Catholic Charities USA officials pushed back strongly against allegations from Republican House of Representatives members that its humanitarian responses to the U.S. border crisis were potentially criminal acts. In a statement released on Dec. 15, C.C.U.S.A. said those accusations were “each fallacious and factually inaccurate. Our life-saving humanitarian work neither violates federal laws nor endangers communities.”
“As our nation grapples with escalating turmoil on the southwestern border of the US and a highly charged political environment, it’s incredibly disturbing for Catholic Charities—the domestic humanitarian arm of the U.S. Catholic Church—to be accused of violating federal laws, fueling the dramatic increase in migrants crossing the border and inhibiting immigration enforcement by facilitating the transport of migrants to the nation’s interior,” C.C.U.S.A. said in its statement.
G.O.P. accusations are “each fallacious and factually inaccurate. Our life-saving humanitarian work neither violates federal laws nor endangers communities.”
“The ministry of care provided to migrants by Catholic Charities has been ongoing, across multiple administrations, since our founding in 1910,” the agency said. “To take care of people who find themselves at-risk, including vulnerable people on the move, is a component of the material of the worldwide Catholic Church and is remitted by the gospel.”
C.C.U.S.A. was responding to a letter it received on Dec. 14 from 4 House representatives demanding that C.C.U.S.A. preserve documents “related to any expenditures submitted for reimbursement from the federal government related to migrants encountered on the southern border. This is applicable to all funds related to shelter, food, transportation, basic health and first aid, COVID-19 testing and associated medical care needed during quarantine and isolation, and other supportive services.”
The letter—from Congress members Lance Gooden and Jake Ellzey of Texas, Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin and Andy Biggs of Arizona—included a warning: “Next Congress, we’ll proceed to analyze your organization’s role in facilitating the border crisis, your potential violations of federal law, and your misuse of taxpayer funds.”
Accusations that humanitarian groups like C.C.U.S.A. have been engaged in human trafficking due to efforts to help migrant arrivals and asylum claimants in the US have been a favourite canard amongst right wing media outlets lately, though virtually all C.C.U.S.A.’s humanitarian efforts are vetted and even funded by government agencies, and migrants and asylum seekers are typically delivered into C.C.U.S.A.’s hands by members of the U.S. Border Patrol themselves.
C.C.U.S.A insisted in its response that its “humanitarian care (food, clean clothes, bathing facilities, overnight respite) is provided legally.”
“It typically begins after an asylum-seeker has been processed and released by the federal government. Each U.S. and international law provide for the fitting to hunt asylum at one other country’s border.”
“The ministry of care provided to migrants by Catholic Charities has been ongoing, across multiple administrations, since our founding in 1910.”
C.C.U.S.A. reminded the members of Congress: “Without the help of Catholic Charities and other humanitarian organizations, many migrant families and individuals can be on the streets of our nation’s communities. These communities are higher equipped to handle large numbers of migrants precisely due to our humanitarian services.”
The letter from the G.O.P. Congress members was delivered to Catholic Charities national headquarters the identical day that Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott likewise looked as if it would goal Catholic Charities and other humanitarian agencies that work with migrants on either side of the border. In a letter to the Texas Attorney General’s office, Mr. Abbott, a Catholic, urged the state’s chief prosecutor to “initiate an investigation into the role of NGOs in planning and facilitating the illegal transportation of illegal immigrants across our borders.”
In keeping with the governor: “There have been recent reports that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can have assisted with illegal border crossings near El Paso. We further understand NGOs could also be engaged in unlawfully orchestrating other border crossings through activities on either side of the border, including in sectors apart from El Paso.”
He advised Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton: “I stand able to work with you to craft any sensible legislative solutions your office may propose which are geared toward solving the continuing border crisis and the role that NGOs may play in encouraging it.”
Dylan Corbett, the founding executive director of the Hope Border Institute, an advocacy and repair agency based in El Paso, said the 2 letters represented “an escalation in anti-immigrant rhetoric.”
Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott likewise looked as if it would goal Catholic Charities and other humanitarian agencies that work with migrants on either side of the border.
“I’m nervous now that as we enter a latest Congress that there’s going to be greater politicization of what’s happening and attacks on the church’s agencies, that are doing their best in a very difficult environment with few resources to supply a dignified welcome for people on the border.”
Mr. Corbett bristled at insinuations that church agencies are engaged in human trafficking due to their assistance to migrants. “That’s categorically false,” he said.
“The fact is…if there have been legal pathways for people to come back to the US who’re in need of protection, that may be the most important dent that you may make in human trafficking on the border. But within the meantime, Catholic agencies on the border are providing humanitarian relief to people in need, to the vulnerable, and dealing as hard as they will to be certain that what few windows of opportunity can be found for defense for individuals who need it” remain open.
C.C.U.S.A. and other humanitarian groups working on the border have been similarly targeted previously due to the various federally approved and funded programs its agencies provide in a humanitarian role across the Southwest. The impetus for this latest round of allegations from Republicans appears to be the impending court-ordered termination of the usage of Title 42, a public health regulation that has been employed throughout the Covid-19 pandemic by the Trump and Biden administrations to show back migrants on the border.
In his letter to Mr. Paxton, Mr. Abbott wrote: “With the top of Title 42 just days away, the variety of illegal immigrants crossing the Texas–Mexico border has reached an all-time high. Indeed, this past Sunday, over a 24-hour span, over 2,600 illegal immigrants crossed the border near El Paso and illegally entered Texas. These numbers are prone to increase in the approaching weeks.”
In November a federal court ordered the top of the emergency use of Title 42 by Dec. 21. A coalition of Republican attorneys general from 19 states asked for an emergency suspension of that ruling on Dec. 12.
“The fact is that if there have been legal pathways for people to come back to the US who’re in need of protection that may be the most important dent that you may make in human trafficking on the border.”
Mr. Corbett called Mr. Abbott’s letter political grandstanding that “actually seems like a move towards criminalizing humanitarian work, good Samaritans.” He called it irresponsible and potentially dangerous to humanitarian employees who’ve already been confronted by self-appointed border militia members. He noted that El Paso has already endured its share of suffering due to “rhetoric that demonizes migrants and attacks border communities,” recalling a terrorist attack in 2019 at an El Paso department store that left 23 dead.
Beyond those perils, he said that the governor’s accusations come at a very difficult moment “when we’d like solutions, we’d like collaboration and we’d like real leadership from our political leaders.”
“In my community of El Paso immediately,” Mr. Corbett said, “what’s happening doesn’t have a look at all like the photographs that the governor is painting…This can be a community that’s coming together; we’re doing our greatest.
“And I can say that we’re working in excellent collaboration on the local level amongst federal authorities, our local governments, border enforcement agencies, humanitarian organizations [and] N.G.O.s on either side of the border to take care of a very broken situation,” Mr. Corbett said. “We’re picking up the pieces…of a broken immigration system. We shouldn’t should be working at cross purposes with anyone in government.”
Joan Rosenhauer, the chief director of Jesuit Refugee Services/USA, responded to the 2 letters in an announcement released to America. “JRS/USA works each day with individuals who have fled violence and persecution and are searching for legal opportunities to request asylum within the U.S.,” she said. “Many wait patiently in Mexico for months for a chance to enter the U.S. legally, and we help them seek those legal pathways.
“Their stories must be understood,” she said, “but accusations like this will create a false narrative, which will be damaging, concerning the work that N.G.O.s are doing on the border and ultimately cause harm to asylum-seekers and the organizations serving them.”
Concluding their statement to the 4 members of Congress, C.C.U.S.A. called once more for the passage of a comprehensive immigration reform legislative package that has been tied up in Congress since 2013.
“Allow us to be clear,” C.C.U.S.A officials said. “The U.S. immigration system is in dire need of reform; Catholic Charities and all those agencies and individuals responding to this national crisis are operating inside a broken system. We urge all Americans to ask the administration and their Congressional representatives to act on this vital issue, as we’ve done.”
