The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego has launched a new interfaith ministry to accompany refugees and asylum seekers at immigration court.
The program is in response to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tactic of arresting refugees and asylum seekers after their immigration hearings in order to quickly deport them.
The ministry is called "Faithful Accompaniment in Trust & Hope," or FAITH. It's a follow-up to the effort that was started six weeks ago when Bishop Michael Pham and other religious leaders accompanied refugees to their immigration hearings. Though there were ICE agents present, no one was detained that day.
Pham said he felt compelled to act after seeing the raids in El Cajon and North Park. It reminded him of the regime he fled in Vietnam as a young boy.
"Growing up living under a different regime, who were very oppressive, who did the same raids as what we saw here," he said. "That's why it takes another level of how serious this is for me."
Clergy and lay parishioners started regularly accompanying refugees and asylum seekers to court this week. Their hope is that with clergy present, those courthouse arrests will stop. The Rev. Hung Nguyen from Our Lady of Guadalupe thinks their presence has helped, if for nothing else, to provide comfort.
“If that give them a sense of hope. if that give them a sense of inner peace to find a way to move forward. That's a big win,” he said.
On the ministry's first day Tuesday, ICE agents detained two people after their hearings. Nguyen said the sense of hope they had that day turned into a "heaviness" seeing people detained. On Wednesday, a Vietnamese couple and another woman were detained after their hearings, Nguyen said.
The ministry is an interfaith effort, and the San Diego Organizing Project has also partnered with the diocese. Gloria Morales-Palos is with SDOP, and said the issue is personal to her. She crossed the border illegally in the mid-1980s as a teenager. She gained her legal status in 1995 through the Suspension of Deportation program.
"Thirty years ago, I could have been deported. I could have been separated from my family," Morales-Palos said. "This immigration system was broken back then. Right now is beyond broken."
She called the courthouse arrests "abuse."
"The lack of respect and dignity for these people that they're only probably guilty of is coming to the United States and seeking for our very life," she said. "For opportunity that many of them are fleeing from a very violent situation."
Last Friday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's decision that put a stop to ICE agents from roving around areas with high concentrations of immigrants to arrest people. The courts ruled agents must have probable cause to arrest people they believe are in the country illegally.
Court observers said it’s too early to tell if the 9th Circuit’s ruling is having an effect. Nguyen said the ministry will continue to attend immigration court hearings to give support throughout August, or longer.
"We are committed to carry this ministry forward," he said. "And so if we need to fill the calendar in September, October, November, we'll be there."
