Donald Trump’s aggressive crackdown on immigration is pushing faith-based groups to be more bold, flexible and creative in their ministries to immigrants, a panel of experts said during a webinar hosted by the American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
The session was designed as a primer on the immigration crisis for advocates, clergy, educators and legal professionals concerned about the well-being of immigrants and refugees.
Lisa Harris Lee
“People of faith and goodwill want to actively participate in defending the rights of their loved ones, neighbors and co-workers who are being targeted,” said Lisa Harris Lee, director of the ABHMS Healing and Transforming Communities unit and the webinar organizer. “They are seeking information to do that. We know the immigration policies in this nation are complex and complicated. We do not all agree on the best response. But most agree that mass deportation, threats, and disregard for sensitive locations is hostile and unjust.”
Ministries and advocacy groups must be ready to pivot when administration policies change, said Mar Imsong, executive director of Massachusetts Baptist Multicultural Ministries and ACE Center for New Americans.
That’s what volunteers and staff at the center had to do after a Department of Homeland Security memo announced humanitarian parole status now can be paused or terminated, effectively expanding ongoing detention and deportation efforts to include Haitians, Venezuelans, Ukrainians and others in the country legally, Imsong explained.
Mar Imsong
“We have been working mostly with parolees, people who have come here legally and have work authorization. These humanitarian parolees are mostly people who came here during the last administration, so the situation is really changing all the time.”
One result included a significant drop this month in attendance in English-language classes and an after-school program at the ACE Center. “So, we had to start providing transportation for our children to come to the center and we have people going to homes to help people with their homework,” Imsong said.
Imsong advised immigrant advocates to expand and rely heavily on networking efforts to identify partners to weather current immigration challenges. “We are collaborating with like-minded organizations, and that’s the way to go forward in a time like this. We have to collaborate and network with as many people as we can.”
Advocates must be prepared for the bone-crushing anguish and despair immigrants feel during the deportation process, said Robert Vivar, a former deportee now serving as immigration and border missionary for The Border Church, a nondenominational community serving migrants and deportees in San Diego, Calif., and Tijuana, Mexico.
Robert Vivar
“One of the big problems when you’re deported is that you don’t accept where you’re at and you try to look for ways to be able to return back. And, unfortunately, many times you don’t seek to return legally, but rather you seek to return in an illegal manner, which can really be frustrating and dangerous,” the California resident said.
He advised immigrants facing deportation to strengthen their relationships with Christ and to not lose hope. “You need to be a productive member of your community so that you are not a burden on your family. And at the same time, you need to keep your mind occupied on positive things because of the trauma, the depression, the anxiety that you go through. It is very easy to fall into ill relationships and into negative things that will only hurt any opportunity for you to be able to return legally to the country that you left behind.”
Michael Woolf
But there seems to be little chance deported individuals will be able to return to the United States under the current administration, Vivar said. “The main part of Border Church is to bring hope and increased faith to families that have been separated by the broken immigration system, and also to bring hope to our migrant community seeking protection in our country.”
One action churches can take is to embrace the sanctuary movement by declaring all properties off limits to federal agents and law enforcement, said Michael Woolf, senior minister of Lake Street Church, a sanctuary congregation in Evanston, Ill.
“It certainly means opening your church up as a place of safety and refuge during times of crisis. It means saying, unequivocally, that you’re not going to cooperate with ICE. This is a theological claim about the belovedness of those who are facing deportation, and it’s about their worthiness, their inherent human dignity that can’t be stripped by ICE.”
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