WASHINGTON (RNS) — At a Thursday (Sept. 11) Georgetown University roundtable of some of the top U.S. Catholic voices on migration, Catholic leaders underscored the gravity of the threats immigrants are currently facing as the Trump administration escalates its mass detainment and deportation efforts.
“What I’m hearing from people and seeing in people’s eyes is fear,” said Washington Auxiliary Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala during the public roundtable. They’re also feeling confusion and questioning, he said, asking themselves, “Where do we go from here? If we are not welcome, if we cannot find a safe place, if we cannot find a home here, where do we go from here?”
Menjivar-Ayala crossed the border without authorization and lived as a Salvadoran immigrant without legal status before becoming a U.S. citizen. “This issue for me is very, very personal. Because I was a stranger, and you welcomed me,” he said. “Do you know who else said that? My boss,” he said, referencing Jesus.
He said immigrants are using the same phrases they used during the Salvadoran civil war to talk about deportation, “Se lo llevaron,” or “They took him or her.” They would say that phrase, in El Salvador in the 1980s, he said, “when people were kidnapped, when people w …