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Young adult volunteers with Iskali prepare aid for immigrant communities in the Chicago area during Thanksgiving week. (OSV News photo/Corey Castellano, courtesy Vicente Del Real and Iskali)

Encountering Christ in neighbors facing detention, deportation and loss


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OSV News Filed Under: Commentary, Immigration and Migration

During Thanksgiving week, a group of 25 young adults from Iskali went into our neighborhoods carrying groceries, rosaries and a desire to draw close to families shaken by immigration detentions, deportations and loss.

Thanksgiving is a time when many gather around tables filled with family and abundance, yet so many immigrant families in our community are facing empty chairs, empty refrigerators, and fears they never imagined.

These young Catholics chose to spend the day differently: not in comfort, but in proximity with the suffering. We went not to fix, but to listen, to pray and to stand with families whose pain is too often hidden behind closed doors.

One of the families visited was a household suddenly left without its father and husband after he was detained — taken without warning, leaving behind a mother and a daughter with severe autism.

Manuel Gomez and Eduardo Ruvalcaba walked into that home not knowing how profoundly it would affect them. As the mother described the fear and isolation that followed her husband’s detention, they confronted a reality deeper than anything conveyed through news coverage or policy debates.

For Manuel, the encounter stripped away any distance between theory and lived suffering. “Once your eyes are opened to the realness of this situation, they cannot be shut,” he reflected.

He described leaving the home with “a potent cocktail of sorrow, grief, anger and frustration” — not abstract emotions, but responses to a family fighting for stability and hope.

What moved him most was the mother’s courage and determination to care for her daughter alone. “There is a beauty in experiencing the real human experience, in all of its joy and sorrows,” he said. That beauty, he realized, demands responsibility: We cannot witness such pain and remain unchanged.

Eduardo experienced something similar. The volunteers arrived ready to clean and deliver groceries, but the mother simply asked them to sit. She needed someone to talk to — someone to hear her fear, her exhaustion and the overwhelming isolation she faces without her husband and without nearby family. “What really hit me,” Eduardo wrote, “was when I realized she just needed someone to talk to.” But what touched him even more was her unwavering faith.

Despite everything, she spoke with confidence that God was guiding her family. “She truly believes that God is going to get her through this,” he said. “Hearing her talk about her faith with so much confidence inspired me.” Her hope, forged in suffering, became a witness for him.

Another group of volunteers visited a Venezuelan family. Ángel listened as the father spoke about the difficult conditions in Venezuela — families surviving on three dollars a month, children forced to choose between school and work. As he listened, Ángel felt something shift. “It felt like hearing my own parents’ story — the same sacrifices, the same hopes,” he wrote.

The encounter awakened in him a deeper gratitude for his own family and for the sacrifices many immigrant parents quietly endure so their children can dream.

Throughout the evening, every group encountered stories marked by resilience and struggle: families choosing between paying rent or a lawyer, children asking when their fathers would return, mothers carrying tremendous burdens in silence.

This holiday season, when many are celebrating, these families are facing decisions no one should have to make. In each home, our young adults discovered empty plates and refrigerators, but, worse, the empty chairs around the table.

I myself visited a different family that morning, along with three other volunteers. The family’s father, Silverio, had been killed on Sept. 12 by federal officers in an altercation that unfolded as they attempted to detain him.

Entering their home with groceries, I quickly realized that sometimes the only honest response to grief is a tear. There are wounds so deep that the explanation feels hollow. The holidays become painful when the one who should be sitting at the table is gone. In that home, I understood again that true accompaniment is to be able to feel each other’s pain.

By the end of the morning, we had delivered food, prayed with families, played with children, met pets and shared tears.

As we enter this season of Advent, Iskali is forming a support group for families affected by detention, deportations and fear. Our hope is to be friends to those who feel rejected, targeted and persecuted. The need is too great, and too sacred.

This holiday season, may we remember that Christ came not to be served but to serve and show us the way. May we remember, as Mother Teresa taught, that we belong to each other, and that the suffering of one family is the responsibility of us all.

Many of our neighbors are missing food on the table or loved ones at their side; recognizing them as our brothers and sisters is the first step toward compassion. And as we reflect on these days of gratitude and giving, we might quietly ask ourselves: Who is the neighbor I am being called to notice? Whose story am I being invited to hear? Where is Christ waiting for me — in the stranger, the migrant, the grieving family next door?

We will continue walking with these families because love demands presence. And we know that in every home we enter and in every story and every tear, we encounter Christ himself.

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