Bishop Rojas shepherds flock away from ICE; releases obligation to attend Mass
Photo: Jomarc Nicolai Cala via unsplash.com/@brojomnick
I’m angry. Righteously angry.
My great-grandfather left everything he knew in Asia to work the sugar plantations in what was then the Territory of Hawaii.
He wasn’t free when he came here. He was an indentured laborer, bound by contract and hope for something better.
Like so many people who built this country with their sweat and dreams, he believed America’s promise wasn’t about being perfect. It was about being fair and following the law.
Today, that promise feels as fragile as the old photo I have of the cattle steamship in which he came to America. It reminds me of the difference between belonging and being thrown out, between hope and fear.
When a bishop protects his people
Bishop Alberto Rojas of the Diocese of San Bernardino has done something amazing and deeply Christian.
On July 8, he made a rare decision allowing the 1.6 million Catholics in his area who have “genuine fear of immigration enforcement actions” to skip their Sunday Mass without it being a sin.
This came after ICE agents arrested people on two of his church properties in June, creating what Bishop Rojas called “a tremendous amount of fear, confusion and anxiety.”
As a Presbyterian elder, I’m amazed by this Catholic bishop’s courage and wisdom.
Catholic bishops have sometimes let people skip Mass during natural disasters, wars, or events like COVID-19. But this seems to be the first time a bishop has done this because of immigration raids.
Bishop Rojas used his church authority like a shepherd’s staff, protecting people who can’t protect themselves.
This is what real leadership looks like in dark times.
This looks like police state tactics
What happened in San Bernardino County makes my blood run cold.
On June 20, World Refugee Day, which makes it even worse, ICE agents entered Catholic church properties in Montclair and Highland. They basically raided sacred ground.
A longtime church member at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Montclair was arrested on church property while he was doing landscaping work. Agents chased several men into the church parking lot at St. Adelaide parish in Highland.
I’m haunted by reports of agents working while wearing masks over their faces, not clearly showing who they are or proper badges, without warrants signed by judges, giving no promise that arrested people will get a fair hearing.
These aren’t the methods of a free country.
These are the tactics of dictatorships that my grandfather’s and father’s generation fought and died to stop in the Philippines.
When I think of the Gestapo’s midnight raids, the Soviet secret police’s random arrests, the Tonton Macoute’s reign of terror in Haiti, I see scary similarities in these masked figures grabbing people from church grounds.
This isn’t me being dramatic.
This is someone whose family knows directly what it’s like to be hunted just for wanting a better life.
When the law becomes lawless
My Presbyterian faith and my family’s immigrant story have taught me that democracy stands on one big idea: due process.
Due process means every person, no matter their status, deserves to know what they’re accused of, to face the people accusing them, and to have their case heard by a fair judge. This is what separates civilized society from mob rule.
But as Bishop Rojas said, “Authorities are now seizing brothers and sisters indiscriminately, without respect for their right to due process and their dignity as children of God.”
When immigration enforcement throws out these basic principles, when the Trump administration got rid of protections for arrests at churches, schools and hospitals in January, we’re not seeing law and order. We’re seeing law and order turned upside down.
A Presbyterian standing with a Catholic
Even though I’m a Presbyterian elder and Bishop Rojas leads Catholics, I see in his actions the same Spirit that moved our Church ancestors to shelter refugees from religious persecution.
When John Calvin opened Geneva’s doors to Protestant refugees from across Europe, when Presbyterians ran Underground Railroad stations, when we welcomed Vietnamese boat people in the 1970s, we acted from the same belief that drives Bishop Rojas today.
The Catholic idea of sanctuary and the Presbyterian principle of social justice come from the same place: the belief that every human being is made in God’s image and deserves protection from injustice.
“Cease these tactics immediately, in favor of an approach that respects human rights,” Bishop Rojas demanded of our government.
The weight of family history
My great-grandfather’s rough hands planted sugar cane under the Hawaiian sun while his heart planted dreams of becoming an American citizen. He kept going because he believed this country would eventually see his humanity.
My grandfather helped in the war effort through manual labor, doing his part to feed democracy and starve fascism.
My father built a life in Hawaii after statehood, as the islands become more strongly tied to democracy (through labor strikes and grassroots political organizing) rather than the oligarchy of the sugar planters.
Each generation of my family has watched America slowly, imperfectly, but steadily expand its circle of protection and fairness.
Today, watching masked agents raid churches and grab people without warrants, I’m scared we’re watching that circle shrink fast.
My anger and my sorrow
I am angry, deeply, righteously angry, at leaders who would throw out fairness for the cheap politics of fear.
I’m angry at a system that terrorizes families whose only crime was wanting the same opportunities my great-grandfather wanted in Hawaii’s cane fields.
I’m angry at the moral cowardice of people who stay quiet while churches become hunting grounds.
But under my anger flows something deeper—sorrow.
Sorrow for a country that seems to have forgotten its own story.
Sorrow for children who now fear going to worship.
Sorrow for communities torn apart by raids that echo the darkest parts of history we promised never to repeat.
Stand up and say something, do something
Bishop Rojas has shown us what faithful leadership looks like in a moral crisis.
He used his authority to create space for vulnerable people, to put pastoral care above political pressure, to say that some things—like the right to worship without fear—are more important than the petty tyrannies of enforcement bureaucrats.
As a Presbyterian elder, as the descendant of immigrants, as an American who still believes in fairness and human dignity, I stand with Bishop Rojas.
I call on my fellow Protestants to follow his example.
I challenge every person of faith to ask, “When vulnerable people needed protection, where did I stand?”
How faithful we are won’t be measured by our theological differences but by our shared commitment to justice, mercy, and the radical idea that every person—documented or undocumented, citizen or visitor—is made in God’s image and deserves to be treated with dignity.
Bishop Rojas chose to be a real shepherd instead of someone who runs when trouble comes.
History will remember his courage.
History will also remember how we respond.
