The immigration debate comes home to Catholic parishes

She brought her children here from her country because she feared gangs would kill them.

“I left because of the delinquency of El Salvador. The situation there is very delicate. A mother has instincts toward her children, and, well, I saw a very dangerous future for them,” Maria Ayala says.

The Salvadoran civil war—which killed some 70,000 from 1980 to 1992, including San Salvador Archbishop Oscar Romero—spawned gang violence by groups like Mara Salvatrucha.

“I was afraid my children would become part of Mara,” Ayala says. She saw many other neighborhood children join the gang. They wound up dead or addicted to drugs.

The civil war also devastated the economy in El Salvador, especially the country’s agriculture. Violence and unemployment, coupled with deteriorating family and social structures, has led many El Salvadorans to flee to the United States.

“Just thinking about going back makes us tremble,” Ayala says. “I’m not going back.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement seemed to have other plans for Ayala, who sewed military vests and backpacks for U.S. troops at the Michael Bianco plant in New Bedford, Massachusetts. On the crisp morning of March 6, 2007, when ICE officers stormed the plant and surrounded Ayala and her fellow workers.

“We turned off our machines, but we were already surrounded by immigration agents,” Ayala says of the raid. “They told us not to run but to sit down. We didn’t know what to do—run, sit, or hide.”

Ayala says she and her coworkers felt as if they were on a dead-end street, not knowing where to go or what was going to happen. The workers went most of the day without food or water, cuffed at the wrists and ankles.

“A worker doesn’t deserve that kind of treatment,” she says, choking up. ICE held Ayala and the others at nearby military barracks overnight. She says she went three days in detention without bathing.

Raids and anti-immigrant laws are spreading fear among the undocumented, says Holy Cross Father Daniel G. Groody, associate professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame and an immigration expert.

“It’s divided families. Fathers were sent back and their kids remained here,” he says. “People were living in the shadows before, but I think now people in some sense are moving into hiding.”

That’s the case with Ayala, who still lives in Massachusetts with her children. She picks up the odd job here and there to provide what she can for her family.

“We will never forget that day,” she says. “We cannot sleep, we get pains, headaches. Our world is uncertain because here we are in the United States, and we don’t know our future.”

A parish opens its doors
Undocumented parishioners of St. Bridget Church in Postville, Iowa stayed in the parish hall for six days after the May 12, 2008 ICE raid in that city.

“They did not leave [the church] because of fear,” Father Paul Ouderkirk, the parish pastor, says of those affected by the invasion of the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant, in which 389 undocumented immigrants were detained. “They were so scared.” More than 400 immigrants found a safe place to sleep at St. Bridget.

“Our church doors were wide open. We housed parishioners and fed them for a whole week, three meals a day,” says Paul Rael, who works in Hispanic ministry at the parish. “And we continue to help them, especially people who are detained or who have detained loved ones.”

At one point the parish was feeding more than 1,000, “morning, noon, and night,” according to Ouderkirk, a tremendous effort sustained by the volunteerism of a few women at the parish. But the positive response was far from universal.

“A certain number are saying they’re criminals—they should be prosecuted,” Ouderkirk says. “My response to that is, ‘They lived here for 10 years, why all of a sudden are you bringing this up?’ Nobody answers that.”

Others have been raising similar questions since ICE increased its enforcement and deportation efforts, especially after the failure of immigration reform legislation in 2007. Over the last five years, the U.S. Catholic bishops have been pushing for a comprehensive immigration reform that would include abandoning the border “blockade” strategy and emphasizing family unity and a broad-based legalization of the undocumented. (See sidebar, page 15.)

An October Zogby poll commissioned by the bishops found that 69 percent of self-described Catholics supported a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. That’s up from 49 percent two years ago, but divisions among Catholics remain.

Steve Skojec, a parishioner at St. Mary Mother of God Parish in Washington, is one of the many Catholics who still doesn’t see it the bishops’ way. He believes the bishops’ position encourages unchecked immigration.

Skojec says some bishops “seek to undermine legislation that limits social services” to the undocumented. In particular he points to Phoenix Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted and Tucson Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas, who publicly opposed a ballot measure that would require individuals to produce proof of citizenship before applying for public benefits. The measure passed.

Skojec believes that “certain bishops” do not sufficiently recognize a nation’s right to control its borders. They “pay lip service to the sovereignty of the state, while placing an inordinately heavy weight on the right of the migrant,” he says.

Groody of Notre Dame has a reply to that: “The claim to sovereign rights must be addressed after the needs of distributive justice are met. That means we really can’t look at immigration as the problem—it’s a symptom of a deeper one.”