In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. Uzziah had become king when he was 16 years old, ruled like a champ, led the nation of Judah to prosperity, but then got a little too full of himself and was struck with leprosy by God as punishment. When he died, the nation was set adrift. In the midst of that turmoil, Isaiah had a vision of God on the throne and was called to serve as God’s messenger. He went on to prophesy the birth of Christ, write the book of Isaiah, and meet a painful end, possibly by being sawn in half. Unclear. Yet, the story of his vision is interpreted as a reminder that even in times when a nation is in freefall, some higher power is bigger than all of it.
This general sense of deference to a higher power was perhaps reflected in the Obama administration’s 2011 memo that formalized protections against ICE enforcement actions at “sensitive locations.” Arrests, interviews, searches, and surveillance were prohibited from occurring at schools, hospitals, public demonstrations, and institutions of worship. In 2021, the Biden administration issued a memo that expanded these protected areas to include sites such as crisis centers, playgrounds, food banks, graveside ceremonies—places people gather to find resources and community. Places where they find belonging. The guidance was not always followed, but in January of 2025, the Trump administration rescinded the entire policy regarding protected areas. Enforcement at such places would happen on a case-by-case basis.
Wilson Velásquez was one of the first people to be arrested at church. He and his family had left Honduras in 2022 to seek asylum in the United States. Velásquez had applied for a work permit, gotten a job at a tire shop in Atlanta, joined a church, and then helped start another congregation. He was in that church on January 26, 2025, when he was summoned by ICE and taken away from his wife and three children.
On June 11, 2025, a Latino man was detained in the parking lot of Downey Memorial Christian Church. The five men did not identify their agency, names, or badges, or show a warrant, but they did point a rifle at the pastor of the church as they put the man into an SUV with tinted windows.
Countless Christian individuals and congregations have provided refuge for immigrants. The Sanctuary Movement was founded in 1980 by two Quakers and a Presbyterian minister to aid Central American refugees with no legal documentation. The original movement dissolved and has been replaced with the current New Sanctuary Movement, which is a network of faith-based organizations—Lutheran, Catholic, Unitarian, Jewish, and more—who support immigrants threatened by deportation. These are the Mothers of Exile who gather the newcomers into their arms. If only this could be said of all religious practitioners.
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