its founding.
Marry Fontana says that at the time of the founding “They were reading the Bible and saying, ‘Where do we encounter God in this world? If we take our faith seriously, what kind of actions does that call us to?'” She went on to say “They kept returning to the idea that the God that they read about in the scriptures in the Bible was someone who identified first and foremost with the poor. And then they looked around their community of El Paso and said, ‘Who are the poor in our midst?'” In El Paso, that “was primarily people who are undocumented,” Fontana stated.
She went on to say “We’re just a bunch of regular folks trying to live out what we believe are principles of love and belief in the dignity of our fellow human beings, and there’s really nothing secretive or sinister about it,” She adds. “We have a very mundane existence. We serve meals, we do a lot of laundry, and that’s kind of it.” However, authorities have launched an investigation.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office launched a probe into Annunciation House’s activities. The Texas AG demanded the nonprofit turn over huge amounts of documentation about its immigrant clients. In May, Paxton’s office sought an injunction to halt what it saw as Annunciation House’s “systemic criminal conduct.” According to a press release, Paxton thinks Annunciation House has broken the law in a multitude of ways.
A press release explained that they “have reviewed and obtained sworn testimony indicating that Annunciation House’s operations are designed to facilitate illegal border crossings and to conceal illegally present aliens from law enforcement,” it went on to say that “Annunciation House operates as a criminal enterprise.” Unfortunately, the injunction was blocked by a judge.
A state district court judge rebuked that argument, describing Paxton’s actions as “outrageous and intolerable.” Judge Francisco X. Dominguez decided the state hadn’t established probable grounds to shut down Annunciation House and had violated its religious freedoms. However, Paxton has remained resolute, and hasn’t just continued his pursuit of Annunciation House but is targeting other nonprofits that assist immigrants.
Catholic groups have long been involved in illegal migration. Lloyd Barba, a historian of religion at Amherst College, says that Some of them start to argue, ‘Well, we’re not engaging in civil disobedience, we’re going to be engaging in the civil initiative because it’s the government…that is failing to uphold its law after having signed the 1980 Refugee Act. So if the government is not going to uphold the law, we will take the civil initiative to uphold the law and offer protection for these migrants.'”
Undeterred by this bump in the road, Paxton announced that he was suing Annunciation House “to revoke its registration to operate in Texas.” He “reviewed significant public record information strongly suggesting Annunciation House is engaged in legal violations such as facilitating illegal entry to the United States, alien harboring, human smuggling, and operating a stash house.” Another press release explained. The OAG “has complete and unlimited authority to examine business records to ensure that entities operating within the State are doing so lawfully,” it continued.