The City of Austin approved $1,500 in taxpayer funding for a September 10 event co-hosted by CAIR-Austin, nine months after Governor Greg Abbott designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a foreign terrorist organization and seven months after Attorney General Ken Paxton sued to shut down CAIR’s Texas operations. The event, promoted as part of Austin’s “We All Belong” anti-hate initiative, will screen a documentary titled “Jesus Was a Migrant” at the city-owned Asian American Resource Center, with CAIR representatives participating in an interfaith panel discussion alongside immigration legal services providers.
Austin Public Information Specialist Natalie Hulsey confirmed the public funding to The Dallas Express, stating the event is “directly tied to the City of Austin’s We All Belong initiative.” The grant represents a small portion of the $150,000 Austin’s Equity and Inclusion office allocated for the We All Belong program in fiscal year 2025-2026. The event registration page lists CAIR-Austin, FaithWorks, and partner organizations as hosts, with Austin Equity and Inclusion as the official sponsor.
State-Level Legal Battle
Abbott’s November 18, 2025 proclamation designated CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations under the Texas Penal Code and transnational criminal organizations under the Texas Property Code. The designation, which is a state action rather than a federal foreign terrorist organization listing, prohibits the groups from purchasing or acquiring land in Texas.
“The Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world,’” Abbott stated in the proclamation. “These radical extremists are not welcome in our state and are now prohibited from acquiring any real property interest in Texas.”
Paxton followed with a February 5, 2026 lawsuit against national CAIR and its Austin, Houston, and Dallas-Fort Worth chapters, seeking to ban the organizations from operating in Texas. The lawsuit cites CAIR-Texas’s founding board member’s 2008 conviction for funneling $12.4 million to Hamas through the Holy Land Foundation, a case in which CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator, though a federal judge later ruled the government violated due process by publicizing that designation.
“Sharia law and the jihadists who follow sharia law have no business being in Texas,” Paxton said. “Radical Islamic terrorists are antithetical to law and order, endanger the people of Texas, and are an existential threat to our values.”
Austin’s Response
Rather than distancing itself from CAIR following the state designation, Austin doubled down. On January 22, 2026 — two months after Abbott’s proclamation — the Austin City Council honored CAIR-Austin with an official “CAIR-Austin Day” proclamation recognizing the organization’s “vital role in protecting the civil rights of Austin’s Muslim community.”
Council Member Krista Laine stated at the ceremony: “This proclamation reminds us that everyone belongs in Austin.”
Documentary and Event Details
The September 10 event centers on a 31-minute documentary by Tisby Studios that equates Jesus Christ with modern illegal border crossers. The film argues that Jesus’ brief childhood flight to Egypt — a temporary journey within the Roman Empire that fulfilled Old Testament prophecy — makes him comparable to asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border today. The documentary’s premise frames Christian support for border enforcement as theological apostasy.
Filmmaker Jemar Tisby, author of “The Color of Compromise,” which critiques white evangelicalism as inherently racist, described the film as “a scathing indictment of those who call themselves Christian while supporting the current administration’s racist rhetoric and cruel violence.” When a Baptist News Global interviewer asked what Christians who support border enforcement will experience in heaven, Tisby responded: “What makes you think they’ll get to heaven?”
Partner organizations include Asian Texans for Justice, a progressive AAPI advocacy group, and American Gateways, which provides immigration legal services throughout Central Texas.
CAIR’s Background
The Anti-Defamation League documents that CAIR was founded by several leaders of the Islamic Association for Palestine, which federal prosecutors alleged was a Hamas propaganda front. The United Arab Emirates designated CAIR as a terrorist organization in 2014. The U.S. federal government has not designated CAIR as a terrorist organization.
State Board of Education member Brandon Hall told The Dallas Express: “Texas taxpayers shouldn’t tolerate any government or taxpayer-funded entity, at any level, partnering or working with CAIR. Texas taxpayer dollars should never be used to legitimize, support, or collaborate with organizations designated as foreign terrorist organizations. Period.”
CAIR disputes the allegations and called Paxton’s lawsuit “another frivolous, politically motivated anti-Muslim publicity stunt.”
The event remains scheduled for September 10 at 7:00 p.m. at the Asian American Resource Center, 8401 Cameron Road, Austin.
Until local leaders are prosecuted for violating state law, this will continue.