The Winn Correctional Center, an ICE detention facility, is seen in this aerial photo in Winnfield, Louisiana, Wednesday, April 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
[Episcopal News Service] Episcopalians in the Diocese of Western Louisiana’s Allies for Immigrants ministry are working to support immigrants who are in facilities throughout the state operated by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement.
“The one thing I keep thinking of from the Bible lately is, ‘Treat the person from another country as you treat your own countrymen,’” the Rev. Bette Kauffman, deacon at Grace Episcopal Church in Monroe, told Episcopal News Service. “It’s so, absolutely crystal clear that there is to be no distinction between how we treat our fellow humans based on where they are from, and that passage (from Leviticus 19:33-34) is always from my mind these days.”
The idea to establish Allies for Immigrants began in late 2019, when an immigration attorney moved to Alexandria and joined St. James Episcopal Church. At St. James, he met Joy Owensby, missioner for the Diocese of Western Louisiana’s Formation and Community Engagement. He explained that Louisiana has a “Detention Center Alley.”
“When we realized that [the state’s] all nine ICE facilities are inside the Diocese of Western Louisiana, we felt like we needed to respond in some way,” Owensby, who is married to Western Louisiana Bishop Jacob W. Owensby, told ENS. “I spoke with the bishop, and he was on board. So, Bette and I got about 20 people together, and we started meeting on Zoom every month.”
Those meetings led to the formation of Allies for Immigrants, which serves those immigrants who are detained in a center and those who’ve been released. The allies write letters and send Christmas cards to detainees and donate money for commissary accounts. They also contact their local, state and federal elected officials to advocate for the release and well-being on behalf of detainees and share information on immigration rights on social media. When permitted, they visit detainees in the centers and offer pastoral care. For those who’ve been released, the allies provide transportation, reunite immigrants with their families or sponsors and donate cell phones and other immediate necessities. The allies also offer prayer support for detained and released immigrants.
Louisiana has nine ICE detention facilities, more than any other state except Texas. This includes a “staging facility” at Alexandria International Airport in central Louisiana, a hub for rapid deportations. Most of Louisiana’s centers are in poor, rural areas, where access to legal representation is limited. Lawyers, federal oversight officials and immigration advocates have decried the inhumane conditions inside Louisiana’s detention facilities, including physical abuse, poor medical care, widespread use of solitary confinement and unsanitary conditions.
As of July 27, 7,379 detainees are in Louisiana. Nationwide, 59,041 migrants and asylum-seekers were in ICE custody as of Aug. 14, according to the latest available data compiled by NBC News.
Allies for Immigrants works with other dioceses and with local organizations, like the Shreveport-based nonprofit Louisiana Advocates for Immigrants in Detention, or LA-AID. The all-volunteer organization provides transportation, meals and overnight houses for released immigrants. Members of LA-AID also write letters to detainees and advocate for humane treatment and medical care, as well as communicate with detainees’ families.
Kauffman and Owensby both said there’s a “huge difference” between 2025 and previous years in advocacy work for Allies for Immigrants.
“At least during the first Trump administration, people could get released on bond. Now, very few people are getting released and more people are either being deported right away or staying stuck in the detention centers,” Kauffman said.
President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to deport undocumented immigrants and immigrants with criminal histories. However, many immigrants who’ve been arrested and deported since he took office in January were in the United States legally and have no criminal background.
Since January, ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents have been arresting immigrants at courthouses, workplaces and other public and private places nationwide. In the Diocese of New York, three Episcopalians were arrested in July after going to federal immigration courts for routine and mandated appearances.
One of the New York Episcopalians, Elizabeth “Ketty” De Los Santos, a 59-year-old asylum-seeker from Peru and a parishioner of St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in White Plains, is confirmed to be in Monroe, Louisiana, as of Aug. 13. She was sent by bus to ICE’s Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe without any of her medications and is now at Ochsner LSU Health-Monroe Medical Center in Monroe for unspecified in-patient treatment.
Members of Allies for Immigrants are working with the Diocese of New York and St. Bartholomew’s to advocate for De Los Santos’ release and to help ensure her well-being while detained. Kauffman has attempted multiple times to make a pastoral visit to De Los Santos at the hospital, but the ICE agent supervising her has refused every time. Kauffman told ENS she “hasn’t given up” and is looking for other legal avenues to visit De Los Santos, who is believed to have no telephone access while hospitalized.
Kauffman and Owensby said Allies for Immigrants are limited legally in what they can do to directly help detainees, but they regularly stay in contact with the detention facilities’ chaplains to help address spiritual needs. Over the past couple of years, the ministry has, by request, purchased $6,000 worth of Bibles for detainees in different languages, most in Spanish. A priest in the Pineville-based Diocese of Western Louisiana is also working with a chaplain to eventually hold worship services in one of the centers.
“It’s all just been so overwhelming,” Kauffman said.
Owensby concurred.
“Everyone’s exhausted, but we believe in the cause, and we are really committed to this work that Jesus says we’re supposed to do,” Owensby said. “Even the seemingly little things like the letters and the Christmas cards are letting these people know that there are people out there who are praying for them and care about them.”
-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.