A Bullseye on Migrant Shelters Also Targets Big White Churches
Trump’s disdain for migrants, and his acolytes’ willingness to go after migrant shelters, is bound to run into the First Amendment. It already has in Texas because migrant shelters are run by religious organizations and churches. The big white churches that vote conservative might have cautioned against religious repression but they mostly remained silent. I am not sure they will be able to do so much longer.
Last year, if you recall, I got a lot of laughs and chuckles about the Texas AG’s bumbling efforts to shut down migrant nonprofits in Texas. The Lazy-Eyed Cowboy sued nuns and deployed SWAT teams to arrest little old ladies handing out voter registration applications. But he lost regularly in both state and federal courts. That guy lost more often last year than the Chicago White Sox. It was almost fun to watch. Except the joke might just be on me now. The whole show might be going nationwide.
Billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy and his billionaire immigrant nerd buddy Elon Musk are slated to operate Trump’s planned Department of Government Efficiency. The L.A. Times reports that an early effort towards “efficiency” will be to shut down migrant shelters operating in Texas close to the Mexican border. Vivek, an immigrant’s child himself,” uses the pejorative term “abetting” in his tweet about nonprofits’ role in the “border crisis.” He means that nonprofit migrant shelters are a cause, not a solution to illegal immigration. He thinks they are pull factors. Here is a bit from the LA. Times:
Dozens of shelters run by aid groups on the U.S. border with Mexico have welcomed large numbers of migrants, providing lifelines of support and relief to overwhelmed cities. They work closely with the Border Patrol to care for migrants released with notices to appear in immigration court, many of whom don’t know where they are or how to find the nearest airport or bus station.
But Republican scrutiny of the shelters is intensifying, and President-elect Donald Trump’s allies consider them a magnet for illegal immigration. Many are nonprofits that rely on federal funding, including $650 million under one program last year alone. As part of that agenda, Trump’s incoming border czar, Tom Homan, has vowed to review the role of nongovernmental organizations and whether they helped open “the doors to this humanitarian crisis.” Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who along with Elon Musk was tapped by Trump to find ways to cut federal spending, has signaled that the groups are in his sights and called them “a waste of taxpayer dollars.”
Aid groups deny that they are aiding illegal immigration. They say they are responding to emergencies foisted on border towns and performing humanitarian work. “The groundwork is being laid here in Texas for a larger assault on nonprofits that are just trying to protect people’s civil rights,” said Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, an advocacy group. For the last year, Texas has launched investigations into six organizations that provide shelter, food and travel advice to migrants. Courts have so far largely rebuffed the state’s efforts, including rejecting a lawsuit to shut down El Paso’s Annunciation House, but several cases remain on appeal. The Texas Civil Rights Project, which represents two organizations being probed by the state, says it has trained more than 100 migrant aid organizations in the weeks since Trump’s reelection on how to respond if investigators come knocking.
We should probably expect to see more regulatory efforts directed against exempt migrant shelter organizations at both the state and federal level. Ironically, the efforts will involve politicians who otherwise defend religious freedom — as Trump did often during the campaign — going after churches and religious nonprofits. There is an excellent article in Reason discussing the history of migrant nonprofits as acts of faith and worship:
This was meant to be a humanitarian mission—something many churches and religiously informed nonprofits view as an expression of faith rather than politics. Faith groups, many of them Christian, have long offered humanitarian assistance and protection to immigrants. In the 1980s, scores of Central Americans fled their war-torn countries and migrated to the U.S., but the U.S. government opposed granting them humanitarian status, instead deeming them economic migrants. Religious leaders began to consider housing the migrants in church buildings.
Churches and faith-based nonprofits have remained major players in the sanctuary space, both in the literal sense and the broader work of migrant aid and welcome. Sanctuary churches “remobilized as deportations picked up under George W. Bush and then [Barack] Obama,” wrote Shikha Dalmia for Reason in 2018. “Since Trump assumed office, the number of congregations opting to provide sanctuary has doubled from 400 to 800, according to Church World Service.” Churches and nonprofits have continued to ruffle federal feathers, especially during periods of intensified government crackdowns on undocumented immigrants and the border.
As church groups were sheltering and aiding vulnerable migrants, the federal government was building a case against religious and lay volunteers. Undercover agents “attended worship services, Bible study meetings, and internal church discussions” as part of Operation Sojourner, “posing as committed sanctuary workers,” explained the Center for Constitutional Rights. Three years after the sanctuary movement was born, the Center says, “the U.S. government indicted 16 people, including three nuns, two priests, a minister, and lay volunteers, on 71 counts of conspiracy and transporting and harboring refugees.”
In 2017, four aid volunteers with No More Deaths, a ministry of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, Arizona, left food and water for migrants in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. They were convicted in 2019 on misdemeanor charges of entering the refuge without a permit and abandoning property. A federal judge overturned their convictions in 2020 on the grounds that “their activities were exercises of their sincere religious beliefs.”
It is already pretty obvious that the Lazy Eyed Cowboy doesn’t care about religious freedom as it relates to migrant shelters. He went after nuns and religious orders and hardly anybody in Texas mainstream complained. The question is whether Vivek, Elon and Homeland Security will be as ruthless. And whether the big white churches that have nothing much to lose in the short run will stand around watching like they have been doing in Texas.
darryll k. jones