News

Sandi Villarreal 7-18-2018

Rosaries sit on the check-in table at Catholic Charities of San Antonio. Photo by Sandi Villarreal / Sojourners

Parents who have just been reunited with their children — after being separated, some for months, amid the implementation of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy — are offered food, clothes, toys, and other essentials and are paired with background-checked volunteers to help them through the next steps of the process.

FILE PHOTO: German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Brussels, Belgium, July 12, 2018. Tatyana Zenkovich/Pool via REUTERS

Chancellor Angela Merkel's Bavarian allies, who are pressing her to toughen up immigration policy, should remember their Christian roots and show a sense of responsibility toward the poor and weak, the head of the Catholic Church in Germany said.

Image via REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

The police department plans to stop honoring those requests and bring proceedings against officers involved in Garner's death on Sept. 1 if there has been no federal prosecution decision announced by then, Byrne wrote.

FILE PHOTO: Rosayra Pablo-Cruz, a Guatemalan mother who had been separated from her two sons, exits the Cayuga Center after being reunited with them in New York City. July 13, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

On July 10, after examining how an initial wave of reunifications of young children had gone, Sabraw concluded that government vetting policies could be streamlined to speed the process. 

Tom Hals, Reuters 7-13-2018

Walter Armando Jimenez Melendez, an asylum seeker from El Salvador, arrives with his four year-old son Jeremy at La Posada Providencia shelter in San Benito, Texas, U.S., shortly after he said they were reunited following separation since late May while in detention July 10, 2018. REUTERS/Loren Elliott

"They took the children from us without any explanation," said Isabela, who asked that only her first name be used. "I felt I had lost her, that I could not find her."

Douglas Massey 7-13-2018

Image via REUTERS/Adrees Latif

All data indicate that undocumented migration from Mexico, in particular, has ended and at this point more unauthorized Mexicans are leaving the country than entering it. According to estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center, the Center for Migration Studies and the Department of Homeland Security, the undocumented Mexican population stopped growing in 2008 and has been trending downward ever since.

Anna Sutterer 7-12-2018

Image via Anna Sutterer 

And then jazz enters the scene, a music that grapples with chaos and comes out with soul. In the tension of clashing notes and melodies, fingers flying across valves and keys, the band finds a groove that communicates the experience of the civil rights movement

the Web Editors 7-11-2018

Children are escorted to the Cayuga Center, which provides foster care and other services to immigrant children separated from their families, in New York City, U.S., July 10, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

After praising a child detention center in Virginia, White responded to immigration advocates, saying, "I think so many people have taken biblical scriptures out of context on this, to say stuff like, 'Well, Jesus was a refugee.' Yes, He did live in Egypt for three-and-a-half years. But it was not illegal. If He had broken the law then He would have been sinful and He would not have been our Messiah."

Sandi Villarreal 7-10-2018

Photo by Kayla Lattimore/Sojourners

RAICES Texas — the San Antonio-based immigration legal services provider that has received tens of millions of dollars via a viral Facebook fundraising campaign launched amid the family separation crisis at the border — today announced a plan to distribute $20 million of their funds: give it over to the Department of Homeland Security to “post bonds” for mothers being held in detention.

FILE PHOTO: Brett Kavanaugh speaks, moments after being sworn-in at a Rose Garden ceremony in 2006 at the White House, June 1, 2006. REUTERS/Larry Downing/File Photo

President Donald Trump has chosen conservative federal appeals court Judge Brett Kavanaugh as his nominee for U.S. Supreme Court Justice, NBC News reported on Monday, just before the official White House announcement.

Kavanaugh would replaced retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy if confirmed by the U.S. Senate. 

Pope Francis prays inside the cripta of the St. Nicholas Basilica in Bari, southern Italy July 7, 2018. REUTERS/Tony Gentile

"Truces maintained by walls and displays of power will not lead to peace, but only the concrete desire to listen and to engage in dialogue will," he said in his second speech of the day, after a private meeting among the religious leaders.

the Web Editors 7-06-2018

1. Women Faith Leaders Bear Witness at the U.S.-Mexico Border
“Gloria Anzaldúa famously referred to the U.S.-Mexico border as una herida abierta — an open wound. … But if the border is a wound, then perhaps we can best describe our nation as doubting Thomas before his encounter with Christ.”

2. Americans Are Having Fewer Babies. They Told Us Why.
From The New York Times. Spoiler alert: Babies are expensive.

Brett Beasley 7-05-2018

Image via Joshua Conrad Jackson, Neil Hester, Kurt Gray, and University of North Carolina -Chapel Hill. 

The overall composite image of God’s face that resulted from the selections has a few obvious features. The face is masculine, white, and young. These features stand out best in comparison with what the researchers call God’s “anti-face,” a composite of all of the images in each pair participants did not choose. This anti-face was more feminine, older, and darker skinned.

the Web Editors 7-05-2018

FILE PHOTO: EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt attends a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington. June 21, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt has resigned, Trump said on Thursday.

Immigrant children, many of whom have been separated from their parents under a new "zero tolerance" policy by the Trump administration, are being housed in tents next to the Mexican border in Tornillo, Texas, U.S., June 18, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

U.S. Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego last month ordered the government to stop separating children from immigrant parents entering the United States illegally and set deadlines for the government to reunite families.

the Web Editors 7-05-2018

A Rohingya refugee is seen in Balukhali refugee camp at dawn near Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh, March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne//File Photo

But in 2017, only 33,000 refugees resettled in the U.S., the country’s lowest total since the years following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a sharp decline from 2016, when it resettled about 97,000.

A protester is seen on the Statue of Liberty in New York, ]July 4, 2018 in this picture obtained from social media. Danny Owens/via REUTERS

A New York woman was due to be arraigned in federal court on Thursday, a day after she scaled the stone pedestal of the Statue of Liberty to protest immigration policy.

Benjamin Perry 7-02-2018

Migrants arrive at Catholic Charities Rio Grande Valley. Photo by David Choy / Faith in Public Life

Last week, I joined a delegation of 14 women faith leaders, organized by Faith in Public Life, to speak with refugees and community activists about our government’s treatment of immigrants at the border. We went expecting to encounter a community’s pain, but I don’t think any of us were prepared for the trauma we found, nor the fierce resistance of those standing up for migrants’ humanity.

Rosel Labone 7-01-2018

Drummers from the group 'Rise and Resist.' Photo by Rosel Labone

More than 10,000 protesters gathered at Foley Square in downtown Manhattan Saturday morning to march against the Trump administration’s policy on immigration. The New York march was part of a nationwide series of rallies organized by advocacy groups, legal and immigrants’ rights organizations, trade unions, and concerned citizens.