A shelter run by a charity in El Paso, Texas, is accused of “planning and facilitating” the arrival of illegal migrants. cross the border from Mexico to the United States, according to court documents.

The accusation of blatant illegality is part of a lawsuit filed by state Attorney General Ken Paxton against Annunciation House, a Catholic group that operates a handful of shelters providing temporary housing to migrants who have illegally crossed the border to the United States.

Paxton launched an investigation earlier this year into the association, demanding the immediate release of documents regarding its migrant clients, which it refused to do.

“Annunciation House publicly presents itself as a humble organization dedicated to ‘simply living the Good News of the Gospel’ and bringing ‘compassion and freedom’ to ‘outcasts or aliens,'” documents filed last year. of El Paso County Court, adding: “The actual operations of Annunciation House are very different.

“Annunciation House staff… repeatedly admitted that they had previously helped migrants in the United States who had not surrendered to Border Patrol, that they had helped people in Mexico cross the border to the United States in the past, and that they intended to continue these efforts. activities in the future.

The shelters are run by Ruben Garcia, a Catholic activist who is compared to a living saint for helping migrants in El Paso for nearly 50 years.

But Paxton claims his organization is involved in human trafficking and further accuses the group of “boasting” about helping “migrants who avoided Border Patrol by crossing the Rio Grande, lest agents not send them back to Mexico.”

“Annunciation House contracts with a local company once or twice a week to transport migrants in vans in groups of approximately 15,” court documents state.

“Annunciation House knows that at least some of the aliens to whom it provides services are present illegally and attempting to avoid Border Patrol. The transportation of these aliens through Annunciation House presents a very significant likelihood of human trafficking.

The House of the Annunciation, which boasts of having helped 500,000 migrants since its creation in 1978, does not accept government subsidies and relies exclusively on private donations.

The group has refused to give Paxton any of its records on the migrants it helps and has not filed accounts with the IRS since 2003, using their religious designation to avoid publicly releasing their annual financial statements, according to the public records.

Paxton’s lawsuit seeks to obtain documentation from the charity about the people it welcomes through its doors, saying that would “corroborate the presence” of undocumented migrants who have infiltrated the country.

The AG accused Annunciation House and other Catholic charities of helping fuel the boom in migrant crossings over the years.

In addition to Annunciation House, Paxton requested records from Catholic Charities of Rio Grande, Angeles Sin Fronteras in Mission, Texas, and Team Brownsville.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott urged Paxton, at the height of the migrant crisis in 2022, to investigate the role border nonprofits play in “planning and facilitating the illegal transportation of immigrants illegal across our borders.

At the time, El Paso was so overwhelmed with hundreds of migrants sleeping on the city’s streets, leading the city’s mayor to declare a state of emergency in December 2022 and April 2023.

Faith groups have stepped in to help shelter migrants – as they have for decades. But, according to Texas AG, they operated with virtually no government oversight.

Since 2014, Border Patrol agents have used Annunciation House to coordinate emergency relief for the millions of migrants crossing the southern border, according to reports.

The group also helped migrants on bus in Colorado. Border Patrol agents often send migrants who have completed their screening process to Annunciation House and other charities. The problem is that migrants evade this process by entering the country illegally, then end up in the group’s shelters, mixing with those who have been admitted to the country to seek asylum, according to the reports.

The Department of Homeland Security is also asking agents to refrain from making arrests at churches and places of worship.

As the AG’s legal battle to obtain the documents intensifies, Annunciation House has gone to court to protect its rights as a religious group.

So far, she has won the battle against Paxton. Things got so heated that even Pope Francis weighed in, calling the AG’s investigation into the House of the Annunciation “pure madness” in a 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 that the request to release information violated his “free exercise of religion.”

District Judge Francisco Dominguez called Paxton’s investigation “scandalous and intolerable” and an attack on the Catholic Church.

An attorney for Annunciation House told the Post this week that 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 group’s attorney, who declined to comment further.

In July, Paxton’s office fought back by appealing the decision all the way to the Texas Supreme Court, which is scheduled to hear the case in January.

The court proceedings will be closely monitored by nonprofit organizations that work with migrants in communities along the southern border with Mexico, which has seen more than 6.7 million migrant “encounters” under the Biden administration, according to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.

For Garcia, 76, boss of the Maison de l’Annonciation, it is above all about doing God’s work and helping the poor.

Although he declined to comment through his lawyer this week, he remains 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 organizing the visit of the nun, born in Skopje, in present-day North Macedonia, to El Paso while she was on a speaking tour in the United States in 1976.

He said she encouraged him to work with the “poorest of the poor,” who in El Paso were undocumented migrants from Mexico. In 1978, the city’s diocese gave him the second floor of a dilapidated brick building that now serves as the group’s headquarters.

When he broke the news in a letter to Mother Teresa, she wrote: “Now you will tell the good news and bring people back to Jesus. » Garcia said he was inspired to name his new nonprofit Annunciation House.

Like Mother Teresa, canonized by Pope Francis in 2016, Garcia was imbued with sainthood by his own supporters. Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar, who represents El Paso, called it “a saint who still walks the earth” during a congressional delegation to the border in February.

But critics say groups like Annunciation House encourage migrants to break the law by crossing the border illegally and enriching drug cartels that traffic people through Mexico and Central America.

“Apart from everything else, they aid and abet the violation of laws,” said Ira Mehlman, media director of Federal for American Immigration Reform, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. “Clearly Ken Paxton knows what they are doing and that they are complicit in encouraging this entire illegal immigration operation.”