In these days of Easter season, we hear lovely readings about Jesus the Good Shepherd. We can imagine bucolic settings of green grass and flowing waters, where this gentle Jesus leads his sheep to a place of rest. Yet, make no mistake, there is also something fiercely protective about the shepherd in the Gospel of John. For danger lurks just outside the sheepfold: “A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy.” This Good Shepherd will not stand idly by and let that happen. This Shepherd, come to find out, lays down his life for his sheep.
Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish, a Catholic parish in Logan Heights that has served immigrant peoples for its 100-year existence, where I am humbled to serve as its pastor, has entered as one of five plaintiffs in a suit against the federal government’s immigration agencies. It is our aim that government actions allowing ICE to enter “sensitive locations” like churches, hospitals and schools to enforce immigration laws be rescinded. Justice Action Center and Innovative Law Lab are co-counsel in this suit.
I do not want to put words in the mouth of Pope Leo XIV, who has not yet had a chance to say much. But every indication we are getting shows he will continue the course of his predecessor, Pope Francis, and therefore ours will be a church for the least and the rejected. One of Francis’ images of the church was that of a field hospital. Such a term conjures up images of canvas tents in war settings, where injured soldiers go for urgent treatment of their wounds. International humanitarian law states that such field hospitals should be shielded from attack. It is only common sense and common decency. And yet, here in the field hospitals of our own churches, we the faithful, each of us in our own way wounded individuals, are not protected.
A few weeks ago, a woman caught me by the side of our church. She looked at me and said, with tears in her eyes, her voice cracking, “Padre, es como que están cazándonos, como si fuéramos animales.” (Father, it’s like they are hunting us, as if we were animals.) It is true. This is what undocumented people are feeling. The nets are closing in on them, the circle is getting tighter, and even their own places of worship are not safe. If we have come to this as a country, that hardworking, religious, family-oriented people are going to be hunted in this land, then can there not be at least one place where they are safe? The place they go to be in that privileged relationship with God, which all of us — Republicans, Democrats, independents and all others — so desperately need? Actual hospitals should be counted among those safe places, obviously, as should schools where our children learn.
The mere fact that ICE has a right to enter religious spaces fuels what Cardinal Robert McElroy termed “the war of terror and fear” which is being waged against our undocumented brothers and sisters, God’s precious people. Just the threat itself is sufficient to have people feel on edge and never at true peace.
The Catholic Church believes a country has the right to protect its borders and to have orderly immigration. But terrorizing hardworking, faithful people is simply unacceptable.
We all the trendy plastic bracelets from a few decades ago, “WWJD,” or “What Would Jesus Do?” While perhaps simplistic, there was something remarkably refreshing and even grounding about those bracelets. What would Jesus do today if ICE officers were to present themselves at the door of his church? I think we all know. He would not allow them to enter; he would do everything he physically could to protect his sheep. He gives an example for all religious leaders to follow. I take my cues from him. The other plaintiffs and I are not standing idly by, allowing ICE to enter our sacred spaces.
Santarosa is pastor at Our Lady of Guadalupe church in Logan Heights, where he resides.
