Special Report: Annunciation House Provides Refuge To America’s Foreign Policy Imbroglio

On February 20, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accused Annunciation House of violating immigration laws. For over 40 years Annunciation House has been providing services to migrants in El Paso. Its services have helped El Paso taxpayers from having to burden the cost of migrant surges along the border. For the most part, Annunciation House has operated openly and with the support of immigration officials to help transit migrants out of El Paso to communities across the United States where families and friends await them. It wasn’t until 2018 when El Paso’ taxpayers had to help fund the migrant operations because of Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

Nonetheless, the taxpayer funding is negligible when compared to the private funding and volunteers that have kept Annunciation House and other local migrant shelters operating even during migrant “surges” that have happen regularly throughout its history.

Paxton’s latest attempt to stifle Annunciation House’s migrant work is only the second attempt to close it down in its 40-plus years of operations. Before Paxton, there was Greg Abbott.

Almost since its launch in 1978, Annunciation House has been providing lodging and other help to undocumented migrants from Central America from its building on East San Antonio. The migrant shelter was created by Ruben Garcia and is housed in a building owned by the El Paso Catholic Diocese. The center’s co-founder was Delia Gomez. [1] Shortly after helping to launch Annunciation House, Gomez became the Executive Director of Las Americas Refugee Asylum Project that was helping migrants seek asylum. [2]

It was a 1976 visit by Morther Teresa to El Paso that led to the creation of Annunciation House and its name. Ruben Garcia, then the El Paso Diocese Youth Director had heard that Mother Teresa was going to visit New York and he invited her to El Paso to speak to the diocese’s youth. When Garcia wrote to Mother Teresa that the diocese had made a building available to his group, Mother Teresa wrote back to him, “now you have been given your space to begin your journey…announcing the good news to the poor and bringing them home to Jesus.” “That is why we named it Annunciation House,” Garcia told the newspaper after the passing of Mother Teresa in 1997. [3]

In 2016, Garcia added more clarity to the origins of the name for Annunciation House. In his letter to Morther Teresa informing her that the diocese had provided a building to him for his work, Mother Teresa wrote back that the building will allow Garcia to go “out into the street and bringing people home and bringing them to the house of annunciation.” [4]

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In a 1989 interview, Garcia told the El Paso Times that “people come here straight from crossing the (Rio Grande), and immigration sends us people they want off the street.” [5] According to Garcia, his refugee center was helping individuals who had bypassed immigration officials as well as those who had been processed by immigration officials.

Immigration officials likely knew, as they likely know today, that the center they used to get individuals “off the street” was also lodging individuals that had eluded them. This is part of the complexity of the immigration issue in America.

In the early 1980’s, the issue of undocumented immigrants was making headlines much like today. Migrants surging the border were coming from Central America. Christian groups across the country were “extending legal aid, food, clothing and shelter to Central American refugees” who were escaping political violence. Some of the religious organizations and their members were risking “felony charges” for their work helping the refugees. [6] In 1983, “a network of church friends assisted” a 20-year-old Guatemalan woman to “wade across the Rio Grande at midnight” and were providing shelter for her. The group also helped the unidentified woman find “work as a maid.” [7]

“Giving sanctuary – offering to hide” migrants “who have made no contact with immigration – is a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison,” then El Paso district director for Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), Al Giugni told the El Paso Times in 1983. When asked by the reporter if the INS, the predecessor to Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), was going raid the shelter because of the allegations, Giugni replied that INS was “not prepared to do that.” [8]

It is important to understand that providing “comfort, legal aid” to migrants was within the law if they had been processed by the INS, today’s ICE.

Many of the migrants arriving in El Paso in the early 1980’s were from El Salvador. Some were children.

Ruben Garcia was accepting the legal guardianship of some of the Salvadoran minors who had been released by the INS on parole until the cases could be adjudicated. Garcia was working for Annunciation House, a volunteer-based organization he established in 1978. [9] Originally created to “extend help to the poor, especially to undocumented Mexicans, and later to refugees from other countries,” Annunciation House operates out of a Catholic Diocese provided house. There, the volunteer group of Catholics “fed, clothed and taught English” to refugees who ended up at the house. After a few days at the house, “refugees often move on to other cities, with the help of families or friends.” [10]

Annunciation House provided “shelter and meals” to “the undocumented from Central America,” Ruben Garcia told the El Paso Herald Post in 1983. [11] Many of the migrants arriving in El Paso had “a destination, a place where they have relatives or where countrymen have already begun to settle, and are only passing through.”

Annunciation House was not alone in helping migrants in the United States. An estimated 250,000 migrants from Central America had entered the United States by 1983. Churches in Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Tucson and Washington D.C. were “offering sanctuary” to the Central American migrants. However, “no Texas church” had offered “sanctuary publicly, but in the Rio Grande Valley” church groups had “special houses for Salvadorans and other Central American refugees…whether or not these refugees have made requests for political asylum.” [12]

Because “sheltering” undocumented migrants was “a felony offense” many of the Christian groups helping the migrants in the early 1980’s were both operating openly “within the law by providing food, clothing, housing, and help” to migrants, while also providing “secret help” to migrants who had not been processed by immigration authorities, as was the case with the 20-year-old woman who had crossed the river. Garcia, why by October 1983 was named the director of Annunciation House, told the El Paso Times that “as a rule, we don’t keep records” of those the organization helps. [13]

By 1985, refugees from Nicaragua began to replace the Salvadoran refugees.

The Sandinistas

In 1979, the Sandinistas removed from power Anastasio Somoza, whose family had ruled Nicaragua since 1936. In 1984, one of the leaders of the Sandinistas, Daniel Ortega succeeded Somoza as the leader of Nicaragua. Then U.S. President Ronald Reagan declared the Sandinistas a communist threat and supported a counter-revolutionary group known as the Contras.

The United States’ intervention in Nicaragua was ruled as a violation of international law by the International Court of Justice. In 1990 Ortega was defeated by Violeta Chamorro, a former close associate of Ortega who had broken away from him. Ortega attempted a comeback in 1995 and 2001 but lost, after his wife’s daughter accused him of rape. Ortega’s wife, Rosario Murillo, stood by him, refuting the rape claim.

After moving away from his communist roots and with a new strategy developed by Ortega’s wife, he took power in 2007. In 2009, Nicaragua’s Supreme Court removed constitutional restrictions allowing Ortega to remain in power. In 2016, Ortega ran again with his wife, Rosario Murillo as his running mate.

Today, Ortega continues to run Nicaragua along with his wife Murillo.

In 1995, the Nicaraguan imbroglio divided the Catholic Church and Annunciation House’s director, Ruben Garcia. Garcia took the position that the U.S. “should stop supplying weapons to the rebels,” in Nicaragua who were opposed to Daniel Ortega’s Sandinistas. Garcia, who attended a political rally in Managua told the newspaper that “he estimated 500,000 were present” at the political rally. Garcia said that “while I can accept that some of them (rally attendees) were threatened or coerced to be there, I have to accept that a significant number of the Nicaraguan population is in support of the present (Daniel Ortega’s) government.” [14]

Among the undocumented making their way to Annunciation House were former members of Ronald Reagan’s Contras. [15] The Contra guerillas were funded by the U.S government to remove the Sandinistas from Nicaragua. However, due to rising controversies about human rights violations, the U.S. Congress stopped funding Reagan’s Contras in February 1988. Although Reagan had promised members of the Contras access to America, the U.S. government began restricting asylum permits and announced it would again begin deporting Nicaraguans back to their countries. [16]

Not Political

By 1986, it is estimated that Annunciation House had served “more than 2,000 people from Mexico, Central and South America, even Africa and Iran” in the eight years the center had been open. [17] A political and religious movement to provide help to Central American refugees entering the country began to manifest itself across America in the 1980’s. The so-called Sanctuary Movement was founded by two Quakers and a Presbyterian minister in Arizona. Operating in defiance of federal law, the Sanctuary Movement dissolved after the U.S. Justice Department prosecuted eleven members “on charges of conspiracy and encouraging and aiding undocumented migrants.” In 2007, the Sanctuary Movement reorganized.

Even though Garcia’s Annunciation House was “probably” the “only shelter” in El Paso providing support to Central American migrants at the time, Garcia did not identify himself as part of the Sanctuary Movement. Garcia told the El Paso Herald Post in 1986 “we’re here to help the poor, homeless people.” [18]

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Support For Annunciation House In El Paso

Although Annunciation House has operated with the support of volunteers and donations from the community and religious organizations, including the rent-free building provided by the diocese, not all El Pasoans have supported the organization.

Throughout its history, Annunciation House has operated with the substantial support of the community who have provided volunteers and private donations to help it operate. Except for “a small but vociferous group,” there are no other criticisms about Annunciation House to be found in El Paso’s newspapers in the last 40 years of its existence. [19]

In mid-1983, a group calling itself the Organization United for Truth (OUT) was founded. [20] The group, according to Rachel de Anda, was formed because she was “concerned that EPISO is getting involved in local politics,” fearing that “EPISO leaders may one day ‘run the city.’” [21] EPISO for years has used tax monies to provide services to members of the community and has supported or opposed political candidates based on their public support of the organization.

In 1986, OUT accused Annunciation House of harboring undocumented immigrants. [22]

Federal Officials Look The Other Way

Throughout its existence Annunciation House has straddled the line between breaking the law and abiding by it. Since its founding, immigration officials have allowed migrants, both those that have been processed by them and the others that escaped them, to arrive and stay at the Annunciation House.

In 1998, then Border Patrol spokesman, Doug Mosier, told the El Paso Times that federal immigration authorities were “aware of the shelter (Annunciation House) and other similar organizations in El Paso, but as a matter of policy agents don’t ‘raid them or patrol’,” the building. [23]

However, the 2003 death of 19-year-old Mexican migrant, Juan Patricio Peraza outside of Annunciation House shows that the Border Patrol did not always abide by the informal agreement to remain clear of the migrant center. On February 22, 2003, Peraza was killed by Border Patrol Agent Vernon Billings. A judge ruled that Peraza’s death was not the result of the agent’s negligence. However, U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard P. Mesa wrote in his order that “the shortcomings of the investigation (by the Border Patrol) are not inconsequential and do not create confidence in BP (Border Patrol) management’s policy decisions.” [24]

During the 2008 civil trial, it was revealed that the Border Patrol impeded El Paso Police detectives from properly investigating the shooting by leaving the scene and not allowing local investigators to question the agent who shot Peraza at the scene of the shooting.

Nonetheless, federal officials have continued to rely on Annunciation House and other groups supporting migrants to house the migrants that federal immigration officials release into the country.

Ten years ago, a Central American migrant surge in South Texas resulted in federal officials releasing close to 300 migrants into El Paso. After processing the migrants, immigration officials released them to shelter in El Paso. Ruben Garcia told the El Paso Times that “immigration is sending immigrants arriving in South Texas to El Paso because their resources in South Texas have been overwhelmed.” [25]

Beto O’Rourke And Veronica Escobar Caught Off Guard

When the first plane load of migrants landed in El Paso, then U.S Representative Beto O’Rourke and then-County Judge Veronica Escobar told the El Paso Times that they were not notified that the federal government would send migrants that they had processed and released to El Paso. Oscar Leeser, serving his first term as mayor, said the city had not been notified that the migrants would be sent to El Paso. [26]

However, Garcia told the newspaper that Annunciation House had been working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials since June 4 “to coordinate the release” of the migrants into El Paso. The first migrants began to arrive six days later. Garcia added that the “heads up” by ICE allowed his agency and others “to make available 200 beds.” He added that he has “been very impressed by the commitment on the part of the ICE officials that we have been working with.” [27]

Notwithstanding the demands for accountability and federal funds from Escobar and O’Rourke, a few days after 270 migrants had arrived in El Paso, they were preparing to leave. Garcia told the newspaper that “all 270 (migrants) will have been released by U.S. immigration authorities and all of them have some place to go, with friends or relatives,” outside of El Paso. [28]

At least two more flights of released migrants were flown into El Paso in June 2014. By July 2014, Annunciation House had helped about 2,000 migrants who transited through El Paso, after being released by immigration officials on their way to family and friends in other parts of the country. [29]

Less than a month later, after several government officials proclaimed that the immigrant surge was going to be costly for El Paso, Annunciation House closed four of its five shelters. Other temporary shelters ceased operations as well, after a significant drop in apprehensions of migrants in south Texas. [30]

Things changed after Donald Trump took office and implemented his immigration policies. The migrant surges continued but immigration officials stopped coordinating with Annunciation House. Starting on December 23, 2018 and going through Christmas Day, immigration officials dropped off at least 400 migrants at the Greyhound bus station. Unlike the 2014 release of migrants into El Paso, where O’Rourke accused federal officials of not informing El Paso officials, O’Rourke, instead said that “ICE made a mistake yesterday…I don’t think it was intentional.” O’Rourke added that “I think they made a mistake in not alerting the community.” [31]

Annunciation House, which was previously notified by immigration officials, was not given advanced notice of the migrants being dropped off in 2018. [32] The timing of the dropped off migrants – who had been processed by immigration officials – in El Paso came shortly after the government shutdown over funding for Trump’s wall and during the Christmas holiday when government offices are closed. Nonetheless, Annunciation House responded by operating seven shelters to provide services to the migrants.

As the federal government continued closed because of the controversy of Trump’s wall, almost 3,000 migrants, who had been processed by immigration officials and released, had been helped by Annunciation House and other shelters in El Paso. In one week, 1,500 had been sheltered in El Paso. As before, the shelters were not using tax dollars to provide services, instead relying on “thousands of volunteers from church and civic groups.” 2018 had been the “busiest year ever” for Annunciation House and other El Paso migrant “migrant hospitality centers.” [33]

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Annunciation House Helps Reunite Migrant Parents And Children

When Donald Trump launched his “zero tolerance” immigration policy, one of his most controversial policies – the separation of migrant children from their parents – was originally tested in El Paso in 2017. More than 5,000 children were separated from their parents under Trump’s immigration policies. Today, several children remain separated from their parents.

Weeks after Trump’s family separation policy was revealed, the outcry to reunite the children with their parents intensified across the country. Four migrant shelters across the country, including Annunciation House, helped migrant families reunite with their children. [34]

Public Funding

It wasn’t until late 2018 and early 2019 that the county and city governments began discussing helping the local nonprofits, including Annunciation House with public funding, although both argued that it was the federal government’s responsibility. For the most part, Annunciation House and the local migrant shelters operated on volunteers and private donations. For its part, by March 2019 Annunciation House had spent $1 million of its funds over a four-to-five-month period in hotels to help lodge the migrants being released by federal immigration authorities in El Paso. [35]

In the city’s fiscal year 2017, 12,000 migrants had transited through El Paso, according to city officials. By 2018, the number of migrants had increased to 18,000. During the first three months of 2019, city officials said that 32,000 migrants had been released into El Paso’s streets by immigration officials. [36]

Due to the unprecedented influx of processed migrants being dropped off in El Paso, the migrant shelters began to be overtaxed. In response, both city and county officials agreed to fund $20,000 each for a volunteer coordinator position at the United Way of El Paso to help with coordinating the migrant relief efforts. Then-mayor Dee Margo said that the funding “allows us (city) to frankly take more action than we’ve been able to do in the future and justify that for a humanitarian need – an emergency need.” [37]

Greg Abbott And Ken Paxton

Although Ken Paxton’s latest effort to shut down Annunciation House is making headlines across the nation, it was Texas governor Greg Abbott who first tried to criminalize migrant volunteers who help migrants in 2021. Up until 2021, Annunciation House worked with federal officials, albeit sometimes more efficiently than other times, to help released migrants with lodging and transportation out of El Paso. Although federal law does not allow for civilians to help migrants who have circumvented immigration officials, tacitly federal officials ignored Annunciation House and other migrant shelters helping those that bypassed the officials on their way to their final destinations.

On July 28, 2021, Greg Abbott issued an executive order restricting the transportation of migrants in Texas. Abbott’s executive order was targeted at migrant volunteers like Annunciation House. The order said that “no person, other than a federal, state, or local law-enforcement official, shall provide ground transportation to a group of migrants who have been detained by CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) for crossing the border illegally.” [38]

By targeting migrants who had been processed by immigration officials and released into communities in Texas, Abbott was attempting to criminalize the support services legally offered by Annunciation House.

On February 20, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Annunciation House citing an allegation that the nonprofit was “engaged in legal violations such as facilitating illegal entry to the United States, alien harboring, human smuggling, and operating a stash house.”

In a court order on March 10th, Judge Francisco X. Dominguez ruled that Paxton’s actions “run roughshod over Annunciation House, without regard to due process or fair play, call into questions the true motivation for the Attorney General’s attempt to prevent Annunciation House from providing the humanitarian and social services that it provides.”

Annunciation House Has Helped El Paso Taxpayers Stave Off A Migrant Crisis

For about 46 years, Annunciation House has been at the vanguard of providing services to undocumented migrants transiting through El Paso. Although originally established to help the local homeless population, support for migrants transiting through El Paso became its primary focus from the onset.

For the most part, Annunciation House has provided services to migrants that have been processed and released by immigration officials into El Paso’s streets. Almost all the migrants left El Paso within days moving to communities where families and friends awaited them.

Although at times Annunciation House provided services to migrants who had bypassed immigration officials, it did so with the tacit agreement of federal officials who relied on Annunciation House to temporarily lodge and send the migrants they released in El Paso to their final destinations. In fact, when Abbott wanted to criminalize the transportation of migrants, one of those who sued him was the federal government.

Throughout the existence of Annunciation House, the migrant surges have been a constant cycle happening in almost two-year cycles with Central American migrants being the largest populations of migrants. Venezuelan’s today make up the bulk of the migrants transiting through El Paso.

It wasn’t until 2018, almost 40 years after Annunciation House had been operating exclusively through volunteers and private donations, that local government public funds were needed to help the local migrant shelters. Government funds do not constitute the bulk of migrant shelters’ funding today. Much of the reason for the need for local funding can be traced directly to Donald Trump’s immigration policies that overwhelmed the local nonprofits’ ability to provide services to the migrants.

Prior to Abbott and now Paxton, Annunciation House has provided services that helped federal officials deal with migrant influxes helping to keep the immigration system from collapsing and helping to keep El Paso taxpayers from having to house and feed migrants who are unable to complete their journeys out of El Paso to await their court hearings on their immigration statuses.

Without Annunciation House’s services to the migrants, the migrants would quickly overwhelm the community’s taxpayers who would have to pay to house and feed the migrants unable to leave the city.

Footnotes:

1. Coco Ballew, “Commission on women inducts 8,” El Paso Times, March 14, 1996, 3D.
2. Laurie Gallardo, “Faith drives woman to help others,” El Paso Herald Post, March 14, 1997, 1B-2B.
3. Ken Flynn, “Mother Teresa left mark on El Paso,” El Paso Herald Post, September 6, 1997, A2.
4. María Cortés González, “Mother Teresa’s Message To El Paso: Serve The Poor,” El Paso Times, September 4, 2016, 5A.
5. Paul Salopek, “El Pasoans give refuge to Central Americans,” El Paso Times, January 15, 1989
6. Pat Henry, “Seeking sanctuary in El Paso,” The El Paso Times, July 3, 1983, 1-A.
7. Henry, “Seeking sanctuary,” 1-A.
8. Henry, “Seeking sanctuary,” 1-A.
9. Henry, “Seeking sanctuary,” 4-A.
10. Henry, “seeking sanctuary,” 4-A.
11. Betty Pierce, “Refugees want to stay in El Paso,” El Paso Herald Post, May 21, 1983, A-8.
12. “Unwanted refugees run from horrors,” The El Paso Times, July 3, 1983, 4-A.
13. Pat Henry, “Room, board, clothing, love,” The El Paso Times, October 16, 1983, 12.
14. David Hancock, “Central American seminar offers different views of Sandinistas,” The El Paso Times, March 19, 1985, 1-A.
15. Paul Salopek, “Contra deserters head north,” El Paso Times, January 15, 1989, 5A.
16. Salopek, “Contra deserters,” 5A.
17. Paul Haeder, “Annunciation spells hope,” El Paso Herald Post, March 18, 1986, 1.
18. Haeder, “Annunciation spells hope,” 1.
19. Thaddeus Herrick, “Risking dissent in the diocese,” El Paso Herald Post, May 23, 1987, B-1.
20. “New group chartered,” El Paso Herald Post, September 10, 1983, B-2.
21. “Critics fear foundation’s ‘evil’ presence in El Paso,” El Paso Herald Post, November 10, 1983, A-7.
22. Thaddeus Herrick, “Group cautions synod could lead to unlawful activity,” El Paso Herald Post, May 31, 1986, A-10.
23. Tammy Fonce-Olivas, “It’s getting tougher to become a citizen,” El Paso Times, May 11, 1998, 9A.
24. Daniel Borunda, “Agent not negligent in migrant’s death,” El Paso Times, July 29, 2008, 1B.
25. Luis Carlos Lopez, “Shelters Prepare For Immigrants,” El Paso Times, June 10, 2014, 1A.
26. Diana Washington Valdez, “El Paso officials were not notified,” El Paso Times, June 10, 2014, 1A.
27. Lopez, “Shelters Prepare For Immigrants,” 5A.
28. Diana Washington Valdez, “270 Central Americans could leave EP by today,” El Paso Times, June 11, 2014, 1A.
29. Luis Carlos Lopez, “Report: Bad info behind surge,” El Paso Times, July 17, 2014, A5.
30. Lindsey Anderson, “Cathedral to close temporary immigrant shelter,” El Paso Times, August 6, 2014, 1B.
31. Sara Sanchez and Daniel Borunda, “Hundreds left at bus station by ICE,” El Paso Times, December 25, 2018, 6A.
32. Sanchez, “Hundreds left at bus station,” 8A.
33. Daniel Borunda, “Migrant releases slow down in city,” El Paso Times, January 6, 2019, 1B.
34. Daniel Borunda, “Immigrant girl, dad reunited in El Paso,” El Paso Times, August 20, 2018, 1A.
35. Aaron Montes, “El Paso City Council OKs migrant services position,” El Paso Times, March 26, 2019, 7A.
36. Montes, “El Paso City Council OKs,” 8A.
37. Montes, “El Paso City Council OKs,” 8A.
38. Aaron Martinez, “ACLU files lawsuit against Abbott over migrant transportation order,” El Paso Times, August 7, 2021, 4A.

A note about the use of The El Paso Times and El Paso Times in the footnotes. The El Paso Times dropped “the” from its masthead sometime between 1986 and 1989. We have retained the official masthead as it was used when the story was originally published.