A group of volunteers offers a faithful presence in San Diego’s immigration court

As Immigration Judge Catherine Halliday-Roberts worked through a list of about 50 people whom she was about to order deported in June, a man wearing a clerical collar quietly entered the San Diego courtroom.

He sat down on the last bench, clasped his hands together, bowed his head and began to pray silently.

A couple of volunteers observing the proceedings sat on a bench closer to the judge. One wore a button that said, “FAITH.”

Led by the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, FAITH — Faithful Accompaniment in Trust and Hope — is a ministry program through which faith leaders and community members in the region have organized volunteers to provide daily witness of proceedings at immigration court and Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices. Federal immigration officials have conducted widespread arrests in both spaces since May 2025.

The volunteers do not interfere in the outcomes or try to stop arrests from happening. Rather, they offer accompaniment and prayer to the immigrants affected and their loved ones.

“At least the migrants showing up feel that makes a difference for them. That’s the most important thing. It makes a difference for them,” said the Rev. Scott Santarosa, a Jesuit priest who serves as pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in San Diego. “They don’t feel as alone as they might have been. I also think it does have this effect, which is that the people doing the arresting are aware that someone’s watching.”

FAITH began in 2025 as an acknowledgment of World Refugee Day with priests and other religious leaders showing up for a morning at immigration court. It has grown into a daily presence of volunteers. As policies have shifted to include arrests of people who come to ICE offices for scheduled appointments in addition to those showing up for court hearings, the volunteers have responded by monitoring both areas of the federal building.

“It’s faith in action,” Auxillary Bishop Felipe Pulido said. “We go to Mass. We listen to the gospel. The gospel always challenges us to live it out in our daily lives. When we see injustice, when we see pastoral needs … it’s for us to be public witness, basically, not just within the church, but also outside the church.”

World Refugee Day

The diocese had recently closed a ministry providing shelter to asylum-seeking migrants that was needed in the border region during the Biden administration, but border crossings had slowed significantly under the second Trump administration. Santarosa said the priests were looking for other opportunities to support immigrants in the region.

“We said to each other, ‘We have to be attentive to however Jesus comes and knocks on the door the next time because he came knocking, and we responded, and it was this beautiful thing,’” Santarosa recalled.

At a task force meeting, the group discussed bringing priests and other visible religious leaders to immigration court. Reyna-Gutierrez said she felt that the priests’ presence the day they’d gone to court together had made a difference in how people behaved.

“When I was 10 years old living in Vietnam, I witnessed this situation, seeing people being taken away for no obvious reason,” Pham said. “It is sad and disheartening for me to see this kind of thing playing out in this country today.”

He urged those in attendance to stand in solidarity with refugees, migrants and immigrants.

“We are God’s children,” Pham said. “Let us store up our treasure in heaven by sharing, welcoming and promoting harmony. If we achieve this, the United States will become a beacon of hope, peace and love to the world.”

After the Mass, local faith leaders including Pham, Santarosa and representatives from other faith traditions went to the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building in downtown San Diego, which houses both the immigration court and ICE offices.

Guards at the building initially blocked their entry but then let them inside. Santarosa observed ICE officers in the hallway outside the courtrooms, but those officers left without arresting anyone after the religious leaders arrived.

After the morning court hearings finished and the religious leaders returned to speak with journalists, a reporter asked Pham whether he planned to have an ongoing presence of priests at the court.

He responded that the priests would be back, and he tapped Santarosa to lead the program, which became FAITH.

Helping and getting help

Santarosa formed a team, and they organized and trained nearly 700 volunteers, including more than 150 clergy, roughly 50 of them priests, to show up to the federal building.

The program launched in August 2025 with volunteers working in three shifts — 7:30-10 a.m., 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m. and 12:30-3 p.m.

Pulido said he went with Morales-Palos to accompany a family that had requested support in advance when the father had a check-in appointment with ICE. The bishop stood with the two adult daughters while they waited for their father to come out from the appointment, but the attorney came out alone and said that ICE had arrested him.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Pulido recalled. “The two of them were crying and very desperate. I just got close to them, but I didn’t know what to do.”

Then, he said, Morales-Palos came over to the daughters and comforted them.

“I really saw God through this lady, how she was giving comfort to them,” Pulido said.

Morales-Palos lived that need for comfort herself when ICE arrested her cousin after his court hearing in October. The family’s attorney was eventually able to get the cousin released, and Pham and several priests have shown up for his hearings since then, Morales-Palos said.

“That meant a lot,” Morales-Palos said. “Finally the church is walking along with us. It’s a good time to be Catholic. I’m very proud of being Catholic and being in the diocese in San Diego because the church is doing their mission.”

She said she hopes the program will spread to other regions of the country.

Standing up for FAITH

Patrick Corrigan got involved in the FAITH ministry because he was looking for something to do after retirement.

The military veteran is now the ministry lead and spends four days a week at the federal building.

“It’s just really transformed my faith,” Corrigan said. “I do feel closer to God at the courthouse. I’ve said that before, and it’s cliche, and it sounds trite to me when I say it, but it is that — it’s just a beauty and a reminder of just who we are.”

In February, officials with the Federal Protective Service suddenly decided to tell volunteers that they could no longer stand in the hallways of the federal building because they were loitering. Corrigan and several people volunteering with another grassroots collective stayed in the hallway and received citations.

They decided to fight the tickets.

Corrigan claimed the citation infringed on his freedom of religion.

After an initial hearing in federal court, prosecutors decided to defer the charges. That means that as long as Corrigan and the other volunteers don’t get charged with anything else before August, the prosecutors will drop the charges.

Corrigan said Pham has since met with leadership from the Federal Protective Service and ICE to maintain volunteers’ right to be in the hallways. So far, the volunteers have been in the building every day, but sometimes they have to navigate federal employees who don’t want them there.

The restrictions are toughest, Corrigan said, at immigration court, where volunteers are facing increasing limitations in the waiting area and have been banned from the hallways. The courtrooms are often too full for observers because of a recent increase in the number of people scheduled per judge per day.

For faith leaders in other places thinking of implementing a similar program, Santarosa, Corrigan and Morales-Palos said the most important thing is to start. It doesn’t have to be every day, they said.

“There is not a perfect way, and if you wait to be ready, you will never be ready,” Morales-Palos said.

Reyna-Gutierrez recommended finding a legal services partner for advice on how to observe safely. Santarosa suggested using a buddy system with people who are interested, and Corrigan said that faith leaders might be surprised as to who and how many raise their hands to help when presented with the program.

“We may not change something. We’re not going to change the laws,” Corrigan said. “But we know we’re there. The brothers and sisters know we’re there, and the community knows we’re there. Maybe what matters to me most is there are many folks who don’t look the other way.”

In 2007, when he was a young pastor at a church plant in Salem, Oregon, the Rev. D.J. Vincent noticed that a group of unhoused people had been living in Cascades Gateway Park. He and his parishioners wanted to do something to help them out and settled on a simple idea: They’d host a potluck.

That impulse to share a single meal started a ministry that has grown into a multimillion-dollar nonprofit called Church @ the Park. It now offers outreach services, workforce development, emergency shelter and permanent housing to the area’s unhoused population. In 2024 they served nearly 2,000 people across six locations.

As Church @ the Park evolved, so too did Vincent’s approach to ministry. From his conversations with unhoused folks at the meals, he gained a new perspective about dignity, humility and relationships. He felt he needed to change the way he was thinking about his service work; in looking for guidance he came across Street Psalms, a faith-based organization committed to developing strong community leaders.

The organization, a network of more than 40 organizations in 100 cities around the world, was formed to help create “communities in mission” that foster human flourishing in urban spaces. Street Psalms is based on “theology from below” — that is, learning alongside people at the margins rather than imposing solutions from above. This approach aligned with Vincent’s experience at the potlucks.

“Street Psalms created a bubble of belonging for us,” Vincent said. “They value connectedness and relationship, and our organizational values are the Street Psalms values. We aren’t just a place for people to get resources, but where they can find value and dignity and responsibility.”

Learning to be peacemakers

Street Psalms calls itself a “sodal” expression of the church, as opposed to a more traditional “modal” one. “Sodal” comes from the Latin “sodalitas,” meaning “companion” or “partner.” The organization uses this description to explain how it seeks to develop leaders who are embedded in vulnerable urban communities, people who are trying to enact meaningful change in their cities.

“We’re an urban monastery without walls,” said Sarah Moore, Street Psalms’ senior fellow for applied research, who came to the organization after a career as a psychology professor. “We prepare people for the challenges they face out in the real world of service.”

Forming leaders who serve communities

Thompson has been with Street Psalms since it was founded in the 1990s. The organization initially served urban youth workers in Philadelphia and was an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trust. Kris Rocke, the current executive director, had written a curriculum for World Vision, a youth mentorship organization, and he realized that the leadership skills it cultivated could be applied to anyone looking to share the “good news in hard places.” In 2023, Street Psalms officially became a religious order.

“Our charism has crystallized, especially over the past eight years,” Thompson said. “We’re committed to the formation of leaders who are serving their communities. It takes a special kind of spirituality to do this work, and we realized people weren’t getting the training they needed in a more formal seminary.”

While Street Psalms has always mentored leaders in their specific contexts, its programming and curriculum has become more formalized and refined over the years. Its nontraditional seminary is not affiliated with a denomination and does not ordain pastors for local churches. Instead, it trains people to lead communities in mission. It ordained its first cohort of leaders in 2010.

“We say we’re joyfully unaccredited,” Moore said. “While we do not believe, not at all, that this replaces formalized and accredited seminary training, we do believe that this offers the type of transformational experience that prepares leaders to serve the sodal form of the church.”

Street Psalms offers a one-year novitiate program that ends in ordination. Through daily, weekly, and monthly rhythms and practices, as well as synchronous and asynchronous classes and workshops, ordinands learn the Incarnational Framework and how to employ it in their communities. Nearly 40 people around the globe have been ordained. The organization also has a one-year fellowship program that finances specific community projects. Funded by grants from large and small benefactors, it gives all of its materials away for free.

The program is rooted in a specific hermeneutic, a way of reading the Bible that prioritizes and centers the most vulnerable people in Bible stories and parables.

“What you practice with Street Psalms is a way of reading Scripture from below, from the perspective of the marginalized,” Thompson said.

“During my formal training for my M.Div., nobody helped me see that the context of Scripture is about people who were oppressed,” she said. “It’s written to tell that story, but you very rarely hear that. The Lord’s Prayer, for example, came about during the context of the Roman Empire. When you think about it like that it gives it a new resonance.”

Learning to read with this lens prepares leaders in urban communities to ask questions of the text that might unlock new significance for its constituents and to be open to new and surprising interpretations.

“One of the big things the church doesn’t talk enough about, that Street Psalms does talk about, is violence,” Thompson said. “It’s not just physical violence, either. It can be the political thing and the pressure to pick sides.

“With Street Psalms, we want to curate the kind of conversations that don’t create enemies on the other side. I don’t know where I’d be as a preacher or as a spiritual leader if I didn’t have this framework.”

Building ‘communities in mission’ around the globe

Street Psalms trains leaders to love their city and seek peace in it, which entails learning how to listen to their city’s “sacred song”— the literal meaning of “psalm.”

“With the name, you have two images coming together and resonating,” Thompson said. “’Street’ says, ‘I’m here,’ ‘I’m with my community.’ And ‘Psalms’ is all the joy and lament that you find there. All the raw ways history shows up through our people.”

The organization takes different forms with all its partners; every mushroom that blooms from the network is unique. These partners do many kinds of work, from homeless outreach to after-school programs to helping survivors of domestic abuse and walking with people coming out of prison. And they’re all over the globe.

When an organization commits to following the Incarnational Framework, it becomes a “community in mission,” which in the simplest terms means that it shares the See, Do, Be, Free philosophy and can tap into a web of support when it needs help navigating challenges that can arise when doing things with people and not just for them.

“We’re kind of like the wholesalers,” Moore said. “And our partners are the retailers.”

Changing the way leaders engage with the world

In addition to the seminary, Street Psalms runs a design studio that functions as a kind of incubator for innovative social change. Partners can put their ideas through their paces before testing them out in the world.

One idea that came out of this is the Preaching Peace Initiative. At gatherings called “Tables,” partners tackle issues that pertain to their communities using the Incarnational Framework and the “theology from below” hermeneutic. Thompson visited a Table at one of Street Psalms’ partners in Kenya.

“In Nairobi there was a Preaching Peace Table with Christian pastors and Muslim clerics, and they took a common theme and discussed it from their different perspectives,” she said, adding that there had been violence between these communities in the past.

“The theme was: ‘What does it mean to love your neighbor?’ So you get in this room and you see the kind of conversation about peace. It helped foster these ideas of abundance and peacemaking and asked what it would look like for that to exist there, in that community.”

Thompson likened that work to what Vincent is doing with Church @ the Park.

“They have a clear picture of what it means to serve the most vulnerable,” she said. “They have a common language of scarcity and abundance and what it means to work across difference for the sake of the poor.”

During the early potlucks, Vincent saw problems to be solved, needs to be met, deficits to be addressed — what he regards now as classic scarcity thinking. But as he listened to the people he was serving, he learned to see differently. His perspective shifted to one of abundance and collaboration. And he understood that the community already had what it needed to flourish.

“We grew into a ministry of mutuality, where folks can find not only resources, but value and dignity,” he said. “The goal is co-creating a better reality, and we are our best selves in community, not in isolation.”

Vincent now takes all of Church @ the Park’s staff through a version of the Incarnational Framework during their training. He wants the organization to be as inclusive as possible, serving people regardless of their faith background, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other typical dividing line. More than half of the employees don’t identify as religious, but they’ve found a sense of belonging in the organization and its mission for peace and relational abundance. This kind of radical acceptance and baseline humility is what helps make Street Psalms unique.

“It’s more than a curriculum or content,” Moore said. “If you embrace the framework, it changes the way you engage with the world.”

When I was a child, there was almost always someone I didn’t know at our Thanksgiving table. We regularly hosted students from the college where my dad taught, especially those who were far from home.

I never questioned the author of Hebrews’ instructions: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2 NRSVue). My childhood experiences of hospitality were safe, predictable gatherings that included a greater-than-average chance for dessert, if I was lucky. Entertaining strangers who might be angels seemed like a no-brainer.

While I am grateful for this early exposure to one form of hospitality, my view of the practice widened in divinity school when our ethics professor challenged us to consider the angelic encounters described in Scripture. Far removed from the strangers-turned-friends I had pleasant table conversations with growing up, the angels in Scripture may appear with flaming swords, such as those stationed east of Eden in Genesis 3, or with drawn swords, as the prophet Balaam recounts in Numbers 22.

The more I read, the more difficult and dangerous entertaining angels sounded. It was clear why angels begin so many conversations with “do not fear.”

In Genesis, I read how Abraham’s afternoon plans and the family budget went out the window after three visitors appeared and dinner preparations began by finding a calf in the field (18:1-15). Lot faces danger to his family and the loss of his home (19:1-29), while Jacob’s encounter ends with a permanent limp (32:24-31).

Similar stories in the New Testament recount Mary surrendering her bodily autonomy (Luke 1:26-38) and Zechariah losing his ability to speak (Luke 1:8-22).

The Christian practice of hospitality is about so much more than sharing a meal with people like ourselves. Entertaining strangers as angels in disguise involves risk, vulnerability and encounters with those unlike us. Some level of discomfort is essential. Yet extending hospitality is also a space of discovery and transformation, as our biblical predecessors experienced through their angelic encounters.

Theologian Thomas Ogletree writes: “To offer hospitality to a stranger is to welcome something new, unfamiliar, and unknown into our life-world. … Strangers have stories to tell which we have never heard before, stories which can redirect our seeing and stimulate our imaginations.”

We live in a moment where such connection and transformation are urgently needed. It is also harder and riskier to encounter those unlike us. Christine Pohl explains that as households have become more secluded and private, the risk to host and guest alike has increased.

Institutions play an increasingly important role in creating “third places” where people can connect. These social spaces, distinct from both home and workplace, are harder and harder to find, further limiting opportunities for transformative encounters with strangers.

Some places cannot safely open their doors to strangers in our current moment. The Christian practice of discernment must accompany extending hospitality in communities where particular vulnerable identities are being targeted. Yet in places where this is not the case, creating sacred space for encounter may be exactly what the church is being called to in “such a time as this” (Esther 4:14).

One of the gifts of my work is that I regularly bump into stories of congregations across the country that are doing the hard, messy, scary work of welcoming strangers. I hear more and more stories of churches that are designing third places and drawing on their spiritual resources to create belonging, offer support and remind the world — and themselves — that our value is not in what we produce but in who we are.

The results are as different as the congregations that create them. Members of Mack Avenue Community Church in Detroit asked their neighbors what they needed and, in response, created a community space with a cafe and laundromat. The pastor of Mt. Carmel Missionary Baptist Church in the small town of Folkston, Georgia, took the church outside, worshipping in parks, hosting community days and training cyclists in the town’s national wildlife refuge.

Holy Family Episcopal Church in Houston took an old a meat-packing warehouse and redesigned it to be a worship space that doubles as an art gallery, supporting local artists and welcoming community members all week long. North Decatur Presbyterian Church in suburban Atlanta hosted a community gathering after a government agency 3 miles away laid off a large number of staff. Congregation members made room for people to tell their stories and share resources. They also helped people find a sense of belonging and held their suffering in the larger story that the church tells.

I doubt any of these congregations would say this work is easy or that they’ve been trained to do it. They will likely name failures, lengthy timelines, fears and moments of discomfort as just some of the challenge they faced while deepening their practice of hospitality. Yet they continue to hold open this space. The transformative encounter is simply too important, too beautiful for them to stop.

On the day of Pentecost, the disciples were thrust outside the safety of the house and into a space thronged with strangers. Fire, wind, languages from across the globe and accusations of drunkenness swirled around them. And in that moment, the church was transformed forever.

Amazed and astonished, each one in the multinational crowd heard the good news in the language they spoke at home. Thousands were cut to the heart and received the promise of God for themselves. And the church did what it does best: it welcomed them in, shared its spiritual resources and affirmed their belonging and belovedness.

In a season of seemingly endless tumult, faith leaders can learn about building welcoming, diverse communities through the miracle of Pentecost. The evangelist Luke’s account of this event in Acts provides a vivid picture of how to translate godly deeds into languages that strengthen faith, hope and belonging within congregations.

Nine days after the ascension of Jesus, Luke writes, many were gathered in one place.

“And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? … [I]n our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’” (Acts 2:2-8, 11b NRSVue)

Hearing in our own language

The discipline of linguistics shows how language influences the social, cultural and spiritual dynamics of human life. I agree with the belief that holds a strong correlation between being able to commune with God in one’s native language and the deepening of personal faith. And I don’t find it surprising at all that the events of Pentecost included a multilingual miracle that catalyzed the birth of the church.

In April, Barna reported that belief in Jesus is on the rise in America after hitting a low point in 2021 and 2022. The research firm invited Christian leaders to adopt the language of openness and hospitality in the face of a 21st-century culture of skepticism, writing: “For pastors and ministry leaders, this is a moment both to celebrate and to steward. People are open — perhaps as much as any time in recent memory — to Jesus. Churches that can meet people in this openness — with authenticity, humility and a focus on discipleship — may find fresh opportunities to minister.”

Some faith communities were already modeling that behavior.

To those who arrive from different places to become our neighbors, colleagues and fellow church members, how might the language of inclusion be received?

In Lansing, Michigan, St. Luke Lutheran Church’s commitment to authenticity and cultural appreciation is removing barriers and boundaries for its multiethnic congregation. The church holds gatherings where worship is multilingual and songs like “Harambee Harambee” are sung in the native languages of community members.

Worship services are offered in English, Arabic and Swahili in a church of more than a dozen languages.

Hearing in our own language

To the overlooked and most vulnerable in our society, how might a language of mercy, compassion and hope be known, heard and received?

In San Antonio, Texas, Chris Plauche, a 76-year-old retired pediatrician, imagined providing stability and support to senior adults experiencing homelessness. The result, Towne Twin Village, is a community for formerly unhoused individuals 55 and older. Along with 200 residences, the campus offers medical and behavioral health care. Daytime guests are provided breakfast and lunch along with access to spacious showers, haircuts and pedicures.

Plauche’s project partner, Edward Gonzales, says that long-term residents are skeptical at first, but by day 180 “they’ve improved their quality of life and are standing a little bit taller. They’re smiling and looking you in the eye.”

Hearing in our own language

To those who are lonely and feeling far from God in our society, how might a language of trust and belonging be received?

In London, James Fawcett leads Being With, a 10-week course whose participants practice being present in the lives of others as well as their own. The course stems from the “being with” theology developed by the Rev. Dr. Sam Wells, which centers around Christ’s life in relation to the time that he spent being with others. It’s not through a rigorous curriculum or Bible study lessons that God’s presence is realized in the lives of the participants but through conversations of wonder or dwelling in spaces of silent reflection.

“We’re trying to be with people as Christ is with people but also as God is with us,” Fawcett says, “and God’s desire is to be with us, and [God] was with us in Christ.”

Being With has now extended beyond the UK, and transformation is happening in the lives of individuals all over the world. People who are on the various edges of faith are being brought to the center of the church and are finding belonging.

“There’s something about it which opens an unclosable door for individuals that they’re then continually seeking,” Fawcett says.

I’m reminded of 1 Corinthians 2:13, where the apostle Paul writes, “This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.”

Through our words and actions, communication that is taught and empowered by the Spirit stretches beyond the barriers of cultural appropriation, injustice and exclusion. We can express hospitality, compassion for the vulnerable and belonging that reach into the hearts of all of God’s beloved.