May 8th, 2008
Illegal-immigrant crackdowns have Valley churches on edge
Once a month, Manuel Maldonado leads a group on a spiritual retreat to the mountains in central Arizona, where out in nature members feel closer to God.
But an April 12 retreat to a campground near Prescott was devastating to the group.
A camper complained the group was making too much noise. Yavapai County sheriff’s deputies arrived, questioned the church members about their citizenship and called federal immigration officials. Nine church members, including the pastor, Maldonado, were detained; seven were later deported to Mexico.
“We are brothers who went there to praise God, and they treated us like delinquents,” said Maldonado, pastor of Iglesia Cristiana Agape in west Phoenix.
The deportations have sent a shock wave through the large and fast-growing network of Latino evangelical churches in Arizona and across the nation, many of which are filled with undocumented immigrants.
Local pastors fearful of stepped-up immigration enforcement are canceling retreats north of the Phoenix area. Some national church leaders are concerned the deportations could open the door for immigration raids at churches.
The Prescott deportations echoed incidents in the Valley that have raised tensions between church leaders and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. A crime sweep by sheriff’s deputies in September resulted in arrests of undocumented day laborers near a church sanctuary in Cave Creek, and another on Good Friday led to arrests of illegal immigrants in east Phoenix.
“We don’t feel safe for the Latino people,” said Hector Ramirez, pastor of Iglesia Wesleyana in Phoenix. He canceled a trip this weekend to the Assembly of God Camp in Prescott that involved seven Valley Latino evangelical churches and 80 members. The retreat will be at one of the churches.
“We are afraid not only that our undocumented members could be deported but that members with papers could be hassled about their immigration and detained,” he said.
Tags: arizona, maricopa
13 Responses to “Illegal-immigrant crackdowns have Valley churches on edge”
Like heroin or human toxic biodiesel
There’s no violation because there’s no law that says the INS or police can’t raid a church. They just don’t want to do it in front of the cameras.It’s stated right in the article: let illegal immigrants live on their properties in the hope that immigration officials won’t raid churches to make arrests.The churches are hardly “harboring” illegals, as everyone knows they’re inside and the church won’t stop officials from entering and capturing the illegals.
In related news, the price of chicken reaches an all time high. I’m just guessing but with the way things are going I wouldn’t be surprised
I would be surprised if more than half of US politicians will be able to mark Pakistan in world map.
Mmm… this crow is delicious. Pass the salt?
you mean, conservatives are hypocrites?! gasp
Many, MANY millions of unemployed Americans on welfare. You just have to motivate them.
Music will do that.Jump down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton…
The thing is that those who remember churches caring for community and say that we should pull the rug out from under those who need help because the churches should go back to helping them all, are apparently the first ones to object when the church starts protecting people from an out of control government.
The spring is beautiful in California. Valleys in which the fruit blossoms are fragrant with pink and white waters in a shallow sea. Then the first tendrils of the grapes swelling from the old gnarled vines, cascade down to cover the trunks…. The men who work in the fields, the owners of the little orchards, watch and calculate. The year is heavy with produce. And the men are proud, for of their knowledge they can make the year heavy. They have transformed the world with their knowledge. The short, lean wheat has been made big and productive. Little sour apples have grown large and sweet. And that old grape that grew among the trees and fed the birds its tiny fruit has mothered a thousand varieties, red and black, green and pale pink, purple and yellow; and each variety with its own flavor.The men who work in the experimental farms have made new fruits: nectarines and forty kinds of plums, walnuts with paper shells. And always they work, selecting, grafting, changing, driving themselves, driving the earth to produce. [But] the little farmers watched debt creep on them like the tide. They sprayed the trees and sold no crop. They pruned and grafted and could not pick the crop. And the men of knowledge have worked, have considered, and the fruit is rotting on the ground. …The decay spreads over the state. And the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. Men who can graft the trees and make the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce. Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the state of California like a great sorrow.The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit - and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains….There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our successes. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate, ‘died of malnutrition,’ because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. In the eyes of the people there is the failure. And in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
It’s always nice to see followers of Jesus standing up to “Conservative Christians.”
boo hoo….i am gonna cry…..