Pilgrimage to detention centers along US-Mexico border highlights immigrants’, employees’ needs

On June 3, a vigil took place outside the West Texas Detention Facility in Sierra Blanca, Texas, the third of five stops by a group of 10 Episcopalians to immigration detention centers along the U.S.- Mexico border. Some participants hold paintings of children who died during migration or while in detention. (Photo: Leeann Culbreath)

[Episcopal News Service] Episcopalians from five states and the District of Columbia are in the middle of a five-day pilgrimage to immigration detention centers along the U.S.- Mexico border in New Mexico and Texas. At each stop they, along with area residents, offer a prayer vigil for detainees and for center employees harmed by the system.

“We want to continue to shine a light on immigrants, because [Americans] are not aware of what is happening, what we are supporting as taxpayers and voters,” the Rev. Leeann Culbreath, a priest in the Diocese of Georgia and one of the pilgrimage organizers, told Episcopal News Service in a phone interview while traveling to the group’s third stop. “We are responsible for this system and what is happening to these people, who are all beloved children of God.”

She and other participants are members of the Episcopal Migration Caucus, which was formed in May 2024 to urge Episcopalians to advocate for just immigration policies. Members introduced a resolution that was adopted by the 81st General Convention, calling for “Migration with Dignity” for migrants in every country.

The 10-member group’s first stop on June 1 was at a park near the Torrance County Detention Center in Estancia, New Mexico. There 55 people participated in the prayer vigil, including several people involved in migrant advocacy. Rio Grande Bishop Michael Hunn was there to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ, he said, noting, “Our status before God does not depend on the passport we carry.”

Hunn, whose diocese covers New Mexico and parts of West Texas, including El Paso, said he was supporting not only those detained but also those who work inside the detention facility. “Those who are detained deserve humane treatment, and those employed in the detention center deserve the honor of treating people humanely,” he said. “Not asking people to sleep in cold rooms, with the lights on all night, or packed in like cattle. Treating people like animals hurts a person.”

The prayer vigil that begins each stop on the pilgrimage has a similar shape, Culbreath said, patterned after Morning and Evening Prayer. It includes Scripture readings, a psalm and songs. It also includes time for stories or reflections from those engaged in work on behalf of immigrants.

At the second stop on June 2, outside a detention facility in El Paso, they heard from the Rev. Lee Curtis, Rio Grande’s canon to the ordinary, about his visit the night before to men being held at a processing center in El Paso. He told of his efforts to offer comfort and blessings to them through the plexiglass divider that separated them.

He also described the experience of a local immigration advocate who, along with a Roman Catholic priest, that morning was accompanying a woman to immigration court in El Paso. That woman and some 30 other people had their cases dropped without notice and were immediately arrested, even after she declared that being deported to her home country would mean certain death for her.

“They wanted to do the right thing, but they got arrested and detained anyway,” Culbreath said.

Rio Grande Bishop Michael Hunn reads a statement during a stop in Estancia, New Mexico, part of a five-day pilgrimage to immigration detention centers. (Photo: Leeann Culbreath)

Culbreath emphasized the pilgrimage’s mission is rooted in immigration and migration resolutions adopted by The Episcopal Church in General Convention.

In addition to the caucus’s 2024 resolution, she pointed to a 2018 resolution that denounced inhumane immigration policies and urged all Episcopalians to advocate on behalf of migrants. It also asked people to tell the U.S. government “to address the specific needs of women and children migrants and others with special vulnerabilities.”

The 2024 resolution’s call for migration with dignity will be hard to enact, Culbreath said, given that the current profit-based system of over 200 immigrant detention centers nationwide benefits from placing migrants in incarceration facilities.

It also disproportionately detains people of color, she added, but people of every race will be affected after Temporary Protected Status is removed from as many as 300,000 immigrants living in the United States, putting them all at risk of being detained and deported.

Worldwide migration is at an all-time high, she said, with people leaving their homes to avoid wars, political unrest or climate-related food insecurity. “They’re going to keep moving, no matter how bad their deterrence is,” she said. “And they are going to continue to try to come to places they believe are safe, so they can have some kind of future for their children.”

She added, “The more we put people in detention, the more abuse and trauma we’ll see … but it doesn’t have to be this way.”

Americans have a choice to make, Culbreath said. “We have to decide if we want to keep going down that path, or if we want to have a completely different system that actually upholds the dignity of every human being, which is our part of our baptismal covenant.”

In addition to the stops in Estancia and El Paso, on June 3 the group held a vigil outside the West Texas Detention Facility in Sierra Blanca, Texas. The final two stops will take them to detention centers near San Antonio, Texas.

— Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas.