Court Battle to Keep Annunciation House Open Underscores How Faith Groups Strive to Welcome Strangers in the Face of Anti-immigrant Sentiment
Originally published in The Conversation on July 23, 2024.
Over the past few months, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been locked in a court battle with Annunciation House, a network of shelters in the El Paso area that assists migrants with basic needs and legal aid. On July 2, 2024, district court Judge Francisco Dominguez issued a ruling denying Paxton’s attempt to shut down Annunciation House. Paxton appealed two weeks later.
In his original suit, Paxton sought to rescind Annunciation House’s ability to operate as a nonprofit in Texas, alleging that its efforts to assist migrants amount to “human smuggling.”
Dominguez stated in his ruling that Paxton’s demands for documents from Annunciation House were simply a pretext to achieve a predetermined outcome of closing the shelter and that, rather than gathering evidence first, Paxton had assumed a crime and then sought evidence for it.