In early July, an asylum seeker from Nicaragua arrived for a routine hearing at the immigration court in Harlingen, Texas. Inside the nondescript, tan brick building, Carlos went through his case, explaining that he’d been in the U.S. for the last five years. In that time, he’d attended every court date, every ICE check-in, and followed every requirement asked of him by the government.
The judge listened to his claims, and outlined what he’d need to build a case for his next court date in August of 2026. But just as the hearing was set to adjourn, everything fell apart. His case was dismissed, and as he stepped outside, he was pulled away by two masked ICE agents.
In a matter of minutes, Carlos had gone from an asylum seeker moving through the proper legal channels, to a nonresident at risk of immediate deportation.
“Just like that, everything we feared came true,” said Brian Strassburger, S.J., a Jesuit priest and director of Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries in Brownsville. “They put him in handcuffs, put him in an unmarked vehicle, and took him away.”
Strassburger was one of three religious volunteers who had accompanied Carlos to his hearing that day. Since June, he and his colleagues had been hearing reports of courthouse arrests playing out at immigration hearings across the country.
“I wanted to see if it was happening in our own backyard,” he said.
As Carlos’ experience showed, it was.
A multi-pronged effort to deliver on President Donald Trump’s threats of mass deportation has led to similar scenes from California to Maryland. The strategy is simple and effective: Department of Homeland Security attorneys attend immigration hearings and move to dismiss a noncitizen’s case. If the motion is granted, that individual is then eligible for expedited removal. Outside, ICE officers are ready to arrest and detain them while they await deportation.
In response, volunteers like Strassburger have begun attending immigration hearings. They come from varying backgrounds — some are members of faith-based groups, others are teachers, veterans, or community organizers — but their goal is the same: to provide support and bear witness.
“Our congregants might not know how to plug in in this moment — but this is one way,” Ashley Hiestand, a minister from Mount Hollywood United Church of Christ in Los Angeles, told Christianity Today.
The vast majority of immigrants facing deportation today are Christian, and as the magazine reported last month, more Christians — and Catholics specifically — have signed up for court-observation training across the country, including in Los Angeles and New York. In May, a Queens pastor observing immigration court in New York was arrested. (He was later released.)
In recent weeks, more and more clergy have stepped into the fray.
And it’s working. Just days ago, Bishop Michael Pham launched a new ministry in the San Diego Diocese after he and other clergy reportedly saw masked ICE agents “scatter” at their immigration court presence on World Refugee Day in June. The diocesan ministry implemented a calendar for sign-ups and held an orientation bringing volunteers up to speed on the immigration system — and what they should expect to see in court.
“I’m inspired by Bishop Pham and my brother Jesuit priests who have launched the courthouse accompaniment ministry in San Diego,” Strassburger said. “We have had a rotation of priests and women religious accompanying at immigration court in Harlingen, and I could definitely see us expanding that and formalizing it like they’ve done.”
‘It’s Unlike Anything I’ve Seen’
Immaculate Heart of Mary Sister Rose Patrice Kuhn was part of the rotation in Harlingen in July. She was there with Strassburger when Carlos was detained, and had met and prayed with him and other immigrants awaiting their court hearings earlier that day.
“We just wanted them to know that they had somebody who cared,” she said. “Even though we can’t do anything for them legally, we can be there to support them.”
For Kuhn and Strassburger, their ministry on the border has been rapidly evolving, adapting to constant changes in policy. Just a few years ago, immigrant advocates and nonprofit groups were making routine visits to shelters on the U.S. side of the border, or to the encampments on the Mexican side in Reynosa.
Then, in January of this year, the CBP One app was shuttered the day of Trump’s inauguration, effectively closing off one of the last remaining pathways that hundreds of thousands of people have used at the border to seek asylum. (The app later relaunched as CBP Home, with a feature that would help migrants “self deport.”) Since then, Strassburger says the border has been eerily quiet.
“It’s unlike anything I’ve seen in my four years here,” Strassburger told The Barbed Wire.
He continues to make twice-weekly trips to visit shelters in Mexico, but the populations have dwindled there, too. Some migrants have resettled in safer cities like Monterrey, while others have repatriated back to their home countries. “It’s a small population that’s left, but it’s the most vulnerable,” he says. “It’s mostly single mothers with small kids. Some have family in the U.S., but they can’t get to them. That’s the population we continue to serve.”
Kuhn has observed the same thing. During visits to the shelter in Reynosa, she mostly encounters people who know there isn’t a path forward for them right now, but who also don’t have the option to go back home.
“At this point, you’re trying to offer support to people who are in limbo,” she told The Barbed Wire. “They’re trying to figure out what to do with their lives, because they sold everything they had when they left their countries, and in most cases, they left because of fear of violence.”
One woman she spoke with told her that she was separated from her husband when they arrived at the border because of his tattoos and because they came from Venezuela. Soon after, she learned he had been detained and sent to El Salvador.
“These are people who presented themselves at the border because they wanted to make their appointments and go through the process,” said Kuhn. “Even if they had been waiting six months or eight months, there was always that hope that they would make it through.”
Now, it’s a whole different atmosphere. Everyone she encounters is paralyzed by uncertainty.
Their colleagues also make regular visits to the adult detention facility in Port Isabel. Joe Nolla, S.J., a Chaplain at Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries, told The Barbed Wire that many of the men there are struggling because they’ve done nothing wrong.
“They entered legally, but they had the horrible misfortune of having tattoos and being from Venezuela or El Salvador, and automatically getting profiled as a gang member,” Nolla said. “These are people who had no criminal history whatsoever in the United States.”
During his visits to Port Isabel, Nolla typically delivers a service, and then he sets up two chairs in the back of the room for one-on-one conversations. Without fail, people eagerly line up to talk. “It’s difficult to see them suffering unjustly, but they’re trying their best to carry on.”
Throughout their community, Nolla and Strassburger have watched as threats of ICE raids and an increase in anti-immigrant rhetoric have created a culture of panic. “People in our parish are living in fear because they’re being criminalized, detained and deported to fulfill some promise of mass deportation,” Strassburger said. “Now, we’re not hearing as much from people in shelters, but from people who have court cases coming up, who don’t know if their case might be abruptly closed, and they’ll be on a flight or taken by ICE the second they step out of the courtroom.”
The tactic has sparked multiple lawsuits, including a class action suit filed last month by several immigration advocacy organizations, arguing that it’s a violation of due process.
“We are witnessing an authoritarian takeover of the U.S. immigration court system by the Trump administration,” said Keren Zwick, director of litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center, in a press release. “People who attend their hearings to seek permission to remain in this country and comply with U.S. immigration law are being rounded up and abruptly ripped from their families, homes, and livelihoods. Meanwhile, the administration is issuing directives telling immigration judges to violate those same immigration laws and strip people of fundamental due process rights.”
After witnessing Carlos’ detainment, they’ve put out a call to other religious organizations and volunteers to attend hearings, accompany people to the courthouse, and pray with them before they enter.
“It’s a scary environment to walk into for anybody, and certainly for migrants who feel out of place and in another world,” Strassburger said. “We want to be a familiar presence for them, but we also want to be a deterrent to the DHS representatives and ICE agents to remind them of their own values, and what they’re called to do by their own faith. Perhaps that could serve as a deterrent for some of the more nefarious acts that are taking place in immigration courts around the country.”
Kuhn will return to Texas later this month, where she’s prepared to do what she can to meet the needs of the local migrant population — whether that’s accompanying them to court, visiting with them in shelters, or bearing witness to the next intimidation tactic directed their way.
She has hope that things will change for the better, but until then, she also keeps the members of Congress in her prayers. “I pray that they will have the courage to stand up for what’s right.”
