ANCA Mobilizes South Texas Faith Community against Cuellar

WASHINGTON, DC – The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) – Texas joined with the ANCA national office in launching a campaign to educate faith leaders across South Texas about local Congressman Henry Cuellar’s criminal corruption and direct complicity in anti-Christian persecution.

ANCA and ANCA Texas are bringing the case against Congressional Azerbaijan Caucus Co-Chair Henry Cuellar directly to the pews of his own district, mailing comprehensive information packets this week, in English and Spanish, to Christian parishes, faith-based institutions, clerical and lay leaders, and religious influencers across Texas’s 28th Congressional District and the broader South Texas region.

The ANCA packets – featuring correspondence in both English and Spanish – document the Federal indictment of Rep. Cuellar and his wife for accepting $600,000 in bribes from Azerbaijani government-controlled entities. A copy of the full 54-page indictment was included in each packet. Also included were materials about Azerbaijan’s genocide of more than 120,000 Christian Armenians from Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh), and Baku’s continuing demolition of Armenian churches, monasteries, cross-stones, and sacred sites across the ethnically cleansed lands it now occupies.

“South Texas pastors, priests, and parishioners deserve to know the sins of their Congressman against at-risk Christians, who paid him for this betrayal, and exactly how much he got paid – the modern-day equivalent of his thirty pieces of silver,” said Aram Hamparian, ANCA Executive Director. “Henry Cuellar took hundreds of thousands of dollars from a regime that bulldozes cathedrals, desecrates cemeteries, and drove an entire Christian civilization from its three-thousand-year-old homeland. He took that money, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, to block U.S. support for Armenia, to insert pro-Azerbaijan language into our laws, to deliver speeches written by Baku’s allies on the floor of the House of Representatives. Every Christian leader in his district needs to know these facts – and the right to share them with the faithful in their ministries.”

A Letter to South Texas’s Christian Leaders

The packets, co-signed by Hamparian and ANCA Texas Co-Chair Philip Kanayan, open with a letter written in a spirit of Christian solidarity, framing Cuellar’s bribery not as a distant Washington scandal but as a betrayal of the Body of Christ:

“Truly, Congressman Cuellar’s betrayal strikes at the very heart of the Body of Christ. He was charged with pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars, not thirty pieces of silver, but the sins are the same — treachery and greed. The setting: the U.S. Congress, not the Garden of Gethsemane.”

The letter calls on recipients to “review the enclosed indictment and prayerfully consider what steps you and your congregation might take to ensure that your parishioners and your neighbors fully understand the depth and significance of this betrayal.”

Alongside the letter, recipients receive the full 54-page federal indictment of Henry and Imelda Cuellar, detailing how Azerbaijani diplomats referred to the Congressman as “el Jefe,” tracked his legislative work on Baku’s behalf, and funneled payments through sham consulting contracts and shell companies. Federal prosecutors documented Cuellar’s promises to influence U.S. foreign policy, deliver pro-Azerbaijan floor speeches, insert favorable legislative language, and arrange meetings with U.S. defense officials in exchange for the payments.

The packets pair the indictment with a Christian Post op-ed by communications strategist Stephan Pechdimaldji characterizing Azerbaijan’s demolition of the Stepanakert Cathedral as cultural genocide and a direct violation of the International Court of Justice’s December 2021 provisional measures, a National Catholic Register article documenting the demolition of the Armenian Mother Cathedral in occupied Artsakh, and a May 2024 brief from International Christian Concern documenting Azerbaijan’s siege and ethnic cleansing of Artsakh’s Christian population, the destruction of 89 Armenian churches in Nakhichevan between 1997 and 2006, and the broader pattern of forced displacement of indigenous Christian communities.

Ground Zero for Foreign Interference

“South Texas is ground zero in the fight to hold Azerbaijan accountable for its foreign interference in American democracy, and our Christian community has a particular stake in this fight,” said ANCA Texas Co-Chair Philip Kanayan. “The Azerbaijani regime that bought Henry Cuellar is the same regime bulldozing churches and cathedrals built by Christians a thousand years before Texas was Texas. Pastors, priests, deacons, and lay leaders across this district are going to receive the documentation, read it for themselves, and reach their own conclusions about the man who has represented them in Congress.”

In December 2025, President Trump pardoned Cuellar — a decision the ANCA condemned as a free pass for foreign bribery. Days later, after Cuellar announced he would continue running as a Democrat, Trump publicly rebuked him for “a lack of LOYALTY” — making clear that even the president who pardoned him had concluded Cuellar’s word could not be trusted.

The ANCA has actively targeted Cuellar through its #ExpelCuellar campaign, calling on the House to vote for his expulsion and on voters to reject him at the ballot box. The faith-community outreach announced today represents the next phase of that work, bringing the documentary record of Cuellar’s conduct, and Azerbaijan’s, directly to the religious leaders and institutions that shape civic life across South Texas.

In April, the ANCA endorsed Webb County Judge Tano E. Tijerina in his Republican bid to represent Texas’s 28th Congressional District. Following outreach by the ANCA Texas team, Judge Tijerina, his wife Kimberly, and his campaign team visited ANCA’s national headquarters in the Nation’s Capital on April 22nd, sitting down with the ANCA’s DC staff for a substantive discussion of the full range of priorities advocated by ANCA Texas and Armenian Americans across the Lone Star State, including Azerbaijan’s genocidal ethnic cleansing of Artsakh’s Christian Armenians, the ongoing illegal detention of Armenian hostages in Baku, Azerbaijan’s systematic destruction of Armenian Christian churches, cemeteries, and sacred sites, the right of return for displaced Artsakh Armenians, and justice for the Armenian Genocide.