Catholic leaders analyze the impact of stricter immigration policies on Hispanic communities

(OSV News) — The impact of immigration enforcement — including the ongoing nationwide deportation efforts — is “making life unbearable” for many Catholic families and communities, said a group of panelists gathered at Georgetown University for a recent Latino Leader Gathering, hosted by Georgetown’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life in Washington.

The Dec. 4 gathering brought Catholic leaders and organizers together to assess how current U.S. immigration policies are reshaping daily life for migrants, especially in Hispanic communities across the country. The conversation, as explained by the initiative, focused on the “fear-inducing immigration enforcement tactics,” the separation of families, and racial prejudice “resulting from the violent rhetoric and policing that have accompanied the immigration policies of the last year.”

Christian Soenen, the initiative’s projects manager and the meeting’s moderator, recalled an incident that occurred in September, during the Archdiocese of Washington’s commemoration of the 111th World Day of Migrants and Refugees. A procession began at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart, where, Soenen said, parishioners had recently been intimidated by federal agents near the church.

He remembered that at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, Washington Cardinal Robert McElroy, condemned what he called a “comprehensive governmental assault” meant to sow fear among millions of immigrants, warning that these practices seek to “make life unbearable for undocumented immigrants.”

As a result of the current administration’s immigration policies, which have intensified in a number of areas across the country, “life has changed drastically,” said panelist Roxana Rueda Moreno, community leader of Chicago-based Iskali, a Catholic nonprofit dedicated to forming and empowering young Latino leaders.

“Since the increased immigration enforcement, our communities, our families are living in constant fear and anxiety,” she said. “It’s not a fear of ‘we’re doing something wrong’, but it’s the fear of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

She also shared how parents in Chicago now hesitate to take their children to school, families are choosing to work from home if possible, and routine activities such as going to church are being interrupted to stay safe.

She also pointed out that there are people in detention centers, including pregnant women and older adults, who suffer from a lack of adequate medical care. Two U.S. Senate investigations have detailed these conditions, with the most recent one uncovering “dozens of credible reports of medical neglect and poor conditions in immigration detention centers nationwide,” according to PBS News.

As of Nov. 16, well over 65,000 individuals are in ICE custody, with 73.6% of those detained having no criminal conviction, and many of those with convictions were responsible for minor offenses such as traffic violations, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued, on Nov. 12, a special pastoral message on immigration, urging respect for human dignity and restating Catholic social teaching on immigration, which balances three interrelated principles — the right of persons to migrate in order to sustain their lives and those of their families, the right of a country to regulate its borders and control immigration, and a nation’s duty to regulate its borders with justice and mercy.

Panelist Yolanda Chávez, a theologian and pastoral leader with decades of experience accompanying migrant women in Southern California, said during the Dec. 4 discussion that in addition to a change of migration policies, there “has been systematic violence that has wounded our community from within.”

“When the daily life of a family or community is disrupted, something breaks, and this administration has unleashed not only violence but also racism that destroys the basic trust that sustains any human community,” said Chávez, who spoke in Spanish, with an interpreter.

Chávez, who, after living in Los Angeles for three decades, was deported and now lives in Mexico, joined the conversation virtually. “In my personal case, it stripped me of many things: my job, my history, my home, my community, and my sense of belonging,” she said. “This forces me to rethink where the dignity of human beings really lies,” said Chávez, who — despite being far from her loved ones and the roots she forged over many years — still serves her faith community in LA.

Concluding with a poem of hers, she described a community that has been “persecuted, wounded” and dehumanized. “That community reveals the body of Christ,” she read.

“They are people whose faith is not naive, whose hope is neither emotion nor optimism,” Chavez said. “They are witnesses to how God holds and rebuilds what the system breaks. They are witnesses to the One who sustains Christ’s wounded body today.”

For her part, Rosa Reyes, director of the Dream Partnership at Trinity Washington University, where she provides programming and services to support immigrant students, said that immigration enforcement is affecting everyone “regardless of your immigration status.”

“I think U.S. citizens are also being affected, and are having to walk around with their passports or with copies of their birth certificates or things like that. I think it has impacted the community so much, regardless of their status,” she said.

A recent report by Pew Research Center noted that close to half of the nation’s Latinos (47%) report feeling less safe in their neighborhoods due to the Trump administration’s deportation campaigns. Most Latinos (59%) report having either seen or heard about Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests or raids in their community over the past six months.

Latinos’ daily routines have been impacted, said Pew survey respondents, with 19% recently changing their everyday activities over concerns of being asked to prove their legal status, and 11% reporting they now more often carry documentation proving their citizenship of immigration status. Pew also reported that some Latinos are avoiding local community or cultural events (10%), speaking a language other than English (9%), family and friend gatherings (9%), grocery shopping (8%) and religious services (7%).

Reyes also said that “students are having to face those very difficult decisions, even considering dropping out of school to be together with their families,” and that fear and uncertainty cause them chronic stress that affects their concentration, academic performance, sleep and daily life.

She recommends establishing predictable routines, creating emergency plans, connecting with legal and community resources and fostering a sense of community and support.

In this regard, panelist Paula Fitzgerald, who has been recognized for her work in defense of immigrants, agreed that, with the increase in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity, the immigrant community she serves in Washington, Maryland and Virginia is experiencing growing fear and is in a state of constant alert.

Fitzgerald is the executive director of “Ayuda,” an organization that works to increase the availability of direct legal, social, and language services for low-income immigrants annually. She pointed out that the legal protections previously in place for schools and places of worship have been weakened, citing the Trump administration’s rollback of a policy that prohibited immigration enforcement in sensitive locations, such as churches, schools, and hospitals.

She also noted that, despite years of working with authorities to protect the community, those protections have rapidly been lost, noting that ICE arrests in the District of Columbia area rose from about two per month between 2023 and 2024 to approximately hundreds per month since August 2025.

There is a significant increase in urgent cases involving detained clients who need immediate legal assistance and quick access to accurate information, while organizations that provide legal and social aid are facing funding cuts, which makes their work even more difficult, Fitzgerald added.

“The anxiety of our clients is through the roof, and it’s very difficult to advise people. We serve a lot of victims of crime, and we will, any given week, have a domestic violence survivor come in, trying to figure out what to do. Should I report to MPD (metropolitan police department)? Am I safe reporting?” she explained.

“People are hesitating before going to get medical care. People who are trafficked or subject to labor exploitation are not reporting it,” she added. “People who already were in states of vulnerability have become more vulnerable, and that makes our society less safe as a whole.”

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