New Jersey Faith Leaders and Volunteers Pray With And Support Families Waiting To Visit Detained Loved One

At a privately-operated immigration detention facility in New Jersey, some family members have to travel for hours just to get a 15-minute visit with their jailed loved ones. But at times, officials at GEO Group’s Delaney Hall have cruelly turned them away and told them to try again tomorrow, adding further stress onto the burdens facing families when breadwinners and other loved ones are kidnapped by masked federal agents and detained.

Many others are forced to wait for hours after arriving, often in the hot sun. But they don’t have to wait alone.

Religion News Service reports that following Delaney Hall’s contentious reopening in May, local volunteers and faith members from the community have begun to camp out in the facility’s parking lots every week in order to support visiting families, including distributing coffee, water, and coloring books, as well as holding a “Let Us Pray” service seeking the protection of immigrant families.

“A small altar sat in the middle of the circle holding sanctus bells, prayer cards and a photo of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, the Catholic patroness of immigrants the leaders called on for intercession,” the report said. “Two people joined the group from the visitor’s line. Clutching the paper, both said they wished to remain anonymous and kept their eyes fixed on the sidewalk below.”

During the short service, Fr. Eugene Squeo, a retired diocesan priest, affirmed the humanity of immigrants in his English and Spanish remarks. “We are here because we recognize the dignity of each and every human person,” Fr. Squeo said. “And no one should be treated cruelly or inhumanely.”

Monica Aguilar of community-based organization Action 21 told Religion News Service that as an immigrant herself, her faith has been central to her experiences and hopes prayers “reach inside those walls to people who are looking at us. Hopefully, they can see us through the windows. Sometimes at night, we can see the shadows. I don’t know if they can see us, but it will reach their spirit.”

Volunteers and supporters hope their prayers can reach many others too. Pax Christi New Jersey‘s Kathy O’Leary, who helped organize the weekly event, said she’s “working with the Archdiocese of Newark to hold a Catholic Mass in the coming weeks and with the Episcopal Diocese of Newark to arrange a prayer service,” the report said. “The plan, she said, is to invite different denominations and faith traditions to lead services in the space beside Delaney Hall for the foreseeable future.”

And, volunteers and supporters plan to be at the GEO Group-operated site for as long as they can. Many other local voices, such as First Friends of NJ/NY, Cosecha NJ, Radio Jornalera NJ, NJ Alliance for Immigrant Justice, Faith in New Jersey, SOMA Action, Newark Solidarity Coalition, and Resistencia en Acción NJ have also been leading actions around Delaney Hall. GEO Group’s federal contract is valued at $1 billion and multiplies detention capacity in the state four times over, the ACLU said.

“We’re going to come out here, as long as we need to be out here, as long as we can be out here,” O’Leary told Religion News Service. “We kind of expect that eventually we’re going to irritate people, someone in power too much, and get shut down, but we’ll figure out another way then to support our neighbors. We hope that this is the beginning.”

Faith leaders and volunteers have been standing with immigrant families in increasing ways during the past several months, as we noted in August.

During the summer, San Diego Bishop Michael Pham, an appointee of Pope Leo XIV, was among faith leaders to support immigrants at their immigration court hearings on World Refugee Day, compelled by their values and the unprecedented surge in arrests of individuals just trying to follow the rules by attending their court dates. Since then, dozens of volunteers have joined the San Diego diocese’s court accompaniment program.

Similar court accompaniment efforts have been ongoing in Texas, where Scalabrinian Sister Leticia Gutiérrez told Religion News Service that El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz was also recently in immigration court to bear witness to proceedings. “Seitz witnessed the detention of three people — ‘the sobbing, the anguish of the wife of one of them,’ said Gutiérrez in Spanish. Seitz told her, ‘I saw Jesus walking through the hallway, sister, defenseless.’”

And, in his most extensive remarks on migration since his election to the papacy in May, Pope Leo called migrants and refugees “messengers of hope” and a “true divine blessing” in a world often “darkened by war and injustice.”

The remarks, released ahead of next month’s 111th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, recognized the global circumstances that force individuals to migrate, including “wars, violence, injustice and extreme weather events.” But as Pope Leo noted, nations that receive migrants and refugees who have had the “courage” and “tenacity” to leave everything behind and begin their lives anew also have much to gain from their presence.

“With their spiritual enthusiasm and vitality, they can help revitalize ecclesial communities that have become rigid and weighed down, where spiritual desertification is advancing at an alarming rate,” Pope Leo wrote. “Their presence, then, should be recognized and appreciated as a true divine blessing, an opportunity to open oneself to the grace of God, who gives new energy and hope to his Church: ‘Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it’ (Heb 13:2).”