About this time last year, I visited a migrant respite center in McAllen, Texas, run by Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, the charitable arm of the Diocese of Brownsville. Sister Norma Pimentel helped established the center in 2014, at the height of the unaccompanied minor crisis, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was overwhelmed with thousands of children and teenagers turning themselves in to Border Patrol agents.
Squatter’s rights do not exist; property rights do.
On May 15, 2024, Texas Public Policy Foundation’s James Quintero testified before the Senate committee on the issue of “squatter’s rights.” McCaw Property Management (n.d., para 1) defines a squatter as “somebody who is living on a land or in a building that is either unoccupied, abandoned, or foreclosed without the legal consent of the...