By Crystal Sandoval

Ken Paxton’s latest attack on Annunciation House is an effort to stop the courageous, humane work rooted in the Gospel of welcoming the stranger and feeding the hungry at the border regardless of immigration status. This is work that Annunciation House has done for decades, touching thousands of migrants and volunteers alike as they uplift dignity and care for all humankind. It is vital work that builds community, grounds us in shared values and visions, and inspires hope and joy.

This humanitarian work is anathema to a toxic politics of xenophobic hatred and fear that is taking deep root in Texas at this moment. We are seeing our values turned on their head. Those, like Annunciation House, who lead with care and compassion are criminalized and attacked, and people who come seeking safety and prosperity are stripped of their humanity and seen as a threat. 

Immigrant and border communities, who everyday infuse our society with new life and economy, are seen as sources of risk and decay rather than opportunity or growth. Our communities are left to hold on for dear life among a morass of racist white supremacism, lawless vigilantism, and state-sanctioned violence – violence against their people.

This situation is dire, but it is hardly hopeless. Calling out this politics of hatred and fear is a critical first step. Likewise, we must leverage all resources and institutions to resist – litigate, agitate, document, and organize. The most vital thing we have is our community, and if we put the time and effort into preparing people now, it will harden our resistance in the future; it may even keep a family together or save a life. And we must always fight to affirm ourselves, our joy, our communities, our lives, our hopes and dreams, our futures and possibilities. 

We cannot go into this struggle to preserve an exclusionary and alienating status quo that fostered the opening for the hatred and fear we face. We must build a better Texas together for everyone in this state.

Here in El Paso, we have had the gross misfortune of being exposed to this repeatedly in recent years. We cannot escape the Texas Department of Public Safety over-policing that comes with Operation Lone Star, where our community’s safety is at far more risk from a reckless high-speed police pursuit than from migrants seeking a better life. We cannot escape the razor wire, endless miles of razor wire strung up everywhere, this inescapable specter of other people’s fear that haunts our lives. 

We cannot escape the memory of those 23 people killed by a racist who came to our community to hunt Latinos and whose words echo in the voices of Greg Abbott and Paxton.

These are harsh and painful lessons that we know too well here at the border but that we also know are coming for communities across this state. Laws creating a state immigration and deportation system don’t just apply to the wall; they apply to immigrant communities across the state.

Laws criminalizing driving your undocumented primo to the doctor, the grocery store, or the church don’t just apply at the border – that mandatory five- or 10-year sentence applies to everyone across the state. 

If left unchecked, this hatred, this fear, unfounded but powerful, will consume us all. All of us will be vulnerable; whether you are a construction worker or a lawyer, whether you sound like a Chicano or speak with a twang and drawl, there is no privilege and no pedigree under white supremacy that can protect communities of color across this state from being feared, otherized, criminalized, and targeted. 

The period of racialized over-policing we are headed into will shake us all, from the richest to the poorest, from the most recent to the most established, across this state.

As demonstrated in Attorney General Paxton’s attack on Annunciation House, this moment is grave, and the risks are real. But we should take inspiration from the staff and volunteers of Annunciation House; despite what they face, they stand committed to the work, the values, the community, the hope, and the joy of what they do. 

There is courage in that commitment that should inspire us as we persist in our work of welcoming communities across Texas.

Crystal Sandoval is the director of cross-border initiatives at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center based in El Paso, Ciudad Juárez and New Mexico.