EL PASO — Gabriel Ribeiro arrived at Annunciation House — a Catholic charity facing political and legal battles for helping migrants — without clothes, food and a third of his right foot.
The 34-year-old Brazilian slipped while jumping aboard a moving cargo train outside El Paso, wrapped a spare shirt around his foot to slow the bleeding and waited on the side of a road for help. Recovering at an Annunciation House shelter three weeks later, Ribeiro said he would be sleeping on the streets or worse without the help.
“I wouldn’t even have the money to go back to Brazil, to buy a ticket,” Ribeiro said in Portuguese.
Following Catholic teachings that emphasize helping those in need, Annunciation House and its volunteers provide food, clothing and shelter to migrants without asking about their legal status.
The U.S. Border Patrol, with limited holding capacity, generally detains undocumented migrants for no more than three days and often relies on charities and nongovernmental organizations to house and transport migrants to other parts of the country. These private groups have drawn increasing fire from conservative media and politicians who see illegal immigration as a danger and demand the organizations be shut down, saying they encourage unauthorized border crossings.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joined the fray in February, filing suit to shut down Annunciation House, saying it was taking advantage of “the chaos at the southern border” to facilitate illegal immigration.
“While the federal government perpetuates the lawlessness destroying this country, my office works day in and day out to hold these organizations responsible for worsening illegal immigration,” Paxton, a Republican who is the top lawyer for the state of Texas, said at the time.
Paxton has since sued three additional Texas charities that offer aid to migrants — Team Brownsville, FIEL Houston, and Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley — and opened an investigation into Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, an El Paso-based nonprofit that provides legal services to low-income migrants.
The attorney general’s office did not respond to three phone calls and two emailed questions seeking information about the lawsuits and the agency’s immigration-related investigations into nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs.
Ruben Garcia, director of Annunciation House since its first shelter opened in 1978, said volunteers are following the religious directive to take care of “the least among you.” Annunciation House has taken in over 1 million migrants since opening, Garcia said in court.
Migrants who arrive at Annunciation House deserve help and respect, Garcia said. “How can you not treat them as human beings?”
“Ask them, why did you leave your country?” he said, and the answers boil down to two responses: “I’m afraid. I can’t feed my family.”
The genesis of Texas’ crackdown on charities and NGOs can be traced to a December 2022 letter from Gov. Greg Abbott to Paxton requesting an investigation into the role private organizations play in “planning and facilitating the illegal transportation of illegal immigrants across our borders.”
“In addition, I stand ready to work with you to craft any sensible legislative solutions your office may propose that are aimed at solving the ongoing border crisis and the role that NGOs may play in encouraging it,” wrote Abbott, who has drawn attention to border issues by busing about 120,000 migrants to Democratic-run cities since 2022.
Abbott sent the letter one day after the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank, hosted a discussion titled “How Nonprofits and Corporations are Facilitating the Border Crisis.” Known for producing Project 2025, an agenda for the next Republican president, the Heritage Foundation pressed for cutting government funding for border-area NGOs, saying the groups were responsible for dispersing migrants across the country.
“It’s something that has not gotten enough attention,” Mike Howell, executive director of the Oversight Project, an arm of the Heritage Foundation, told the gathering.
The influx of migrants since President Joe Biden took office in 2021 would not have been possible without help from the organizations, Howell said.
In El Paso, Annunciation House learned it was under investigation by Paxton’s office in early February when representatives of the attorney general’s office arrived at its headquarters and demanded access to more than two years of business records and information about every migrant the charity had helped since January 2022.
Annunciation House was given one day to comply.
Instead, the charity sued the attorney general’s office, arguing state investigators had no right to examine its records.
Two weeks later, Paxton raised the stakes by filing a countersuit seeking to shut Annunciation House down, saying his agency had compiled information “strongly suggesting” the charity was breaking the law by facilitating illegal entry into the United States, operating its shelters as “stash houses” for illegal immigrants and engaging in human smuggling.
Bishop Mark Seitz, who has led the Catholic Diocese of El Paso since 2013, condemned Paxton’s actions as a political attack on an organization that was following the Good Samaritan’s example, as told by Jesus, to help those in dire need.
Churches and faith-based nonprofits, Seitz said, are working to shelter migrants and keep them out of danger. Without that help, migrants — some of whom have traveled thousands of miles and endured unspeakable violence — would be targets for crime.
“What we’re doing — our various efforts here in our community — is to remove them from the streets, to help them find safe and legal ways to move on,” Seitz said. “So we’re trying to keep them out of the hands of people who would abuse them. To call those who do this work themselves traffickers is a malicious lie.”
It is not the church’s job to vet migrants’ legal status or examine their documentation before offering help, he said.
“That’s not our role, that’s the government’s role,” Seitz said. “The church’s role is to say, ‘How can I serve you? How can I help you?’”
U.S. Rep. Lance Gooden, a Republican from Terrell, east of Dallas, does not buy the argument. Speaking at the 2022 Heritage Foundation event on nonprofits and the border crisis, Gooden said he believes faith-based charities are helping migrants out of a skewed religious perspective.
“They are facilitating this, and they’re doing it in the name of Jesus Christ. I don’t believe that that is the intention of the average churchgoer in the Catholic church,” said Gooden, who describes himself as an “America First” Republican.
In a recent interview at the U.S. Capitol, Gooden said securing the southern border was essential. Even St. Peter’s Square, near the papal residence in Rome, has “massive security,” he said.
“They’re not welcoming people with open arms into Vatican City, just like we should not until we secure our own lands and take care of people here at home,” Gooden said.
Catholic leaders disagree, saying Paxton’s effort to close Annunciation House is a threat to religious freedom.
Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a June news conference in Kentucky that closing the El Paso charity would infringe on the ability to follow the Gospel.
The Catholic church, he said, “obviously wants to respect the law.”
“But if that liberty is restricted, then yes, our religious liberty is being restricted because we can’t put into practice the precepts of the Gospel,” said Broglio, who also serves as archbishop to the U.S. military.
Annunciation House’s attorney, Jerry Wesevich with Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, made a similar argument in a June court hearing in the legal battle between Paxton’s agency and the charity.
“If religious freedom does not allow Annunciation House to obey Jesus’ primary command to love one another by providing a child a safe and warm place to sleep on a cold night, then there is no religious freedom in Texas,” Wesevich said.
Lawyers for the attorney general’s office did not address arguments about religious freedom in the hearing. In legal briefs, lawyers for Paxton argued Annunciation House was not entitled to protection for actions that violate the law.
The attorney general’s office went further, saying in legal briefs it was “highly doubtful” Annunciation House had a “bona fide” religious component because it makes no effort “to evangelize or convert” migrants it helps; does not offer baptism, communion or other Catholic sacraments; and can go months without offering Mass. In addition, state lawyers argued, about half of its volunteers are not religious.
“Instead, Annunciation House’s members appear to subscribe to a more Bohemian set of ‘seven commandments,’ including commandments to ‘visit’ people when ‘incarcerated’ and ‘care [for them] when they’re sick,’” lawyers for Paxton’s office told District Court Judge Francisco Dominguez in a legal brief.
Paxton, the state’s attorney general since 2015, has made protecting and promoting religious liberty a primary mission of his office. He rejects accusations that efforts to shut down Annunciation House infringe on the Catholic charity’s faith-based practices.
“It’s just not true,” Paxton said on the Tudor Dixon Podcast in April. “These are the organizations that are end-running our laws and doing things the federal government couldn’t do, but they’re using taxpayer dollars to do it.”
Annunciation House, which relies on private donations, has received money from the federal government one time — $300,000 from FEMA in 2022 to reimburse the cost to feed and house migrant families who had been processed and released by the Border Patrol.
Emails from The Dallas Morning News that Paxton’s office did not respond to included questions about how his defense of religious liberty relates to the Annunciation House lawsuit.
In a July 1 ruling, Dominguez sided with Annunciation House and said Paxton’s effort to shut down the charity violated the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act by imposing an impermissible burden on the charity’s free exercise of religion. The judge also called Paxton’s lawsuit “outrageous and intolerable” and characterized the demand for the charity’s records as a pretext to justify “harassment” of Annunciation House, its employees and the migrants seeking refuge.
“The Attorney General has a duty to uphold all laws, and not just selectively interpret or misuse those that can be manipulated to advance his own personal beliefs or political agenda,” Dominguez wrote.
Paxton appealed the ruling to the Texas Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case. Oral arguments are set for Jan. 13.
The court’s ruling, expected before the end of June 2025, can affect Paxton’s investigations into four other Texas charities that offer help to migrants:
- Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, in San Juan near McAllen, was sued by the attorney general’s office in an effort to depose the charity’s staff members as part of an investigation into suspected illegal activity. A district judge in Hidalgo County ruled against Paxton, and his office has appealed.
- FIEL Houston, an immigrant-led civil rights organization, was sued by the attorney general’s office for allegedly violating laws barring nonprofits from engaging in overtly political speech. A district judge in Harris County ruled against the attorney general’s office.
- Team Brownsville, which helps asylum seekers in the Brownsville area, was sued by the attorney general’s office to force a deposition from a representative of the nonprofit. A Travis County judge ruled against Paxton’s agency.
- Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center received a letter in early September from the attorney general’s office demanding information about its work with a Biden administration program that allows up to 30,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to migrate to the U.S. each month if they have a financial sponsor in the country. Las Americas responded with a lawsuit seeking to block the investigation as a violation of its right to free speech and ability to advocate on behalf of its clients. On Sept. 27, a federal judge ruled against Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in their request for a temporary restraining order against the attorney general’s office.
At one of Annunciation House’s three shelters on a warm August day, Ribeiro sat in a common area with his bandaged right foot elevated. Volunteers were cleaning up after lunch had been served to several dozen migrants.
In Brazil, Ribeiro has an ex-wife and two daughters, ages 13 and 7. He worked various jobs — waiter, delivery driver — the cost of living shot up, he said.
“My life was at a standstill,” Ribeiro said. “The income I get is to pay rent, to pay alimony, and to get by. … I’m left with nothing. I can’t spend my life paying rent and alimony.”
The United States beckoned as a place to start over. He set sights on Boston or New Jersey and planned to send money back to his family in Brazil.
Then came the accident.
As he jumped onto a cargo train that was leaving El Paso around 2 a.m., he fell and felt pressure and pain as the wheels ran over his foot. In the darkness his right sneaker didn’t look damaged. Maybe he was OK.
Ribeiro took off his right shoe and felt for his toes.
“That’s when I saw that I didn’t have any toes left,” he said.
He removed one of the three shirts he was wearing and wrapped it around his foot, limped more than a half-mile to an intersection and waited for several hours until a man walked by and called 911 for him.
“Buena suerte,” the man said, wishing him luck in Spanish as Ribeiro was loaded onto an ambulance.
Because Ribeiro didn’t have family in the United States, the hospital contacted Annunciation House.
Garcia, the charity’s director, said there was no question about helping. He paraphrased Matthew 25, which recounts Jesus telling his apostles that whenever they helped “the least among you, you did it to me.”
“When you see that man who has his foot chopped off, his toes — and the hospital calls and says we’re ready to discharge him — don’t you think that Matthew 25 was referring to him?” Garcia asked.
Ribeiro said he was grateful for Annunciation House. Volunteers take him to medical appointments. The charity provided a scooter to improve mobility while his foot heals.
“It’s hard to find a place like this, to support you and, if you need it, they’re there to help you,” he said. “I’m also very grateful to God for providing a place like this to help us when we need it most.”
Staff writers Joseph Morton and Marcela Rodrigues contributed reporting.
This is part of a joint reporting effort called Crossing Points that is intended to show migration into the United States from a global perspective using new storytelling techniques. The lead partners are The Dallas Morning News, VII Foundation and Outriders.