Massachusetts Episcopalians rally behind immigrant church member before ICE appointment

[Episcopal News Service] Episcopalians from across the Diocese of Massachusetts joined a large group of community members on Sept. 16 in rallying behind an immigrant from Honduras before she appeared at a morning appointment with federal immigration officials.

Organizers estimate about 500 people attended the event outside the Burlington office of U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement to support Blanca Martinez, an asylum-seeker who fears deportation under the Trump administration’s policies. Martinez attends St. Peter’s-San Pedro Episcopal Church in Salem and has lived and worked as a house cleaner in the area for the past decade after fleeing violence in her home country.

“Thank you so much for being here … I want to thank God because he has sustained me until this day,” Martinez told the crowd in Spanish through an interpreter before her appointment. The rally was livestreamed on her church’s Facebook page. “I am here today speaking up for myself and for so many more people who are suffering in silence.”

Her supporters credit the large turnout outside the ICE office for helping to secure good news: After the brief appointment, federal authorities released Martinez and allowed her to stay in the United States for at least another year.

“Blanca’s story is the story of many,” Massachusetts Bishop Julia Whitworth, who attended the event, told Episcopal News Service by phone afterward. “The suffering of another person is our suffering as well. The measure of our own humanity is how we treat the most vulnerable among us.”

Whitworth flew home early from the House of Bishops’ meeting in the Dominican Republic to join the rally in support of Martinez. The bishop led the group in prayer, and then she and the Rev. Nathan Ives, rector of St. Peter’s-San Pedro, escorted Martinez and her lawyer into the ICE building.

Immigrants “incredible contributions and are at an incredible risk because of the indignities of our government,” Whitworth said, and Christians are specifically called by their faith to raise their voices.

“We are called to stand for the dignity of every human being,” Whitworth said. “As Christians, we are shaped by biblical stories of people whom God led into foreign countries to escape oppression. We are shaped by scriptures that again and again say welcome the stranger, care for the immigrant, stand with the oppressed.”

Martinez, a victim of childhood polio, suffers from chronic health issues that supporters fear could worsen in ICE detention. Last month, a group of about 300 people joined her at a previous immigration check-in appointment. She began seeking asylum after first coming to the United States but continues to live in legal limbo.

Along the way, she has been active in the local community, including helping to create a cooperative of immigrants who provide house cleaning services. She also is active in the Essex County Community Organization, a multifaith network of congregations and labor leaders.

“She is a remarkable woman,” Ives told ENS. He emphasized Martinez’s determination to find a better life by fleeing Honduras. Because of her childhood polio, she walks with only one fully functioning leg, yet she was able to make the journey to the United States on foot.

So far, her efforts to seek asylum have been “denied all along the way, every appeal,” Ives said. “It’s really unconscionable when you look at it objectively.”

About five years ago, she won a stay of removal, Ives said, but now she again faces the threat of deportation – like many other immigrants in Salen and other communities of the Diocese of Massachusetts.

“We’re dealing with the fallout left and right of broken families, and it’s just been absolutely tragic,” Ives said, in describing ICE detention of family members in the area who had been working hard and paying taxes. “These are all functioning members of our economy.”

During his campaign, Trump had vowed to oversee mass deportations of millions of people living in the United States without permanent legal residency status. He began pursuing policies to follow through on that promise in the hours after his Jan. 20 inauguration to a second term, with a series of executive orders related to immigration.

Although Trump and fellow Republicans have said their priority is the deportation of people convicted of crimes, this year’s immigration enforcement raids have swept up thousands of people with no criminal record. Data tracked by NBC News indicates there were more than 58,000 people in immigration detention as of last week, and less than 55% had been convicted of or charged with crimes.

The Sept. 16 rally for Martinez was organized by the Matahari Women Workers’ Center, which has mobilized public accompaniment campaigns as a way to stop or slow immigrant detentions. It describes many of those detentions as “kidnappings” that take hard-working people away from their families and communities.

Whitworth told ENS she felt it important to be with the group supporting Martinez, even though it meant missing the end of the House of Bishops’ fall gathering. She said she had the blessing of Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe.

“One of the things that we’re talking about in House of Bishops is how important our local work is,” Whitworth said. “Bishop Rowe is a really clear that we are a gathering of bishops who serve in local communities, as pastors as preachers as teachers and also as prophetic voices. That’s what we’re called to do and be.”

She also, as a Christian, wanted to counter the anti-immigrant narrative espoused by white supremacist and Christian nationalist movements.

“I think that that’s what our folks in the Diocese of Massachusetts are feeling so acutely,” she said, “that we have an alternate narrative to share about the Gospel, not only here but across the church.”

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.