Aiexpress – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is threatening to close Annunciation House in El Paso, accusing it of “worsening illegal immigration” and ending its decades-long purpose of ministering to the destitute, including migrants who have crossed the border.
“The call to serve the stranger and those in need is at the very heart and core of the gospel,” stated 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 serve at Annunciation House, where he helped 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 initiative.
However, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has requested information from the non-profit “to evaluate these potential legal violations,” he stated. He accuses Annunciation House of “facilitating illegal entry into the United States, alien harboring, human smuggling, and operating a stash house.”
“My office works tirelessly to hold these organizations accountable for worsening illegal immigration,” Paxton stated in a news release. “The OAG has complete and limitless authority to inspect business documents to ensure that firms operating within the state are acting lawfully. In the event of a flagrant failure to comply with such a request, the OAG may cancel the business’s right to operate in Texas. The OAG action aims to withdraw Annunciation House’s authority to conduct business in Texas and to appoint a receiver to liquidate their assets.
“Is there no shame in referring to houses of God, houses of hospitality, as stash houses?” asked Annunciation House director Ruben Garcia at 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.”
Volunteers like Marvin Vann Griffith are concerned about this, despite the fact that the migrants they assist at Annunciation House are those whom Customs and Border Protection have already vetted and given to the non-profit, which is requesting assistance from church-sponsored organizations.
“To ask us to stop doing this would be to ask us to give up the heart of the gospel,” he went on to say. “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 at a 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.”
On behalf of Annunciation House, Wesevich sued Paxton’s office, requesting that a judge determine which documents are legally releasable. The matter will be heard in El Paso on March 7.
