Dear Editor:
We, the Heart of Texas Network for Immigrant Rights (HOTNIR) Faith Support Team, are — as people of faith — compelled to condemn the violence against immigrant and mixed-status families we are witnessing in our community.
We recognize people of faith inevitably hold differing views about immigration law, border security and public policy. Faithful people can disagree about how a nation should manage its borders, but our faith does not leave up for discussion the reality that every human bears the image of God and possesses an inherent worth that no government, circumstance or legal status can remove.
Thus, we cannot be silent in the face of what we are witnessing: Adults, children and families being robbed of safety, dignity and the ability to thrive. Immigration enforcement is not removing “violent criminals” or “the worst of the worst” from Waco’s streets. Rather, we are witnessing the lives of community members — adults, children and families — traumatized and stripped of basic human needs and rights.
“We cannot be silent in the face of what we are witnessing.”
National bodies such as the American Academy of Pediatrics continue to sound the alarm about the harms of immigration enforcement being exacted on children and families in the United States. The AAP states:
Separations of a parent or primary caregiver from his or her children should never occur, unless there are concerns for safety of the child at the hand of the parent. Efforts should always be made to ensure that children separated from other relatives are able to maintain contact with them during detention.
Despite warnings from experts and rising moral concerns, we are witnessing significant negative impacts on children and families in Waco due to immigration enforcement.
Data suggest that 23,000 to 24,000 people in McLennan County live in mixed-status families (families including at least one undocumented member). And 97% of all accepted HOTNIR cases involve families with children. In Waco, guns have been trained on adults and children who are American citizens during immigration enforcement operations. We have seen a mother separated from her infant for months. We have seen a minor detained as they got on the school bus.
We have seen a 27-year-old DACA recipient brought to the United States as an infant detained at a regular DHS check-in and deported to a country where they have no support system or knowledge of navigating daily life. We have seen fathers detained and separated from their families. One father of five children, ranging in age from 4 to 18, came to the U.S. legally on a humanitarian visa. He was detained in November 2025 and remains in detention. Another father of four young children was detained while transporting his wife to an emergent medical appointment. Three of the four children were in the car and witnessed his detention. He has been deported.
HOTNIR volunteers and community members have witnessed firsthand the way detainees and their families are being stripped of basic human rights and dignity. Volunteers and families report delays in processing that sometimes result in detainees and deportees disappearing for days before their loved ones know what happened or where they are. Because of equipment and service disruptions, detainees have no guarantee of being able to communicate with family, friends or legal counsel. Water and food are insufficient in detention facilities. In some facilities, each day, a 5-gallon water cooler is placed in a cell with 80 people. Currently, detainees report they are fed twice a day. Detainees released after six weeks have lost, on average, 40 pounds.
The opening chapter of Genesis declares that humans are created in the image and likeness of God. Human worth is not earned; granted by citizenship; or dependent on language, nationality, race, wealth, productivity or documentation. It is bestowed by God.
The Hebrew Bible also repeatedly calls God’s people to remember and care for the stranger. This concern for the stranger appears again and again in the biblical texts, including in the story of Christ. Those who claim the Christian faith must remember the story of Jesus begins with a family fleeing political violence. Before he preached a sermon, healed a body or welcomed a sinner, Jesus was carried across a border by parents seeking safety for their child. The Holy Family knew displacement, fear and what it meant to be strangers dependent on the mercy of others.
“The question is not whether Christians believe in Christ, but whether we recognize Christ when he comes to us in the form of a stranger.”
Later, in Matthew 25, Jesus offers one of the most challenging teachings in all of Scripture: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” In this remarkable passage, Christ identifies himself with those who are hungry, imprisoned, vulnerable and displaced. The question is not whether Christians believe in Christ, but whether we recognize Christ when he comes to us in the form of a stranger.
The affected people in our community are not detainment or deportation statistics. They are mothers and fathers, children and grandparents. They are workers, students, neighbors and friends. They are people whose lives possess sacred worth because they reflect God’s own image.
When individuals and families in our community are stripped of due process, humanity and safety in the process of immigration enforcement, we damage the fabric of our community. When fear becomes the dominant lens through which we view our neighbors, our spiritual vision begins to diminish. In moments such as these, we are called neither to silence nor to outrage alone. We are called to witness and to remind our community that every life is sacred. We are called to affirm: Compassion is not weakness, hospitality is not naïveté, and human worth is not negotiable.
We therefore call upon our neighbors in faith, our congregations, our houses of worship, our civic leaders and all people of goodwill to hear the stories shared in this letter; to reject the language of dehumanization and fear; and to insist on policies, practices and public discourse that honors the dignity of all people.
Let us recommit ourselves to seeing every immigrant not first through the lens of politics, but first through the eyes of faith. For before they are immigrants, they are God’s beloved.
Faith Support Team, Heart of Texas Network for Immigrant Rights