Judge Denies Texas Attorney General’s Efforts to Use Consumer Protection Law to Shut Down a Migrant Shelter

Annunciation House is one of more than a dozen organizations Ken Paxton has investigated using the state’s powerful consumer protection laws.

by Alejandro Serrano and Robert Downen, The Texas Tribune, and Vianna Davila, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune
July 3, 11 a.m. CDT

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

An El Paso judge on Tuesday denied Texas’ efforts to shut down a migrant shelter network that Attorney General Ken Paxton claimed was violating state law by helping people he suspected of being undocumented immigrants.

Although the case centered around immigration, it was one of more than a dozen instances ProPublica and The Texas Tribune recently identified in which Paxton’s office has aggressively used the state’s powerful consumer protection laws to investigate organizations whose work conflicts in some way with his political views or the views of his conservative base.

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