Texas Supreme Court submits case between Texas AG and El Paso’s Annunciation House
El Paso, Texas (KVIA) -- The legal dispute between the Texas Attorney General's Office and El Paso's Annunciation House continued today in front of the Texas Supreme Court where both sides presented their arguments.
Associate Deputy Attorney General Ryan Baasch mentioned several times that Annunciation House shelter network has been harboring undocumented immigrants at their facilities and constantly denying entry to law enforcement into the shelters.
"Annunciation House's purpose is to shelter illegally present aliens. That distinguishes them, as a service provider who serves all indiscriminately. Annunciation House is on the right, saying it won't even serve U.S. citizens," Assistant Attorney General Ryan Baasch said.
"Annunciation House provides these services to illegal aliens because they are illegal aliens. And no matter what you think about whether we can impose ultimate liability on them for that, we're at the pleading stage and surely we can get past the standard to file our quorn to petition," Baasch added.
Amy Warr, the attorney representing Annunciation House also said multiple times there has been no violation of the harboring statute because Annunciation House as an established Ministry of the Catholic Church, does not hide undocumented people from law enforcement. Hiding them is an element of the harboring statue, according to Warr.
"Everyone in El Paso including law enforcement knows that we are there, and what we do that we, as part of our mission we house undocumented people and principally documented people, people brought to us by federal law enforcement authorities," Warr said.
These undocumented people Warr referred to are those individuals who were processed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the FBI, or DHS to serve as witnesses in trafficking operations.
"And that's because the federal law enforcement, like the FBI, they apparently don't have the power to process people like ICE does. So when they come to us to be housed at the request of federal law enforcement, technically they're undocumented," Warr added.
More updates in later newscasts.
