Totally expected, which doesn’t make it any less despicable.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will appeal an El Paso district judge’s ruling that blocked his efforts to close the Annunciation House networks of shelters for migrants crossing the border.
“For too long, Annunciation House has flouted the law and contributed to the worsening illegal immigration crisis at Texas’s border with Mexico,” Paxton said in a news release Monday. “I am appealing this case and will continue to vigorously enforce the law against any NGO engaging in criminal conduct.”
The appeal comes as Paxton has ramped up his efforts to stop Catholic organizations from providing services to migrants.
Ruben Garcia, the founder and executive director of Annunciation House, said the appeal was expected but still disappointing.
“It’s very, very difficult to believe that at the end of the day, this is not all the result of a political perspective,” Garcia told El Paso Matters.
El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz said the U.S. Catholic Church has expressed increasing concerns about efforts in Texas to use the immigration issue to restrict people from exercising their faith.
[…]
In the notice to [District Court Judge Francisco] Dominguez’s court Tuesday, the Attorney General’s Office said it is seeking a direct appeal to the Texas Supreme Court. Ordinarily, a district court ruling in El Paso would first be appealed to the El Paso-based 8th Court of Appeals.
All nine justices on the Texas Supreme Court are Republicans, like Paxton. Dominguez is a Democrat, as are two of the three members of the 8th Court of Appeals.
Earlier this year, three Republican justices on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals were ousted in the GOP primary after Paxton targeted them for ruling against his office in a 2021 case, where he asserted the power to unilaterally prosecute voter fraud cases.
The Court of Criminal Appeals is Texas’ highest court for criminal cases, while the Supreme Court oversees civil cases.
Garcia said he worries that Paxton’s actions against the Court of Criminal Appeals justices will be on the minds of the Supreme Court when they hear the Annunciation House case.
He said he has “just a lot of concerns to how, little by little, the structures themselves are being aligned to reflect a particular viewpoint.”
The Attorney General’s Office in June sued Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, the largest providers of migrant services on that part of the border. The suit seeks to depose leaders of Catholic Charities about its services to migrants.
In his El Paso ruling, Dominguez said such efforts are an end-run around constitutional protections requiring that law enforcement prove probable cause that a crime has occurred before attempting to compel evidence in a criminal investigation.
In a response to the lawsuit in the Rio Grande Valley, Catholic Charities’ lawyers made similar arguments.
“This petition represents a fishing expedition into a pond where no one has ever seen fish,” the response to the lawsuit stated.
See here for the previous update. I don’t know what the rules are for bypassing an appellate court, but I do know that Ken Paxton will always seek a friendly audience for his crusades. The Supreme Court of Texas is nowhere as corrupted as SCOTUS or some of the federal district courts that Paxton likes to do business with (a high bar to clear, to be sure), but it has not distinguished itself of late. I have some hope that SCOTx will reject Paxton’s overtures, either directly or after being briefed, but I had hopes for some of the cases that SCOTUS had before them this term too, so keep your expectations in check.
One minor wrinkle of note is that if SCOTx sends this back to an appellate court, that court will be the new 15th Court of Appeals with its Abbott-appointed judges. Which means that whatever happens from here, Paxton won’t have to deal with any Democratic judges again. We should all live as custom-made a life as Ken Paxton does. Texas Public Radio has more.
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