McALLEN, Texas — Texas is expanding its investigation into aid groups along the U.S.-Mexico border over allegations that nonprofits are helping migrants enter the country illegally. Some groups are being sued and facing demands. that a judge called intimidation after the state tried to close a shelter in El Paso.
The efforts are led by Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxtonwhose office has defended the state’s increasingly aggressive actions at the border, including barbed wire fences and a law that would allow police to arrest migrants who enter the US illegally.
Since February, Paxton has requested documents from at least four Texas groups that provide shelter and food to migrants. That includes one of the largest migrant aid organizations in Texas, Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, which asked a court on Wednesday to stop what the group called a “fishing expedition in a pond where no one has ever seen a fish.”
The state’s scrutiny hasn’t stopped the organizations’ work. But leaders of some groups say the investigations have caused some volunteers to leave and they worry it will have a chilling effect on those helping migrants in Texas.
Here are some things you should know about the studies and the groups:
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott sent Paxton a letter in 2022 urging him to investigate the role nongovernmental organizations play in “planning and facilitating the illegal transportation of illegal immigrants across our borders.” Two years earlier, Abbott began rolling out his multibillion-dollar border security apparatus known as Operation Lone Star.
Without citing evidence, Abbott’s letter cited unspecified “recent reports” that some groups may be acting unlawfully. Paxton later accused Annunciation House in El Paso, one of the oldest migrant holding facilities on the border, of human smuggling and other crimes.
The groups deny the allegations and no charges have been filed.
Other Republicans and conservative groups applaud Texas’s efforts.
Many non-profit organizations on the Texas border are based on faith and have operated for years – and in some cases decades – without state oversight.
Several groups have partnered with Abbott’s bus program, which has transported more than 119,000 migrants to Democratic-led cities across the U.S. However, some of those partnerships began to erode after reports of poor conditions on board the buses and the frustration among migrant aid organizations that migrants were arriving in cities without warning.
In addition to Annunciation House, Paxton has sent letters to Angeles Sin Fronteras in Mission, Texas; Team Brownsville; and Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley.
The Catholic Charities group is part of the Diocese of Brownsville and provides services to existing residents and migrants. In 2017, it opened a migrant shelter that typically sees more than 1,000 people a week, most of whom stay for just a few days.
In court documents, Catholic Charities said it had provided Paxton’s office with more than 100 pages of documents and an affidavit from its executive director. But in June, Paxton asked a court to allow the state to question a member of the organization about intake procedures, communications with local and state law enforcement and the organization’s “practices of facilitating aliens across the Texas-Mexico border.”
Catholic Charities denies wrongdoing and this week asked a judge to deny Paxton’s request.
This week, an El Paso judge accused Paxton’s office of going too far in its search for evidence of criminal activity.
That ruling involved Annunciation House, whose records Paxton began digging up in February. The Catholic shelter in El Paso opened in 1978.
In a scathing ruling, U.S. District Judge Francisco X. Dominguez said Paxton’s efforts to enforce the law a summons for data of migrants violated the asylum’s constitutional rights.
“This is outrageous and unacceptable,” the judge wrote.
Paxton’s office did not respond to messages seeking comment on the ruling. The state could appeal the decision.
It is not clear when a court will rule in the investigation into Catholic Charities.
Every group that received letters from Paxton’s office continued to offer aid to migrants.
But at Annunciation House, director Ruben Garcia said negative comments from Paxton have caused some volunteers to leave, fearing they would get caught up in the legal process.
Marisa Limon Garza, executive director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso, said the legal actions against their partners are seen as an attack on the values of binational communities that help immigrant communities. Garza added that it has had a “chilling” effect.
“When this organization, which has been working with the most vulnerable in our region for over 40 years, is in the eyes of the government, you wonder if your organization will be next,” Limon Garza said. ___ An earlier version of this story misspelled Marisa Limon Garza’s first name as Marissa.