(RNS) — By dinnertime the evening before her U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement check-in appointment, Blanca Martinez knew she probably wasn’t going to sleep much that night.
“It gives me a lot of anxiety,” Martinez said of ICE check-ins during an RNS interview in Spanish, on Monday (Sept. 15). She had experienced a restless night before her Aug. 15 check-in, when she was told to come back a month later, an unusually small window of reprieve.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” said the Salem, Massachusetts, resident, alluding to the possibility of detention at the appointment.
But despite Martinez’s high stress levels, she knew she wouldn’t be alone at the appointment Tuesday. About 500 people came to support her outside the immigration office in Burlington, including Massachusetts state Rep. Manny Cruz, Salem Mayor Dominick Pangallo and Bishop Julia Whitworth of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, who skipped the end of a national bishops gathering to support Martinez.
“This is something that we as a diocese take really seriously — that when one in our congregation is under threat, we are all under threat, and that we have the capacity to stand up f …