March in El Paso to defend migrants' rights on Feast of St Oscar Romero

Our Lady of Guadalupe mosaic, El Paso. Image: Michael Tangeman

El Paso, Texas - The protective figure of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas, looms large above the fear-filled west Texas city of El Paso these days. And well she should.

The massive mosaic of the Mother of God stands four stories tall, attached to a soon-to-be opened affordable housing bloc named 'Nuestra Senora' (Our Lady), just five minutes from the international border with Mexico.

A stone's throw away is the imposing red-brick structure of the El Paso's St Patrick's Cathedral. It's early morning, the third Sunday of Lent and less than 24 hours until the Feast Day of Saint Oscar Romero, the slain Archbishop of San Salvador who, for his staunch defence of human rights and the dignity of the poor, was martyred by an assassin's bullet while saying Mass on March 24, 1980.

Above the half-full parking lot leading to the cathedral, a sign for the adjacent 'Border Pain Institute' hangs like an ill-omen in the air, an unintended signifier of the pain this border city is enduring in the midst of a convulsive crackdown by the administration of US President Donald J Trump against an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants nationwide.

Inside the cathedral, Bishop of El Paso Mark Seitz is holding out a message of hope for the 150 worshippers or so gathered for 7am Mass on Sunday morning. In the Gospel reading of Luke 13:1-9, Seitz reflects on the orchard owner who would chop down a barren fig tree, counselling hope that in time and with more care the tree would one day bear fruit.

It is a message echoed an hour later, a mile and a half due south and a scant four blocks from the border, where at Sacred Heart church, with a picture of Saint Oscar Romero prominently displayed near the altar, Jesuit pastor Father Rafael García celebrates the Mass in Spanish with nearly 200 members of the 132-year-old Jesuit mission parish in El Paso's historic Barrio Segundo neighbourhood.

"With patience, a little fertilizer, some water and given more time," Father García says in language easily understood by parishioners familiar with rural living in both Mexico and Texas, "the barren tree may yet bear fruit."

Such hope may be all that many people in the border communities like El Paso have for now, as they are dealt blow after blow with news of draconian measures being carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in response to multiple decrees signed by US President Donald J Trump in his first days and weeks in office, measures which are generating palpable fear among local communities here.

Clearly, most likely to experience the fear and pain of the new Trump policies are vulnerable undocumented immigrants and those asylum seekers whose cases are in process. But, a wave of fear has also spread among the thousands of Mexican-born legal US residents and naturalized citizens living here, who now feel threatened that they may be arbitrarily deported or denied their legal right to re-entry if and when they cross the border, as they customarily have done for generations, to visit family and friends on the Mexican side.

With that reality as a backdrop, it is clearly no accident that Bishop Seitz called for today's march, Mass and vigil in defence of immigrants' rights to coincide with the Feast Day of Saint Oscar Romero, who so vigorously defended in life the human rights of the oppressed and dignity of the poor in his native El Salvador.

In convening the March, Bishop Seitz, who also serves as Chairman of the US Catholic Bishops Conference's Committee on Migration, not only cited the real and "heartwrenching pain coursing through our community" resulting from "indiscriminate immigration enforcement, the denial of due process and the pulling apart of families." He also referenced the Trump immigration policies as "grave attacks on human dignity" and singled out the threat of mass deportations as both "untenable and immoral."

But even prior to the new Trump policies, the El Paso diocese had been under siege on the immigration front. For nearly three years, the Catholic-run Annunciation House migrant shelter has been battling a lawsuit filed by the top law enforcement official in Texas, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, alleging the shelter has been illegally harbouring undocumented immigrants and demanding its immediate closure. That case is currently under consideration by the Texas state Supreme Court and a verdict is expected at any time.

As if the Texas case weren't enough, on January 20th Trump immediately rescinded on his first day in office a federal policy from the Biden era that protected certain "sensitive" spaces, including schools, churches and hospitals, as safe from immigration enforcement raids by ICE agents from the Department of Homeland Security.

The Trump rescission of the sensitive spaces policy drew immediate sharp criticism from Bishop Seitz, who said the termination of the policy "strikes fear into the heart of our community, cynically layering a blanket of anxiety on families when they are worshipping God, seeking health care and dropping off and picking up children at school."

The subsequent announcement of Trump-decreed deportations en masse further shocked El Paso and other borderlands communities, with widely reported sightings of ICE agents scouring the streets of Texas cities looking to sweep up undocumented immigrants for deportation.

The ham-handed execution of the raids has also led to numerous cases of legal residents being detained, then deported across the border to Mexico and denied re-entry, effectively separating them from their families and prohibiting them from returning to their homes and jobs on the US side of the border. The result is a growing fear among non-immigrants that they too may become the target of illegal detentions and deportations at the hands of ICE, with little or no legal recourse.

"People are really afraid, they're trembling," said a Mexican-born legal resident, who has been living in El Paso for years. "All my friends, they don't want to go on vacation to visit their families or even go shopping across the border out of fear that they'll be denied re-entry on some technicality, or misunderstanding, or perceived irregularity in their papers."

Most recently, last week local churches and non-governmental groups were dealt a further blow when the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced it would revoke federal grant monies owed them for temporary shelter services they had provided to disaster victims - unless the groups agree to provide FEMA with the names of any immigrants who been sheltered. The El Paso diocese, Annunciation House, and other Catholic and Baptist groups all received federal grants under the FEMA program.

In this context, the El Paso diocese and the Hope Border Institute, a research and training institute housed separately on the diocesan office campus, undertook the launch of Monday's march, Mass and vigil under the theme, 'Aquí Estamos' - which in Spanish means simply, 'We Are Here'. But the slogan also carries with it the clearly implicit meaning that the local diocese is also not going away, that it intends to stay and stand and fight in the defense of immigrants' rights in El Paso and all along the border.

Today's march is slated to depart from El Paso's downtown Plaza San Jacinto at 6pm, proceeding through the city's streets to Sacred Heart church for a twilight prayer vigil. Led by Bishop Seitz, hundreds of participants are expected, including local civic and community leaders, bishops from the United States, Canada and Mexico, and Cardinal Fabio Baggio of the Vatican's Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

Michael Tangeman is a journalist and author of the book, Mexico at the Crossroads: Politics, the Church, and the Poor.

See also: ICN 12 March 2025 - USA: Bishop of El Paso to lead march & vigil in solidarity with migrants - www.indcatholicnews.com/news/51920