Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's free bus trips for illegal immigrants to the sanctuary cities shifted the open-borders debate from a Texas problem, and turned every state into a border state, making it go national.
Now, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's targeting of an open-borders NGO stands to draw attention to the nefarious role these self-congratulating government-financed groups are playing in egging on the current border surge.
According to the Texas Tribune:
In a Tuesday evening statement, Paxton accused Annunciation House of a series of offenses, which included smuggling people across the southern border and operating a stash house.
“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.
Which is pretty disgusting, but such are the natural things that come of being very determined to "welcome the stranger," meaning, the people who have broken into our country illegally like burglars.
Being experienced in leftist lawfare tactics, the NGO's nimble response was this:
A Catholic nonprofit that operates several shelters in El Paso sued the Office of the Attorney General earlier this month to delay the release of records after the state agency demanded the immediate release of extensive documentation about the immigrant clients that it serves along the border.
The Consumer Protection Division of the attorney general’s office launched an investigation into Annunciation House on Feb. 7, demanding the release of documentation within one day, the small nonprofit requested an extension to review what information the organization was legally required to turn over.
The state denied the extension, so the Catholic nonprofit sued the state, requesting a court rule on which documents the group must hand over to the attorney general. Additionally, to buy time, Annunciation House also requested a restraining order against the attorney general to grant the Catholic organization relief from the state’s immediate demands.
In turn, Attorney General Ken Paxton announced his office was suing the organization for failing to comply with the demand and suggested the religious nonprofit of “worsening illegal immigration.” If a judge sides with the state, the lawsuit could prevent the group from operating in Texas, which it’s done since 1976.
Why don't they want to release their records? What's in there that they don't want the taxpayers, who pay at least some of their expenses, to see?
Paxton has said that as Texas's top regulator, he has the right to look at any company or NGO's business records. This group seems to think they're an exception.
Sure, it's a battle of bureaucrats. But the hard fact is, there is a border crisis on unlike any that has ever been seen before and Texas is on the receiving end of it. Criminals are rolling in. Enormous profits are accumulating to Mexico's cartels. Phony asylum claims have inundated the system, shutting out people with authentic claims to asylum. Nothing truly catastrophic has happened in the world (other than in Ukraine and Israel) since Joe Biden issued his invitation to all the world to come on in. The border crisis is a Biden-driven crisis and Mexico's cartels, which control who gets into the states, are its chief beneficiaries. To hear the NGOs tell it, though, migrants are all fleeing unbearable persecution and crises, when the fact remains that most are economic migrants, many are criminals, and few qualify for the asylum they use as a password for being allowed into the country under Biden's catch-and-release. The NGOs are an enabling protection racket.
Paxton has taken on a particularly sticky group, the wokester religious organizations who justify their willingness to enable lawbreaking with fallacious claims that they are just "welcoming the stranger," as they put it, forgetting that there's nothing in the Bible about welcoming burglars into one's home who are looking to rob you. They've got the wokesterly bishop of El Paso, Mark Seitz, who kneeled for Black Lives Matter protestors earlier, loudly siding with them. As far as Catholic teaching goes, obeying the laws of a country, is also commanded of Catholics, and it's right there in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
The NGOs claim to be all generous of spirit and Gospel-oriented, but they aren't that in the least as they bring in migrants and even coach them on how to game the asylum system. The stash houses and smuggling operations Paxton charges them with is an additional knock-on effect of someone with a disordered understanding of a just law.
Most migrants come here in search of either jobs to take from Americans, or lifetime benefit packages which these groups certainly have no intention of paying -- the BGOs like this one, want you, the taxpayer, to pay them, whether you like it or not, and too bad if you lose a job to a migrant or become a victim of a crime. They're not responsible.
That's not exactly charity, and in the end, rule-of-law gets tattered, too. The NGOs getting this taxpayer money would like to "serve" everyone in the world who wants into the states, legitimate or not, close to a billion people, by some estimates, and stick the other guy with the tab.
The NGOs, which take federal money, have a vested interest in continuing the border surge, because the name of the game is always funds, funds, funds with this bunch, and in the process, they have made themselves the handmaids and enablers of Mexico's notorious human-smuggling cartels, which make big dollars from their nefarious trade.
It's about time they be held accountable for the knock-on effects of their hollow virtue-signalling and be made to pay for the damage they are doing. If they want to do charity in Honduras, let them go to Honduras to do charity. They shouldn't be allowed to write their own law and do it on the taxpayer dime. Paxton is right to shine a light on their virtue-signalling and expose them for the dishonest, damaging groups that they are, putting a stop to this bad charade.
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