Texas Tribune
Texas churches responding to growing mental health needs
by Stephen Simpson, The Texas Tribune – 2024-03-28 05:00:00
SUMMARY: The Texas Tribune outlines the mental health crisis in Texas and how local faith communities are stepping in to fill gaps left by a shortage of mental health professionals. Rev. Michael Marsh of St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Uvalde helped establish long-term mental health services following a tragic school shooting. Churches across the state are now increasingly offering mental health care, often partnering with secular mental health organizations. This trend of integrating faith-based support is rooted in data indicating people often consult clergy over mental health professionals. Some churches, especially within Black and Hispanic communities, have overcome cultural barriers and started to actively participate in mental health initiatives. There has been a paradigm shift among faith leaders who now openly discuss mental health from the pulpit, helping to destigmatize the topic and guide congregants toward healing.
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For 24/7 mental health support in English or Spanish, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's free help line at 800-662-4357. You can also reach a trained crisis counselor through the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.
The Rev. Michael Marsh stood before his congregation at St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Uvalde, knowing his grieving community needed more from him than prayer.
It had only been a few days since a gunman killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in 2022, and with very few mental health resources in the city of 16,000, Marsh knew he had to find a long-term solution to heal his community not just spiritually, but mentally as well.
“I was talking to my own therapist, and she told me to contact the Children's Bereavement Center of South Texas in San Antonio because they're well-respected and credible. I reached out to them, and in a couple of days, a parishioner told me the Children's Bereavement Center was looking for a space to set up long-term here in Uvalde,” Marsh said.
Two years later, there's a partnership between the mental health organization and St. Phillips Episcopal Church. The Children's Bereavement Center of South Texas in Uvalde is housed inside the church's former storage building. This collaboration has allowed the center to expand its services to not only children affected by the deadliest school shooting in Texas history but also adults, first responders, teachers, and anyone else who might need it.
“I have had people whose children were directly impacted by the shooting come up to me, and I will ask them if they are going to counseling, and they will say, ‘Well, my child doesn't' want to go to counseling,' Marsh said. “I said ‘it's not a question of whether he or she wants to go. If your child broke his arm, would you let him decide whether or not to go to the doctor? If the answer is no, then why would you let them decide whether to see a counselor?”
Tragedy may have led the Uvalde church to forge a mental health partnership, but their move is part of a growing trend among churches to offer more services to congregants and the public, particularly after so many experienced depression and isolation during the coronavirus pandemic. And many Texans emerged only to discover the state's severe mental health workforce shortage.
Christian churches have offered a limited array of counseling services to their followers, either from church leaders or fellow members, more are stepping in to expand existing programs and services or banding together with other churches to offer a network of help. In some ways it's a no-brainer. A 2003 study found that people were more likely to consult clergy for mental health treatment than to seek services from a mental health provider, even if they weren't religious.
Some, like The Potter's House in Dallas, the megachurch run by well-known pastor T.D. Jakes, has a counseling center staffed with licensed mental health professionals who incorporate faith-based teachings into improving members' overall ability to cope during stressful life events. Saint John's United Methodist Church in Austin has had a mental health ministry team dedicated to removing the stigma of mental illness for the past four years. Community Bible Church in San Antonio has had mental health groups since 2007 focused on those experiencing mental illness because of trauma and a group dedicated to helping teens deal with life's ups and downs.
“I believe there is still a sort of stigma about seeing a counselor, psychologist, or therapist,” Marsh of St. Philip's in Uvalde, said. “But I also think for rural communities, it's just more challenging to find mental health professionals, and sometimes the clergy are more readily available.”
No where is this more true than in Texas, which faces a mental health workforce shortage. Today, 98 percent of the 254 counties in Texas are federally designated “mental health professional shortage areas” because there's only 1 clinician for 30,000 residents. That number is expected to worsen.
This workforce shortage has prevented private and state-run mental health hospitals from operating at total capacity, created long waitlists for therapy services, and forced many private providers from taking on new clients as the demand has exceeded scheduling capacity.
Mental health providers in Texas believe if adequately resourced, pastors and other religious leaders can offer a valuable contribution to taking on the mental health crisis in Texas. It's a role more churches are taking on.
“The church needs to be able to provide actual care rather than telling the person to pray more or be more spiritual,” said Denise Espino, a mental health provider and director of Mental Health Support Groups for Community Bible Church.
She said one of the main challenges she has witnessed is church leaders being fearful of letting someone with mental illness in their own lives participate in support groups on their campus.
“Many church leaders are more willing to allow family members to meet [meet with pastors or deacons], but when it comes to the person with a diagnosis themselves, they shy away from providing support,” she said.
However, now there are entire curriculums dedicated to faith-based mental health to educate clergy on how to respond to mental illness in their communities.
“Resources are out there – the church just needs to make a commitment and jump in,” Espino said.
Partnering with secular resources
This alliance between secular mental health providers and churches is one that has slowly grown over the last few decades.
“For a long time, there has been a disconnect between clergy and psychiatrists,” said Doug Beach, chairperson of the NAMI's FaithNet Advisory Group. “I think there has always been skepticism on the part of psychiatry about faith. But now the data has made it clear the importance of community to mental health, and we have recognized that if faith is important to you, then it's important to your mental health.”
A 2023 study found that people who are deeply religious usually have better mental health as long as they stay connected to the church. But the study also found older congregants with depression relied more on prayer and were less likely to seek mental health treatment.
Beach, of NAMI, said that when he started holding mental health wellness classes over a decade ago at his San Antonio church, he noticed that most of the people attending the meetings were from other churches, not his own.
“I had a woman after one of my classes tell me where she lived, and I told her you know there is a church in your neighborhood that does classes like this, and she told me she already knew, but people might recognize them there,” he said.
Historically, there's been a stigma around mental illness in many Christian denominations. But since World War II, there's been a growing conversation within faith communities about mental illness and treatment. In 1993, Pope John Paul II spoke before the international delegation of psychiatrists to express the church's esteem of psychiatric medicine.
“The idea of demonic possession and stuff like that when it comes to mental illness was probably 15 to 20 years ago. I hardly run into anybody anymore who says that,” Beach said. “I am sure there a few pastors who still do, but they're pretty much in the minority today.”.
Christians aren't the only faith considering how to reach followers in need of mental health help. This renewed focus on mental wellness has highlighted the mitigation efforts others have established in their community over the years.
While some faith communities have taken to addressing mental health inside their facilities using in-house programs, others have systems built up already that allow them to redirect those who are having a mental health crisis to care that takes their religion into consideration.
Multiple mosques in the Dallas and Fort Worth area carry information about the Al-Shifa Clinic, a charitable Muslim medical clinic in Richland Hill, near Fort Worth. This clinic allows religious leaders to redirect those needing help to a center with licensed social workers and two psychiatrists.
“Initially, the center was established to provide medical and social services to immigrants and refugees arriving from Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia, and other Middle Eastern and South Asian countries,” said Ahmed. “Since 2004, the center has been providing these services to all indigent residents residing in the DFW area, irrespective of country of origin, ethnicity, and religious beliefs.”
Ibn Sina Foundation, a nonprofit organization serving the Houston area for over 20 years, organized the first Muslim Mental Health Conference for Community Leaders in 2022 to address addiction and mental health in their community. Over 30 mosque leaders attended the conference.
Something similar occurs at the Jewish temples across Texas, where Judaism-based health service agencies have been established to give rabbis the ability to redirect them to faith-based mental health care handled by professionals.
Shalom Austin is a program dedicated to adding mental health resources and awareness in Central Texas communities through financial support and collaboration between temples and mental health providers.
“We offer a variety of mental health programs and services for the community,” said Rabbi Amy Cohen, Shalom Austin's chief social services officer for Shalom Austin. “This includes one-on-one counseling with a licensed therapist, support groups, and case management services.”
Cohen said the center is currently offering a five-week program to synagogues titled “Life Transitions” to help people through specific events that might cause someone's mental wellness to suffer.
“Participants will focus on areas such as navigating relationships, career shifts, exploring gender identity, and more,” she said.
Even the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has a page of links dedicated to getting mental health resources into every religious organization. The agency recommends all faith communities invite mental health experts to speak to their congregations, learn the primary signs of mental illness, and share the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in their publications.
Despite this new level of mental health awareness, some churches, particularly those in Black and Hispanic communities, have been more reticent. But that too is now changing.
Angela Bigham, the wellness director at Rehoboth Baptist Church in Austin and community engagement director for the University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing, said the hesitancy over the past decade was primarily due to the cultural disconnect between religious leaders and the predominately white mental health field.
“I had an African American woman come up to me saying she wished she could do counseling, but when she went to the psychiatrist, she [the therapist] didn't understand her background,” Bigham said. The provider, the woman told him, insisted that spanking in the home wasn't abuse but discipline, and the woman seeking help felt that the therapist kept trying to pin her problems on spanking as a child.
Bigham also recalled that several years ago, when she was doing volunteer work for the University of Texas in Austin, the school was part of an effort to bring mental health resources into African American churches, but the effort fell flat.
“It turns out they were sending like some young girl … wearing thigh-high shorts and flip-flops, into these churches to tell them how many free resources they have,” Bigham recalled. “These elders don't care if there are free Cadillacs in the parking lot; they are trying to figure out why you are disrespecting their church in your thigh-high shorts and flip-flops.”.
Bigham eventually took over the program and held a town hall event at a Black church where a pastor got up and introduced mental health providers to the congregation and gave them time to describe what free services they had to offer.
“The reaction was great; people were shocked by the things available in their community. They had no idea because there was such a disconnect between everyone,” Bigham said.
Bridges to Care, a program developed in 2020 by the San Antonio chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, connects the clergy and the congregation with mental health service providers and helps improve the congregation's understanding of their mental health. Churches that participate must also invite the other churches near their neighborhood.
“We have learned that the program tends to stick longer when you involve the entire neighborhood. Well, we have had 2,000 people go through our program and have worked with 70 congregations in our community,” Beach said.
Beach said the Bridges to Care program has thrived in east San Antonio, a historically Black area of the city.
“I think one of the reasons is that when we asked church leaders to go get your compadres and work together on this, it became their program and their neighborhood's effort, and it was all being done by their church,” he said.
Beach said the organization is trying to do the same thing on the city's west side, which is primarily Hispanic, a demographic that has been hard for mental health providers to reach.
“Last year at our Pathway to Health conference, we had a session for Hispanic families to educate them on how to talk about mental health,” Beach explained. “People were in tears because they had been living with this mental illness for years but were unable to explain it to their families, or they realized what was happening to one of their family members. It was overwhelming.”
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed to everyone, church leaders say, that mental illness wasn't something happening outside of the church but a crisis within their congregation.
“I haven't met a faith leader recently who doesn't recognize the impact of the pandemic,” Beach said. “I mean, honestly, most of them know members of their congregation who are dying by suicide, or they have family members who have bipolar disorder or are under psychiatric care. It's not like mental illness is hiding.”
The critical piece in solving this problem is for religious leaders to do something that can be pretty hard: show vulnerability to their congregations.
“We have found that if pastors are willing to get up in the pulpit and talk about mental health issues, and, in some cases, talking about themselves or their family, it makes all the difference in the world. Suddenly, they give permission to the people in the flock to talk about these issues,” Beach said.
Speaking from the pulpit
Robyn Bishop, lead pastor of Memorial United Methodist Church in Austin, has always had a strong belief in God's healing power, but in college, she struggled with an eating disorder and needed counseling. Because of this experience, she knew mental health and faith could co-exist, but in 2011, when she was a pastor for a church in Houston, she decided it was time to tell her story during a women's retreat. The response she received was overwhelming.
“I asked afterward if anyone wanted to ask for prayer, and the next two hours, women started coming forward sharing their stories about how this family member was struggling with bipolar disorder, or this family member was struggling with anxiety or addiction,” Bishop said. “It showed me that if I talked about it more than other people would talk about it.”
The people who stand behind the pulpit are considered among Christians to have faith so strong that they can lead others. But even they can struggle with their mental health, and more religious leaders are starting to tell their stories in hopes of helping others.
“We know now that having a mental illness is like having a broken arm. You need to go to the doctor for it,” Bishop said.
Disclosure: Cadillac and the University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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Anti-abortion deposition requests generate fear, not results
by By Eleanor Klibanoff, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-10 05:00:00
SUMMARY: Anti-abortion activist Jonathan Mitchell has filed several legal petitions in Texas, aiming to investigate those involved with facilitating abortions, including abortion funds and women who seek out-of-state procedures. Although judges have not approved these petitions, they have spurred fear and confusion. Mitchell was granted one petition to depose a woman who had an abortion out-of-state, but that ruling is on hold pending appeal. Legal experts argue that Texas abortion laws and federal protections for interstate travel make it unlikely for Mitchell's tactics to succeed. However, his method of incremental legal challenges aims to create uncertainty and exploit legal gray areas, using the fear of litigation to deter people from supporting or accessing abortion services.
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Anti-abortion legal crusader Jonathan Mitchell has filed at least seven legal petitions in Texas in recent years asking to depose abortion funds, providers and researchers. While these filings have created fear and confusion, none have yet to be approved by a judge.
Now, Mitchell has moved on to targeting individual women. He has filed at least two petitions seeking to depose women he claims traveled out-of-state to terminate their pregnancies, one of which a judge granted; that ruling is on hold while an appeal proceeds.
Under state law, the person who terminates a pregnancy cannot face criminal or civil penalties. Texas abortion laws govern in-state conduct, and there is broad constitutional protection for interstate travel. A federal judge has previously ruled abortion funds are likely safe from prosecution, and just this week, a federal judge in Alabama upheld the right to leave the state to seek medical care that is legal in another state.
All of this would make it difficult, if not impossible, to take action against someone who assisted a Texan in getting an out-of-state abortion, legal experts say. But Mitchell has made his name turning long-shot legal theories into the law of the land through exactly this strategy of incremental, often losing, legal battles that exploit confusion about the law.
“These … proceedings are just about scaring people into thinking they can't help somebody going out of state to have an abortion, or they're going to go after them with a lawsuit,” said Charles “Rocky” Rhodes, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston. “It's not about a lawsuit, it's about using fear to induce compliance.”
Rule 202 petitions
Most states, and the federal judiciary, allow a lawyer to depose someone before a lawsuit is filed to preserve their testimony. It's most commonly invoked when someone may die before the lawsuit is filed.
Texas, however, goes much further, also allowing lawyers to depose someone for the purpose of investigating a potential claim before filing a lawsuit. This provision went largely unnoticed and unused before the judiciary revised its rules in 2000 and combined it with the more typical pre-suit deposition rule, said Lonny Hoffman, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center.
“This is a very unusual animal,” Hoffman said. “We're allowing people to use the court system, the coercive power of the state, to compel someone to give testimony before a lawsuit has been brought against them.”
Conservative Texas courts, typically not so friendly to plaintiffs, have slowly imposed stricter restrictions on when they agree to grant Rule 202 petitions, Hoffman said. In 2011, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the “intrusion into otherwise private matters authorized by Rule 202 outside a lawsuit is not to be taken lightly,” and “is not a license for forced interrogations.”
When used correctly, Rule 202 petitions can diminish frivolous lawsuits and save time, Rhodes said.
“There are strong policy reasons for the rule. I think it's a good rule,” he said. “It's just being abused here. This is harassment, and contrary to the very purposes of the rule.”
Petitions filed against women
The two petitions Mitchell has filed against women who allegedly traveled out-of-state are similar. Both were filed by ex-boyfriends who say they disagreed with their former partner's decision to get an abortion. The petitions assert each woman's mother influenced her to have an abortion.
One petition, first reported by The Washington Post, was filed last month and is sealed. The woman is represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, which declined to make her available for an interview.
“I think anyone would agree that it's pretty terrifying to be told that you might be sued for doing something that is entirely legal,” said senior staff attorney Molly Duane. “The petition uses the word murder 23 times. This is just not a normal document for anyone to receive and I think the inflammatory nature of it is by design.”
Duane reiterated that it is legal to travel to a state where abortion remains available to terminate a pregnancy.
“This is part of a yearslong campaign by Jonathan Mitchell and other abortion extremists to intimidate people into chilling their own constitutional activity,” Duane said.
The other petition, which has not been previously reported, was granted by a judge earlier this year. The Texas Tribune is not naming either party, or the jurisdiction in which it was filed, since no lawsuit has been filed and the woman named in the filing has not been accused of a crime. Her lawyer declined to comment.
The deposition in that case is on hold while an appeal proceeds.
In a brief, the woman's lawyers argued that granting the petition would be “repugnant to the liberty interests that Texas fiercely protects,” by validating the petitioner's “scheme to harass an ex-girlfriend who has moved on from her relationship with him.”
Both petitions claim to want to investigate potential violations of Senate Bill 8, also known as the “Texas Heartbeat Act,” which prohibits anyone from “aiding or abetting” an abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. But that law, which Mitchell helped design, only applies to abortions performed by Texas-licensed physicians. While the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the law to remain in effect, a state judge found it unconstitutional, a case that is still moving through the courts.
“It is helpful for them to just have this [Rule 202] threat rather than actually litigate,” Rhodes said. “Because if an actual challenge arises and it's determined that somebody cannot actually sue under SB 8, that would make the law entirely toothless.”
The petitions also hint at future wrongful death lawsuits, which cannot be brought against the person who terminated their pregnancy. Mitchell previously filed a wrongful death lawsuit against women who allegedly helped their friend obtain medication to terminate a pregnancy in Texas. That case is still pending in Galveston.
In a filing, the lawyers in the case now on appeal noted the risk to women across the state if judges began green-lighting Mitchell's strategy.
“A Rule 202 petitioner would be entitled to depose and seek documents from any woman who is not now pregnant, but was rumored to be at some time. Any woman who has a miscarriage could be subject to a forced interrogation. Any scorned lover could harass or intimidate their ex … for simply receiving a false-positive pregnancy test,” the lawyers wrote in their brief.
“Someone who has sex and then gains and loses weight may be forced to produce documents proving that she did not violate a wrongful death statute or SB 8,” they wrote. “The implications of a grant of this petition on the personal freedom and liberty of women to simply exist in Texas without being forced to answer to any ideologue anywhere in the world … are staggering.”
Other petitions
None of Mitchell's previous Rule 202 petitions have resulted in anything other than extended legal battles. He has filed at least nine, including three against abortion funds that help people travel out-of-state.
Two of those cases — one against the Lilith Fund, filed in Jack County, and another in Denton County against the Texas Equal Access Fund — were nearly identical. In each case, the funds countersued and Mitchell moved to dismiss their suits.
The judge on each case ruled differently — one granted the dismissal, the other denied it — and, complicating matters further, two three-judge panels from the same appeals court also disagreed. Both cases will likely go to the Texas Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, in Hood County, Mitchell filed a Rule 202 petition against the San Antonio-based Buckle Bunnies Fund. A judge denied the fund's motion to dismiss. That case is on appeal at the 2nd Court of Appeals in Fort Worth, which issued the dueling opinions in the Jack and Denton county cases.
In a rare move likely intended to address the discrepancies between the rulings, the appeals court voluntarily said it would hear this case en banc, before all seven judges, on May 22.
Mitchell filed two Rule 202 petitions against abortion providers that left Texas after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, which are still pending. He has also filed petitions against Sidley Austin, a law firm that said it would pay for Texas-based employees to travel out of state to get an abortion, and an abortion researcher at the University of Texas at Austin.
None of these petitions have resulted in any depositions, let alone any lawsuits. But they have generated a lot of fear and confusion, which legal experts say is largely the point.
“What's so clever about [Rule 202 petitions] is that they never have to sue,” said Hoffman. “They just have to threaten to get the woman in front of a court reporter and force her to answer questions, and it has exactly the chilling effect that they want.”
In a statement, Mitchell reiterated his claim that abortion funds and employers that pay for out-of-state abortions are potentially vulnerable to criminal prosecution and civil liability.
“Conduct taken inside Texas that procures an abortion is a criminal act under the state's pre-Roe abortion ban, even if the abortion occurs out of state,” he said, referring to 19th century laws that were on the books before the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade in 1973.
The question of whether those laws remain in effect has not yet been fully resolved by the courts. But a federal judge has preliminarily ruled that abortion funds are likely safe from prosecution.
But Mitchell has made his career working the margins of the law, pushing on weak spots until he finds a way in. He successfully circumvented the constitutional protection for abortion with SB 8, and has been a leading voice in getting the U.S. Supreme Court to consider reviving the Comstock Act, a zombie law restricting the mailing of abortion drugs, which hasn't been enforced for over 100 years. He's been advising towns and cities that want to pass so-called “travel bans” that prohibit the use of municipal roads to transport someone leaving the state for an abortion.
“He's been harassing the funds and abortion support networks for years, so it's not a new tactic,” said Elizabeth Myers, a Dallas attorney who represents the funds. “But now that target has expanded to actually include pregnant women, which they've said they would never target. This was always where they were going to go, and now we're here.”
Disclosure: University of Texas at Austin and University of Houston have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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Texas police have charged hundreds of migrants with rioting
by By Alejandro Serrano and Uriel J. García, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-10 05:00:00
SUMMARY: Migrants rushing an El Paso border gate to enter the U.S. have faced mass arrests by the Texas Department of Public Safety on rioting charges, a strategy now under legal scrutiny. A judge has dismissed over 350 rioting cases related to two border-rushing incidents, although El Paso District Attorney Bill Hicks, appointed by Governor Greg Abbott, secured grand jury indictments to revive these cases against the state's usual practice for misdemeanors. Hicks insists the prosecutions are about law and order, not immigration, while critics see them as an attempt to deter migration using criminal provisions conflicting with federal immigration law. The legal future of the indicted migrants remains uncertain following the judge's dismissals.
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EL PASO — Twice in recent months, hundreds of migrants have rushed a border gate in El Paso in an effort to push past state troopers and National Guard and get into the U.S.
The Texas Department of Public Safety responded by arresting hundreds of the migrants en masse on misdemeanor rioting charges. Now that strategy is being tested in local courts.
Earlier this week, a judge in El Paso dismissed 211 of the rioting cases related to one incident; the same judge had previously dismissed 140 other cases from another border-rushing incident — those cases were revived when the local district attorney took the unusual step of presenting the misdemeanor cases to a grand jury, which indicted all the migrants.
Typically grand juries only review more serious felony cases, while prosecutors present misdemeanor cases directly to judges who must determine if there's enough evidence to support charging someone with a crime.
El Paso District Attorney Bill Hicks has defended his move and says that it is about maintaining law and order, not anything to do with an individual's legal status. Gov. Greg Abbott appointed Hicks to the job after the previous district attorney left office following an effort to oust her amid allegations of incompetence and official misconduct.
“This, at least from the prosecutor's point of view, has nothing to do with immigration,” Hicks said this week. “This is a matter of people committing a crime and destroying property and endangering lives.”
At news conference on Thursday, Hicks defended his decision to present the cases to a grand jury and said his office will appeal Judge Ruben Morales' ruling. He added that the 211 migrants would be released on Thursday. He said that if an appeal's court reverses Morales' ruling he would issue arrest warrants for the 211 migrants whose cases the judge dismissed this week.
“It's proper to take those cases to a grand jury of 12 people in our community and ask those 12 people in our community what do they think,” he said. “It's appropriate that our community has the opportunity to speak.”
Hicks said he is not prosecuting the cases to make any political statement about immigration. He said he is doing so because anyone that “breaks the laws in our community, we will file charges and make sure that that person faces justice in our courtrooms.”
“These cases are not about immigration. These cases are not about politics,” he said. “These cases are clearly about law and order.”
Elissa Steglich, co-director of the University of Texas School of Law's immigration clinic, said the rioting charges appear to be tied to the state's recent push to deter migrants from crossing into Texas — an effort that has put it in conflict with the federal government, which has primary jurisdiction over immigration laws.
“It's hard not to see the arrests as an attempt to enforce immigration law while using state criminal provisions,” Steglich said. “It raises the real tension in that people under the law have the right to seek asylum.”
DPS did not respond to a request for comment about the latest case dismissals. A spokesperson earlier referred inquiries to Hicks' office.
The first border gate rush occurred in March when, according to Hicks, nine migrants at the front of a group of roughly 1,000 asylum-seekers cut through concertina wire and allegedly assaulted National Guard members.
At Abbott's direction, DPS arrested more than 200 of those individuals on misdemeanor rioting charges.
It's a rare criminal charge: Fourteen people were charged with rioting in El Paso County over the last decade before this year's mass arrests, according to county figures. The crime is punishable by up to 180 days in jail or a $2,000 fine.
“If this is their new strategy, I'm hoping they will quickly learn that it's a poor one,” said El Paso County Public Defender Kelli Childress, who is defending many of the migrants. “Arresting people against whom you have evidence that they committed a crime is one thing, but arresting people for the purpose of harassment to add to some sort of deterrent would be a really bad mechanism to curb migration.”
DPS arrested 141 migrants on the same charge following another border gate rush in April.
Morales dismissed 140 of the cases shortly after, ruling that DPS had insufficient probable cause to continue detaining the migrants, who were then turned over to federal authorities.
Following the dismissals, Hicks presented the same cases to a grand jury, which indicted the migrants on the same charges. That led federal authorities to send the migrants back to county custody so they could be served warrants. But the future of the new cases remains unclear after this week's dismissal of the cases against the other migrant group.
On Wednesday, Morales dismissed the cases related to the March incident because prosecutors had convened a grand jury in state court, then took the cases to a county court without a required order transferring the cases between jurisdictions.
“I can't just randomly take cases and hear them without proper orders,” Morales said during a hearing this week. “That's just not the way it works.”
Childress, the public defender, said she is raising the same issue to challenge the charges against the migrants who rushed the border in April.
Immigration-related cases don't end up in Texas courts frequently: U.S. Border Patrol agents typically detain migrants who illegally cross the border and either charge them with suspicion of entering the country illegally — which are handled in federal courts — or send them through an administrative process to quickly deport them. Migrants can also request political asylum.
But in different parts of the Texas-Mexico border, including in El Paso, the state has set up barriers aimed at preventing migrants from surrendering to Border Patrol after they've crossed the Rio Grande.
The El Paso arrests occurred amid the state's ongoing, multibillion-dollar border security initiative, Operation Lone Star, and an escalating fight with the federal government over immigration enforcement. DPS troopers deployed to the border as part of Operation Lone Star have arrested migrants on state trespassing charges since July 2021.
Lawmakers last year approved a new law that would let Texas police arrest people suspected of entering the country illegally on state charges. The law, Senate Bill 4, remains locked in a legal battle between the federal and state government.
Legal experts said the mass arrests like those carried out by DPS on the border can be challenging to prosecute in court.
“The issue in all of these mass crime cases is you need to figure out who did what, which can be very difficult,” said Thomas P. Hogan, a former prosecutor currently teaching at South Texas College of Law Houston. “You need to figure out exactly what conduct each individual engaged in and whether or not it violated the law.”
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We the Texans: Local news and democracy
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When local newspapers shrink or shutter, it leaves a gap in news access that other local news outlets struggle to fill, causing news deserts — communities without reliable local news sources. Texans in news deserts struggle to navigate misinformation and often grow to mistrust the media and other institutions.
On Thursday, May 9, The Texas Tribune hosted “We the Texans: Local news and democracy,” as part of our yearlong initiative examining the state of democracy in Texas. In this solutions-focused conversation, Nic Garcia, the Tribune's regions editor, talks with media experts and community leaders about the challenges local communities face and what can be done to ensure Texans across the state have access to reliable local news.
Speakers include:
Mitch Borden, Permian Basin reporter, Marfa Public Radio
Patrick Canty, publisher, Odessa American
Benjamin Toff, assistant professor, Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of Minnesota
Sign up for the “We the Texans” newsletter at trib.it/HNA to get twice-monthly updates on our yearlong initiative dedicated to listening to Texans, boosting civic engagement and exploring how democracy is experienced in Texas. Delivered every other Wednesday.
To watch more events from The Texas Tribune, visit texastribune.org/events.
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