God raises his border against Trump

They pray, eat, receive a fresh change of clothes, shower and leave. As of this week, migrants who arrive at the Christian El Buen Pastor church in Mesa, Arizona, after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without a visa, can only stay a few hours, barely enough to buy a bus or plane ticket and continue on their way. “We want them to leave the same day if possible,” says Pastor Héctor Ramírez. Every Thursday he receives a van with migrants released from the ICE detention center, located in Eloy, an hour by road from the church. Previously, they could stay overnight. But since President Donald Trump gave carte blanche to detain migrants in places of worship, schools, and hospitals, which used to be off-limits to raids, the pastor does not want anyone to linger so as not to risk being arrested. Half of the congregation are also undocumented people, some of whom have been in the United States for decades, and out of fear of being arrested they have stopped going to church.

“The strategy of care has changed a lot because we have fewer volunteers. There were volunteers who do not have documents and are afraid to come. They no longer want to help now that [sheriffs and immigration agents] can enter the churches without permission and ask anyone for information,” says the pastor, who has been helping asylum seekers arriving in the city for seven years. “We do not want to put them at risk in view of the fact that at some point, the police could arrive and start asking for documents,” he added in a telephone interview with EL PAÍS.

In addition there are local residents, some of whom, even before Trump took power for the second time, had reported the church’s activities to the police on two occasions: “They begin to spread rumors that people are staying overnight, that we are protecting them, and we do not want to take that risk. There are those who do not like people from other countries coming because they think they may be criminals. Hearing the news, they become racist, even if they are Hispanic or from any other nation, and they turn against the migrants who are arriving.” Another measure that the El Buen Pastor church has taken is to resume religious services via Zoom and Facebook Live, which began during the pandemic. “We put the members of the congregation at risk by asking them to come to the church; I would prefer that they do not come.”

Like Ramírez, religious and spiritual leaders across the country are considering new strategies to help undocumented people in their communities, while condemning the intrusion of ICE agents into their places of worship. Pastor Edgar Vásquez is part of a new task force created by the United Methodist Church to address immigration issues, from public statements to organizing resources to serve communities. For him, claiming that churches, schools, and hospitals harbor “criminals” without visas to be in the U.S. is false: “I take it as an attack, as an accusation against the churches that have provided sanctuary shelters, which has been a Christian tradition in the United States since the 1970s. A place of religious worship is a safe place for a person who is living under persecution, political oppression,” said the pastor, who now serves a congregation in Yuma, Arizona, about 30 miles from the border with Mexico, where the population is a mix of active military personnel and veterans with immigrant families who have worked the lettuce fields for generations.

During Trump’s first administration, Pastor Vásquez experienced the immigration raids that were carried out in North Carolina and remembers how, in 2019, there were undocumented parents who asked him to assume legal powers over the custody of their property and the custody of their children in case they were deported. “It is very sad and unfortunate to see how the most powerful country in the world is using its vast resources, and the army, to persecute immigrant communities. And what is not measured is the impact at the family level, at the level of the social fabric that the communities form. That is incalculable collateral damage and they don’t care,” says the pastor.

Last week, during Trump’s interfaith inaugural service at Washington National Cathedral, Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde asked the president to “have mercy” on undocumented immigrant workers, who are the workforce that powers many industries in the United States. “Millions have put their trust in you and, as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” the prelate told Trump, alluding to his belief that he had been saved from an assassination attempt by divine intervention. But the president, who by that time had already issued several executive orders to tighten immigration policies, criticized the sermon later from the White House: “It wasn’t very exciting, was it? I don’t think it was a good service. They could have done a lot better,” the president replied as he walked with his team to the Oval Office.

Pope Francis has also criticized Trump’s plans for mass deportations. “If it is true, it will be a disgrace, because it makes the poor wretches who have nothing to pay the unpaid bill. It won’t do. This is not the way to solve things,” the leader of the Catholic Church said during an interview with Italian television. A decade ago he also said Trump was “not a Christian” for wanting to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

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