“We were doing something that Catholics have been doing for centuries…which is to bring the presence of Jesus to those who are at the margins,” said David Inczauskis, S.J., one of the faith leaders who participated in a Eucharistic procession on Oct. 11 at a Chicago-area Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center. Father Inczauskis and a delegation of other clergy and Eucharistic ministers were turned away by officials at the facility in Broadview, Ill.

“We’re bringing attention to a deep problem, which is the lack of transparency,” he said, noting that the Democratic Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth were prevented from visiting detainees in the Broadview facility.

The entire event would have been “rendered unpolitical,” Father Inczauskis said, if ICE officials had allowed ministers in to share Communion with detainees since “we were simply doing what the Catholic Church always does.”

Following the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, Catholics around the country have been organizing prayerful demonstrations for immigration justice. The Broadview Eucharistic procession, organized by the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership, a Chicago faith-based advocacy group, was one example. 

Father Inczauskis described how fear and isolation were descending on immigrant neighborhoods across Chicago, prompting the procession. “I’m talking with pastors around the city of Chicago who have large migrant communities,” said Father Inczauskis. He said they told him that Mass attendance has dropped by “20 to 30 percent” on Sundays “because people are just afraid to leave their homes.”

The day after the procession, ICE agents were observed outside of St. Jerome’s Catholic parish on Chicago’s North Side as a Spanish-language Mass was ending. Ushers advised parishioners to wait for the agents to leave. 

“There’s a sense that these ICE agents know where some of these undocumented Catholics are uniting in prayer and are kind of using that as a way of targeting [them],” Father Inczauskis said. He described a mood of “threat and devastation” in communities that are being “torn apart by ICE…homes are being invaded, almost in military style, as migrants and people of color are being targeted.”

In a statement reported in The Chicago Tribune, officials from the Department of Homeland Security denied that Border Patrol targeted St. Jerome’s or that it authorized enforcement actions at the church.

While the first Eucharistic procession was denied entry to the Broadview processing center, C.S.P.L. is planning a People’s Mass at the facility on Nov. 1, All Saints’ Day. It plans to again attempt to send a delegation to bring the Eucharist to detainees.

Joanna Arellano-Gonzalez, a C.S.P.L. director, said that the upcoming effort has received support from Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson. In a letter released on Oct. 23, Ms. Thompson asked the Department of Homeland Security to allow a small group into the facility to provide Communion, according to Michael Okińczyc-Cruz, executive director of C.S.P.L. 

Mr. Okińczyc-Cruz said that the organization attempted to coordinate the visit through D.H.S. prior to the first procession, although D.H.S. Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that Eucharistic ministers from the group could not be allowed in because of “safety” considerations given the “short notice” ICE officials received, according to The Chicago Tribune. This time, organizers have attempted to comply with D.H.S. conditions through a formal written request sent on Oct. 24, more than a week before the planned event.

Although The Chicago Tribune reported that a D.H.S. official said “a week [in advance] is sufficient” for visitation requests, according to policy posted on the ICE website visitors must submit written requests 14 days in advance.

According to Father Inczauskis, the Mass on Nov. 1 will be celebrated by Bishop José María Garcia-Maldonado of the Archdiocese of Chicago. Karl Kiser, S.J., provincial of the Jesuits’ Midwest Province, and JoAnn Persch, R.S.M., a longtime Chicago-area immigration advocate, will also attend.

Father Inczauskis hopes to see a broad coalition of Catholics and Christians join the ecumenical procession, building on the strong turnout experienced at the first event. He hopes that this time, participants will be allowed to provide spiritual care to detainees at the facility.

“One Church, One Family”

C.S.P.L. is not the only Catholic coalition focusing attention on abuses immigrants are suffering under the Trump administration’s mass deportation policy. The Ignatian Solidarity Network and 16 other partner groups organized the “One Church, One Family: Catholic Public Witness for Migrants” campaign to bring Catholics across the country together in prayer and solidarity with immigrants.

“Welcoming the stranger is not about partisanship; it’s about discipleship,” said Jon Gromek, the director of justice formation and action for I.S.N. “The church’s teaching here is clear and timeless: to accompany and defend the vulnerable is a biblical mandate.”

A binational Mass held along the U.S.-Mexico border was the inspiration for the campaign, according to Mr. Gromek. Bishops from both nations concelebrated in solidarity with migrants at the Mass. The event had been organized by the Kino Border Initiative, a Jesuit ministry that works in the borderlands.

The first national observance sponsored by One Church, One Family was held on Oct. 22. A second day has been planned for the feast of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, the patron saint of immigrants, on Nov. 13.

Mr. Gromek said that Pope Leo XIV’s first apostolic exhortation, “Dilexi Te” has helped inspire organizers. He quoted the pope, who wrote, “in every rejected migrant, it is Christ himself who knocks at the door of the community.” (No. 75)

Kevin Appleby, a senior fellow at the Center for Migration Studies, outlined Pope Leo’s approach to conflict over immigration. He explained that Catholic teaching is “not opposed to deportations per se, but they have to be done in a way that upholds human rights and human dignity.”

“In this current deportation campaign, we’re witnessing the unjust separation of families, a lack of due process for immigrants, the racial profiling of immigrants and tactics which are being used to create fear in immigrant communities. These are tactics which the church strongly opposes because they violate human dignity and the sanctity of family unity,” Mr. Appleby said.

He also noted how important immigrants are to the U.S. economy. “The vast majority of immigrants contribute to the well being of this country,” he said, referencing a C.M.S. finding that undocumented workers are crucial components of the fastest growing U.S. economic sectors, like health care and construction.

Local organizers planned over 50 gatherings for the first “One Church, One Family” day in October across 22 states, Washington D.C., and even Canada and South Africa, according to Mr. Gromek. These events took different forms. “Some [were] hosting prayer services near detention centers, others [were] coming together for public rosaries, school-wide liturgies or educational events on parish grounds,” he said.

I.S.N. has been providing parishes, schools and other Catholic groups with resources and guidance to host events he described as “safe, lawful and prayerful.”

A gathering at the Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, N.J, on Oct. 22 featured denunciations of U.S. immigration policy as cruel and unjust. Bethany Welch, S.S.J., a coordinator on peace and justice issues for the U.S. Federation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph, one of the partner organizations behind the national campaign, was in attendance.

A few days before the Delaney Hall event, Sister Welch said, “I don’t see [the demonstration] as political. I do see it as prophetic, and so I would make that distinction. Throughout Scripture, we see prophets who call us to do more. They call us to be better.”

A local organizer working with the campaign, Ann Hillman, the director of campus ministry at Loyola University Chicago’s health sciences campus, spoke about the public witness her team had planned for the campaign’s first effort in October. 

Ms. Hillman described that gathering as an opportunity “to come together in a moment of prayer and solidarity on our campus.”

She said that many of the students and professionals at Loyola University Chicago’s health sciences campus do clinical work with immigrants. Ms. Hillman also noted the Maywood, Ill., campus’s proximity to the Broadview processing center where C.S.P.L.’s Eucharistic procession occurred.

The U.S. Bishops’ Response

U.S. bishops have sent strong messages of solidarity, pushing back against the deportation clampdown, according to Mr. Appleby. “But,” he said, “they probably need to do more to meet the moment, in terms of organizing Catholics to respond and and really being witnesses to being present to immigrants who are in danger of deportation.”

Some of this renewed organizing will be coming through a partnership between C.M.S., the U.S.C.C.B. and the Hope Border Institute, according to Mr. Appleby. “We’re going to have some regional convenings over the next three to six months around the country to educate people on what’s happening, how to respond, etc.”

Mr. Appleby lamented that “a lot of Catholics support what is happening.”

“Hopefully this is a teaching moment,” he said.

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