After a recent Sunday service at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Logan Heights, an older woman pulled Father Scott Santarosa aside. He could see the fear and anxiety in her face.
“She said to me, ‘Padre, están cazándonos como si fuéramos animales,’” Santarosa recalled. “They’re hunting us as if we’re animals.”
It was a shocking statement, but did not come as a surprise to the parish priest.
The church, which largely serves immigrants, had already experienced a drop in attendance this winter. Santarosa heard personally from several members that they were too afraid of immigration enforcement to go to church.
Our Lady of Guadalupe has a long history of helping migrants in crisis. In 2023, amid a historic influx of asylum-seekers crossing the border, the church opened a temporary migrant shelter.
Now the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda, which has shifted enforcement away from the border and into the interior of the country, has hit the church hard.
Families have had their primary income earner arrested by federal agents. Children are having mental breakdowns because their parents were taken to immigration detention centers.
“They feel like they are under persecution, so we want to help them,” Santarosa said.
The biggest needs are legal and mental health services. To meet those needs, the Catholic Church is partnering with multiple service providers to open an immigrant resource center.
When it opens next week, The Pope Francis Center will host community workshops, provide legal consultations and connect families to mental health services. Francis, who died in April, was the first Jesuit pope and a champion for immigrant rights.
“What we want to do here is create a space of hope and a space for welcome," said Brinkley Johnson, the center’s manager. “We might not be able to solve all the problems — in fact, we certainly cannot — and we aren’t able to reduce all the suffering our government is causing. But we want to offer something that is meaningful and worthwhile.”
Johnson is coordinating with organizations like Alliance San Diego, Casa Cornelia Law Center, and the American Bar Association’s Immigration Justice Project.
She has spent months hearing directly from church members to find out what the greatest need is. Mental health services are something that came up repeatedly, especially for mixed-status families where the children might be U.S. citizens, but their parents are undocumented.
“How do you tell your child, ‘Hey it’s possible one day you come home from school, and I’m not going to be there anymore,’” Johnson remembers one parent asking. “How do people manage those conversations? Community members want psychological support for their children.”
Organizers scheduled a soft opening for Monday and a formal grand opening on Feb. 1. The center is funded entirely by private donations, Santarosa said.
Christians targeted
Members of Our Lady of Guadalupe are among millions of Christians in the U.S. who are feeling personally targeted by Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
A report published in March by the National Association of Evangelicals and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops found that roughly one in 12 Christians in the United States is either personally vulnerable to deportation or lives with someone who is.
“If even a fraction of those vulnerable to deportation are actually deported, the ramifications are profound — for those individuals, of course, but also for their U.S. citizen family members and, because when one part of the body suffers, every part suffers with it, for all Christians,” the report states.
Out of all Christian denominations included in the study, Catholics had the highest percentage of members (18%) who are vulnerable to deportation or live with someone who is, according to the report.
In November, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released a letter stating their opposition to “indiscriminate mass deportation of people.”
The group specifically criticized the Trump administration’s “vilification of immigrants.”
“We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement,” the letter states.
Community comes together
The Pope Francis Center will be housed in the church’s former convent, said Father Hung Nguyen, who is the associate pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe and will manage the building’s renovation.
The rooms where nuns once lived are being converted into consultation offices where families can meet with immigration lawyers. The living room will be a community meeting space for know-your-rights workshops. Another room will be converted into a child care center.
One room that won’t be repurposed is the chapel. That space will continue to be used for spiritual healing, Nguyen said.
For people seeking asylum, legal consultations can often be emotionally draining. People have to share traumatic events, and those consultations often end in tears.
“So the idea is that they will be able to come here, sit and pray as they process their experiences,” Nguyen said.
Although Nguyen is quarterbacking the project, a construction crew made up of volunteers is realizing the vision.
Most of the volunteers are members of the church who are sharing their own expertise with the crew. Someone’s older brother is an electrician, someone’s aunt cleans houses, another person’s nephew is in construction.
“People love this community,” Nguyen said. “People love to be of service to the world. They want to leave this place a better place.”
