A volunteer unloads cases of fresh fruit in the parish hall of St. Nicholas Episcopal Church in Richfield, Minnesota, for patrons of the church’s Casa Maria food pantry ministry. Demand for food has increased by more than fivefold after aggressive immigration activities have taken place in the Minneapolis suburb. Photo: Facebook
[Episcopal News Service] Casa Maria, a food pantry and ministry of St. Nicholas Episcopal Church in the Minneapolis suburb of Richfield, Minnesota, was used to providing food boxes to about 100 mostly immigrant families every Saturday. But by mid-January, as more people in the communities it serves stayed home, fearful of being swept up in aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, requests for food help skyrocketed.
During the week of Jan. 24, requests came from 500 families. And with the help of volunteers and an increase in donations, they were able to fulfill all of them.
Cyara Carabarin Carretero, Casa Maria’s manager, told Episcopal News Services that the pantry’s original model had been to pack boxes of food – either donated or purchased by the pantry – that people could have delivered or pick up. But they quickly shifted most of the requests to a delivery model aided by monetary donations that the pantry used to purchase gift cards.
Screened volunteers were each given some of those cards, and along with grocery lists for three families, they purchased and delivered $150 of food to each of them. Some volunteers turned down the gift cards, preferring to donate the cost. And with food on hand at Casa Maria, boxes still are being delivered, she added. They also are exploring partnerships with immigrant-owned markets that can deliver food that Casa Maria purchases.
And the requests for food help haven’t slowed down. When ENS spoke on Jan. 26 with Carabarin Carretero and the Rev. Rena Romero, a deacon at St. Nicholas and Casa Maria’s ministry developer, volunteers had delivered food to 350 families in the last two days.
“It required a lot of creativity,” Romero said, “and there are lots of people coming forward to help.” People in the neighborhood have volunteered, along with parishioners from area Episcopal churches and others who aren’t Episcopalian. “It’s just been growing as one person shares [information] with a friend, and they’re sharing it with their network,” she said.
Romero said a group of women from St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Estes Park, Colorado, are driving to Minnesota next week to help, and a group of people from Chicago, Illinois, are coming on Jan. 31. “It’s pretty amazing,” she said. “You can feel the solidarity.”
Financial donations also have poured in, with over $200,000 arriving in the past two weeks, St. Nicholas’ rector, the Rev. Rob Cavanna, told ENS. Besides providing food for more people, these funds also allow Casa Maria to provide help with rent and insurance payments that will come due on Feb. 1. That is a special need, he said, for households with two wage earners who both are staying home out of fear.
The Episcopal Church has provided $20,000 from restricted gifts for migration ministries to the Episcopal Church in Minnesota to support Casa Maria or any similar ministry that needs it. And on Jan. 27, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe asked Episcopalians to give as they can in support of emergency funding for ministry with migrants.
Romero said she knew of a large donation from St. Andrew’s by the Lake Episcopal Church in Duluth, 150 miles north of Minneapolis on the shores of Lake Superior, as well as contributions from as far away as the Netherlands. And just hours after Alex Pretti was killed on Jan. 24 by Customs and Border Patrol agents, a man from a local Episcopal church came to the ministry’s door, sobbing, with a stack of gift cards to donate.
Volunteers put together boxes of food for distribution through Casa Maria. A growing number of people, many of them immigrants who are afraid to leave their homes, have been seeking assistance from the food pantry in recent weeks. Photo: Facebook
As Minnesota Bishop Craig Loya has kept his diocese and The Episcopal Church informed about what is happening there, he also has encouraged people to donate to Casa Maria or to the diocese’s Migrant Support Fund.
Support also has come from area Episcopalians who have written notes of encouragement to immigrants in the community, which were tucked into boxes of food that Casa Maria delivered. “It was a simple way to say that you are God’s beloved, and we want you here,” Romero said.
Other volunteers have been providing a different kind of help, Carabarin Carretero said, as they stand watch outside Casa Maria’s doors when it is open. Romero said a group of people take turns watching the door, including one person from St. Nicholas and three or four from other area Episcopal churches, and that they all have some training in how to interface with ICE, as well as how to be “a non-anxious presence,” she said. They also have a plan for where everyone would go and who would be in charge if ICE happened to enter the pantry.
Loya told ENS that in this moment, “Casa Maria is responding to the cruelty and fear all around us by mobilizing for love, leaning in to the relationships they’ve built over those years, with both churches in the diocese and immigrants in the neighborhood, to rapidly scale up the way they are delivering food and other critical supplies to people who cannot leave their home. “
Part of what helped Casa Maria be flexible in meeting these new needs stems from its origins during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Carabarin Carretero said. As a teenager then, she and other members of St. Nicholas’ Spanish-speaking congregation helped put together small grocery bags for parishioners.
As the need continued, the church opened its doors to people in Richfield and nearby Bloomington who needed help, “and we have been growing ever since,” she said. Calling volunteers the foundation of Casa Maria’s work, she noted that many are immigrants themselves who are helping other immigrants.
In addition to St. Nicholas, area Episcopal congregations that Casa Maria counts as its partners include St. John’s in Minneapolis, St. John the Evangelist in St. Paul and St. Stephen’s in Edina.
Loya told ENS by email that since those early days, “Casa Maria has been at the center of our efforts in the diocese to respond to the clear moral imperative in scripture to stand with and care for the immigrant in our midst.”
Romero said that she and others at Casa Maria appreciate the bishop’s unequivocal message. “Bishop Loya’s leadership right now really helps us go the distance and feel like our back is covered,” she said.
Even as leadership of the Minneapolis ICE operation shifts from Gregory Bovino to Tom Homan, there is no indication of a pullback in ICE operations. But that won’t deter Casa Maria from working to care for their neighbors, Romero said.
“We’ll be feeding people, body and soul,” she said. “This is our way of resistance, trying to meet people in this really quiet, hidden human suffering that’s happening. Because that’s the story, and it’s part of the strategy — how long can people keep that up?”
Loya said, “The question for a follower of Jesus is always, ‘What does love look like?’ In a painful season for Minnesota, love looks like Casa Maria.”
— Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas.