Meadow Lands church loses members to ICE raids
On Sunday mornings, Octavio Nava used to celebrate Mass with his family at Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Church in Meadow Lands.
But the pew where Nava, his wife and two children sat on Sundays is empty.
Nava – a trusted member of the church community for years – was deported to Guerrero, Mexico, in early January, weeks after he was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Dec. 5 on his way to a construction job and transferred to Moshannon Valley Processing Center, a detention center in Clearfield County.
His wife, Zuleymi, packed up their two children – an 18-month-old son who was born in the United States and a 5-year-old daughter – and on Jan. 18 boarded a bus to reunite with Nava in Guerrero, a state in southwestern Mexico under a U.S. State Department “Do Not Travel” warning because of high levels of crime, kidnapping, and drug cartel activity.
Another church member, Aroldo Alvarado Garcia, who was detained with Nava and another man near the Houston Exit of Interstate 79 in South Strabane Township, is locked in Moshannon and is scheduled for a deportation hearing on Feb. 5.
“It’s awful, the ICE arrests being carried out with little due process, and good people not being treated with dignity and families being separated,” said the Rev. Jay Donahue, senior parochial vicar at St. Oscar Romero Parish who leads a weekly Spanish Mass. “I think the part that is most difficult is the separation of families. It’s hard to see the men taken away and the women and children left behind and struggle to figure out what to do.”
Church social worker Erenia Karamcheti said at least 10 church members have been detained, deported, or both in ICE operations in the city of Washington and nearby municipalities since October.
In recent weeks, she also has received calls from family members of immigrants who work in and around Washington who have been arrested by ICE officers and are locked in federal immigration detention centers.
Among them are a man who reportedly was detained in the parking lot of a bank on Jefferson Avenue on Tuesday morning on his way to a construction job and three brothers who were arrested in the parking lot of the Washington Home Depot on Jan. 23.
Another undocumented immigrant was reportedly detained the next morning along West Chestnut Street.
Nava fled Guatemala for the United States 18 years ago. Garcia, whose wife, Esperanza, and 7-year-old son are hoping for his release, came to the United States about three years ago. Neither Nava nor Garcia – like many undocumented immigrants who have been swept up in the local raids – has a criminal record.
While President Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of mass deportations that targeted “the worst of the worst” and said his administration would focus on detaining “dangerous criminal illegal aliens,” a new report from the Deportation Data Project at the University of California Berkeley shows a different pattern.
According to the report, the number of arrests of people with nonviolent convictions rose 100% from levels under the Biden administration, while arrests of those without any criminal record are up 600%. Arrests of immigrants who have convictions for violent crimes have increased 30%.
“For both transfers and street arrests (the arrests of immigrants at places like grocery stores and schools or in worst raids), the Trump administration’s decision to stop prioritizing arrests based on factors such as criminal convictions (or to prioritize less) resulted in another well-known trend: the huge increase in the number of arrests of noncitizens not convicted of any crime,” the report said.
Karamcheti said Trump’s immigration policies have caught up immigrant parishioners who have lived in the United States for years and have contributed to their communities.
“These are hard-working people. They are not doing anything wrong. They are not criminals who are robbing stores and they are not murderers,” said Karamcheti. “They are hard-working people and they just want to work and live with dignity. The only thing they want to do is to work and to have a better future for their kids.”
The data shows, too, that those who are arrested are far less likely to be released, while deportation rates within two months of detention rose from 55% to 69%.
Voluntary departures rose by more than 21 times.
“People are going back by themselves,” said Karamcheti. “They say, ‘We will go back, we don’t want to live this kind of life anymore. We don’t feel safe. We feel anywhere we go, they will follow us and because of the way we look, they stop us and ask for papers.'”
Led by Karamcheti, the parishioners at Miraculous Medal are rallying around the immigrant families they worship alongside, providing financial help, coordinating carpools to and from medical appointments and school, picking up groceries for families afraid to leave their homes. and Karamcheti and Donahue have been helping to provide care for two children whose mother was deported last month.
“I would say there are a lot of allies and friends of ours that are not Latino that are helping out, and that’s beautiful to see. In our parish, people are starting to come together more to help,” said Donahue. “It’s painful. It’s hard to watch innocent people go through such awful things. A lot are here illegally, but they’re because of the harsh conditions in their countries.”
Chris McAneny, co-director of the Wellness Collective, a Pittsburgh nonprofit that addresses critical needs in the community, has launched a letter-writing campaign to lawmakers and media outlets seeking immigration reform that will allow a better path to citizenship for people like Nava and Alvarado.
“We are hoping to bring some positive solutions,” said McAneny, who, like Donahue, has advocated for passage of the Dignity Act, a bipartisan bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Maria Salazar that aims for comprehensive immigration reform, such as granting legal status to some undocumented immigrants and providing protections for Dreamers. The bill has stalled.
“We want to have dialogue. We need to provide some sort of pathway to citizenship, and we want to talk to our local congressmen and congresswomen and senators who have the actual means to change policy and the course of where we are headed,” said McAneny.
At a recent get-together, McAneny and church members met to discuss ways they could help immigrant families.
“I’m very concerned,” said a Miraculous Medal parishioner, a middle school teacher fluent in Spanish who has become involved in efforts to help the church’s immigrant population. She asked to remain anonymous. “I want them to know there are allies, there are people willing to help. It’s a really tricky time, but I would say to people that they should do what they can and put themselves out there for people who need help.”
Karamcheti said members of the local immigrant population are carrying ID cards for fear of being stopped, and many are staying home as much as possible, worried for their safety.
Several immigrant parishioners are using a phone app that alerts them to sightings of ICE agents in their area.
Recent incidents in Minneapolis, where federal agents killed two protesters this month, have heightened tensions.
Karamcheti has received threatening emails about her work to help the immigrant population.
But she has vowed to continue her efforts, despite the threats.
“They’re not not going to stop me from doing whatever I’m doing for our people because they are hard-working people and they are not bad people.
“I love this country and I love little Washington. I hope that everybody knows we are all human beings and we should not be living with fear. ICE is doing whatever they want to do,” said Karamcheti.
“This used to be a country with opportunity and I still think it’s a country that can give everybody a chance. It is sad. People come here to work and they have a life here, they have lived here for years. Everybody should have a chance, especially when coming from countries like Venezuela and Nicaragua. We’re here to help each other. We should not be fighting with each other. It is a mess right now, but anger shouldn’t win. We should put love first.”