(RNS) — Even before Donald Trump put his hardline views on undocumented immigration into practice, Isaac Villegas cut his teeth ministering to immigrants.
As the son of two immigrants who met in Los Angeles’ largely Hispanic neighborhoods, you could say he was born into it.
In his new book, “Migrant God: A Christian Vision for Immigrant Justice,” Villegas, a Mennonite pastor who lives in Durham, North Carolina, writes about the people across the United States who have dedicated their lives to solidarity with immigrants through action and prayer.
In the book, released March 13, Villegas recounts his journey along the Migrant Trail Walk in the desolate Arizona desert with people carrying crosses with the names of those who died from heat stroke or dehydration attempting to come into the U.S. He describes his time preparing meals for migrants at a Catholic shelter in Tijuana. He explains how a community defense network tracking migrant raids in Durham worked during the first Trump administration. And he details the experience of his church, which offered sanctuary to an undocumented mother of three fleeing a partner who tried to kill her.
Now a Ph.D. candidate in religion at Duke University, Villegas offers a theological vision for the ways Christian faith transcends national borders and requires adherents to restitch the bonds between them. RNS spoke to him about what he’s learned in his ministry to migrants. The interview was edited for length and clarity.
Why did you want to write this book?
I’ve held onto these stories of people doing solidarity work that I find hopeful, and I kind of replay them in my mind a lot when I need some hope, and I thought that they’re worth sharing with others. I figured other people might appreciate those stories as well.
The title, “Migrant God,” comes from a phrase in the book, “a migrant God for a migrant life.” Tell me more about that.
The title came to me in a sermon I preached in 2011. It was an understanding that God moves with people as they wander through the wilderness of this world. So two key passages for me are when God sets the Hebrew people free from slavery in Egypt, they wander in the wilderness and God’s presence is with them in the form of a tabernacle, a tent, that moves along the way that gets reset wherever they go. That’s what Christians think of as well — that Jesus is this presence of God in human form and solidarity with humankind. So the incarnation of God is a migrant story, as God becoming one of us, to be with us, to be that presence of hope as we wander in this world.
You are the son of migrants. What brought your parents to the United States?
My dad is Colombian and my mom is from Costa Rica. They both immigrated when they were younger and met in Los Angeles, California. My dad was one of the older sons in a large family. His dad died when he was younger, and so it was just his mom at home with the kids. Coming to the United States was a way of sending money back for the care of others. My mom came from an impoverished community in Costa Rica with her whole family to find some kind of economic stability.
What was your religious upbringing?
My very first memories were in a Catholic parish in Los Angeles. Then my parents got involved in the charismatic renewal movement within the Catholic Church. Later on, I dabbled with evangelicalism and ended up with the Mennonite Church because I needed a faith community that was rooted in nonviolence and bearing witness to the peace of Christ through congregational work.
Parts of the book take place in the first Trump administration. You write about the community defense network that was set up in Durham. Has it been reactivated now?
During the first Trump administration, we pieced together this ICE verification watching network here in Durham, borrowing what other groups have been doing and then paying attention to how these networks were burgeoning throughout the United States. That has continued, and it has gotten more organized.
It’s been needed, too, because as soon as Trump got into office, there were groups who would dress up as ICE officers and terrorize communities. They would show up at Latino grocery stores and just scare people with threats of deportation. And so, ICE verification teams go and verify whether people are actually ICE or they’re just posing as ICE agents.
You describe these encounters with ICE where you go up to agents’ parked cars and knock on the windshield and ask if they’re ICE. What’s the idea behind it?
What we discovered during the first Trump administration is that ICE operates in gray areas of the law. They don’t like it when citizens confront them and are aware of what they’re doing because they don’t want the publicity and they don’t want local enforcement knowing what they’re up to. So we found that if you go up and talk to them and confront them and let them know that you’re there, they leave.
I don’t know if that’s going to be the case anymore. There’s a different kind of boldness among ICE agents now, so I don’t know what the effect of staging confrontations will have.
Someone might read the book and say you’re advocating for open borders. How would you respond to that?
An open border plan is not even on the table. What I want to say is what we’ve created here in terms of an immigration system with our enforcement strategies has collateral damage, and that damage is people’s lives. We need to take a steady look at what we’re doing to real people and ask if it’s worth it. I’m trying to say, come with me as we go to this migrant shelter in Tijuana and hear the stories of a mother whose son was threatened by the local cartel and she’s leaving because she cares about her kid’s life and she needs to find safety and that looks like crossing the border into the United States. That’s a real story and that should matter to us, and we should start there with thinking about any kind of border policy change.
National legislation is certainly important. What I want to say is, even if there’s not a piece of legislation we should be calling our senators on, I can tell you about (artist) Alvaro Enciso in Arizona who’s going out every week because of his desire to honor people who died in the desert. That’s something that somebody is doing and inviting people to join him as a way of saying, hey, look, these are human beings out here.
You dedicate the book to Rosa, an undocumented mother who took shelter in the building where your congregation met during the first Trump administration. Are you still in touch with her?
I actually joined her two months ago for a birthday party for one of her kids. It was a wonderful time of joyful celebration. Rosa’s character of endurance and perseverance has been remarkable to me. Rosa is somebody who has put a lot on the line in order to stay here. That’s just been striking to me.
Pastor Isaac Villegas, left, and Rosa del Carmen Ortez Cruz. (RNS photo/Yonat Shimron)
What would sanctuary look like if ICE raids resume?
During the first Trump administration, the North Carolina Council of Churches organized a sanctuary coalition to help congregations ask those questions. I was talking with a friend, a pastor in Ohio. They ended up offering somebody sanctuary this past month, and then that person was granted some kind of reprieve from the immigration courts, so she went back home. So, communities are organizing around sanctuary, and it seems like that is still an option. I think we’re all very tentative about it because we’re worried that with this emboldened ICE, advertising that somebody is taking sanctuary in a congregation would just put a target on their back.
What else can people do now as immigration raids ramp up?
I know that there’s important advocacy work to be done. It sometimes feels like knocking your head against a locked door over and over again. What sustains me in the work is getting to know people who are doing things — walking with somebody through the complications of applying for a work visa, for example. There are local congregations where undocumented people worship. The breadwinner might have been deported from that household, and now all of a sudden, the congregation is helping to support that family. Wwe should support that congregation as they support that family.
