Editorial: Attorney general should stop harassing migrant aid services with no evidence of wrongdoing

Texas once sought to be a leader in the fight against lawsuit abuse and nuisance legal attacks. Today, state officials are perhaps the worst at misusing our legal system — and taxpayers’ money — to score political points.

State Attorney General Ken Paxton, who presumes to champion Christian principles, is pestering church-based organizations across Texas that provide services to legal immigrants and refugees.

Paxton is demanding that Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley and other organizations prove they aren’t “illegally transporting … migrants across the border,” according to a spokesman for the attorney general’s office. Paxton has taken similar action against Angeles Sin Fronteras in Mission and Team Brownsville — defying a court order from state District Judge Francisco X. Dominguez, who demanded that Paxton stop his “outrageous and intolerable” efforts to shut down another target, Association House in El Paso.

Such abuse is unsettling — even hypocritical — from a man who himself has faced indictment on securities fraud charges, impeachment in the legislature and revolt from his own workers who have accused him of various abuses and misdeeds.

Catholic Charities responded to Paxton’s demands for its records by submitting more than 100 pages of documents, but its officials very appropriately are challenging a subpoena to face state prosecutors.

Judge J.R. Flores of the 139th state District Court in Edinburg has said he could rule on the matter within the next week.

We trust Flores will recognize that criminal procedure requires that prosecutors provide evidence supporting their allegations. Paxton hasn’t done so; he’s merely cited letters from Gov. Greg Abbott and Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Dallas, who both accuse the aid organizations of promoting illegal migrant trafficking. They offered no evidence of actual crimes, and Paxton’s office hasn’t filed charges against any of the centers.

The groups are providing services to people who primarily are brought by federal officials who have processed the immigrants’ visa applications — which gives them legal status while their cases are under review.

All this means little to Paxton, Abbott and other state officials who already have spent billions of taxpayers’ dollars on their anti-immigration efforts — money that could have improved state infrastructure or provided myriad services to Texas residents where we already rank last or near last in many key service categories. The officials’ blatant disregard for those who might have valid reasons to seek refuge in our country, for Dominguez’s order and for the principles of jurisprudence is disappointing, especially in a state where more than 5 million of their constituents — more than 17% of our total population — are foreign-born.

Abbott loves to tout the “Texas economic miracle,” but he seems naïve to think it could have occurred without the hard work, dedication and exuberance of these foreign-born fellow Texans.

If Paxton, Abbott or any other official has evidence of actual misdeeds by any of these groups, they need to show it, or stop playing politics, stop the divisive warfare, and be leaders for all Texans — or get out of the way of those who will.

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