From WSJopinion: We have a religious obligation to serve the poor who are suffering in front of us, writes bpdflores
Asylum seekers arrive at the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas, Aug. 4.Sometimes they arrive in a trickle, sometimes in a flood. But the wave of young women, families and unaccompanied minors is constant. Border Patrol agents drop them off at our front door, knowing we will provide temporary respite and treat them with respect. Our Catholic Charities’ Humanitarian Respite Center serves an average of 1,000 migrants in Southern Texas every day.
But our work has been threatened by the Texas state government. Gov. Greg Abbott recently issued an executive order that would prohibit us from transporting those we serve beyond our walls. We filed a friend-of-the-court brief Aug. 12 explaining our ministry’s needs, and a federal court in El Paso temporarily blocked the order from going into effect.
We have a religious obligation to serve the poor who are suffering in front of us. That’s why we have asked a federal court—with the help of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty—to protect our First Amendment right to serve these migrants. For Catholics, the imperatives of Matthew 25 are not dispensable: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.
We do not advance any particular political agenda, and as such the religious liberty protections we seek cut across the usual political lines. While governments rightly try to address the root causes of global immigration, we have an obligation to serve those suffering right now.
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