This story is part of RNS’ Love Thy Neighbor series. You can read all the stories here.
LOS ANGELES (RNS) — At Restauración Los Angeles, a nondenominational Christian congregation with more than 2,000 members, many have personal immigration experiences. That means helping asylum-seekers feels “natural” for the church, said René Molina Jr., its executive director and pastor.
“In the first pages of the Bible, God was hospitable,” said Molina, who pastors RLA in South Los Angeles alongside his parents, the church’s founders. “He made room for us, and so we are to make room for humanity.”
Over the last year and a half, about 10 asylum-seekers have lived on RLA’s campus. They were matched through Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice’s Welcome Network, a Southern California interfaith organization that provides shelter for asylum-seekers and refugees working through the legal system to stay in the country.
CLUE’s Welcome Network was created in 2023 to serve migrants in LA who were bused by Republican governors to Democratic cities in protest over immigration policies during the Biden administration. But as President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda has been enforced, fewer asylum-seekers are arriving at the border and making their way to U.S. cities where they don’t have prior connections. Increasingly, faith-based immigrant support networks like CLUE’s are caring for immigrants after they’re released from stints in detention centers — a time when many lose their housing and jobs. Asylum-seekers leaving detention are staying in church housing for just a night, several months or somewhere in between.
Sharon Gomez, 19, who is among the adults who support RLA’s teen ministry, said when her group was recently asked to shelter another asylum-seeker in the house that is the hub for RLA’s teen p …
