Kevin Kang, a pastor at a United Methodist church about 15 miles north of downtown Los Angeles, was furious last Thursday when he heard that the taco stand next door was raided by immigration agents.
Not only did US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) target his favorite vendors, he said, they had also used the church parking lot to prepare for a raid on a host of popular Mexican food trucks on Foothill Boulevard, a major street in the city of Tujunga.
Kang, who had been protesting all week in downtown LA, rallied congregants to put up signs declaring “ICE activities not welcome” on church grounds. They also procured walkie-talkies for church members to report Ice activities.
“When I look at the scripture, when I look at the message and story of Jesus, he constantly is telling us to defend the most vulnerable,” said Kang, a son of Korean immigrants. “In modern day, we’re all on stolen land, so how can we call somebody ‘illegal’?”
Since federal immigration officers descended on Los Angeles on 6 June, dozens of faith leaders from across southern California – clergy in their long robes, Quakers in Black felt hats, laymen and rabbis – have marched in demonstrations against workplace raids and mobilized to provide services to undocumented immigrants. Many spoke of their faith as a guiding force in their activism and devotion to help the most vulnerable.
“To not speak out is to be complicit in saying that some of us are disposable,” said Eddie Anderson, a senior pastor at McCarty Memorial Christian church in West Adams.
Anderson, who has been protesting in his tailored clergy vest, said faith leaders can play an especially important role in de-escalating tension at demonstrations, serving as a buffer between protesters and law enforcement to prevent confrontations from devolving into violence.
As LA county became a flashpoint in Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, Ice has begun targeting Latino parishes. At Downey Memorial Christian church on Thursday, officers reportedly arrested a man in the parking lot then pointed a gun at senior pastor Tanya Lopez when she questioned why they were arresting him.
The sanctuary status that churches have long held is increasingly under threat. In January, the Trump administration overturned a 2011 policy that limited migrant arrests at “sensitive locations” like schools, hospitals and churches. A month later, more than two dozen Christian and Jewish groups sued the administration over the policy change, but a federal judge sided with the president.
Kang said that while none of his congregants are undocumented, the raids have affected community members who depend on the church’s social programs. (One-third of Tujunga’s population is Latino.) At the food bank, which serves roughly 300 people every Wednesday, attendance fell by about 30% last week, Kang said.
“Basically all our Latino community members stopped coming to the pantry,” he said.
LA county is home to the largest undocumented immigrant population in the country, with nearly 1 million people without status. At least 330 immigrants have been arrested in LA over the past week and a half, as Trump deployed more than 4,000 national guard troops and marines to quell protests downtown. On Saturday, an estimated 200,000 people attended the city’s “No Kings” protest – one of the largest showings across the country, according to organizers.
Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (Clue), a network of faith leaders fighting against local economic and social injustices, established a bail fund for detained immigrants and organized a 30-day rapid response plan in which faith leaders would fast, lead prayer vigils and hold gatherings to demand the reunification of families.
The month-long action plan, called the “Summer of Resistance”, began Saturday at Placita Olvera, a historic downtown street where religious groups fought against injustices. In the early 1900s, the women from La Plaza United Methodist church established the city’s first integrated drinking fountain in the historic district.
“It’s been a place where people of conscience trying to build a better city have gathered to protest,” said Rev Jennifer Gutierrez, Clue’s executive director. “It’s a place where for a long time people of faith have been saying that we care about all communities.”
Gutierrez said Clue has also been conducting de-escalation training for protesters as well as mobilizing faith leaders to immigration courts, where Ice has been arresting people showing up for hearings.
LA churches have long functioned both as refuge and protest spaces, particularly against anti-immigrant policies. During the 1980s, the city became a focal point of the burgeoning sanctuary movement that began in Tucson, where hundreds of congregations defied immigration law to provide aid to Central American refugees fleeing civil conflicts. As roughly half a million Salvadorians arrived in LA, Father Luis Olivares established the country’s largest sanctuary program at La Placita church, providing food, clothing and shelter to the refugees.
“In no other part of the US where there were sanctuary movements was there such an organized program,” said Mario Garcia, a professor of Chicana and Chicano studies and history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of Father Luis Olivares, A Biography: Faith Politics and the Origins of the Sanctuary Movement in Los Angeles.
Olivares and other faith leaders at La Placita “were carrying out a type of faith politics”, Garcia said, where “their faith was being put into action” to help the vulnerable. Olivares also offered sanctuary to undocumented immigrants, primarily from Mexico – a radical step that no other church in the country took, Garcia said.
“I absolutely believe the church has a role in providing sanctuary – in both a political and spiritual sense,” said Rev Omega Burckhardt, a senior minister at the Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist church in Pasadena.
Burckhardt said she attended a “No Kings” protest in Pasadena last weekend with more than two dozen of her congregants. Her church has been working with local faith groups to provide resources, like “Know Your Rights” and legal services information, to community members. Since the raids began, she said there’s been growing interest from church members to become more involved.
“How we choose to be together, offering a place of reflection and discernment, is fundamental to how we build a more loving world,” Burckhardt said.
