Immigrant churches standing in sacred resistance against Trump’s “shock and awe” immigration policies

“WE ARE FULL of fear, but we are not helpless,” said Giselle, a 40-year-old living in a mixed-status immigrant family in Chicago. “We have the power of God, the power of the church, and the power of the Holy Spirit on our side,” she said.

Giselle is the mother of two children who are U.S. citizens. She is long settled in Chicago, having arrived two decades ago from Michoacán, Mexico. She lives in a three-bedroom apartment in Chicago’s Little Village — known as the “Mexico of the Midwest” or “La Villita” by locals — and works as a bookkeeper and worships at a local Pentecostal church where, she told Sojourners, there are other immigrants without permanent legal status singing next to her on Sundays. She volunteers and donates to local charities and generally tries to be a good neighbor — offering her time, talent, and treasure to others in her little corner of Chicago. Giselle said she has built her life in the U.S. and that her adolescent children know nothing else. “We are proud to be Mexican American, to live life here and be part of this community,” she said.

Like thousands of others across the U.S., Giselle and her family do not know how the Trump administration’s stated mass deportation policies will play out. But as policies are put in place and enforcement efforts ramp up, questions keep running through Giselle’s mind: How will I protect my family? What will happen to my immigration status? How will I be able to seek safety in the U.S.? “These are just some of the questions that handicap my ability to live,” she said.

As the Trump administration continues to implement its mass deportation plans, a swirling vortex of pain, fear, and uncertainty dominates the conversation among immigrants and faith communities across the nation. People of faith are responding with hope, resilience, and a steady resolve to be the best neighbors they can be to immigrants in need.

Their church basement used to host quinceañeras. Now it houses Mauritanian Muslims

“They call me Mom,” said Maria Elena Montalvo, pastor of Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bell, Calif., as she worked with Dioulde and Jallo, two asylum seekers from Mauritania, to mop the floors of the church basement where they have been staying since September 2023.

Dioulde and Jallo are two of 20 Mauritanians living in a space that used to be rented out for quinceañeras in the largely working-class area of southeast Los Angeles, where the population is 89.1 percent Latino. Now, in a space that families used to celebrate their daughters’ 15th birthdays under the sprinkling lights of a chandelier, there are rows of futon-style beds lined up against the walls, with folded Muslim prayer rugs, gallon-sized water bottles, and plastic sandals neatly stacked alongside. (Sojourners is withholding the full names of migrants in this story, at their request, due to the sensitivities of immigration status.)

Showing Dioulde how to work the mop bucket and telling Jallo to get the chicken out of the freezer so it can thaw for dinner that night, Montalvo cuts the figure of a mom giving her kids directions on their chores.

But her daughter, Jennifer Coria, 24, who works at the church, said with a wry smile, “She’s nicer to them than she is to us at home.”

For more than six years, Montalvo’s church has made space available to migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers arriving in Bell from countries in Central and South America and Mexico. But over the last nine months, Mauritanians like Dioulde and Jallo have come to call the 100-year-old church their home as well.

They arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border last summer…

The churches are willing, but the bureaucracy is weak: UK Christians welcome refugees amid frustrations with immigration process

When Wai Lin Wong arrived in Bristol from Hong Kong in April 2021, one of the first things she did was look for a new church.

“I logged onto Facebook; I searched Google,” she said, “and found churches with webpages translated into Chinese, groups of other Hong Kongers, and sanctuaries full of people like me.”

That happened a lot, said Mark Nam, an Anglican priest in Bristol. As the Chinese government clamped down on the democratic freedoms of the former British colony in 2020, thousands of Hong Kongers fled to the UK thanks to a visa programthat allows them to live and work in Britain with a pathway to full citizenship.

Hundreds of churches announced they would welcome the Hong Kongers with open arms. They did. And cities like Bristol have since seen their churches swell with newcomers, Nam said. Anglican parishes, Chinese Protestant churches, and evangelical congregations all grew dramatically in the last year.

“It’s been wonderful to see the welcome,” Nam said last year.

In recent months, UK Christians responded to another influx of refugees, this time from Ukraine.

The Sanctuary Foundation, which supports potential sponsors and assists the government in rolling out its Homes for Ukraine program, said over 2,000 churches, businesses, and schools plugged into their programming or volunteered to help in some way since March.

But in both cases, along with the surge of compassion, support programs, and congregational growth, there have come a host of challenges—from bureaucratic inertia to worrying signs of prejudiced double standards.

Sanctuary Foundation’s founder Krish Kandiah, who has been working with refugees since the 1990s, said his organization has been seeing churches welcome thousands of newcomers from Hong Kong, Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine.

The outpouring of generosity by congregations, individuals, and local organizations has been immense. Amid the rush from Ukraine alone, more than 1,000 UK churches stepped up to host refugees, he said.

However, enthusiasm on the part of Britain’s churches has not always been met with efficiency or empathy by their government.