Episcopal Diocese Defends Migrant Shelter, Citing "Jesus" and "Constitution"

On March 11, the Department of Homeland Security sent the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande a letter insinuating illegal activities at a diocesan shelter, including human trafficking.

The letter, sent by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s acting administrator, Cameron Hamilton, states that the Department of Homeland Security, of which FEMA is a part, has “significant concerns” about organizations receiving FEMA grants using those funds to engage in or facilitate “illegal activities.”

Hamilton wrote that such organizations, such as the diocese’s migrant shelter, “may be guilty of encouraging or inducing an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States” and “transporting or moving illegal aliens, harboring, concealing or shielding from detection illegal aliens or applicable conspiracy aiding or abetting.”

In an online video posted on March 14, Bishop Michael Hunn of the Rio Grande diocese said the letter amounted to a not-so-subtle accusation that the diocese was engaged in human trafficking. Hunn did not share the letter with Sojourners. (The Denver Post published a copy of a similar letter.)

“I’m insulted by the insinuation that we have been involved in anything illegal or immoral,” Hunn said in the video after reading excerpts from the letter.

Interfaith Action at American Borders

Every border has a story. Every dividing line on a map, every marker and monument and wall and fence comes with a narrative.  

And at the U.S./Mexico border, that story is an increasingly international and interfaith one.  

Not only are people on the move arriving at the U.S.’s southern border representing a broader swathe of global society and the world’s religions, but organizations across a range of faith traditions are teaming up to provide for their needs — both immediately and in terms of securing their rights to movement and to seek asylum once they arrive safely in the country.  

“An increasingly interfaith affair”  

Rick, 46, a San Diego resident who volunteers with various organizations at the U.S. border with Baja California, Mexico, said he’s noticed the uptick in migrants with backgrounds he would not necessarily expect. 

“I mean, across the years, it’s traditionally been a lot of people from across Latin America — Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala,” he said, “but nowadays, my Spanish is pretty useless. 

“People from all over the world are making their way here,” he said.  

In spring 2024, Rick regularly came down to the Iris Ave. trolley station in South San Diego — just 3 miles from the San Ysidro Border Crossing — to hand out waters to new arrivals waiting for onward transportation in the shade of eucalyptus trees next to the station.  

When he showed up, Rick said he was surprised by the people he met there. “There were Sikhs from Punjab, Buddhists from China, Christians from Haiti, Muslims from Bangladesh and Afghanistan,” he said, “it was like the United Nations in South San Diego.” 

That was quite the shift, Rick said. “It used to be mostly Catholics, a smattering of Pentecostals and Protestants; I met a few Mormons from Mexico a few years ago. But now, it’s an increasingly interfaith affair,” Rick said.

How migrants are changing Europe's churches

“Each apartment block has its own community, its own dynamics, its own culture,” Ute Paul said as she walked among the Plattenbau — formidable apartments built of prefabricated concrete slabs —  in Gotha West, a working-class suburb of the central German city, Gotha.

Originally constructed as a planned housing development (Neubaugebiet) during the waning years of the socialist East German Republic, the district is now home to migrants who have made their way from Ukraine and Eritrea, Afghanistan and Romania, Nigeria and Syria. Many of them are relocated to places like Gotha West, where they often end up grouped with their fellow countrymen and forming cliques based on shared language, religion, or background.

On Coburger Place, a centrally located square with shops and a small casino that serves as the neighborhood’s main hangout spot, there is a small storefront with the words, “from dark to light” written across its windows.

The shop is the principle gathering place for the Mustard Seed District Mission (senfkorn.STADTteil Mission). Since 2015, pastor Michael Weinmann and his wife Christiane have been leading Mustard Seed and “experimenting with new forms of community in Gotha-West,” said Paul, who joined the pair along with her husband, Frank, in 2021.

Focusing less on events and more on “relationships, ‘accidental’ encounters, and natural life in the district,” Paul said the mission has little to show in terms of deliverables or church attendance.

Instead, reflecting the challenges and opportunities of migrant mission in Europe, Paul said Mustard Seed has been able to “create a vibrant network of relationships between people of different backgrounds and origins from across the world.”

Along the way, Paul said the Mustard Seed team has had to unlearn a lot of what they thought they knew about mission and adapt to the everyday realities of those God has given them to serve.

Since the unprecedented migratory movements that shook Europe in 2015 and 2016, an increasing number of Christian organizations have had to reshape their institutions and rethink the identity of Christianity from below.

Mustard Seed is just one example of how the movement of asylum seekers, economic migrants, and internally displaced persons has created new commissions and institutions to meet changing facts on the ground across the continent.

Migration to Europe is not a recent phenomenon. But since 2013, some 17.2 million migrants from outside the European Union (EU) have come to Europe, finding their way to places like Germany and Spain, the UK and Italy. As they arrived, they have sparked public discourse around European culture, values, and religious identity.

Amid the debate, churches have played key roles in the process of integration. Beyond offering religious hospitality, a 2018 study from the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe (CCME) found how congregations provide “symbolic resources for positive self-identification and opportunities for interaction with others as well as crucial services.”

The result has been a transformation of the churches themselves.