Immigrants are living in fear. As Catholics, we must respond with love
Immigrants Are Living in Fear. As Catholics, We Must Respond With Love
By Jean Welch Hill | NW Catholic | June 20, 2025
As immigration enforcement intensifies and fear grows within immigrant communities, many Catholic families are being forced to choose between practicing their faith and risking deportation. The sacred spaces of churches are no longer guaranteed sanctuaries, and mixed-status families are increasingly avoiding sacraments like Mass out of fear.
Jean Welch Hill, Executive Director of the Washington State Catholic Conference, calls Catholics to act with humility, compassion, and courage — reminding us that our faith demands love for the vulnerable and advocacy for the dignity of all people.
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While our Catholic bishops in Washington engage in a legal challenge to the state’s new law requiring clergy to violate the seal of confession, another significant challenge to the rights of Catholics to practice their faith is growing nationwide: the fear among immigrants of being detained by immigration law enforcement officers while at Mass or participating in other sacraments or church activities.
The fear is not unfounded. Consider for a moment a high school student who was born in the United States to parents from another country. Based on a newly passed law, the parents, one of whom works at a factory and the other in a long-term care facility, register with the federal government to avoid a $5,000 fine. Imagine the student receives a panicked message during class that one parent was picked up at work that morning, and no one knows where the parent is. Imagine, by the next evening, the family learns the parent has been sent to a prison in another country, a prison known for its abusive and life-threatening conditions, without an opportunity to challenge the detention. The family wants to attend Mass to seek comfort in their faith, but they fear for the safety of the remaining parent, even within the local parish.
This scenario is possible given just a few recent federal actions:
Using the Alien Enemies Act to justify detaining and deporting individuals with or without legal status – and without due process,
Ramping up expedited removal processes and stationing ICE agents around courthouses, further discouraging individuals from exercising their due process rights.
Individuals fleeing known dangers in their home countries have had their temporary protected status revoked despite there being no improvement in the security situations within those countries.
Congress enacted registration requirements on immigrants that include a $5,000 fine and incarceration for failing to register as an “alien” or facing deportation if a person does register.
The federal government rescinded its policy of respecting the sanctity of certain places, such as churches, permitting law enforcement to enter these spaces.
It is within this context that we also see noticeable changes in participation in the sacraments by individuals whose first language is not English. As a recent ecumenical study revealed, one in five Catholics are either vulnerable to deportation or have a family member who is vulnerable. Families with mixed immigration status, families with legal immigration status and families without legal status may be foregoing or significantly altering the practice of their faith out of fear that they are their loved ones may be subjected to detention by federal law enforcement agents.
The problem isn’t just with government. Anti-immigrant sentiment is also being shared in our pews, further driving our brothers and sisters away from the sacraments. To have a government send in agents to arrest people at Mass is one terror; to have the person to whom you just offered the sign of peace declare you deserve to be deported – despite your years of living and working in the community – is an entirely different horror.
As recently reiterated in a statement from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, our church believes that nations have a right to protect their borders, with respect for the sanctity of human life. We have long advocated for doing so through sensible immigration laws that provide more pathways to citizenship, streamline decades-long processes and recognize the rights of individuals to migrate in search of better lives for their families.
The majority of immigrants in our nation without legal status are not criminals; they are people who have left everything they know to escape from poverty or other threats to life to work hard in our agriculture, construction, hospitality, child- or adult-care facilities or similar industries, raise families in our neighborhoods and contribute to our common good.
As Catholics, we have a moral obligation to counter dehumanizing rhetoric against any person or group of persons. We need to practice enough humility to recognize that our pope has spent decades studying Catholic theology in depth and listen when he shares Catholic doctrine on immigration. We need to believe enough in Christ’s love for every person to recognize him in the immigrant and to treat our neighbors with equal love, regardless of their legal status.
At this moment in history, we especially need to accompany those who are scared, suffering and in fear of or experiencing deportation. And we must be advocates with our political leaders to ensure the rights of every human being to practice their faith and participate in the sacraments, as well as to receive due process under our nation’s laws, are upheld.
Jean Welch Hill is executive director of the Washington State Catholic Conference. Learn more about the WSCC at wacatholics.org.