How much do you have to hate migrants to keep doing this?
A crook any way you look
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton cannot depose the leader of a McAllen migrant shelter, a Hidalgo County judge ruled Wednesday.
District Judge Bobby Flores’ decision shuts down attempts to compel the executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley to submit to questioning on the shelter’s operations.
An attorney for Catholic Charities, William Powell, said he hoped the ruling put an end to the attorney general’s investigation into the organization’s work.
“We would hope that at this point they’ve realized that Catholic Charities complies with the law in all the work they do,” Powell said.
In a statement after the ruling, executive director of Catholic Charities, Sister Norma Pimentel, said the organization would “always strive to fulfill its legal obligations” while continuing its mission.
The attorney general’s office did not respond to a request for an interview.
The attorney general’s office filed a petition to depose Catholic Charities last month, saying it was investigating whether the organization is illegally harboring migrants or illegally encouraging them to enter or remain in the country.
Catholic Charities, a nonprofit that provides food, shelter and other basic necessities to asylum seekers, people experiencing homelessness and others in need, said it has not violated any laws and the attorney general’s office has not presented any evidence to the contrary.
[…]
Catholic Charities argued that the attorney general’s office failed to show that there would be any benefit to the deposition.
“The petition represents a fishing expedition into a pond where no one has even seen a fish,” attorneys for Catholic Charities wrote in their response to the attorney general’s petition.
The attorney general’s office initially requested documents from Catholic Charities in April. Over the course of a few months, Catholic Charities turned over more than 100 pages of documents regarding how it hires and trains staff as well as its rules and procedures for admitting migrants, including required documentation, its process for applying for federal funds, and its relationship and communication with federal, state and local law enforcement.
The organization also submitted a sworn statement from Pimentel, its executive director, in which she responded to questions on operations, funding and communication with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The attorney general’s office, however, said the documents did not shed “meaningful light” into their operations and that Pimentel’s statement was non-responsive and evasive.
The parallels with Annunciation House are obvious. It is my sincere hope that Paxton is alienating some Catholic voters, but it’s too soon to tell about that. I first heard about this case when Paxton appealed the Annunciation House ruling to SCOTx. I don’t know any more about it than what I’m reading in the current stories, but you can count on Paxton to be maximally dickish and dishonest about this. This raises the stakes for the appeal on the Annunciation House case. He’s not going to stop until he’s forced to.