Numerous faith leaders across the U.S. say the immigration crackdown launched by President Donald Trump’s new administration has sown fear within their migrant-friendly congregations. They are pondering ways to resist even in the face of warnings that houses of worship are not off-limits for arrests.
In Portland, Oregon, the Rev. W.J. Mark Knutson, said he plans to offer undocumented migrants sanctuary at Augustana Lutheran Church anyway — just as he did in 2014. A man from El Salvador, wanted for re-entering the United States illegally, took shelter in the church for nearly three months, sleeping under the altar the first few nights.
“Theologically, we’ll stand our ground against the government — an unjust law is no law at all,” Knutson told The Associated Press. “These are sacred spaces.”
In Philadelphia, the Rev. Robin Hynicka, pastor of Arch Street United Methodist Church, said his church is committed to being a “justice seeking, reconciling, sanctuary congregation.”
During the first Trump administration, that commitment included sheltering an immigrant from deportation while he went through a successful process to obtain a visa.
“Our work now is bigger than simply opening the door of the church for one or two people to stay,” Hynicka said. “Sanctuary has to be a value that we extend to one another through our policies, through the laws we enact.”
Other clergy ministering to undocumented migrants were less specific, though they vowed to continue — and even expand — their support following this week’s announcement that federal immigration agencies could make arrests at churches, schools and hospitals, ending existing policies that protected sensitive spaces from enforcement.
The Rev. Joseph Dutan, pastor of St. Paul the Apostle church in the New York City borough of Queens, said some of his congregation members were so frightened by the Trump-ordered moves that they worried attending Mass would be risky.
“More than scary, it’s sad,” Dutan said. “I feel very bad for my people because they have a lot of fear in their heart.”
Another pastor in Queens, the Rev. Manuel Rodriguez of Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic church, said many of his 17,000 parishioners are undocumented and have children who attend the parish’s school.
“We have children who are shaking literally and crying,” Rodriguez said. “They know that at any time their mom, their dad, could be arrested and they could come back from school, and they could be gone.”
“Undocumented people go to church every week to pray that they can make ends meet, so they can pay the rent for their families,” he said. “People are trying to survive, and this is just putting them through hell.”
A New York City mosque, Masjid Ansaru-Deen in the Bronx, has opened its door to migrants, providing shelter to some, said Imam Omar Niass. He said many are from his homeland of Senegal.
“I cannot leave anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim, to sleep on the street,” he said.
Citing his faith, Niass said he’s not worried about the policy change.
“If Trump wants to close houses of worship, but God isn’t pleased, then he won’t be able to do a thing,” Niass said.
Catholic Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Texas, from his diocese along the U.S.-Mexico border, decried the new policy.
The end of the sensitive locations policy “strikes fear into the heart of our community, cynically layering a blanket of anxiety on families when they are worshipping God, seeking healthcare and dropping off and picking up children at school,” said Seitz in a statement.
In response, he said, his diocese “will continue to educate our faithful on their rights, provide legal services and work with our community leaders to mitigate the damage of indiscriminate immigration enforcement.”
Seitz, who leads the migration committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, joined the leaders of the Catholic Health Association of the United States and Catholic Charities USA in a statement Thursday lamenting the policy change.
“We are already witnessing reticence among immigrants to engage in daily life, including sending children to school and attending religious services,” the statement said. “Turning places of care, healing, and solace into places of fear and uncertainty for those in need, while endangering the trust between pastors, providers, educators and the people they serve, will not make our communities safer.”
Bishop Ebli De La Rosa, who oversees Church of God of Prophecy congregations in nine southeastern states, said the new policies could leave his churches devastated. Of 52 pastors who serve in the churches he oversees, 28 are undocumented, as are about half of the 5,000 church members, he said.
“Some of these pastors who have been in this country more than 15 or 20 years,” De La Rosa added. “They do the important, everyday work in their neighborhoods.”
Pastor Maria Elena Montalvo, who leads Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Los Angeles suburb of Bell, said she and her community are facing intense anxiety in the wake of the policy change.
The church, in a predominantly working-class Latino neighborhood, has served as a sanctuary for immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers for the past seven years, since Montalvo became pastor. Recently, the congregation drew attention for housing Muslim asylum seekers from Mauritania in its basement.
Montalvo said she is passionate about helping immigrants and refugees because she was once in their shoes. She emigrated from Mexico in 1989.
“People are afraid to go to work, to school, to live their lives freely because they are afraid of being arrested or deported,” she said.
Montalvo’s recites her favorite Bible verse from Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus tells his followers to welcome the stranger and care for the marginalized.
“I recite that verse every day,” Montalvo said. “It really resonates with me.”
Elsewhere in greater Los Angeles, the Rev. Canon Jaime Edwards-Acton is co-chairing the Sanctuary Task Force at the Episcopal diocese.
Recent discussions addressed how to equip migrants with information about their rights and teach them how to react if they encounter immigration officials.
“We don’t have a full-fledged game plan yet,” Edwards-Acton said. “We are waiting and watching to see how much of the rhetoric actually becomes reality.”
But there is action already, he said: One church administrator has been making grocery runs for a congregant who is afraid to step outside their home.
David Hollenbach, a Jesuit priest and Georgetown University professor with expertise in religion, politics and humanitarian crises, said there is a long tradition in Christianity and other faiths that religious communities can be sanctuaries for people in grave need.
“To violate that is also a very serious issue,” said Hollenbach. “Jesus was himself a refugee. And so it’s not surprising that you find in the teachings of Jesus repeated calls to respect the needs of those who are migrants and strangers in our midst.”
Among Christian evangelical leaders, who represent some of Trump’s most loyal supporters, there were nuanced reactions.
The Rev. Robert Jeffress, a longtime Trump supporter and pastor of Dallas’ First Baptist Church, said the outcry from some faith leaders was misplaced.
“There’s no such thing as a sanctuary that’s immune from the laws of our land,” he said. “If there is an illegal activity on any square inch of America, the authorities have a right to go in.”
Jeffress added, however, “I doubt churches are going to be the first line of attack.”
Brent Leatherwood, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said the move “leads to more questions and confusion than anything.”
The commission is the public policy arm of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination — a conservative body in which support for Trump is strong.
“President Trump is right to fix our broken immigration system … but it must be done so without turning churches into wards of the state or expecting pastors to ask for papers of people coming through their doors,” Leatherwood said in a statement.
“The unintended impact of this change will be that many law-abiding immigrants will be fearful to attend our churches.”
___
AP Religion Team journalists Peter Smith, Mariam Fam and Holly Meyer contributed, as did AP journalist Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon.
___
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
