Texas is wrong to go after nuns

When Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro engaged in a legal battle with the Little Sisters of the Poor over their refusal to subsidize birth control for their employees, I got very angry. As a Catholic who takes her faith seriously, and an asylum lawyer who knows a little about religious persecution, it seemed to me that the then-attorney general was violating the rights of women who just wanted to be left alone to serve God’s glory.

Of course, there are those who believe that Shapiro was fighting to preserve the civil rights of those female employees who refused to buy their own birth control, but it’s clear that going after nuns is not a good look.

I thought I’d seen the last of that kind of chicanery from a state official, but now there’s another example of anti-Catholic bigotry. This time it’s a Republican attorney general from Texas acting under orders from a Republican governor. Bigotry and illegality are, apparently, bipartisan.

We all know Gov. Greg Abbott is waging his own war against the tide of illegal immigration that is making life unlivable at the southern border. Normally, I fully support the governor in his efforts to manage what many of my fellow conservatives call an invasion.

In fact, he’s tried to use constitutional arguments to support his claim that he can interfere with the federal jurisdiction over immigration. As a lawyer, I have to give him credit for ingenuity. Also as a lawyer, I have to say he’s completely off base on that one.

Now he’s wrong about something else. On Feb. 20, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the one they couldn’t impeach, decided to go after Annunciation House, which acts as a halfway house and temporary shelter for people who have crossed the border.

It was founded in 1978 by a few young Catholics in the El Paso Diocese who, ironically enough, wanted to help federal border authorities deal with the human crisis at the border. Back then it wasn’t as serious as it is today, and involved mostly single Mexican men instead of entire families from Central and South America, but there was a need to provide humanitarian aid.

Paxton has decided to redefine these unpaid workers as human smugglers, saying: “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.”

It’s a bit disingenuous for Paxton to accuse this shelter of human smuggling. While the Texas law that prohibits human smuggling does include acts involving the transportation of undocumented aliens across the border and within the state itself, he would then have to charge his own governor with human smuggling in order to be consistent.

Remember when Abbott was buying bus tickets to send aliens to Northeastern cities? Under the letter of the law, that is also human smuggling. Someone should be suing the governor, right?

But this isn’t about fairness or even the law. This is about public relations, and it’s wrong.

What Annunciation House is doing is not illegal. It’s Catholic and Christian. It is providing temporary shelter, food, clothing and medical care to people who need it.

Yes, there is a legitimate argument that they should not be here in the first place. There is an equally legitimate argument that providing this sort of assistance will make it easier for the people who should not be here to stay here.

It is much less legitimate to say that this is actually attracting people to the U.S. I can promise you that the decision to flee Honduras is not contingent upon Annunciation House providing you a blanket and a few hot meals for the weekend.

I am actually more offended with this attack on Annunciation House after having visited a similar facility outside of McAllen, Texas, last year. I spent an afternoon reading books to little girls from Venezuela, Brazil and Colombia, braiding their hair, and drawing pictures with them.

In a couple of days, they and their parents would be on a bus to meet with their sponsors in the United States, usually relatives.

I also attended a Mass in a large gymnasium and helped a frantic father search for his missing toddler, who it turns out was hanging out with a nun. Come to think of it, I suppose I was involved in human smuggling, too. I’m more than ready for my mug shot.

Black humor aside, I think it is a dangerous and counterproductive thing to go after religious organizations that are operating within the law, and are fulfilling their spiritual mission.

Paxton can try and paint Annunciation House and places like it as centers of human trafficking, gang members, drug smugglers and all other sorts of undesirables, but the truth is that they are simply a small, humane attempt to deal with one aspect of a larger, complicated crisis.

I am in full support of laws that will stop this overflow of humanity at the border, but attacking people of faith is a despicable and ineffective way of doing that.

So, until I see Abbott’s mug shot on Fox News, I will condemn the ridiculous assault on my church and its mission.