New U.S. President Donald Trump has announced plans to deport millions of illegal immigrants, threatened workplace raids, and reports suggest he might end the long-standing policy that prohibits arrests in churches.
As snow falls outside, worshippers gather at the United Methodist Church in Chicago to pray and prepare for what lies ahead when Donald Trump officially takes office as President of the United States on January 20.
The president-elect has promised to begin the largest deportation of undocumented immigrants in U.S. history.
“January 20 will come sooner than we realize,” said Reverend Tania Lozano, after distributing cups of Mexican hot chocolate and coffee to warm the approximately 60 worshippers in the church.
Located in Pilsen, a predominantly Latino neighborhood, the church has long been a hub for pro-immigration activists within the city’s large Hispanic community. However, Sunday services are now conducted exclusively in English, as the Spanish-language services have been canceled.
The decision to stream services online more frequently was made out of fear that their gatherings could become targets for anti-immigration activists or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
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The new president has stated his intention to deport millions of illegal immigrants, threatened workplace raids, and reports indicate he may end the policy that bans arrests in churches.
According to David Cruz, an American-born parishioner, “the threat is very real.”
Cruz shared that his mother entered the country illegally from Mexico but has been working and paying taxes in the U.S. for 30 years.
“With the new administration coming in, it will feel like persecution. I feel like we’ve been singled out in an unfair way, even though we cooperate endlessly with this country,” he told the BBC.
However, more than 2,000 kilometers south of Chicago, in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, the immigrant community there holds a very different perspective on the upcoming inauguration.
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Source: Kurir, Photo: Reuters