James Breeden for NY Post
A charity run shelter in El Paso, Texas stands accused of “planning and facilitating” illegal migrants to cross over the border from Mexico into the US, according to court documents.
The accusation of brazen illegality is part of a suit filed by the state Attorney General Ken Paxton against Annunciation House, a Catholic group who run a handful of shelters providing temporary housing to migrants who have illegally crossed into the US.
Paxton launched an investigation earlier this year into the charity, demanding the immediate release of documentation about its migrant clients, which it has refused to do.
“Annunciation House publicly depicts itself as a humble organization dedicated to ‘simply liv[ing] the Good News of the Gospel’ and providing ‘compassion and freedom’ to ‘outcast[s] or alien[s],’” papers filed in year in El Paso County Court say, adding: “The actual operations of Annunciation House are quite different.
“Annunciation House staff … made multiple admissions that they had assisted migrants in the past in the United States who had not surrendered to Border Patrol, had assisted persons in Mexico in crossing over to the United States in the past, and they intended to continue these activities in the future.
The shelters are run by Ruben Garcia, a Catholic activist who has been likened to a living saint for helping migrants in El Paso for nearly 50 years.
But Paxton alleges he his organization is involved in human smuggling and further accuses the group of “boasting” that it helps “migrants who avoided Border Patrol when crossing the Rio Grande, out of fear that agents would send them back to Mexico.”
“Annunciation House contracts with a local company once or twice a week to transport migrants in passenger vans in groups of approximately 15,” court papers say.
“Annunciation House knows that at least some of the aliens it provides services to are present illegally and are trying to avoid Border Patrol. Annunciation House’s transportation of those aliens presents a very significant likelihood of human smuggling.”
Annunciation House, which boasts that it has helped 500,000 migrants since its founding in 1978 does not accept government grants, relying exclusively on private donations.
The group has refused to turn over any of its records on the migrants it helps to Paxton, and hasn’t produced an accounting to the IRS since 2003, using their religious designation to avoid publicly filing annual financial disclosures, according to public records.
Paxton’s lawsuit is seeking documentation from the charity over who it welcomes through its doors, claiming it would “corroborate the presence of” undocumented migrants who had sneaked into the country.
The AG has blamed Annunciation House and other Catholic charities of helping to fuel the boom in migrant crossings over the years.
In addition to Annunciation House, Paxton has demanded records from Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande, Angeles Sin Fronteras in Mission, Texas and Team Brownsville.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott urged Paxton during the height of the migrant crisis in 2022 to probe the role that border nonprofits play in “planning and facilitating the illegal transportation of illegal immigrants across our borders.”
At the time, El Paso was so overwhelmed with hundreds of migrants sleeping on the city’s streets, causing the city’s mayor to declare states of emergency in December 2022 and in April 2023.
The faith-based groups stepped into help shelter the migrants — as they have done for decades. But, according to the Texas AG, they have operated with almost no government scrutiny.
Since 2014, Annunciation House has been enlisted by Border Patrol agents to coordinate emergency relief for the millions of migrants pouring over the southern border, according to reports.
The group has also helped bus migrants to Colorado. Border Patrol agents often send the migrants who have passed through their vetting process to Annunciation House and the other charities. The problem lies in migrants who evade that process by sneaking into the country illegally, then ending up in the group’s shelters blending in with those who have been admitted to the country to seek asylum, according to reports.
The Department of Homeland security also tells officers to refrain from making arrests at churches and places of worship.
As the court battle from the AG seeking the documents has heated up, Annunciation House has gone to court to protect its rights as a religious group.
So far it has been winning the battle against Paxton. Things got so heated, even Pope Francis weighed in, calling the AG’s probe of Annunciation House “sheer madness” in an interview with CBS in May.
This summer an El Paso district court judge ruled against Paxton’s efforts to shut down the group, saying in part the request to turn over information violated its “free exercise of religion.”
District Judge Francisco Dominguez called Paxton’s probe “outrageous and intolerable” and an attack against the Catholic Church.
A lawyer for Annunciation House told The Post this week the group is determined to continue fighting the AG.
“Of course we believe the AG’s actions against Annunciation House are unfounded,” said Amy Warr, the attorney for the group, who refused further comment.
In July Paxton’s office hit back, appealing the decision all the way to the Texas Supreme Court which is scheduled to hear the case in January.
The legal proceedings will be closely watched by nonprofits who work with migrants in communities along the southern border with Mexico which has seen more than 6.7 million migrant “encounters” during the Biden administration, according to the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
For Annunciation House boss Garcia, 76, it’s all about doing God’s work, and helping the poor.
Although he refused comment through his lawyer this week, he is undaunted, according to reports. “This work is my cross,” Garcia told an interviewer earlier this year. “This is what God has called me to do.”
Garcia said he received his calling as a Catholic youth worker in the 1970s. He said he was inspired by Mother Teresa, and was instrumental in arranging for the nun, born in Skopje in modern day North Macedonia, to visit El Paso while she was on a speaking tour in the US in 1976.
He said she encouraged him to work with the “poorest of the poor,” which in El Paso were undocumented migrants from Mexico. In 1978, the city’s diocese gave him the second floor of the shabby brick building that the group now uses as its headquarters.
When he broke the news in a letter to Mother Teresa, she wrote: “Now you will announce the good news and bring the people home to Jesus.” Garcia said he was inspired to name his new nonprofit Annunciation House.
Like Mother Teresa, who was canonized by Pope Francis in 2016, Garcia has been imbued with saintly status by his own supporters. Democratic Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, who represents El Paso, called him “a saint who still walks the earth” during a Congressional delegation to the border in February.
But critics say that groups like Annunciation House are encouraging migrants to break the law by crossing the border illegally, and enriching drug cartels who engage in human smuggling through Mexico and Central America.
“Aside from everything else, they are aiding and abetting the violation of laws,” said Ira Mehlman, media director of the Federal for American Immigration Reform, a Washington DC-based think tank. “Clearly, Ken Paxton knows what they are up to, and that they are complicit in encouraging this whole operation of illegal immigration.”