El Paso, Texas: Paxton Drops Lawsuit to Shut Down Annunciation House Shelters

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has dropped his bid to shut down Annunciation House, the Catholic migrant shelter network in El Paso, ending a legal fight that began in February 2024 and reached the Texas Supreme Court.

Paxton nonsuited with prejudice his counterclaims against Annunciation House Inc., according to a notice filed Monday in state district court, Bloomberg Law reported. Because the dismissal is with prejudice, the attorney general cannot refile the same claims. Annunciation House, which sued in 2024 to block the state investigation into the charity, will likewise abandon its claims against Paxton, the shelter network's lawyer, William Christian of Graves Dougherty Hearon & Moody, told Bloomberg Law on Tuesday.

"It's over"

Ruben Garcia, who has directed Annunciation House since the late 1970s, welcomed the end of the case. "It's very gratifying that this has now ended. It's over," Garcia told El Paso Matters.

Paxton's office included no explanation in the filing, and his office did not respond to a request for comment, El Paso Matters reported.

Annunciation House operates several shelters around El Paso that give migrants released from federal custody food, a bed and help reaching family or sponsors elsewhere in the United States. The network has served people at the border for nearly five decades and is one of the city's best known aid organizations.

A fight over records

The case began on February 7, 2024, when state officials arrived at one of the shelters with a formal request to examine the organization's records. The officials said production had to be immediate and that failure to comply could cost Annunciation House its right to do business in Texas. Garcia consulted a lawyer instead, and the shelter network asked a court to decide what the state could demand.

Paxton argued that Annunciation House was harboring people in the country unlawfully and sought court action that could have revoked its charter. Judge Francisco X. Dominguez of the District Court of El Paso County ruled for the shelter network on July 2, 2024, finding that Paxton's office had failed to establish probable grounds and that the effort violated the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The Texas Supreme Court took the case on direct appeal and ruled on May 30, 2025, that the trial court had moved too fast. The justices held that Paxton has the constitutional authority to file his proposed action and that the injunctions blocking him were premature, and they sent the case back to the trial court without deciding the underlying claims. The dismissal filed Monday closes the case on remand.

What changes in El Paso

For the shelters, the immediate answer is nothing: the doors stay open and the guest records stay with the organization. The filing does not settle the wider legal question at the center of the fight, whether the state can compel a faith based charity to hand over records about the people it shelters.

The end of the case lands in Paxton's final weeks in office. He leaves in mid January after losing his bid for the U.S. Senate in the November 3 election, part of a statewide sweep in which Republicans lost every contested statewide race. Attorney General elect Nathan Johnson, a Democratic state senator, has said he intends to review cases brought by Paxton, including the legal positions his office took against Annunciation House.