Bishop Mark Edington is an official participant, and Giulia Bonoldi, managing director of Rome’s Joel Nafuma Refugee Center and the convocation’s chief welcoming officer for refugees and migrants, joined as a guest.

The meeting takes place under the auspices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the U.N.’s refugee agency, and comes two years after the 2023 Global Refugee Forum, the world’s largest international gathering on refugees.

The forum meets every four years to inspire support for refugees and discuss forced displacement around the world.

The review meeting is designed to expand support for refugees and work on implementing pledges made at the most recent forum.

At the 2023 forum, The Episcopal Church pledged its commitment to support refugees, noting resolutions adopted by General Convention in 2022 and 2018 that expressed full support of measures to protect refugees and asylum-seekers, including LGBTQ+ people, taken by the United Nations and the International Organization for Migration.

Edington, who also attended the 2023 forum, told Episcopal News Service by email that this review meeting highlighted for him what a crisis it is “that some of the wealthiest nations in the world are turning away from the needs of the most vulnerable people in the world at just the moment that there are more refugees fleeing violence, war and climate change than at any earlier point in human history.”

In response, he said faith communities can play a crucial role by stepping into a vacuum left by reduced public funding. “We cannot solve the whole problem, but we can do something — and we are capable of doing even more than we have been doing.”

For Bonoldi, the meeting offered “a shared commitment to deliver on pledges,” she said by email. However, she saw that “significant challenges” emerged around asylum and protection of displaced people “at a time when the gap between growing humanitarian needs and declining funding continues to widen.”

Across the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe, which in Western Europe includes parishes and missions in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland, congregations are serving refugees through its refugee grant program.

The convocation began serving refugees, with support from Episcopal Relief & Development, in 2022 at the start of the war in Ukraine.

Edington and Bonoldi were joined at the meeting by Tanzania Archbishop Maimbo Mndolwa, the Anglican Communion’s representative to the UNHCR Multi-Religious Council of Leaders, and Martha Jarvis, the Anglican Communion’s permanent representative at the United Nations.

Lynnaia Main, The Episcopal Church’s representative to the United Nations, in an email to ENS thanked Edington and Bonoldi “for their representation alongside the Anglican Communion and other faith-based partners” and prayed “for the safety and security of all asylum seekers and refugees around the world.”

— Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas.

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Geneva, Switzerland, hosted some 18 attendees at the Sept. 19-20 conference, which included presentations, discussions and fellowship. Its Refugee Welcome Center began in 2022 in response to an influx of mostly women and children fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Photo: Lynette Wilson/Episcopal News Service

[Episcopal News Service – Geneva, Switzerland] As Western governments continue cuts to foreign aid and humanitarian assistance, and as the United States dismantles its federal refugee resettlement program and eliminates the U.S. Agency for International Development, nongovernmental organizations and religious institutions, including The Episcopal Church, may need to step up their efforts to address the global refugee crisis.

With this in mind, the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe focused its annual leadership training over the weekend on the theme, “The Refugee Crisis: What we can do as parishes, missions and individuals.”

Worldwide, there are an estimated 42.7 million refugees, 73.5 million people internally displaced within their own countries, and 8.4 million asylum-seekers, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ 2024 figures.

Across the convocation, which in Western Europe includes parishes and missions in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland, congregations are already serving refugees through its refugee grant program. The conference aimed to share existing work and establish a framework, including practical guidelines, to identify existing needs and strategize and collaborate on providing services to meet those needs.

“One of our goals is to raise awareness, not only of the refugee situation, but what we are doing within the convocation, what tools we have to help congregations discern what it is that they can or want to do and what the needs of their city are,” Janet Day-Strehlow, who chairs the convocation’s European Institute for Christian Studies, which organized the conference, told Episcopal News Service.

Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Geneva hosted approximately 18 attendees at the Sept. 19-20 conference, which included presentations, discussions, and a sharing of stories by refugees, as well as fellowship. Its parish-based Refugee Welcome Center began in 2022 in response to an influx of mostly women and children fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; in 2024, it assisted 1,000 refugees, the majority Ukrainian.

The center’s budget increased from $15,000 to $150,000 in three years; it receives support through the convocation’s grant program, which Episcopal Relief & Development, Capital Group and private donations support.

Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Geneva, Switzerland, operates a parish-based Refugee Welcome Center catering to the wants and needs expressed by refugees. Photo: Lynette Wilson/Episcopal News Service

The welcome center offers French language classes that complement those offered by local social service providers. It also sponsors cultural events, hosts yoga and other movement classes, music lessons, English classes and English-immersion camps for children, the Rev. Michael Rusk, rector of Emmanuel Episcopal Church, told attendees during his presentation.

The center sought to partner with others so as not to duplicate but rather fill the gaps in needs and services. It is intended to respond to the Baptismal Covenant’s call to respect the dignity of every human being.

“That’s what we’re called to live out, not just on a Sunday, but throughout the week,” Rusk told ENS. Through expressing that covenant, the church has created “a community which has many people of different nationalities, and which includes refugees and migrants who received a warm welcome.”

As of 2024, the convocation, in partnership with Episcopal Relief & Development, has supported over 40,000 refugees in 11 countries with essentials, health care, legal aid, language classes and employment assistance, said Giulia Bonoldi, managing director of the Rome, Italy-based Joel Nafuma Refugee Center and the convocation’s chief welcoming officer for refugees and migrants.

Modeling Emmanuel’s approach, she said during her presentation, churches interested in assisting refugees and migrants first need to understand what social and cultural services are already available. There is no need to replicate or re-invent services, she said. Churches need to work alongside community partners and add value.

“This is a time in which the church has an important opportunity to change the way it perceives itself, to do good work and encourage more awareness [of the crisis],” Bonoldi said during a discussion following Rusk’s presentation.

Kim Powell, senior warden at the American Cathedral in Paris, and Sierra McCullough, co-chair for mission, attended the conference because even though they’re already providing sneakers and socks to young refugees, they’ve not yet applied for a grant from the convocation and they’re interested in expanding their partnerships in Paris to create arts programs for refugees, they said.

In her presentation, the Rev. Sarah Shipman, director of the church’s Episcopal Migration Ministries, spoke about EMM and how, over its 40-year history, it helped welcome and resettle over 110,000 people from some 87 countries. Along with its partners, EMM worked to find housing for refugees, provide legal and employment assistance, language and cultural orientation classes, assistance enrolling children in school, and other services.

EMM had been one of 10 nongovernmental agencies, many of them associated with religious denominations, that facilitated refugee resettlement through the federal program created in 1980. Refugees traditionally have been among the most thoroughly vetted of all immigrants and often waited for years overseas for their opportunity to start new lives in the United States. After the Trump administration issued an executive order in January suspending the program, EMM announced plans to wind down its core resettlement operations. The federal contract officially ends on Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

Through its newly created public witness division, EMM is now part of a broader effort, including the church’s Washington, D.C.-based Office of Government Relations and others, to find ways to continue to assist refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants. And EMM continues to serve migrants through diocesan partnerships, collaboration with other Anglican provinces worldwide and local outreach to refugees who continue to build lives in U.S. communities.

“Whether you’re a Christian or Jewish or Muslim or you have no faith at all, we all feel and experience empathy, and we all have a responsibility in our community to look out for and protect one another,” Shipman told ENS.

Shipman first stopped in Rome to learn about the work of the JNRC; as EMM shifts its focus from resettling refugees in the United States to supporting ministries serving refugees and migrants more broadly, the center based at St. Paul’s Within the Walls serves as a potential model.

Whereas historically, refugees arriving in the United States arrived with a well-established legal process, those arriving in Italy must apply for asylum upon arrival.

“People risk their lives because they have no path to come legally,” Bonoldi said.

The center operates a day shelter and provides food, clothing, Italian- and English-language classes, legal and job assistance, and other services to an average of 150 refugees on weekdays. It does so with a small staff, interns and volunteers, and an annual budget under $400,000.

Max Niedzwiecki, an anthropologist who serves on The Episcopal Church’s Standing Commission on World Mission and who has worked closely with EMM on developing its Rainbow Initiative Program, serving LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum-seekers, talked about refugee rights and the European context.

Following the formation in 1945 of the United Nations and the end of World War II, the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol defined the term “refugee,” outlined their rights and provided a framework for their treatment and protection.

Niedzwiecki also emphasized that the way people talk about refugees, particularly in an increasingly polarized world, can influence their rights. And he reminded those present that refugees are more than their legal status.

“Sometimes when we talk about migrants, there is an implication that the people who are doing the talking are separate from them, while we know that our communities include migrants,” he later told ENS.

“In addition, we might focus only on migrants’ struggles, while we know that they are full human beings with energy, skills and love to share. Their presence is a blessing, and they deserve gratitude, as well as empathy. When we neglect to voice our gratitude, admiration and solidarity with migrants in our words and in our prayers, we run the risk of reinforcing harmful stereotypes in our own hearts, and in the minds of people who are listening.”

On Sept. 22, Bonoldi, Day-Strehlow and Shipman joined the Rt. Rev. Mark Edington, bishop of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe, for a meeting with a UNHCR official at its Geneva headquarters.

-Lynette Wilson is a reporter and managing editor of Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at lwilson@episcopalchurch.org.

Since then another group of Afrikaners claiming refugee status arrived at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on May 30 — to much less fanfare.

In fact, the State Department declined to say how many Afrikaners it has admitted to date.

“Refugees continue to depart South Africa on commercial flights as part of the Department’s successful efforts to resettle Afrikaners seeking safe haven in the United States,” a spokesperson informed RNS via email. “As a matter of general policy, we are unable to comment on individual cases or internal operations of refugee processing.”

The Refugee Processing Center is not updating its database, either. Its recordkeeping ended in late December.

But news outlets abroad have reported that nine additional Afrikaners arrived in the U.S. on May 30 — and more are coming.

On June 20, World Refugee Day, faith-based resettlement agencies that work with the government are acknowledging this will be a record-low year for refugees.

Last year, under the Biden administration, around 100,000 refugees from around the world were resettled across the U.S. On his first day in office, President Trump paused the refugee program.

The one group the Trump administration has allowed in are Afrikaners, the white ethnic minority that created and led South Africa’s brutal segregationist policies known as apartheid. Their admission to the U.S. as “refugees” escaping persecution has been widely denounced as a fabrication. The Episcopal Migration Ministries ended its partnership with the government rather than resettle the refugees.

“In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step,” the Most Rev. Sean W. Rowe — the presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church — said.

Other faith-based refugee agencies have reluctantly agreed to resettle Afrikaners because they hope a court injunction will compel the government to resettle at least 128,000 refugees who had already been approved before Trump’s Jan. 20 suspension of all refugee admissions.

Three faith-based refugee agencies sued the Trump administration to resume refugee admissions. In April, a U.S. district judge ruled that the government must continue providing refugee resettlement. The government filed a motion this week saying the court’s injunctions represent “excessive overreach.”

Many refugee agencies laid off hundreds of employees because of the Trump administration’s indefinite pause of the refugee program. Another faith-based refugee resettlement group run by U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also ended its government-supported program.

Ten Afrikaners are being resettled in North Carolina, a N.C. Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson said. The first three arrived in the U.S. on May 12 and another seven on May 30.

Most settled into apartments in Raleigh, the state capital, furnished with help from Welcome House, a program of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina.

North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein has declared June 20-26 “North Carolina Refugees Welcome Week,” in keeping with the annual June 20th celebration established by the United Nations to honor refugees.

Adam Clark, executive director of World Relief Durham, a faith-based agency, said at least 10 people on his staff have been let go. But the office remains open and is serving refugees that arrived just before Trump’s pause. It has not yet been asked to resettle Afrikaners.

“We’ll move forward for now just to make sure that the door can stay open for people from the world’s greatest crisis areas and for the current thousands of clients that will be penalized (if we close),” Clark said.

In the meantime, Clark said World Relief will celebrate refugees at Durham Central Park on June 21 as part of Durham Refugee Day, a community-wide event that celebrates the contributions and cultures of our refugee and immigrant neighbors.

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe visited the Joel Nafuma Refugee Center at St. Paul’s Within the Walls Episcopal Church in Rome, Italy, on May 19. To his right is the Rev. John W. Kilgore, St. Paul’s interim priest, and to his left is Giulia Bonoldi, the center’s director. Photo: Lynette Wilson/Episcopal News Service

[Episcopal News Service – Rome, Italy] For decades, the Joel Nafuma Refugee Center has provided a space for refugees and migrants arriving here in Rome. Today, it’s the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe’s largest refugee assistance program, one that serves as a model for churches across the continent.

The center, housed in the crypt at St. Paul’s Within the Walls, operates a day shelter and provides food, clothing, Italian- and English-language classes, legal and job assistance, and other services to an average of 150 refugees each weekday. It does so with a small staff, interns and volunteers, and with a budget just under $400,000.

On May 19, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe visited the center and received a guided tour from its director, Giulia Bonoldi, who explained the center’s holistic approach, from providing sleeping bags to people who live on the streets to teaching them about their legal rights and helping them integrate into society.

“The work that’s happening at this refugee center is tremendous. … This is exactly what Jesus calls us to do,” Rowe told Episcopal News Service during his visit. “I think that we can see this as a model of people who are able to help resettle refugees with a shoestring budget. … I think this is a replicable model across The Episcopal Church in this time, particularly as we [in the U.S.] move from a federally funded program to more grassroots and local organizations; there’s something to be learned here.”

Rowe had travelled to Rome to attend Pope Leo XIV’s May 18 inauguration in the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Square. His visit to the center followed the announcement last week that The Episcopal Church would not resettle white South Africans favored by the Trump administration and would end all federal resettlement work when the church’s federal contract expires at the end of the fiscal year.

Episcopal Migration Ministries has been one of 10 nongovernmental agencies, many of them associated with religious denominations, that facilitated refugee resettlement through the federal program created in 1980. EMM will continue to serve migrants through diocesan partnerships, collaboration with other Anglican provinces worldwide, and local outreach to refugees who are continuing to get settled in American communities.

Named for its founder, the Joel Nafuma Refugee Center is a ministry that dates to the 1980s.

Europe is a destination point for refugees and asylum-seekers fleeing violence and persecution, political instability, civil wars and territorial disputes that rage in some 24 African, Middle Eastern and southern and central Asian countries and regions.

The Italian peninsula is close to Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East and is point of first reception for asylum-seekers, many of whom arrive by boat.

Per the European Commission, when a person pleads for asylum, the country responsible for processing the claim is determined by one of three criteria: immediate family links, which facilitate integration; whether an E.U. country has previously issued the asylum-seeker a visa; or “first country,” meaning the point of first reception.

“We are not as a church leaving the field of refugee ministry; it’s just that the way we do it is changing, and the locus of it is shifting,” Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe Bishop Mark Edington told ENS. “Right now, the most active ministry with refugees is in Europe.”

Building on its ministry to refugees and in response to the war in Ukraine, the convocation, with support from Episcopal Relief & Development, began in 2022 accepting grant applications from Episcopal, Anglican and now other churches and missions across Europe interested in working with refugees and migrants.

“Through our partnerships with Episcopal Relief & Development, we’re enabling partnerships with churches in 11 countries and serving 200,000 refugees,” Edington said.

What started with some six projects has grown this year to 20 operating from Romania to Portugal to Cyprus.

“Bishop Mark’s goal was not only to change the lives of refugees, but also to change the lives of churches,” Bonoldi, who also oversees the grant program as the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe’s chief welcoming officer for refugees and migrants, previously told ENS.

The bishop’s goal, she said, was not only to give money and support other organizations engaged in the work, but to get churches to start programs and for members to volunteer to work with refugees. “And this is actually what happened,” she said.

-Lynette Wilson is a reporter and managing editor of Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at lwilson@episcopalchurch.org.

The lawyer, Ruth López, was taken into custody around 11 p.m. May 18 by agents of the National Civil Police. The organization denounced the police’s actions as “a serious human rights violation under international law.”

“The authorities’ refusal to disclose her location or to allow access to her legal representatives is a blatant violation of due process, the right to legal defense and international standards of judicial protection,” Cristosal said while objecting to what it said amounts to “an enforced disappearance.”

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López had been scheduled to participate May 20 in a webinar organized by Episcopal Divinity School. Seminary officials, other Episcopal leaders and global justice advocates are joining Cristosal in drawing attention to the situation while pleading for her safe return.

“We call on Salvadoran authorities to immediately release Ruth López and urge the Salvadoran government to guarantee her physical safety and due process rights,” Amnesty International said in a May 19 letter that was signed by more than a dozen other organizations.

“Authoritarianism has increased in recent years as [Salvadoran] President Nayib Bukele has undermined institutions and the rule of law, and persecuted civil society organizations and independent journalists. Our organizations have been closely monitoring the closing of civic space and attacks on independent press in El Salvador and are deeply concerned at the increasingly pervasive environment of fear that threatens freedoms in the country.”

Lopez’s arrest comes as Bukele’s treatment of detainees has faced heightened scrutiny in the United States, after the Trump administration sent hundreds of migrants to an El Salvador prison under an agreement with Bukele’s government. Many of the migrants reportedly were deported under dubious pretexts, and U.S. judges and critics of the deportations have warned that Trump administration officials may have violated constitutional due process rights.

Cristosal was founded as a partnership between clergy in El Salvador and the United States in 2000. It has since become an independent nonprofit, with continued Episcopal support, and has expanded operations to Guatemala and Honduras. Over the past two and a half years, its staff has assisted over 7,500 internally displaced people in the Northern Triangle, where violence is driven by organized crime, narco-trafficking, and, increasingly, political instability.

López, through her work for Cristosal, had been named one of the BBC’s 100 most influential women of 2024, earning praise for her “tireless dedication to human rights and transparency.”

“I simply do what I think I have to do,” she said in December after being included on the BBC’s list. “It is an enormous responsibility because there are hundreds and thousands of women human rights defenders in our country, brave women throughout our history who have done this all their lives.”

López also is known as a vocal critic of Bukele’s government, which has been accused of corruption. The Salvadoran attorney general confirmed her arrest in an online post on suspicion of “theft of funds from state coffers.” Other critics of the government say there is no validity to the charge.

El Salvador has been living under a state of emergency since March 2022, when Bukele suspended citizens’ fundamental rights and gave authorities the power to arrest and imprison without due process anyone suspected of gang activity.

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.

St. John’s Episcopal Church in Little Silver, New Jersey, used grant money from the Diocese of New Jersey’s Episcopal Community Services to build a vegetable garden to help supply nearby pantries and ministries. April 5, 2025. Photo: Courtesy of Tammy Young

[Episcopal News Service] The Diocese of New Jersey’s Episcopal Community Services will host its annual Sunday campaign, a day dedicated to raising awareness of designated social justice issues and galvanizing congregations to volunteer, donate money or spread awareness, on May 4. 

The campaign is held every first Sunday of May. This year’s theme is “Building on a Firm Foundation,” focusing on the ongoing refugee and immigration crisis.

“We in the diocese are appalled by what’s happening to migrants. … Anybody who looks like they might be Hispanic can be rounded up and taken away without due process of law, including infants who are American citizens and people who have judicial orders permitting them to stay because of credible fears of being tortured if they return to their home countries,” Rosina Dixion, chair of Episcopal Community Services’ advisory council and prayer committee, told Episcopal News Service.

Since beginning his second term in January, President Donald Trump has issued multiple executive orders restricting immigration to the United States, including the asylum process, and increasing security along the U.S.-Mexico border. In his first 100 days back in office, ICE has arrested 66,464 undocumented immigrants and deported 65,682, though many other immigrants who have been arrested and deported were in the United States legally.

In March, hundreds of Venezuelan migrants – many of whom were legally in the United States – were arrested and sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador that has been criticized for alleged human rights abuses. The Trump administration has alleged the illegally detained migrants have ties to the Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua. However, many of the migrants’ families and lawyers insist they have no gang ties, and documents show that about 90% of them have no U.S. criminal record. Many have disappeared from the U.S. detainee tracking system.

Episcopal Community Service members have been distributing red cards to immigrants that describe their legal rights ahead of the campaign. They also have been providing churches information to learn how to participate in immigration justice work as a congregation and individually, as well as liturgical resources focusing on justice for marginalized and displaced people.

“ECS Sunday is really to celebrate the outreach throughout the diocese, and we try to balance charitable giving with advocating for justice. We take the source and the symptoms of oppression and try to stamp it out wherever we can,” Dixion said. “ECS Sunday is one way to remind people that we’re prioritizing our work with immigrants because of the current situation. That seems to be the biggest attack on Gospel justice right now.”

The first ECS Sunday campaign launched in 2021. Since then, Episcopal Community Services has used campaign donations to award $479,000 in grants to 37 ministries throughout the diocese.

St. John’s Episcopal Church in Little Silver is one of ECS Sunday’s 24 founding congregations. The Rev. Tammy Young, St. John’s rector and a member of Episcopal Community Services’ advisory board, told ENS that she plans to use ECS Sunday’s special liturgy during Sunday worship. Her homily, based on the story of Paul’s conversion from Acts 9, will address how anyone can make a positive difference in their community and that everyone is called by God to salvation.

 “We like to think that salvation is a one-way ticket to heaven, but that’s not what biblical salvation is,” Young said. “Our role in advocacy – in seeing need and responding to it – we must teach people to stop being afraid each other, take a chance and go out and start bringing healing to people.”

Episcopal Community Services has provided parishes materials to use to promote ECS Sunday so that the campaign and immigration justice can be incorporated into their May 4 worship services in some way. Money donated to the campaign will fund various outreach ministries throughout the year, including feeding and housing initiatives. Dixion said Episcopal Community Services is hoping to raise $125,000, with $75,000 for the grant budget and $50,000 for additional expenses.

The grants “are designed to expand existing compassion and justice ministries of congregations and make new ones possible,” according to Episcopal Community Service’s website.

Young said St. John’s congregation donates money to Episcopal Community Services throughout the year rather than strictly on ECS Sunday. Most recently, St. John’s donated $1,000 at the beginning of 2025. The church also has been an ECS Sunday grant recipient and used the money to build a community vegetable garden that will help feed nearby pantries and ministries. The garden’s “grand opening” is June 1, when New Jersey Bishop Sally French is scheduled to visit.

“It’s our co-mission with God to make this world the way he intended it to be, that everybody has access to resources to take care of themselves and their families,” Young said. “

The Rev. Marshall Shelly, rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Spotswood and vice president of Episcopal Community Services’ board of trustees, told ENS that having a designated campaign day allows the organization to focus on one theme for the year, maximize positive impact locally and further encourage participation.

“Having an ECS Sunday puts our fundraising and advocacy efforts to the forefront of people in the pews, so they understand that this is an ongoing thing. It invites people to partner with us as congregations, as households and individuals, and across the region. We get people to really connect to the mission and the vision of it,” said Shelly, who also is a member of the advisory board and previously served on the Diocese of New Jersey’s Task Force on Refugees and Resettlement. This year, “we are encouraging people to advocate for those who are sojourners in the land and helping to welcome all to a place of refuge and rest.”

Congregations that participate in ENS Sunday will be given a virtual medallion on their websites to show their commitment to supporting immigration justice and other forms of social justice.

Episcopal Community Services is working to build support networks between parishes and local agencies, as well as among Episcopal churches to help consolidate outreach and evaluate where need is greatest in New Jersey.

“Speaking out on the immigration crisis gives us an opportunity to extend that welcome to all,” Shelly said. “You’re never quite aware just how many people are actually refugees in your midst until you start meeting them, greeting them and joining their company.”

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.

Comunidad de Luz, a migrant shelter for women and children co-established by the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego, features a large kitchen and dining room that will be used for meals and nutrition education classes. The shelter opened in April 2025. Photo: Diocese of San Diego

[Episcopal News Service] The Diocese of San Diego in southern California and several nonprofit and ecumenical partners have opened a shelter for migrant women and children in Tijuana, Mexico, just across the U.S.-Mexico border. The first residents are expected to move in on April 15, and staff and volunteers from both sides of the border are ready to serve them.

The diocese partnered with Via International, the Vida Joven Foundation, the Pacifica Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Anglican Diocese of Western Mexico to establish Comunidad de Luz – Spanish for “Community of Light.” Licensed by the Mexican government, the shelter will house up to 150 women and children fleeing violence, poverty, and political and economic instability.

“God understands the plight of the migrants and the refugees and those who are fleeing from danger and those who need to find a way to start a new life. God is most deeply concerned about the poorest and most vulnerable of our society, and that is where our church needs to be,” San Diego Bishop Susan Brown Snook told Episcopal News Service in a phone interview. “We need to be following Jesus, who said that whatever you do to the least of my siblings, you are doing to me. …We are ministering to Jesus himself and, metaphorically, to Jesus’s mother, Mary.”

In addition to basic necessities like food, clothing and hygiene products, Comunidad de Luz will provide job training, mental health services, nutrition and health education, language classes, child care, academic resources, transportation and spiritual care. Social workers will also be available on site. The Rev. Tony Hernandez, a priest in the Anglican Church of Mexico, will offer regular prayer services and pastoral care at the shelter. Comunidad de Luz also has outdoor space that includes a play area; it will eventually include a vegetable garden that will be a part of the nutrition and children’s education programs.

San Diego Bishop Susan Brown Snook, far left, clergy, government officials, community activists and others who’ve been addressing the humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border gathered April 1, 2025, at Comunidad de Luz in Tijuana, Mexico, for a ribbon cutting ceremony. The migrant shelter will house up to 150 women and children. Photo: Diocese of San Diego

No time limit has been established for residents to stay at Comunidad de Luz, but Snook said she and others involved with the shelter estimate they would stay for up to a year. In that time, the women will “hopefully” have completed job training and have established a network as they search for housing and employment in Tijuana.

Child residents will be enrolled in a nearby public school, with the shelter covering the cost of uniforms and school supplies, Snook said. 

Robert Vivar, the Diocese of San Diego’s immigration missioner, told ENS the shelter aims to create self-sustainable programs for the residents so that they can live “a quality life” after leaving.

“We want to create a space where vulnerable migrant women and children have an opportunity to live a dignified life,” he said. The goal is “to help prepare them so that at a certain point, they can reintegrate back into their community.”

Work on Comunidad de Luz began in 2023, shortly after Vivar started working for the diocese. Vivar preached about migration challenges at Christ Episcopal Church in Coronado, the church home of Tony Ralphs. His wife, a Mexican citizen, owns the fenced 13-acre property in Tijuana where the shelter now sits. The Ralphses were already operating a six-story orphanage, retreat center and chapel on the compound but had another two-story building that wasn’t being used. After hearing Vivar preach, Tony Ralphs offered to license the empty building for a new migrant shelter.

The building received significant upgrades and additions, including an apartment for its resident coordinator, bathrooms, showers, a larger water heater and more. The first floor includes a large commercial kitchen, a dining room, a laundry room and a meeting space for group therapy and other needs. The second floor has three large dormitory-style rooms with bunk beds provided by the Mexican government.

An apartment and office space for the shelter’s resident coordinator, Monse Melendez, were also added to the building.

Comunidad de Luz is licensed to serve only women and children because of its shared property with the orphanage, according to Snook.

Elisa Sabatini is director of Via International, a San Diego-based nonprofit that promotes sustainable, asset-based community development across Latin America, the United States and Sri Lanka. She told ENS that the shelter will “probably cost” $100,000 a year to remain fully operational.

“We have the resources for the operational aspects like bedding, lodging and meals, but I think the more ambitious part of the shelter will be the training of staff and volunteers, the education programs, and the health and psychological services,” Sabatini said. “We’ll need to keep raising money to be sure that we’re solid with everything we’re trying to offer.”

Via International will run adult programming within Comunidad de Luz, including career development and trauma-informed psychological care. The nonprofit will also organize mission service trips to the shelter through its Via GO Travel program.

Aida Renee Amador Aleman, a migrant coordinator for Via International since 2017, will serve as director of Comunidad de Luz.

Snook said a $300,000 startup grant from a private foundation helped to kickstart the shelter. She said she thinks that money will last about a year and a half, but “we’re recognizing that we can’t just sit back and say we’ve got this money and we’re going to be fine.” Fundraising for future sustainment has already begun; almost $25,000 was raised during the Christmas 2024 season.

“So much is required to start a program like this, from the legal side to the financial and fundraising side, to pulling together the partners who are passionate about this work,” Snook said.

Snook and Sabatini are board members of the shelter along with Janet Marseilles, a board member of the Vida Joven Foundation. The San Marcos, California-based nonprofit provides funding and services to orphaned and migrant children in the Mexican state of Baja California. Vida Joven has committed financial support to Comunidad de Luz’s programs for children.

Clergy, Tijuana officials, community activists and others who’ve been addressing the humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border gathered April 1 at Comunidad de Luz for a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Attendees toured the facility and met staff to learn more about the shelter’s programs. Hernandez, the Mexican priest, led a group prayer.

The Tijuana shelter’s opening comes after many migrant shelters and services in the United States have closed in recent months due to a sharp decline in border crossings and anti-immigration policy changes under the Trump administration, including restrictions on the asylum process. Episcopal-operated shelters, like the Diocese of the Rio Grande’s shelter at St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church in El Paso, Texas, and the Diocese of West Texas’ Plaza de Paz Respite Center in San Antonio, Texas, have closed indefinitely. The new policies also effectively halted the United States’ refugee resettlement program, which had been facilitated by Episcopal Migration Ministries and nine other agencies with federal contracts.  

“With the new policies under the Trump administration, it’s going to create an additional strain on housing for migrants in Tijuana,” Vivar said. “Even before these changes, we saw Comunidad de Luz as something that’s very much needed.”

Snook said she hopes to eventually collaborate with the Catholic Archdiocese of Tijuana and other additional potential ecumenical partners in supporting Comunidad de Luz.

“We need to create a safe community and work together to care for this new ministry,” she said. “It’s vitally important to work on the ground in Tijuana to fulfill the migrants’ physical, economical, emotional and spiritual needs. We need to work together to minister to the whole person.”

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.

Loya created the fund, he told Episcopal News Service, because the diocese has seven congregations where immigrants are the majority of members, and another two where immigrants are a sizable minority. Four are predominantly Latino, but all of them include people who have arrived in Minnesota from around the world.

“We are richly blessed by this diversity,” he said.

But in a time when recent immigrants are the target of what he called hateful rhetoric and unjust policies, “we really feel as a diocese that we have to provide a response,” he said.

St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photo: Episcopal Church in Minnesota

Loya thinks the fund can be helpful in two main ways: providing money to congregations’ existing or new initiatives that serve recent immigrants, especially if they need to expand those efforts; and partnering with other organizations to help fill the gaps that will result from cuts to federal funding under President Donald Trump.

Specifics are still in flux, Loya said, as changing circumstances affect where the need is greatest, but he knows the need will be enormous. And just because there is a limited amount the diocese can do “doesn’t let us off the hook to do what we can,” he said

With Episcopal Migration Ministries winding down its core operations after the Trump administration halted federal funding for refugee services, Loya said that now is “a moment for us to recommit to the stranger among us with the love God extends to every human being.”

Since announcing the fund’s creation on Feb. 6, more than 100 individuals have made personal contributions, he said, and he also has been contacted by ecumenical colleagues in the state to see if there was a way they could either partner with the fund or start one of their own.

Loya’s commitment to the fund, and meeting the needs behind it, springs from what he describes as the Christian community’s dual vocation of witness and resistance – “witnessing to God’s vision for beloved community in the world, witnessing to the power of God’s love and God’s coming kingdom in the world; and resisting the way in which the forces of evil in a broken world are always breaking down the creatures of God.”

A model for how Christians can speak up in challenging times, he said, comes from the comments Washington Bishop Mariann Budde addressed to President Donald Trump in the Jan. 21 Service of Prayer for the Nation at Washington National Cathedral. Her words were “brave, convicted, clear, gentle, humble and loving,” Loya said.

He also supports the action of The Episcopal Church in joining the lawsuit against the Trump administration for allowing immigration officers to target churches and other “sensitive” places for arrests as part of the president’s promised crackdown on legal and illegal immigration.

“There is probably no clearer moral imperative in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures than the call to care for the stranger and the foreigner in our midst,” Loya said. “We are given that call because when we were estranged from God, God met us with embrace rather than exclusion.”

Loya also acknowledged that while his primary motivation for serving immigrants in his diocese comes simply from being a follower of Jesus, as a third-generation Mexican American it feels personal. “When I see photos of some of the people in the early deportation efforts, I see my grandmother, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins,” he said. He added that for Christians, “what affects one of us affects all of us.”

In addition to announcing the migrant support fund, Loya’s message also encouraged support for the diocese’s migration caucus, a group of clergy and lay people who have been meeting online for several months to help congregations better understand what is happening with immigration and how they can assist. He noted a series of resources the caucus has gathered.

As bishop, Loya also called on Minnesotans to pray as a way to ground their work and advocacy, and he offered a special prayer that he asked to be used as the end of the Prayers of the People every Sunday until Easter Day:

O God, who embraced us with perfect love and made us your people when we were yet strangers to you: be present with all refugees, immigrants, and displaced people throughout the world; may they know the consolation of your presence, and the liberating power of your love. Then give us grace, we pray, to extend ever wider your embrace in a world of exclusion, until all your children are knit together as beloved family in the perfect love that is your very heart, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who was displaced among us, and who now lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

— Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas.

That resource page can be found here.

“The Trump administration has made sweeping policy changes on immigration that are already having an impact on millions of people,” the office said in an introduction to the toolkit. “Many of these new policies have been — and will be — challenged by the courts, and we anticipate continued shifts. In our ongoing support of migrants, and those living in our communities who face uncertain futures, obtaining and sharing accurate information is critical.”

The toolkit also includes a link to an updated summary of the dozens of immigration-related policies that have been adopted by The Episcopal Church through General Convention resolutions and actions of Executive Council since the 1980s. That summary can be found here.

Trump, in the hours after his Jan. 20 inauguration to a second term, issued a barrage of executive orders, many of them aiming to limit both legal and illegal immigration in the United States. Episcopal Migration Ministries has gathered information here on the immigration orders and the church’s response.

St. Michael’s Interfaith Refugee Resettlement Ministry at St. Michael’s, Brattleboro, Vermont, is seen assisting Afghans arriving in the United States in 2022. Photo: Lisa Sparrow

[Episcopal News Service] The Episcopal Church’s long-standing history of helping refugees resettle in the United States will begin to wind down next month, an early casualty of the new Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies.

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, in a Jan. 31 letter to church leaders and staff, announced that Episcopal Migration Ministries will begin winding down its core operations by Feb. 14, and 22 EMM employees will be laid off. EMM was one of 10 agencies with federal contracts to resettle refugees on behalf of the State Department, but that work ground to a halt last week when President Donald Trump suspended the refugee program as one of his first acts after taking office Jan. 20.

Planning for the end of EMM’s federally funded work, one of the church’s most prominent and respected ministries, was a “painful decision,” Rowe said, but not unexpected, given the change in presidential administrations.

By the end of Trump’s first term in January 2021, resettlement agencies said the president had decimated their capacity to welcome individuals and families fleeing persecution and violence in their home countries. The executive order that Trump signed at the start of his second term went even further, all but ending the 45-year-old federal program, and his administration also has ordered a halt in funding to assist refugees who already have resettled in the country.

“EMM will retain a small team to manage the wind down of EMM’s federal grant-sponsored programs. They have been selected based on program responsibilities and knowledge, performance, ability to communicate with affiliate and federal partners, and some consideration for seniority,” Rowe said.

Departing employees will be offered severance packages. Rowe added that he hopes church-provided outplacement services “will help them find a new way to use the gifts, skills and passion that they have shared with EMM.”

“These departing employees have every reason to be angry, frustrated and frightened at this end of the work to which they have devoted their energy in recent years,” Rowe said. “I am also grieving the loss of this refugee resettlement ministry and the end of this season of our ministry.

“Please know, however, that an end of federal funding for Episcopal Migration Ministries does not mean an end to The Episcopal Church’s commitment to stand with migrants and with our congregations who serve vulnerable immigrants and refugees. As Christians, our faith is shaped by the biblical story of people whom God led into foreign countries to escape oppression, and no change in political fortunes can dissuade us from answering God’s call to welcome the stranger.”

The Rev. Sarah Shipman, EMM’s director, issued a statement thanking the agency’s staff “for their commitment to our mission and their dedicated professionalism – both in serving vulnerable refugee communities directly and in mobilizing churches to welcome new neighbors among us.”

“While we do not know exactly how this ministry will evolve in our church’s future, we remain steadfast in our commitment to stand with migrants and with our congregations who serve them,” Shipman said.

People protest against Trump administration cuts to the U.S. refugee resettlement program, in front of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington in October 2019. Photo: Reuters

Trump’s executive order was one of a series of first-day measures by the Trump administration targeting both legal and illegal immigration. The order did not go as far as ending the refugee resettlement program outright, though it suspended those operations indefinitely, “until such time as the further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States.”

Several of the 10 agencies that have been responsible for resettling refugees are affiliated with religious denominations, and like EMM, some have been forced to reconsider their own operations while lamenting the Trump administration’s abrupt policy shift.

“Some provisions contained in the executive orders, such as those focused on the treatment of immigrants and refugees, foreign aid, expansion of the death penalty, and the environment, are deeply troubling and will have negative consequences, many of which will harm the most vulnerable among us,” Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a Jan. 22 statement.

Then on Jan. 24, the resettlement agencies reported receiving letters from the Trump administration ordering a halt in federal funding intended to help refugees for their first three months, covering costs such as food and rent, as they begin to establish new lives and contribute to their adopted communities.

“It is particularly shameful to leave newly arrived Afghan allies to fend for themselves after the tremendous sacrifices they’ve made in support of American interests,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, said in a written statement. “This is the antithesis of what it means for the United States to keep its promise of protection to the allies of America’s longest war.”

During the 1930s in southern Ohio the Episcopal Church began formally welcoming refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. In 1938, the Church created a poster depicting a well-known scene from the Gospel of St. Matthew. In it, Jesus is cradled in his mother Mary’s arms, as they along with Mary’s husband Joseph, flee their country after its government instituted an infanticide campaign.

EMM’s work was historically rooted in the Presiding Bishop’s Fund for World Relief, which began assisting people from Europe fleeing the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s. After World War II, The Episcopal Church partnered with 16 other Protestant denominations to create Church World Service to provide overseas aid and resettlement assistance for displaced people. After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, thousands of Southeast Asian refugees were resettled in U.S. communities with The Episcopal Church’s help.

The current federal refugee resettlement program was enacted by Congress in 1980, and The Episcopal Church participated from the start, through the Presiding Bishop’s Fund. EMM was established in 1988 as a separate agency to coordinate The Episcopal Church’s resettlement work.

The federal program has long had bipartisan support. EMM and the other contracted agencies have provided a range of federally funded services for the first months after the refugees’ arrivals, including English language and cultural orientation classes, employment services, school enrollment, and initial assistance with housing and transportation.

Refugees were thoroughly screened and vetted by the federal government in cooperation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, and they often waited years for their opportunity to start new lives in the United States. Because of Trump’s order, more than 10,000 refugees reportedly were stranded in locations around the world awaiting final clearance to travel to their new homes.

Bethany Christian Services, one of the 10 resettlement agencies, released a statement Jan. 28 saying it hoped to work with the Trump administration on policy changes that would enable refugee resettlement to resume as soon as possible.

“Providing protection to those seeking safety is one of our nation’s proudest and longest standing traditions,” Bethany Christian Services said. “The temporary suspension of refugee resettlement efforts will cause significant impact to vulnerable men, women, and children legally seeking safety and hope in our nation.”

Each year, the U.S. president is required by law to set a ceiling, or maximum number of refugees to be admitted. During Trump’s first term, his administration reduced the ceiling to a record low of 15,000 refugees a year. President Joe Biden reversed that policy when he took office in 2021, raising the ceiling to 125,000 refugees, though it took several years for EMM and the other resettlement agencies to rebuild their networks and capacity.

In December 2021, EMM celebrated welcoming its 100,000th refugee. By the end of Biden’s term, EMM had 15 affiliates around the country, up from 11 in 2020. They helped welcome more than 6,500 refugees in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2024.

Children from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who have received refugee status, stand outside a temporary hotel residence in Boise, Idaho, in October 2021. Photo: Reuters

Global resettlement needs have only increased in recent years. The refugees who are resettled in the United States typically are fleeing war, persecution and other hardships in their home countries. The UNHCR estimates there are more than 32 million such refugees worldwide, and tens of millions more have been displaced within their home countries.

During the presidential race, Trump’s campaign leaned heavily on anti-immigrant sentiment, raising new concerns about the future of the resettlement program. In the months leading up to the November election, EMM pushed to further expand resettlement capacity by encouraging Episcopal congregations to become remote placement community partners, which allowed them to assist one newly arriving individual or family at a time.

Now, that capacity has dropped to zero.

Although Trump’s order does not say when refugee resettlement might resume, it instructs the secretaries of Homeland Security and State to report back to the president every 90 days. It does not elaborate on what criteria must be met to end the suspension.

– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.