DALLAS — Accusing a non-profit in El Paso of "worsening illegal immigration," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is threatening to shut down Annunciation House and end its decades-long mission of ministering to the poor, including migrants who have crossed the southern border.
"The call to serve the stranger and serve those in need is at the very heart and core of the gospel," said Marvin Vann Griffith of St. Christopher's Episcopal Church in Fort Worth. He returned earlier this week from his second trip to El Paso to volunteer at Annunciation House, helping provide food, clothing, and a temporary place to stay.
"These are church ladies and church dads wanting to respond to people in need," he said of the effort.
But, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has demanded records from the non-profit "to evaluate these potential legal violations," he said. He accuses Annunciation House of "facilitating illegal entry to the United States, alien harboring, human smuggling, and operating a stash house."
"My office works day in and day out to hold these organizations responsible for worsening illegal immigration," Paxton said in a news release. "OAG has complete and unlimited authority to examine business records to ensure that entities operating within the State are doing so lawfully. And the consequence of a flagrant failure to comply with such a request is that OAG may terminate the business's right to operate in Texas. The OAG lawsuit seeks to revoke Annunciation House's authorization to do business in Texas and asks the court to appoint a receiver to liquidate their assets."
"Is there no shame to refer to houses of God, houses of hospitality, as stash houses," said Annunciation House director Ruben Garcia in a news conference Friday morning. "And it is a forewarning to other entities that also do the work of hospitality that they can very well be next."
That's what volunteers like Marvin Vann Griffith fear, even though he points out that the migrants they help at Annunciation House are people whom Customs and Border Protection have already processed and sent to the non-profit asking groups like the church-sponsored organization to help.
"To ask us to stop doing this would be to ask us to give up the heart of the gospel," he said. "To have the attorney general of our state attack it seems to be extraordinary, it's just profoundly strange."
"An attack on one is an attack on all," U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, said during the Friday news conference.
"Attorney General Paxton compounds his abuse of power by focusing it on a religious organization that is putting Catholic faith into practice," said Jerome Wesevich, a lawyer with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. "Attorney General Paxton may want to dust off his Bible and read through it sometime."
Wesevich, on behalf of Annunciation House, sued Paxton's office asking a judge to decide which documents are legally releasable. A hearing on the case in El Paso is set for March 7.