By Heidi Perez-Moreno
heidiperez-moreno@borderbelt.org
As a Baptist youth minister, L.S. is used to kids opening up about their hopes and dreams—and their fears. A Latina girl recently told the youth group she was scared federal immigration officials would detain her father, which sparked a bigger conversation about the cruelties of deportations.
Attendance is down among Latino worshippers at L.S.’s church in southeastern North Carolina since President Donald Trump’s administration announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers can detain undocumented immigrants at churches, reversing a longstanding policy that denoted places of worship as safe havens.
Many church leaders across North Carolina say they are hesitant to talk about what’s happening because they don’t want to draw unwanted attention to their immigrant congregants. The Border Belt Independent and The Assembly are not using L.S.’s full name or the name of her church to protect their privacies.
“Even the things I’m saying to you, is this going to cost our kids getting in trouble? Or their families, which would cost us our ministry?” she said. “It makes me very nervous. I’m holding back a little.”
Twenty-seven Christian and Jewish religious organizations sued the Trump administration in February, saying the policy change violates their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 and the First Amendment. The plaintiffs include the North Carolina Council of Churches, the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church headquartered in Charlotte.
Churches across the country are seeing more empty pews, the lawsuit says, as immigrant families avoid congregating. They are also too scared to take part in churches’ social services programs like English classes, tutoring programs, and soup kitchens.
At least one of the congregations within the North Carolina Council of Churches, which was founded 90 years ago to address racial inequality, scrubbed all references to its Latino members from its website and social media, stopped live-streaming services, canceled small group activities, and installed security cameras, according to the lawsuit. The suit does not name the church or its location.
North Carolina’s foreign-born population has grown 763 percent since 1990, and it has been crucial for churches to embrace newcomers, said Jennifer Copeland, executive director of the council.
“It’s a hallmark of Christianity that we welcome all the people around us,” Copeland said, “and it’s especially a hallmark in the scripture that we welcome people who aren’t from around here.”
The rise in the immigrant population has been a boon for churches that were already experiencing a decline in attendance for decades before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, from which many have not seen a return to in-person attendance. Lower attendance often translates to less in the offering plate, which many churches rely on to pay their bills and operate outreach services.
Trump Immigration Orders Fuel Isolation for Immigrant Parishioners
An increase in the Hispanic population has been especially helpful for Catholic churches in rural areas. The Catholic Diocese of Raleigh, which includes 54 counties in eastern North Carolina, said it has expanded mass and outreach efforts to Spanish- speaking members. Some parishes now offer as many or more masses in Spanish than in English.
Churches as sanctuaries
During weekly gatherings, L.S. leads her youth group through dinner and Bible study. She also helps the children practice emotional regulation techniques like deep breathing and meditation to process daunting feelings of anger and fear.
She said she never asks about participants’ immigration status but worries about their future. “I’m going to do everything I can to protect those children while they’re in my care,” she said.
On Trump’s first day in office, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security issued a directive allowing immigration officials to enter and make arrests at “sensitive” areas like places of worship, schools, and healthcare facilities. Previously agents were prohibited from entering such spaces without extreme circumstances or high-level approval.
“It’s a hallmark of Christianity that we welcome all the people around us, and it’s especially a hallmark in the scripture that we welcome people who aren’t from around here.”
Jennifer Copeland, executive director of the North Carolina Council of Churches
During Trump’s first week, ICE arrested more than 4,500 people across the country, including nearly 1,000 who were detained during a Sunday “immigration enforcement blitz,” according to the lawsuit filed by the religious groups. Among them was a Honduran asylum seeker wearing an ankle monitoring device while awaiting a hearing in his case, who was arrested during a church service in Georgia. ICE agents explained they were “looking for people with ankle bracelets,” the lawsuit says.
ICE field offices are expected to meet a quota of 75 arrests each day, “a much higher rate of arrests than previous administrations,” according to the lawsuit.
In a statement announcing the policy change on Jan. 21, the Department of Homeland Security said federal immigration agents can more easily detain undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes. “The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.”
Churches have long served as sanctuaries in communities. Some served as shelters for enslaved people in the 1800s. In the 1960s and ’70s, some protected draft resisters during the Vietnam War.
During Trump’s first term, several churches offered sanctuary to immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. José Chicas, a Salvadoran immigrant who faced deportation orders despite regularly checking in with ICE, spent more than three years in a Durham Baptist church. Juana Luz Tobar Ortega, who sought asylum after emigrating from Guatemala, spent more than four years at an Episcopal church in Greensboro after receiving a 30-day deportation notice in 2017.
Growing support for Trump
While some churches are pushing back against new immigration policies, support for Trump has grown among Christians.
Trump won 88 percent of the vote among white evangelical Protestants last fall, up from between 76 percent and 81 percent in 2020, polls show. He won 53 percent of the Catholic vote, a 3-point increase from 2020, according to the National Catholic Reporter. While Latino Catholic voters picked Kamala Harris, their support for Trump grew 11 points over 2020, a Pew Research Center analysis of results found.
Catholicism is the largest religious affiliation among Latinos in the United States. But Brandon Bayne, a religious studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, cautioned against lumping their priorities in with a larger voting bloc. Like others, Latinos’ political views are shaped by their home countries, generational experiences, socioeconomics, colonization, and racial oppression, he said.
“I’m going to do everything I can to protect those children while they’re in my care.”
L.S., youth group leader
Trump Immigration Orders Fuel Isolation for Immigrant Parishioners
Immigrants who fled oppressive governments in places like Cuba or Venezuela might be more likely to support Republicans in the United States because of the false narrative that Democrats embrace communist ideals, Bayne said.
“That has more to do with the branding of Harris as a ‘communist,’ and the way that so many Latinos in the U.S. come from countries where that sort of tarnishing of someone as being a socialist or communist comes with all sorts of memories of civil wars and dictatorships,” he said.
The Catholic dioceses of Raleigh and Charlotte said in a joint statement that immigration is not just a policy issue but a moral concern. They said they advocate for compassionate reform that supports those already contributing to society “while respecting immigration laws and the need for secure borders.”
Catholic Charities will continue to provide essential services, including food assistance and legal support through accredited representatives, the dioceses said: “It is the position of the Catholic Church that pastoral, educational, medical and social services provided by the Church are never conditioned on legal status.”
Keeping families safe
The A.M.E. Zion Church, a historically Black church headquartered in Charlotte with about 1.5 million active members nationwide, said in the lawsuit that it is committed to serving people “regardless of race, creed, color, faith, or national origin, including immigrants lacking legal status.”
Many of its 1,600 congregations are in communities with large numbers of immigrants, according to the lawsuit: “Since the rescission of the sensitive locations policy, congregations have reported a decrease in worship attendance, with congregants conveying that they are now afraid of going to church due to the imminent risk of an immigration enforcement action.”
One of the 628 churches that make up the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church is next to an ICE office, and another is “in an area that has seen large scale raids and detentions by ICE in the past,” the lawsuit says.
Copeland said many churches began to see a decline in attendance after Trump took office. She said the policy change allowing immigration officers in places of worship came as a “mild surprise,” but not a shock. The changes are hard, she said, especially for immigrant church-goers.
“They’re under the threat of being found in places where they would typically seek community and assume safety,” she said.
L.S. said her church continues to think about how to keep families safe. “I would hate for my kids to stop coming because they don’t feel safe here,” she said. “Not because they won’t feel safe being with us, but simply safe now that they may be exposed.”
