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Border security

Watchdogs demand info from DHS, HHS on NGOs working along Texas border to aid illegal immigrants

CatholicVote, Judicial Watch demand communications records between DHS and catholic charities

By Timothy Nerozzi Fox News
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FIRST ON FOX: Religious watchdog group CatholicVote Civic Action has partnered with lawyers from Judicial Watch to file a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) after neither agency followed through on CatholicVote's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

CatholicVote and Judicial Watch are demanding access to records and communications between the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and the Diocese of Brownsville, Texas, and the diocese's prelate, Bishop Daniel E. Flores. 

Communications between CBP and Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, as well as communications with the Humanitarian Respite Center are also requested. Similar requests have been made to the HHS.

Immigrants crossing border into Texas.

Immigrants crossing border into Texas. (Getty Images)

"The Biden administration has refused to provide copies of communications between Catholic-affiliated charities and organizations at the border. Their lack of transparency and obstruction forced us to file these federal lawsuits," said CatholicVote president Brian Burch. "American Catholics deserve to know the full extent of the U.S. government's role in funding and coordinating with Catholic Church affiliated agencies at the border, and what role these agencies played in the record surge of illegal immigrants over the past year."

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"Americans have the right to know how the Biden administration is using tax dollars to conspire with ‘charities’ and release illegal immigrants into their communities," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Texas border control has local citizens worried.

Texas border control has local citizens worried. (Getty Images)

The two groups are looking for insight into the workings of Sister Norma Pimentel's Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley (CCRGV) and its financial relationship with Border Patrol officials. 

Authorities in South Texas said in July 2021 that they learned that illegal immigrants who had possibly tested positive for COVID-19 were released from federal custody to a Catholic charity, which booked hotel rooms for them without notifying local officials.

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"Sister Pimentel, in a February 3 interview, acknowledged her charity is reimbursed with tax dollars to buy ‘very few’ plane and bus tickets for illegal aliens to move throughout the United States," Judicial Watch said in a statement.

BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS - FEBRUARY 26: Sister Norma Pimentel, Executive Director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley escorts a young asylum seeker upon his entry into the United States on February 26, 2021 in Brownsville, Texas. Her group was one of the first to cross into south Texas as part of the Biden administration's unwinding of the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols, (MPP), also known as the 'Remain in Mexico' immigration policy. Many of the asylum seekers had been waiting in the squalid camp alongside the Rio Grande in Matamoros for more than a year and became close to camp logistics workers, many of them American. The immigrants are now free to travel to destinations within the United States pending asylum court hearings. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, escorts a young asylum seeker upon his entry into the United States on Feb. 26, 2021, in Brownsville, Texas. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

An undocumented immigrant family reportedly coughing and sneezing at a restaurant in Texas told the La Joya Police Department last year that they had been released by Border Patrol because they were positive for COVID-19. The family told police that the government had turned them over to CCRGV, which paid for their lodging at the Texas Inn Hotel, according to CBS 11 News.

The hotel manager told authorities that the Catholic Charities of The Rio Grande Valley had booked rooms in the hotel to house undocumented immigrants detained by Border Patrol. 

"We have an understanding based on what was told to us that the hotel in totality has already been rented out," La Joya police Sgt. Manuel Casas said. "The information we have is that everyone that is staying in that hotel is COVID-19 positive because it's being rented out for them."

DHS and HHS did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment on the lawsuit.

Fox News' Louis Casiano contributed to this report.