Border shelters relieved the pressure during migrant surges. Under Trump, they could become a target

McALLEN, Texas — When Roselins Sequera’s family of seven finally reached the U.S. from Venezuela, they spent weeks at a migrant shelter on the Texas border that gave them a place to sleep, meals and tips for finding work. “But we didn’t know how.” Dozens of shelters run by aid groups on the U.S. border with Mexico have welcomed large numbers of migrants, providing lifelines of support and relief to overwhelmed cities. As part of that agenda, Trump’s incoming border czar, Tom Homan, has vowed to review the role of nongovernmental organizations and whether they helped open “the doors to this humanitarian crisis.” Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who along with Elon Musk was tapped by Trump to find ways to cut federal spending, has signaled that the groups are in his sights and called them “a waste of taxpayer dollars.” “Americans deserve transparency on opaque foreign aid & nonprofit groups abetting our own border crisis,” Ramaswamy said last month in a post on X. Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, which operates a shelter in McAllen with capacity for 1,200 people, was notified by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in March that authorities wanted to interview the executive director, Sister Norma Pimentel, to investigate whether there were “practices for facilitating alien crossings over the Texas-Mexico border.” Pimentel declined to comment to The Associated Press, citing the ongoing case, but attorneys representing her organization responded to the accusations in court calling them a “fishing expedition into a pond where no one has ever seen a fish.” In downtown McAllen, a large lobby serves as a welcome center where families receive travel information while their children play with volunteers. “In McAllen, we would have been lost without them.” Former McAllen Mayor Jim Darling still recalls the night he received a call from the city manager in 2014 explaining that the bus station was closing, but 25 migrants were still waiting for a bus.