The text makes some reasonable arguments about the potential for unintended consequences from faith-based charities providing aid to undocumented migrants, but also exhibits some fallacious reasoning in suggesting this could lead down a slippery slope to enabling human trafficking and other harms, without sufficient evidence to demonstrate a direct causal relationship.

1. slippery slope • The text suggests that by providing humanitarian aid to migrants, charities are indirectly aiding human traffickers and becoming complicit in their activities. This is an oversimplification and an example of the slippery slope fallacy, where it is assumed that one action will inevitably lead to an undesirable consequence without sufficient evidence.

Before this chain of causation should be accepted, we would need to be presented with a lot more information:

• how many migrants helped by charities use human traffickers
• how many of those same migrants would not have found a way across the border if not for the traffickers
• how much of the supply of traffickers stems from cartels

A preponderance is assumed at each juncture of this chain, with no information presented to support each assumption.

2. guilt by association • The text implies that because some migrants may have been trafficked by cartels, all organizations that help them should be viewed as associated with these cartels and their activities.

And at what point does providing yet another way station in this process shade into actual complicity?

Given the word "complicit" in the title of the article, this reads as rhetorical question, asserting guilt. As such, it is an instance of the guilt by association fallacy, where guilt or blame is assigned based on an assumed or very indirect connection rather than actual evidence of blame.

3. questionable cause • One part of the text makes several unsubstantiated causal claims that are not supported by evidence:

Encouraging an influx that's crushing small border towns to the breaking point, hurting big cities across the nation, and driving horrible crimes isn't compassionate.

Nor is greasing a path into sex work or the gray economy of app deliveries.

This commits the questionable cause fallacy several times:

• "Encouraging an influx that's crushing small border towns to the breaking point" ​This assumes that charities are directly "encouraging" migration influxes, and that their actions are the cause of small border towns being overwhelmed. However, no evidence is provided to support this causal link.
• "hurting big cities across the nation" ​Again, this claims that charities aiding migrants is hurting big cities nationwide, which is an oversimplification and lacks evidence of a clear causal relationship.
• "driving horrible crimes" ​This statement implies that the actions of charities are leading to an increase in unspecified "horrible crimes," which is an unsubstantiated and inflammatory claim.
• "greasing a path into sex work or the gray economy of app deliveries" ​This suggests that by aiding migrants, charities are facilitating their entry into sex work or informal employment sectors like app-based delivery services. However, there is no evidence provided to support this causal connection.

These statements make multiple unsubstantiated causal connections without providing any data, research, or evidence to back up the claimed links between the actions of charities and the negative consequences mentioned.

Making such strong causal claims without evidence is known as the non-causa pro causa (questionable cause) fallacy, which is assuming that one thing is the cause of another without establishing a valid causal relationship.