Nonprofits vow to ‘intensify’ work with migrants in response to Texas lawsuit

SAN JUAN, Texas (Border Report) — Several nonprofit organizations vowed to step up in assisting asylum-seekers a day after Texas’ attorney general sued a Catholic migrant shelter in El Paso.

“We are not going to be deterred. We’re not going to be afraid. I know that the governor is promising going after every organization and all of the organizations doing humanitarian work, but also the work that we’re doing,” Fernando Garcia, executive director of Border Network for Human Rights told Border Report on Wednesday.

Garcia was in the Rio Grande Valley leading a community forum to educate the public on SB4, the new state law that takes effect next month and will allow any peace officer to arrest a migrant. The law was passed by the Legislature and is part of Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative called Operation Lone Star.

On Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Annunciation House, a long-standing non-governmental organization, that provides shelter for migrants in Far West Texas.

Paxton has sued to revoke their license to operate in the state and has accused them of helping migrants to illegally enter the United States, “alien harboring, human smuggling and operating a stash house,” according to Paxton’s website.

“The chaos at the southern border has created an environment where NGOs, funded with taxpayer money from the Biden Administration, facilitate astonishing horrors including human smuggling,” Paxton said.

The 65-page lawsuit, filed in El Paso County, alleges: “Annunciation House appears to be engaged in the business of human smuggling.”

“If the work that Annunciation House conducts is illegal — so too is the work of our local hospitals, schools, and food banks,” Annunciation House Director Ruben Garcia said in a statement.

Border Network for Human Rights, an NGO founded 26 years ago, works closely with Annunciation House and has over 7,000 members in West Texas. Garcia said his group was not backing down and instead would intensify protests against the state and Abbott.

“It is an attack against all of us, this attack against Annunciation House. So we will extend our full support and we’re going to stand behind Annunciation House in this irrational attack,” Garcia said.

“He’s taken up an irrational, racist, political decision criminalizing not only immigrants but also organizations that actually are providing help and support at the border. So no, it’s the opposite, actually, we’re gonna do it with more intensity now,” Garcia said. “We’re going to intensify the resistance.”

In December 2022, Abbott ordered Paxton to launch an investigation into several nonprofits in El Paso that assist migrants, including Border Network, and Annunciation House, Garcia said.

Garcia’s group hosted over 100 people at Wednesday’s community forum held in a Hidalgo County building where they learned their rights and how to respond if questioned or arrested by a peace officer after SB4 takes effect on March 5. It’s part of the organization’s Journeys of Resistance campaign. The organization is canvassing the state and has visited several towns this week. The campaign plans a march in Austin on March 9.

He says he has been contacted by other NGOs after the lawsuit was filed and some are very worried.

“I’m afraid some of the organizations might step back,” he said. “The governor is doing this. I don’t think he has a basis but I think he wants to send a message, right? And the message is, ‘Be afraid; stop whatever you’re doing because I’m going to go after you.’ Even if what we’re doing is legal. It is within the U.S. Constitution. It is humanitarian.”

Andrea Rudnik, volunteer coordinator for Team Brownsville, a nonprofit that sends food and supplies from Brownsville, Texas, to migrants in Matamoros, Mexico, and operates a welcome center north of the border, said she was shocked at the lawsuit filed against another NGO.

“We are more than concerned. To try to shut down Annunciation House is like a crime against humanity. It’s almost unspeakable. They have been doing good work for a lot of people that are in need,” Rudnik told Border Report.

“I would not have believed that it could happen to an organization as well established and so established for such a long time,” she said.

“We even think about ourselves,” she said. “You feel like anything you say, you don’t want to be the thing: ‘Oh yeah, Team Brownsville we’re going to come after you.’ No. I don’t want to say that. But I certainly think it.”

LUPE Votes, a sister organization of La Unión del Pueblo Entero (LUPE,) condemned the lawsuit.

“Ken Paxton’s latest attack against Annunciation House in El Paso shows that there are no limits to his politically-motivated and immoral campaign against vulnerable asylum-seekers at the border. Annunciation House and dozens of other groups from El Paso to Eagle Pass and Brownsville do the daily hard work of welcoming immigrant families with shelter, a warm meal, and clean clothes, among other basic necessities every human being deserves,” LUPE Votes Deputy Director Dani Marrero Hi said.

“Paxton, Gov. Greg Abbott, and other state leaders should follow the lead of Annunciation House and humanitarian groups instead of trying to shut them down,” Hi said.

The Mexican American Legislative Caucus denounced Paxton’s actions as a “baseless attack.”

“Nonprofits like Annunciation House … are picking up the slack for our government’s lack of resources to address the global migration surge. Churches, regarded as safe spaces for all, and small nonprofits aiding women and children, should never be politically exploited,” said Texas state Rep. Victoria Neave Criado, MALC chairwoman.

“Make no mistake, going after NGOs working closely with migrants will only put an additional strain on our governmental resources — creating chaos during an election year,” she said.

Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.