As President Donald Trump’s administration has pursued immigration enforcement aggressively this year, The United Methodist Church has intensified multiple avenues of immigrant support. Now United Methodist leaders are using their Advent messages to urge pastors and church members to protect and defend U.S. residents targeted by the federal administration’s immigration crackdown.
The United Methodist Immigration Task Force issued “An Advent Call to the People of The United Methodist Church” at the conclusion of its Nov. 18-25 meeting in Los Angeles. Established in 2014, the task force is made up of representatives from the Council of Bishops, denomination-wide agencies, racial-ethnic ministry plans and caucuses, and Methodist-related and ecumenical agencies that work with resettlement, advocacy and legal assistance for migrants and refugees.
The task force’s message encourages bishops, the UMC’s top administrators, to engage “immediately and intentionally in ministry with migrants.” The group recommended bishops take several actions:
- Involve migrants in the planning of migration projects, using the UMC’s racial/ethnic Plans and Caucuses as key resources
- Hold conference-wide rallies about migration issues
- Support the Immigration Law and Justice Network, an advocacy and legal assistance organization with sites around the U.S.
- Volunteer with Church World Service and its resettlement offices and affiliates, and with national United Methodist mission institutions and other community-based organizations directly engaged with immigrant and refugee communities
- Create rapid-response teams in conjunction with the General Board of Church and Society, the denomination’s social-justice agency based in Washington, D.C.
- Use the General Commission on Religion and Race expertise for learning how to be an appropriate, effective ally and provide trauma-informed care
- Develop safety plans in the event of immigration enforcement raids on local churches.
In an example of safety plan development, Colorado pastor Betty Nguyen offered guidelines Dec. 3 for churches to prepare response teams in case federal agents raid church properties. Nguyen serves as superintendent of advocacy and community engagement for the Mountain Sky Annual Conference, a United Methodist region covering Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana and a portion of Eastern Idaho.
In the past, agencies such as Customs and Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have been discouraged officially from raids on “sensitive sites” such as schools, hospitals, churches and houses of worship. That 2011 rule was rescinded Jan. 20, by President Donald Trump.
Nguyen recommends churches set up “Encounter Teams” whose members have specific responsibilities. These include:
- A team leader who serves as coordinator
- An “ICE communicator” whose task is to interact with ICE agents
- Team members who will record the visit, move people to private spaces for safety, monitor church property for agents’ presence and call a rapid-response hotline to alert the neighborhood to the agents’ arrival
“As we enter the season of Advent, our churches will be filled with gatherings, activities and worship services, please take a moment to pause and work with the leadership in your church so that if ICE visits, you will know how to handle the encounter,” she wrote.