A crisis of faith: ICE raids force some churches to take 'extraordinary' action

LOS ANGELES — As word spread among Catholics that immigration agents were visiting places of worship to carry out deportations, the pews inside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels Catholic Church in downtown Los Angeles became less and less crowded.

Isiah, a devout Catholic, was so frightened he stopped attending weekly Mass for fear that he could be swept up in the raids. Isiah, who declined to provide his last name to The Times because of concerns about his immigration status, prayed the rosary as a substitute for two weeks before his faith brought him back to church.

“Church is not a place for threats,” he said Thursday in Spanish.

A month of sweeping immigration enforcement actions has sent people underground, leaving businesses empty and upending daily life across Southern California. It’s also sparked a crisis of faith for many Catholics who have spent their lives worshiping at Sunday Mass and are now questioning whether it’s safe to connect with God in such a public space.

In an extraordinary move this week, Bishop Alberto Rojas of the Diocese of San Bernardino told his diocese of about 1.2 million people that they could stay home on Sundays to avoid Mass as concerns about immigration sweeps loom. It came after arrests near or at local churches.

“I want our immigrant communities to know that their Church stands with them and walks with them through this trying time,” he said in a statement.

Rojas’ decree — the first of such to be given by a Catholic leader in Southern California — underscores the challenge religious institutions are grappling with as the Trump administration carries out its deportation agenda. Religious leaders want people to turn to faith to help them navigate challenging times, but they also don’t want the exercising of that faith to bring harm, experts say.

“Bishop Rojas’ decision signals that the Church’s mission encompasses a higher calling: to embrace the downtrodden, welcome the stranger and distance itself from policies that dehumanize them. The Church sees that mission as a higher kind of patriotism — care for humanity and calling government enact the higher angels of human nature,” said Richard Wood, president of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at USC.

In May, following immigration raids in Nashville, the city’s diocese became the first to say that no Catholic would be “obligated to attend Mass on Sunday if doing so puts their safety at risk.”

It’s a rare step for a bishop to excuse congregants indefinitely from Sunday mass, said Brett Hoover, professor of theology at Loyola Marymount University.

The last time dioceses took such an action was during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when people were instructed to isolate to slow the spread of the virus. Such decrees were also issued during the flu epidemic in the early part of the 20th century. Decrees excusing certain individuals from Mass are generally issued on much smaller scales, giving certain congregants a pass because of issues like illness or natural disasters, Hoover said.

“Bishop Rojas is registering that this is traumatizing for people — seeing families being separated,” Hoover said. “Catholic teaching is very clear that immigration, particularly deportations, should not split up families.”

For Catholics, historically, not attending Sunday Mass was seen as a potentially “very serious sin,” Hoover said. While time has softened the tradition, Rojas’ decree is a way to relieve people from feeling as though they are doing something sinful if they’re afraid to attend Mass.

“Part of it is a symbolic gesture, and then part of it is to kind of relieve the more scrupulous Catholics of their worries about attending Mass,” Hoover said. “It’s very practical and pastoral too.”

Rojas’ decree comes as more bishops have begun to speak out about the administration’s deportation policy in which agents have deployed aggressive tactics and, at times, concealed their identities in ways that have terrified immigrant populations. People have been detained while carrying out typical daily activities in shopping center parking lots, car washes, bus stops and other public spaces.

Since early June, nearly 2,800 people have been caught up in the immigration enforcement push in the L.A. area alone, including U.S. citizens and hundreds of undocumented immigrants without any criminal record.

The raids have hit the Catholic community particularly hard, given that such a large portion of worshipers are immigrants or have family members who were born outside of the United States. More than a quarter of U.S. Catholic adults were born outside the country, compared with 15% of U.S. adults overall, according to data from a 2015 study by Pew Research Center.

Archbishop José Gomez of the Los Angeles Archdiocese, who has long called for immigration reform, criticized the Trump administration in a column published in Angelus last month, saying it has “offered no immigration policy beyond the stated goal of deporting thousands of people each day.”

“This is not policy, it is punishment, and it can only result in cruel and arbitrary outcomes. Already we are hearing stories of innocent fathers and mothers being wrongly deported, with no recourse to appeal,” he wrote.

On Saturday, about 300 Catholics from across the Archdiocese of Los Angeles joined Gomez for Mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City during the sixth annual Archdiocesan pilgrimage to the Basilica, the most visited Catholic pilgrimage site in the world. Gomez addressed the burden of fear and anxiety caused by immigration enforcement during the homily.

“Today we lay all our cares at the feet of Our Lady,” he said. “And if we open our hearts today, if we fix our eyes on Our Lady’s, we will hear her tender words to St. Juan Diego: Am I not your mother? Are you not under my shadow and my gaze? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not sheltered underneath my mantle, under the embrace of my arms?”

In Orange County, Bishop Kevin Vann has not offered a dispensation from attending Mass, but the diocese has started bringing Holy Communion to celebrate Mass in the homes of people who are afraid to go to church.

Vann and his auxiliary bishops posted a letter last month condemning the raids, which they said “invoke our worst instincts” and “spread crippling fear and anxieties upon the hard-working, everyday faithful among us.”

Rojas’ decree comes after he said individuals were recently apprehended at two Catholic parishes in the area, something that intensified fear already being experienced by his congregation — many of whom are immigrants. Some houses of worship say between a third or half of their congregants are no longer showing up in person as the raids continue.

According to the National Catholic Reporter, multiple people were arrested at or near diocese churches on June 20, including a man at Our Lady of Lourdes in Montclair, which ICE officials dispute.

“The accusation that ICE entered a church to make an arrest [is] FALSE,” wrote Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin in an email to The Times. “The illegal alien chose to pull into the church parking lot [and] officers then safely made the arrest.”

Rojas wrote in the decree Tuesday that many churchgoers have shared “fears of attending mass due to potential immigration enforcement action” and that “such fear constitutes a grave inconvenience that may impede the spiritual good of the faithful.”

In lieu of Sunday service, Rojas encouraged his members to “maintain their spiritual communion” by praying the rosary or reading scripture and directed diocese ministers to offer support and compassion to the affected.

On Thursday, a quiet congregation gathered for Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, just blocks away from the site where protesters gathered to oppose immigration raids last month. For some attendees, the spiritual safety of the church has proved to be a physical source of strength amid the uncertainty.

“We hope the collective prayer will bring some kind of change,” said Maria Machuca, whose parents are immigrants.

Santi Camacho, who rarely attended church before the raids, said immigrant communities everywhere are finding themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place: facing possible arrest during worship, or hiding in their homes until they potentially subside.

Still, many members of the church don’t want to stop attending Mass even if leaders give them permission.

“If all you have is family and your family is at the church, you’ll risk it,” Camacho said.

Isiah, who had paused attending Mass during the raids, said church is really the only place he feels safe anymore. He has faith that the spiritual strength found inside the building — a place where he goes to worship God — will shield him from harm.

“My belief is that if the police came, the church and God would protect me.”