Immigration crackdown gives Holy Week new meaning at this New York church

USA Today

19-04-2025

Immigration crackdown gives Holy Week new meaning at this New York church
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NEW YORK ‒ The Rev. Juan Carlos Ruiz led a grave procession around a Brooklyn block on Good Friday.
About 60 people ‒ with a mariachi group ‒ walked near the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. That's where Ruiz serves an immigrant, mostly Latino, congregation in the Bay Ridge neighborhood.
The band played somber hymns marking Good Friday, a mournful day during Holy Week. But the procession carried even more weight this year.
On a gray afternoon as people got out of work, they performed the Stations of the Cross, the Christian tradition marking Jesus' persecution and death.
For many in attendance, the commemoration has new meaning amid federal immigration enforcement targeting immigrant communities, including the risk of arrest at a place of worship.
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'Many of the people, you don't see the crosses on them,' Ruiz, a 54-year-old Mexican pastor with peppered hair, said before the procession. 'But they are really being crucified right now.'
Multiple people attending the service said simply being there carries risk amid the immigration crackdown. Some were fearful for friends and family. Others mourned a new era in American immigration policy.
New York City saw an influx of migrants under the Biden administration, in part due to efforts by Republican-led states. Now the Trump administration ushered in a new era of immigration raids, fewer protections from the city and the new fear that churches could be targeted by immigration officials.
President Donald Trump campaigned on tough new immigration enforcement, particularly targeting violent offenders living illegally within the United States. In January, the Trump administration said it removed restrictions that once prevented agents from detaining people at places of worship.
"Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America's schools and churches to avoid arrest. The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense," reads a published Jan. 21 news release attributed to a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson.
Clergy such as Ruiz, who arrived to the United States as a teen, are now shepherding their congregations through the fear of such crackdowns.
'I don't think there's ever been as important a time to be able to show our faith and values more publicly,' the Rev. Chloe Breyer, executive director of the Interfaith Center of New York, said in a phone interview after attending an immigration court hearing. 'What is passed as a strength in our current society is total lawlessness.'
Ruiz's group turned the block, passing row houses and low-rise apartment buildings in a historically white immigrant neighborhood that is increasingly Arab, Latino and Asian.
Breyer said many religious institutions have responded to the immigration crackdown.
In the Bronx, the imam of a mosque took the Quran's call to shelter the stranger and has housed undocumented migrants, Breyer said. St. Edward the Martyr Episcopal Church, where Breyer serves in Manhattan's Spanish Harlem neighborhood, has a legal clinic for asylum seekers and a food pantry. Members of the activist group Jewish Voice for Peace held a Seder meal outside of the federal immigration building in Manhattan protesting the arrest and detention of Columbia student activist Mahmoud Khalil, who is Palestinian.
Stations of the Cross on a Brooklyn block
At Good Shepherd, a woman, who Ruiz said was soon to be baptized, led the group holding a small wooden cross with palm leaves ribboned on it. The first stop on the Stations of the Cross was near the corner of the nondescript church, which has a grayish facade and bright red doors. In Spanish, Ruiz began with the second reading, when Roman officials make Jesus take up the cross as a criminal with observers looking on, according to the Bible.
The Stations of the Cross is normally 14 stations and can take hours. Ruiz cut it down to four stations, stopping at each corner of the Brooklyn block, to read gospels in Spanish and English. Ruiz, a former Catholic priest, said he shortened it so people pay attention as Jesus takes up the cross, receives help to carry the burden, and is stripped of his garments before he dies.
They passed a taco truck, Starbucks and, across the street, a Chinese halal restaurant. To the side, Latino and Asian delivery workers sat on their scooters, swiping their phones for the next gig. Women in hijabs walked around the procession. The mariachi, made up of a dozen young musicians on guitars, horns and violins, played somber notes.
The white robe Ruiz donned is torn at the neck. In 2018, during Trump's first term, New York City police arrested Ruiz and other clergy and city officials when they tried to prevent a local immigrant rights activist from being deported.
At the time, the city was promoting its sanctuary status, even as agents detained people. Recently, Mayor Eric Adams invited Immigration and Customs Enforcement back on to the Rikers Island jail complex. Adams has also sought to loosen the city's "sanctuary" laws that have limited NYPD's cooperation with ICE, arguing the city needed to remove criminals who are migrants.
Ruiz's church has been known for welcoming migrants with food, shelter and services to help start the process of people getting documented or navigating a notoriously complex legal system. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ruiz helped arrange funerals for undocumented people whose family members died from the disease and were left in city morgues.
In New York City, about 40% of the city's estimated 8.2 million people are immigrants, according to a 2023 report. Around 412,000 people in the city don't have lawful status in the country, with many living in the city for years.
The church as a refuge
Since 2022, more than 200,000 asylum seekers arrived to New York City, some arriving by bus as Republican states sought to overwhelm the city's sanctuary status. The city declared a state of emergency, with nonprofits, shelters, food pantries and places of worship opening their doors to help people.
News and videos of arrests have weighed heavy on the congregation, Ruiz said.
Two brothers of Venezuelan families that frequent the church were sent to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center, Ruiz said. Their names appeared on a list of more than 200 Venezuelan men held in the notorious prison, which is how their family found them.
One worked as a delivery man, Ruiz said. Both had tattoos, which the Trump administration has used to label Latino immigrants as gang members.
In past years, Ruiz added, the Stations of the Cross brought people to join them as they went through the neighborhood. Ruiz and others noticed fewer people joined this year.
Ruiz, whose family was once undocumented, recognizes the looks on people's faces encountering police. Or having to work clandestine jobs for low wages.
"The past is very much alive for me," he said.
After the procession, about two dozen people remained for the evening service. Families sat scattered in pews.
To the side, workers readied fresh produce in boxes. The next day, on Holy Saturday, families lined up for meals around the church block.
Contributing: Trevor Hughes, Lauren Villagran and Zachary Schermele, USA TODAY