Rebecca Solloa, the executive director of Catholic Charities in Laredo, said that, while the threatening calls her facility had received were not local, she still instructed her staff to take precautions like avoiding wearing Catholic Charities’ apparel in public. “Having seen and learned about what happened in El Paso, anybody can come from the outside to hurt the community,” said Solloa, referencing a 2019 mass shooting that killed 23 and which the shooter said was a response “to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
Despite the vitriolic rhetoric and conspiracy theories, Tony Stieritz, the CEO of Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio, which was the target of a Feb. 9 Bergquam video linking the organization to migrants on the border who said they were going to Cincinnati, said that the over 800 volunteers at his facility fall “in love with the work that we do.”
“We will stand resolute in serving the poor and vulnerable regardless of where they come from,” Stieritz said.
To the members of Congress spreading accusations about Catholic Charities, Stieritz said, “It is Congress’ and the (Biden) administration’s job to fix the broken immigration system. We continue to pick up the pieces for the federal government’s lack of a policy that promotes order and human dignity for migrants.
“Let’s not stoop so low as to pick on the people who are trying to do the Christian work of the Gospel. Please work together in a bipartisan way to figure out the challenges that we all share,” he said.
This article originally appeared here.
