The impacts of the increased immigration enforcement have not been evenly felt throughout the Washington region or in the city’s suburbs, where there have been fewer federal agents.
A person who answered the phone at St. Gabriel Catholic Church in the Petworth neighborhood of Washington told RNS attendance had been down that weekend, but a person at St. Camillus, a large parish with many immigrants in Silver Spring, Maryland, said attendance had not been impacted.
Debra Anderson, director of communication for the Potomac Conference Corporation of Seventh-day Adventists, told RNS she had reached out to five Washington Seventh-day Adventist churches, including one in the Columbia Heights area, and none had reported significant decreases in church attendance due to immigration fears. Only one saw a slight decrease, but church leaders told her it was not possible to be certain of the reason.
The Rev. Anthony Parrott, co-lead pastor of The Table Church, said his congregation has already seen disruptions due to the police presence. Some worshippers have attended services at the church’s satellite location away from downtown, he said, and others have organized trainings for how best to respond to police actions as bystanders.
The efforts follow a series of public condemnations by religious leaders, including local clergy, of the federal takeover of D.C. police. On Wednesday, a group of bishops, rabbis and pastors signed a joint statement denouncing the influx of law enforcement, declaring “fear is not a strategy for safety.”
“From the White House, the president sees a lawless wasteland,” the statement read. “We beg to differ. We see fellow human beings — neighbors, workers, friends and family — each made in the image of God.”
Signers included the Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, and an array of Jewish, Methodist, Lutheran and Presbyterian leaders in the city.
On Tuesday, a group of faith leaders, including Latino Christian National Network’s the Rev. Carlos Malavé, Congregation Action Network’s the Rev. Julio Hernandez, and Sandra Ovalle Gómez, held a vigil outside immigration court in Sterling, Virginia, instructing attendees to wear white following the tradition of the mothers of the disappeared movement in Argentina’s military dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s.
The group demanded the release of those abducted, detained and disappeared; an end to National Guard participation in deportations; and the opening of court hearings to the public for transparency.
“There’s a lot of fear right now,” said Hernandez.
Many faith leaders aren’t speaking out “because they’re concerned about the impact on their own communities,” he said. “There are people who in the first Trump administration showed up on the streets with us and now who refuse to go out because the fear is so real,” including Black leaders afraid of police brutality.
Hernandez said, “I believe we’re sending people to death sentences” when the U.S. deports them to dangerous homelands or third countries. The Baptist pastor said that he was drawing on the example of the Berrigan brothers, two Catholic priests and anti-war activists during the Vietnam War, to ask himself, “What are we willing to risk at this moment to save lives?”
“This is a time for faith communities and community organizations and labor on all levels to start speaking out because what is happening right now is unjust and unacceptable,” Hernandez said.
This article originally appeared here.
