On June 6, Father Brendan Busse, the pastor of Dolores Mission Church, was with families and students at the church’s parochial school when his phone “starts buzzing, buzzing, buzzing,” he recalls. He learned from a text that immigration agents were arresting workers at a garment manufacturer in Downtown LA. 

“I had started my day at our eighth grade graduation, and ended the day picking up flash grenades off the ground,” he says. “They had been thrown at a crowd of people who were just trying to get to their families.”

By the time Father Brendan arrived at the scene, family members, lawyers and others had surrounded the building. Community members were trying to get inside the gates as ICE agents tried to keep people out. Father Brendan was standing next to a young woman at the gate when an ICE agent grabbed her.

“Myself and another volunteer locked arms with each other,” he says, “trying to pull her back — keep her, screaming, ‘Don’t take her, don’t take her.’” 


Father Brendan Busse holds a spent flash-bang grenade he picked up during the June 6 ICE raids downtown. Photo by Brandon R. Reynolds.

Since the ICE raids began in June, faith leaders have become politically visible, standing alongside traditionally secular social justice organizations. For Father Brendan, that has meant stepping literally into the middle of the fray. But that’s the kind of conflict that Dolores Mission Church has been involved with in one way or another for decades. 


The Dolores Mission Church, in the heart of Boyle Heights, isn’t that large, but in terms of its support of immigrants, its influence is outsized. Photo by Brandon R. Reynolds.

It’s perhaps most famous for being the birthplace of Homeboy Industries, the gang rehabilitation project that has since gone national. But the church has been a sanctuary for immigrants for 40 years, and has spun off a grade school and several grassroots organizations, like Proyecto Pastoral, that focus on everything from education to homelessness. 

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Its politics are written into the fabric of the place. On the back wall is an illustration of Oscar Romero, the priest assassinated in El Salvador in 1980 for his outspoken views on social justice. On the front wall, above the altar, is a large cross, painted with images of a U.S. Army helicopter bombing villages on the right arm and a farmer on the left.

“Sometimes people come in and they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s not very traditional,’” says Father Brendan. “I want to remind them: It’s traditional. It might not be typical, but you got hell on one side, and you got what a kingdom of God might look like on the other side, and that’s as traditional as it gets.”


Father Brendan Busse stands in the plaza of Dolores Mission Church. Behind him are cots that are brought into the chapel nightly for the Guadalupe Homeless Project. Photo by Brandon R. Reynolds. 

“Dolores Mission is a special place,” says Isaac Cuevas, director of immigration affairs for the LA Archdiocese, which serves Catholic masses in 40 languages to 1.4 million people across the region. “It’s in the heart of a neighborhood that had seen its fair share of ups and downs over the course of decades in this city. And it’s always been a beacon of hope for people — not just the local people in the neighborhood, but people that come in from all over.”

Father Brendan, 47, is a Jesuit priest born and raised in LA. He’s been at Dolores Mission for eight years, and pastor for the last three. 

“Since I didn’t really have a vision as a child of ‘I want to be a priest,’ even the day of my ordination, and even till today, I can’t tell you I had a very clear vision of what it means to be a priest,” he says. 

But he always knew it came back to community — the immediate Boyle Heights parish, but also the larger interfaith community.

“Since I’ve been ordained, and because of the community organizing work I’ve done, it’s been a lot of grace, learning from the interfaith community — rabbis and imams and other pastors and priests. What is the vocation that we live as religious leaders? How does that call us to be present in public moments like the one we’re living through now?”


Supporters at a prayer vigil and march lay flowers at the loading dock of the Metropolitan Detention Center. Photo by Daniella Lake.

That interfaith community was on display at a prayer vigil organized by LA Voice last week in front of the federal building downtown.

Speakers of various religions and backgrounds stood on the back of a truck, just hours after ICE agents poured out of another truck to arrest people in front of a Home Depot. Then they marched around the federal building, led by Busse and a few other leaders, and around the Metropolitan Detention Center, where flowers were laid and speeches given.


Father Brendan Busse (fourth from left) leads an interfaith march around the Metropolitan Detention Center. Photo by Brandon R. Reynolds.

Father Brendan thinks the vigils matter, but he also believes the most important work for him may not be where there are peaceful songs and chants, and instead where there’s chaos and yelling and guns.

“Being between people who are actively in some sort of conflict brings a different quality of attention and conversation, and I hope, a possibility for some sort of understanding of what’s happening,” he says. “Even if there are consequences to standing in that place, there’s clarity: There’s no option to stand in any other place.”


Father Brendan Busse addresses marchers in front of the Metropolitan Detention Center. Photo by Daniella Lake.