Most days, ICE agents patrol the halls of San Diego, California's Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building's 4th floor, which houses eight immigration courts. But On June 20, World Refugee Day, while two immigration cases were heard, agents were nowhere to be found following a clergy delegation led by Bishop-elect Michael Pham.
Pham, a former refugee who fled Vietnam in 1980 at the age of 13, told The Times of San Diego that ICE agents were "standing there covered with masks as we walked toward the courtroom. Eventually the ... agents kind of scattered and went away. No wonder people come in fear."
"Like the story of Moses and Exodus, the Red Sea parted," Scott Reid of the immigrant-aiding San Diego Organizing Project told The Times of San Diego.
"We've never seen the hallways cleared out so quickly," another observer told outlet.
That morning, two cases were heard by Judge Catherine "Cate" Halliday-Roberts. Pham and other clergy members attended the hearings. Both cases were continued, meaning the trials were postponed to a later date.
"Our presence made a difference," Jesuit priest Scott Santorosa, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in San Diego, told The Times of San Diego.
The clergy's attendance at the San Diego courthouse comes after Pope Leo's First U.S. Bishop called upon priests, deacons, and ministry leaders across the Diocese of San Diego to escort asylum seeks to court on World Refugee Day.
In a joint letter stating their intentions to stand alongside immigrants at hearings that day, Pham and Reverends Ramón Bejarano and Felipe Pulido, said "people of faith stand with immigrants and refugees."
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