Shock, confusion, fear. That’s what I’ve witnessed while delivering pastoral care to detainees at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Broadview detention center outside Chicago. Detainees, many of them snatched off the streets, have described crowded rooms, with people sleeping on cold floors at times.
Sometimes all we can offer is prayer, but faith can help sustain these men and women while they await their fate. Our Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership has 75 active ministers including me. We are Catholic bishops, sisters, deacons, priests and clergy of other Christian denominations, Islamic imams and laypeople who peacefully show up at the center. We are ready to step inside the claustrophobic space with boarded-up windows and offer solace, some comforting words and someone to listen to their stories. At least a few of us are there every weekday, hoping to get inside to help.
However, we had to fight hard just to get in the door.
Christ made it very clear that we’re called to visit those in need and be with them, and when we do, it puts a human face on them and creates a bridge of solidarity between those in detention and us. We belong to one another.
We are there to bear witness to what is happening behind these walls, away from public scrutiny. Detainees often exist in darkness from the world’s attention. We simply do not think about them; we do not see them. But we must. And that’s another reason why we show up.
After months of large-scale actions and legal action, a U.S. district judge in April ordered that clergy be allowed inside the detention center in the days leading up to Easter this year, following a lawsuit filed by the Chicago faith-based nonprofit Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership.
Our first time inside Broadview was on Ash Wednesday in February. The detainees were able to receive Communion and have ashes placed on their foreheads. On Holy Thursday afternoon, the Rev. Juan Vargas knelt on the floor of the processing center and washed the feet of detainees in shackles. Outside, dozens of Catholic faithful stood in the rain, praying, singing and reciting the Rosary.
The judge cited the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in his decision, and the order stated that the government had substantially burdened the clergy’s religious exercise. Others across the country are also fighting for the right to minister to detainees. On Oct. 5, the Archdiocese of St. Louis sued ICE over rules that ban priests from bringing the sacraments to detainees and other strictures in place at a center there.
Our daily pastoral visits have shown that the protocols we reached in mid-May have been working well, and we continue to seek a permanent agreement for this pastoral ministry to continue for as long as it is needed.
While we wait, a coalition delegation of 30 Catholic clergy, laypeople and more has been granted a general audience and photo with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican and will be visiting Rome from Oct. 26 to 31. This is clearly an issue that resonates with the pope, who has spoken about the need for dignity for all human beings and has emphasized the importance of protecting the spiritual rights of migrant detainees.
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The Vatican’s announcement of Leo’s cancer diagnosis has only deepened our profound appreciation for him as the head of the global Catholic Church. He has taken a stand for the dignity and worth of all people. We’ve been keeping him close to our hearts and in our prayers.
From protesting and organizing outside the Broadview center to meeting with the pontiff one year later in a stand for immigrant, human and religious rights — we have come far.
But there’s much more to be done to ensure that we can continue to serve our brothers and sisters who are being detained. Litigation for the case continues, and we hope to make this a permanent right that we can visit each day, as long as the ministry is needed.
In James 2:17, we are told that “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”
Over the last 150 days, we have provided spiritual and religious care to more than 700 migrants inside Broadview. We will continue to show up; we will continue to serve.
The Rev. David Inczauskis is a Jesuit Catholic priest and a member of the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership Clergy Council.
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