FAR WEST TEXAS — Last week, representatives from the Episcopal Migration Caucus caravanned 1,300 miles across New Mexico and West Texas, holding prayer vigils in front of five immigrant detention facilities. Along the way, they asked Americans to imagine an immigration system in line with the values of the church. “Mass detention and deportation go against our deepest value that all are created in the image and likeness of God and against our Episcopal baptismal promise to seek Christ in all persons and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves,” said Martin Dickinson, a layperson who co-organized the event.
On Tuesday, the pilgrims converged on a gas station in Sierra Blanca. Following the lead of a white church van — not unlike the hundreds of anonymous white vans that criss-cross the region each day, carrying folks between detention facilities and court appointments — they bounced down a dirt access road and came to a stop in front of the West Texas Detention Facility.
The West Texas Detention Facility is privately-owned and one of the largest immigrant detention centers in the United States. In September 2022, the facility made headlines around the world as former warden Mike Sheppard was charged with fatally shooting one migrant and wounding another, accompanied by his twin brother, Mark, who had also worked as a jailer for Hudspeth County.
Father Mike Wallens, who serves a number of Episcopal Churches in the Big Bend, brought up the Sheppard brothers during a short address to the group. Before the media blitz in Sierra Blanca, Wallens had had greater access to minister to folks within the facility — whether they were migrants themselves or correctional officers. He’s since brought this approach home, helping spark a multi-denominational coalition that meets regularly in Alpine, bringing Catholics shoulder-to-shoulder with Presbyterians and immigration advocates alongside Border Patrol agents. “If you have a coalition and everyone agrees, it’s not big enough,” he’s fond of saying.
In contrast to other protest movements around the country sending rocks through police cruiser windshields, this group’s big tent approach includes outreach to law enforcement, whom they see as critical allies and as victims of the system in their own way. “Those who are detained deserve humane treatment, and those employed in the detention center deserve the honor of treating people humanely,” Bishop Michael Hunn said at a vigil last Monday night at Torrance County Detention Center in Estancia, New Mexico. “Not asking people to sleep in cold rooms, with the lights on all night, or packed in like cattle. Treating people like animals hurts a person.”
The group held up signs honoring migrant children who had passed away in migrant detention or shortly after being deported. The signs featured the artwork of Michelina Nicotera-Taxiera, a Tucson-based artist who made ofrendas, or altars, commemorating their lives. “We really wanted to focus on the children, and to have something other than a protest sign,” explained Reverend Leeann Culbreath.
Culbreath, on pilgrimage from Georgia, said that she’s among a growing number of religious leaders who believe the immigration detention system is so broken that it can’t be reformed. “In this political moment, the Trump administration is trying to open new detention centers, including detention centers that will incarcerate children,” she told the crowd. “We stand against that expansion, because we know that expansion means more abuse, more death, more torture, more separated families. We don’t want any of that.”
The government pushed back against the pilgrimage’s characterization of detention facilities and of working conditions for correctional officers, wardens, and others who work within their walls. “ICE takes its commitment to promoting safe, secure, humane environments for those in our custody very seriously,” a senior Department of Homeland Security official wrote to The Sentinel.
A complete abolitionist stance against incarceration — calling for an end to the practice of jailing people and building prisons — is not the official stance of the Episcopal Church, but it’s gaining traction, especially as the church makes headlines for its involvement in the immigration debates of Trump’s second term.
The church has emerged as a major voice of opposition against President Trump’s immigration policies. In January, during a homily broadcast on national TV, Bishop Mariann Budde implored the president to “have mercy” on immigrants. In response, the President lashed out on Budde on X, branding her a “radical Left hard line Trump hater.”
In May, the Episcopal Church ended its partnership with the U.S. government. Since 1980, the church has helped to resettle more than 100,000 refugees, but leadership felt that they could no longer continue this mission after the Trump administration decided to fast-track refugee protections for Afrikaners — a white minority in South Africa whom the president has falsely claimed are the victims of a genocide — while ending protections for other groups, including Afghan immigrants who helped the U.S. military with its mission in the Middle East. “It seems to be that people who are white seem to be more valuable than those who are people of color,” Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe told NPR. “In any case, the way that this has happened, the decision making, the criteria that has gone into this just doesn’t fit with our morals and the values that we hold as a church.”
As someone whose faith has brought her to radical thought and action, Culbreath appreciated that the church’s most prominent leaders were sticking up for the advocacy work of people like her and her associates within the Migration Caucus. “It’s very affirming, and I feel encouraged,” she said. “It’s wonderful to see this being said at a higher level, and to see people in positions of authority in the church take a very clear moral stand.”
