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The Weekly Dispatch
Community-powered immigration news from the Bay Area.
Welcome to El Tímpano’s Weekly Dispatch. I’m Erica Hellerstein, senior immigration, labor and economics reporter.
On Monday morning, Californians awoke to the news that Pope Francis, the Catholic Church’s first Latin American pope, had died after a weeks-long battle with pneumonia.
In his passing, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as he was born, left behind a legacy marked by deep kindness and care for the world’s displaced. From his earliest days in the papacy, Francis implored nations worldwide to treat immigrants with dignity rather than fear. He made headlines in 2015 as the first pope to ever address the U.S. Congress, invoking his family’s immigration story as he urged lawmakers to adopt a compassionate response to the global refugee crisis.
“On this continent, thousands of persons are led to travel north in search of a better life for themselves and for their loved ones, in search of greater opportunities,” Francis, born in Argentina to Italian immigrants, told the legislature. “Is this not what we want for our own children? We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to their situation.”
A decade later, Francis issued an impassioned condemnation of U.S. government’s immigration policies shortly after Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, calling the government’s mass deportation plan a “crisis.” He made clear to the world that Jesus, too, was a refugee—a man who “chose to live the drama of immigration.”
Francis’ passing comes at a fraught moment for the faith community, as the Trump administration escalates its immigration crackdown. For years, churches served as no-go zones for immigration officials; along with schools, faith spaces have offered rare sanctuary from enforcement. This dates back more than a decade, when both Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued policies restricting enforcement in “sensitive locations” such as schools and houses of worship.
This arrangement held steady even during the first Trump administration. Back in 2017, I profiled a Salvadoran pastor living in North Carolina who spent months sheltering inside a small local church after receiving a deportation order. Back then, the church’s sanctuary provided a reprieve, as ICE refrained from arresting him there due to its sensitive locations policy. He remained holed up inside the cramped space for months, knowing he was safe inside.
But in January 2025, the Trump administration reversed the sensitive location policy. A coalition of religious organizations sued in response. On April 11, however, a judge sided with the Trump administration. That means for now, Trump’s reversal remains in place, and houses of worship are no longer off-limits for immigration enforcement.
Now, as immigrants nationwide gather to mourn Francis, those here in the Bay Area may be asking: Just how safe am I in the pews?
In today’s edition, we look at how local immigrants are grappling with the new reality of going to church under these changing policies.
Despite fears, immigrants are still filling pews
Recently, Emma Paulino, a community organizer with the interfaith advocacy organization Faith in Action East Bay, heard from an immigrant mother whose 8-year-old son came home from his first day of school after winter break in distress.
The child, a U.S. citizen, was crying hysterically, and searching for a bag to pack his belongings. When his mother asked why, he explained that he was afraid of family separations, something his classmates at school had been discussing. “I need you to prepare our luggage because we have to move to Mexico,” he told her. “I don’t want to be separated.”
Such stories are becoming increasingly common, explained Paulino, whose organization works closely with immigrant congregations across the East Bay. Children are anxious about family separations. Parents are approaching the organization with growing concerns about their safety in church. “It’s all very tricky,” she explained. The administration’s reversal on the sensitive locations policy has “increased peoples’ fears around going to public places.”
This anxiety is already influencing how people engage with their faith. “My whole family has stopped going to church out of fear of ICE [agents] entering,” one immigrant living in Oakland told us.
But others remain undeterred. “I always attend because if we trust in our heavenly father we have nothing to fear,” one of El Tímpano’s SMS subscribers in Oakland told us. Paulino visited several immigrant congregations during Lent and on Good Friday and noted that the pews were full. Other local churches reported the same. Paulino described the strong turnout as “our faith calling us to go and put our fear aside,” a sentiment that, at least for now, appears to be overriding immigrants’ hesitations.
“Parents know that the Church will do whatever is possible to protect families,” she said. “So they continue to be a really sacred place.”
Francis’ advocacy for humane treatment of immigrants resonates in the Trump era
Francis’ final public statement cemented migration as a defining concern of his papacy. In his Easter Sunday address, just one day before his death, the pope denounced rising xenophobia and the demonization of migrants. “On this day, I would like all of us to hope anew and to revive our trust in others, including those who are different than ourselves, or who come from distant lands, bringing unfamiliar customs, ways of life and ideas,” he said.
The statement was, perhaps, Francis’ parting message in a 12-year pontificate that saw him travel to Greece and the U.S.-Mexico border to meet with refugees and displaced families. It’s a message that resonates deeply with many congregants who bring their own migration journeys to their faith, Paulino said.
“For the immigrant community, he was the voice of people who have no voice,” she said, “especially for the most vulnerable, the poor. He always spoke very loudly about immigrants. About human beings. About dignity.”
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading and see you next week.
P.S: Many thanks to the California Sun podcast for featuring this great conversation about my in-depth reporting on the survivors of the mass shooting of farmworkers in Half Moon Bay. You can listen to the episode here.
— Erica Hellerstein
Ear to the Ground
El Tímpano’s text messaging (SMS) service reaches 5,700 Spanish-speaking immigrants across the Bay Area. We polled our subscribers about how they feel about going to church in the midst of changing federal immigration policies. Here are a few of their responses:
I am calm and I feel safe going to church. I put everything in God’s hands.
Yo estoy tranquila y me siento segura de ir a la iglesia; todo lo pongo en la manos de Dios.
– Oakland resident
I no longer go to church because I’m afraid of everything that’s happening today.
Ya no voy a la iglesia porque tengo miedo de todo lo que está pasando hoy en día.
– Berkeley resident
I feel safe because God is with me.
Me siento segura porque Dios está conmigo.
–Oakland resident
From the El Tímpano newsroom
El Tímpano provided our SMS community with information about COVID from the first day of California’s mandated lockdown, fielding questions from people wondering how they would continue to afford to meet their basic needs of food and shelter as the economy closed down. We witnessed the years of challenges that followed as Oakland, and Fruitvale in particular, suffered from the continued blows of COVID, from high infection rates to economic uncertainty.
Remembering COVID will be an ongoing project for El Tímpano this year. We held our first event on March 15, 2025, commemorating the fifth anniversary of the lockdown. If you missed the event, read about it below. And stay tuned for more coverage and commemoration of COVID’s fifth anniversary in the newsletter, on the website and at an upcoming COVID event from the newsroom.
East Oakland residents reflect on the fifth anniversary of COVID through art and storytelling
The “Rays of Resilience” event celebrated the local Latino and Mam communities’ collective strength through visual art, poetry, oral histories, and music.
Stories we’re following
- While sensitive locations like churches aren’t off limits for ICE raids, a new state bill would protect schools from immigration enforcement. The legislation, co-sponsored by the Santa Clara County Office of Education and the Santa Clara County Board of Education, aims to ICE-proof schools by establishing campuses as “safe havens” from immigration enforcement. Under the policy, immigration officers would be prohibited from going on school campuses without a warrant or approval from school employees, the Mercury News reports. Tens of thousands of children across the Bay Area live in mixed-status households, and without safeguards from immigration enforcement, school officials predict lower student attendance in response to the administration’s hardline immigration policies.
- Trump admin slashes aid programs for undocumented college students in California. Last month, the Department of Education quietly terminated a federal program that provides financial aid and counseling to low-income, first-generation college students, including those without legal status. According to CalMatters, there are more than 100,000 students in California enrolled in the program, and while the state doesn’t track their immigration status, some estimates place the number of student recipients without legal status in the thousands, most of whom attend community colleges. The department has provided little to no information about how to interpret the new policy, leaving schools statewide scrambling to respond. One student who is likely to be impacted told the outlet the change is “heartbreaking.”
- Misinformation and online rumors about ICE raids have proliferated in the months following Trump’s inauguration. KQED recently published a handy guide about how to separate fact from fiction regarding ICE raids and immigration enforcement, including general information, advice, and links to local resources. You can check it out here.
Resource of the week
Finding affordable summer activities for kids in the Bay Area can be tough – spots fill up fast and costs add up quickly. But in Alameda County, there are several organizations that offer free or low-cost summer programs for families.
We recently updated our Spanish-language Summer Program Resource Guide, which features a wide range of options for summer 2025 including day camps, soccer leagues, cooking classes, academic enrichment, and more – spanning Oakland, San Leandro, Hayward, and Berkeley.
Do you or someone you know work with Spanish-speaking families who could benefit from this guide? Share it with them and let them know they can text us any questions at (510) 800-8305.
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Questions and feedback? Tips for newsroom stories? Reach out team at newsletter@eltimpano.org.
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