(RNS) — On Friday (Dec. 12), Religion News Service reported that the Department of Homeland Security is threatening to block funding for six years for Catholic Charities Rio Grande Valley. The shelter network along the Texas-Mexico border is accused of “submitting inconsistent migrant data” and “billing the government for services provided to migrants beyond the federal 45-day limit.” The article featured the head of CCRGV, Sister Norma Pimentel. Maybe you’ve seen her accolades: “Pope Francis’ favorite nun” or “Time’s 100 most influential people in 2020.”
Just two months ago, I had the honor of speaking with Sister Norma when she met with a very small group of pastors from the Wabash Pastoral Leadership Program in Indiana. They were there learning about migration at the Mexican border. I tagged along because I’m studying the ways congregations deal with polarizing issues, including immigration.
A different cohort of pastors had visited her offices just two years ago and experienced a very different scene. In 2023, every inch of space was occupied by people. The shelter was then handling 2,000 migrants at a time, and only by taping off paths for themselves on the floors could the staff move around the building.
When we visited earlier this year, no migrants were there to receive in-house services. President Donald Trump’s executive orders had effectively shut off the spigot that President Joe Biden’s executive orders had opened just a few years before. We had seen the same thing the previous day on our walk across the border to Mexico. Migrant services had dried up in Reynosa, Mexico, too, because there were so few migrants.
The Indiana pastors asked Sister Norma many questions about how they could help once they got home. My own question was where the money came from. I knew that, nationally, Catholic Charities got roughly two-thirds of its funding from government contracts for migrant services.
Sister Norma did not answer my question directly. This was a meeting with pastors. She was talking about ministry. To me she said, “We all pitch in together. Everyone helps out.” I did not push further. This was a meeting with pastors, not a press conference, and I am not a journalist.
I am, however, a researcher who studied faith-based welfare reform, sometimes called “charitable choice” or “faith-based initiatives,” in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I wrote two books on the topic and a pamphlet used in the George W. Bush White House. So I looked up the CCRGV budget, which is public record, and found that the majority of CCRGV’s funds comes from grants, the bulk of which come from the government.
Today I study the effects of cultural and political polarization on religious groups, so I know what’s coming as the federal government stops funding CCRGV. There will be adamant statements about the risks of religious groups’ taking public contracts. There will be charges that DHS’ action is only about the Trump administration trying to inflict pain on pro-migrant groups. There will be a brief flurry of op-eds about why the other side is so bad on this issue.
But perhaps this time we could do better as a society as we discuss this complex issue. I offer three helpful framings to improve our public debate:
First, it is fair to ask whether the DHS accusations are true. It is easy to imagine they have some truth in them. Three decades ago, I warned about using congregations as contractors because they had so little experience in grant management. Catholic Charities has a professional bureaucracy with much more experience, but let’s be honest: It is extremely difficult to keep spotless records on highly mobile migrant populations who cross an international border routinely, come from many different countries (in 2023, most of the migrants were not Mexican), and speak different languages. I am not claiming knowledge of the facts of this case, but they do matter.
Second, it is fair to examine the federal government’s record of enforcing its contracts and how penalties are determined. Critics will say the administration is selectively punishing Sister Norma and CCRGV to make a point about religious charities using government money to circumvent U.S. policy on migration. Again, I do not know if the government is selectively enforcing here, but it is easy to imagine that it is. I do know that a six-year funding ban is a very stiff penalty.
Nonetheless, and lastly, we should all be happy this incident is shining a light on public/private partnerships, including public/religious partnerships, especially when it comes to serving migrants. This is how this work is done. Catholic Charities is hardly alone in getting government money to provide social services. Lutheran Family Services and Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse both receive millions in federal aid.
Lastly, it is important to resist any attempts to oversimplify the complex issues involved here. Faith-based providers are government contractors on a large scale. Government enforcement of its own funding contracts is a legitimate task and not necessarily politically motivated persecution. Still, selective, zealous enforcement of only certain contracts is a dangerous game if it’s motivated primarily by ideology.
(Arthur E. Farnsley II is director of the Congregations and Polarization Project at Indiana University Indianapolis. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of Religion News Service.)
