This is hitting close to home. We’re seeing it here in Florida too.
From Angelus:
In the months since the November 2024 elections, Isaac Cuevas has gone from parish to parish saying the same things at educational workshops for immigrants.
Amid concerns that the new Trump administration would toughen immigration laws and ramp up deportations, Cuevas, who works as director of immigration and public affairs for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, invited anxious parishioners to take a “Know Your Risk” approach to clear up misinformation and false rumors about immigration enforcement.
“Every time I gave this presentation, it was like, look: ‘These are the priorities that ICE (U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement) focuses on. They don’t go out on the streets, and they don’t pick people up because that’s racial profiling.’ ”
But Cuevas would end every presentation with a disclaimer: “This is what we know today. This can all change tomorrow.”
Sure enough, it did.
Since the first June 6 raids in downtown LA’s Fashion District, all that guidance is “out the window,” Cuevas said, as immigration agents raided garment factories, car washes, and store parking lots in search of people without legal status to arrest and deport.
The sweeps represent a shift from the Trump administration’s previous policy of targeting undocumented immigrants with criminal backgrounds for arrest and deportation.
In some majority-Hispanic neighborhoods, checkpoints have been set up on city streets, while agents have been seen stopping people on sidewalks in seemingly indiscriminate fashion. Parks are empty, as are some stores. Many popular food vendors are missing from their regular spots.
For Catholics, the result has been a climate of fear. Several Los Angeles priests contacted by Angelus noticed fewer parishioners at daily and Sunday Masses in the week after the initial June 6 raids. Retreats and ministry meetings were canceled. At least one parish had to postpone first Communions.
“It feels like COVID again. People are hiding,” said one priest who serves in a parish in a heavily Latino suburb of LA.
To make people feel safe at his parish, during Masses a team of parish staff with walkie-talkies lock entry points to the parish property — parking lot gates, church doors — after the First Reading.
“If someone wants to get in [for Mass] after that, they have to knock, and if they’re not ICE, we let them in,” said the priest, who requested anonymity to protect the identity of his parish. Some neighboring parishes in the deanery have followed similar procedures, the priest said.
