A leading priest in the Episcopal Church of the Diocese of Chicago, after Sunday Mass at a Southside Church here, condemned the latest move by the Internal Revenue Service to help the Trump administration’s hunting down of and deportation of immigrants.
“It is illegal to deport anyone who has applied for asylum and not yet had a court hearing, or to arrest and deport green card holders or to arrest anyone without a valid court order to do so but this new use of the I.R.S. is a particularly cruel system of entrapment,” according to a priest leading the immigration rights efforts of the Episcopal Church here.
Speaking at St. Margaret of Scotland Episcopal Church here, the Rev. Sandra Castillo, chair of Chicago’s Episcopal Church task force on immigration, noted that undocumented immigrants have long been encouraged by the government to file for returns and pay their taxes and that they have been issued nine-digit taxpayer identification numbers in place of the Social Security numbers they don’t have. “To use that information to round up people, destroy families, and instill terror in communities is an outrage but it does not surprise me that the Trump administration would be doing this.”
Castillo castigated the Trump administration for its immigration policy in the sermon she delivered here Sunday at the church and in a discussion afterward in the church hall. The group of parishioners involved in the talks included white, African American, Nigerian, and other African immigrants, Filipinos, and Latinos.
The Episcopal Church here and nationally has been outspoken in its condemnation of the Trump administration’s immigration policy and is warning immigrants and their friends and neighbors about the growing dangers in communities across the country.
Apprehended even with a green card
Lewelyn Dixon, a green card holder who immigrated to the United States from the Philippines 50 years ago is, according to reports in the press, locked up at an Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) prison in Washington State.
Her detention puts the lie to what Trump has been saying about his illegal and unconstitutional immigration crackdown, which he describes as the beginning of the largest mass deportation program in U.S. history. Trump has said he is targeting people who committed illegal acts yet the apprehension of Dixon and others tells a different story. She is in the country legally and has no criminal record.
At the church gathering on Sunday, people learned that illegal roundups are becoming more and more common.
The pastor of St, Margaret’s, the Rev. Primo Racimo, told how another immigrant who has held a green card for 35 years and travels often to her home overseas to visit family was apprehended recently at the airport in Tacoma, Washington, which was her flight’s entry point back into the United States. “She was shipped to an immigration detention center where she languishes today,” he said.
Castillo said the Episcopal Church in Chicago is warning immigrants, including those with green cards, not to leave the country. “Do not give them a chance to destroy your life and the lives of your families,” she said.
Born in Chicago
Castillo, 73, who was born in Chicago, is the daughter of Mexican immigrants. She was a lawyer for 25 years before she became a priest and is an experienced advocate for immigrant rights.
She talked about how family detention centers are not designed to keep families together, as the administration claims, but places where the aim of splitting up families actually comes to life. Boys 18 years and older, she said, are sent with their fathers to detention centers that are essentially prisons while mothers and their daughters and sons 14 and under are shipped off to other detention centers where conditions are also appalling. Many families never get to be reunited.
She talked about a 49-year-old man she tried to help who was alone after being separated from his nine children and unable to get the medication he needed.
A major part of the fightback by the immigration task force run by Castillo involves informing immigrants and their friends, family, and supporters of their rights.
“People need to know,” she said, “that ICE agents arresting people for deportation need to present valid court papers and do not have the right to enter your home unless you open the door and invite them in.”
She told how her task force explains the need for families to alert everyone, even young children, not to open the door to ICE agents demanding entry. “Even if a four-year-old opens up it is declared that the agents were invited into the home. Tell them if they really have a court order they can slip it under the door,” she said.
Castillo told People’s World that, in her opinion, the entire deportation effort and drama the Trump administration stirs up around it is really a big distraction. “They want to divert attention from the fact that they are destroying the constitution, dismantling democratic rights for everyone, dismantling government and agencies we all depend upon for sustenance and survival, and moving to create a society where the rich reap all the benefits and the majority can just remain hungry. In my opinion, this administration is surrounded by a number of fascists who are pushing to implement the entire program of Project 2025.”
Project 2025 is a right-wing manifesto calling for the total reordering of government to serve the interests of the rich over the working-class majority. During his election campaign, Trump denied having anything to do with it but has since filled his administration with leading members of the Project 2025.
Castillo has done social work with immigrants from Africa, Burma, Cuba, and Guatemala, among many other countries. “Issues like climate change, and U.S. foreign policy that exploits whole countries causes people to immigrate to the United States in the first place,” she noted. “Mass immigration and movement of people has always been a part of history but this is no reason to use it to divide us against one another.”
Racimo said “People of all backgrounds have got to come together and realize that we all have much more in common than what separates us. Only this way can we really change the system.”
He put in a plug for the coming May 1 demonstrations in Chicago when immigrant rights groups are planning to come together with labor and its allies to march and rally. “May 1 is the international workers’ holiday,” he said, “and immigrants are workers so we should all get out and make this the biggest May Day event. After all,” he said, “May Day started right here in Chicago in the 19th century when the immigrant workers rallied for the eight-hour day.”
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