This story is part of RNS’ Love Thy Neighbor series. You can read all the stories here.
LOS ANGELES (RNS) — When the Rev. Joey Evangelista saw immigration agents wearing “full battle gear,” their faces covered by masks, just two blocks from St. Kevin Catholic Church, he froze. The Catholic priest, a member of the Missionaries of Jesus, said he still has trauma from facing military intimidation while in ministry in the Philippines and Congo.
Evangelista said the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement actions reminded him of former Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte’s tactics during his war on drugs. The priest told RNS, “It’s the same playbook, and it’s scary.”
Although Evangelista admits he’s “scared” as a priest in the United States on a religious worker visa, he’s using his “privileged position” as a clergy member to work with a local interfaith group that wants to defend democracy.
One LA, a local coalition of religious groups and other community institutions, has been convening civics meetings, which the group refers to as “freedom schools,” since the summer in response to immigration raids. They also work with local elected officials to hold public hearings about the impacts of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, seeing both efforts as helping protect democracy.
The coalition — which includes about 30 organizations, almost two-thirds of which are houses of worship — is part of the national Industrial Areas Foundation organizing network of faith-based and community organizations.
After Los Angeles was shaken by a series of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in June, leaders with One LA noticed widespread fear was keeping people hiding in their homes.
“ We needed to do something public where we came together because we felt like we would be more courageous and have more imagination together,” said Robert Hoo, lead organizer for One LA.
The first gathering, on July 4 at San Gabriel Mission Church, kicked off the freedom school strategy. Taking the name from both the Independence Day launch and the Civil Rights Movement practice of creating spaces for Black Americans to explore intellectual curiosities and organize for political power, the LA movement aims to help both citizens and noncitizens understand and defend their rights at a fraught time for immigrants in the U.S.
At the launch at the historic Catholic mission, over 200 people filled the church; people shared their experiences and learned about constitutional law, their rights when dealing with immigration agents and preparing one’s family for a potential immigration emergency.
Since July, One LA has held about 35 freedom schools at different congregations in its network. Freedom schools are designed to be ongoing, where a small group continues to meet to build relationships, which is key to a “healthy democracy,” Hoo said.
During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, freedom schools offered an alternative education model focused on liberation, democracy and critical thinking for students of all backgrounds to challenge racism and inequality in American society. Recalling their well-documented success, One LA uses similar methods to educate LA-area residents on how to respond to federal immigration enforcement.
One LA has no standardized content for each freedom school. Some have included skits based on reports of real encounters with immigration agents, developed by One LA member CASA 0101, a community theater in the Boyle Heights neighborhood. Participants act out how to respond to encounters with immigrant agents in various situations, including agents coming to homes, stopping someone in their car or approaching a street vendor.
“Something about the acting process of actually being shouted at by someone pretending to be (immigration enforcement), it kind of gets it into your gut in a way that just learning or reading about it doesn’t really do,” said Janet Hirsch, board president for One LA and the group’s leader at Temple Isaiah, a Reform Jewish congregation in LA.
One Sunday in October, RNS observed a freedom school in a Catholic church’s meeting hall, where a group of about 10 people, mostly older women, gathered for their second meeting after a packed Mass let out next door. The name of the church and participants’ full names are being withheld out of concerns they could be targeted by immigration enforcement.
Miguel, a parish volunteer who led the session with his polo shirt precisely tucked into his belt and with a professorial tone, told RNS that this was his first time getting involved in meetings like this.
But growing up in El Salvador before he fled to the U.S., where he said he eventually gained legal immigration status, he witnessed St. Óscar Romero, former archbishop of San Salvador, intervene on behalf of poor people during the country’s civil war. “I began to understand the church had a role. It has an obligation in societies,” Miguel said in Spanish.
A parish volunteer prayed in Spanish to open the meeting, seeking Jesus’ help in “whatever fear, whatever situation that attempts to placate us, that in your name we may have courage to rise up and demand our rights.”
Using information prepared by One LA, Miguel walked parishioners through updates on national immigration policy, including Congress’ massive budget increase for immigration enforcement. He told attendees that bonds were being denied to some people in detention and gave an update on a Supreme Court ruling that allows for immigration agents to conduct arrests on the basis of race, language and employment.
Urging attendees to share the information with family members and neighbors, Miguel gave advice. For example, he said someone without legal status who has been in the country for more than two years should carry documentation of their residence, such as a bill, to help prevent being deported without a hearing. He also referred people to LA public libraries that have free immigration consultations.
The sessions have helped some attendees. Sheila Thomas, a OneLA leader at Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church, said their group discovered one parishioner had been carrying around her original naturalization paperwork and her birth certificate in her purse all of the time, and she learned from the freedom school not to carry originals.
One parishioner at San Gabriel Mission, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he lacks legal immigration status, said that his apartment building had twice been raided in the middle of the night by immigration agents but that they had been unsuccessful in detaining anyone. He learned about his rights for the first time at a freedom school and shared his new knowledge with his landscaping colleagues and neighbors, telling them not to open their doors during a warrantless raid. He said having information like this helps him feel less anxious.
Adela Del Rio, a catechist at San Gabriel Mission, said she now shares know-your-rights information with other parishioners and hands out know-your-rights documents in the supermarket. “If I hear chatter about what we’re living through, I share, I give out cards,” she said in Spanish.
Hirsch said another couple who participated in the freedom schools has gone into the back-of-house at restaurants where they are regulars to conduct know-your-rights sessions.
However, organizing is painstaking work that does not always go smoothly, the program demonstrated. Sometimes participants continued to rely on advice from sources that conflicted with official know-your-rights advice, and others spoke about the challenge of getting the most vulnerable immigrants to trust them enough to even engage.
At the end of the Oct. 12 presentation, which involved substantial back-and-forth with attendees, many expressed a desire to get more people from the parish involved. One woman began to tear up as she described her frustration that so few in her large parish had shown up in the face of such an “inhumane” situation. “They need to raise their own consciousness. I don’t know how to make each of them conscious,” she said in Spanish, crying.
Thomas from Holy Name of Jesus said attendance at her parish’s first freedom school was “not that great,” and she wasn’t sure whether fear was keeping people from attending.
But for Ortencia Ramirez, a One LA leader at San Gabriel Mission, the freedom schools helped her have the knowledge and to build relationships to participate in the second prong of One LA’s strategy — testifying at local public hearings about what they are witnessing.
One LA approached Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass in October and suggested the city hold public hearings over concerns about civil rights violations related to ICE arrests. That ultimately led to a partnership with U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and a congressional hearing of Democrats in LA on Nov. 24.
At the hearing, Ramirez read aloud an account of a car-wash worker who said her brother-in-law, a U.S. citizen, was tackled and detained, presumably based on his appearance. “A few streets down, the agents realized their mistake. Once they found his documents and kicked him out, they kicked him out of a moving car. He was left with bruised ribs and unable to urinate from the impact of being tackled,” Ramirez read, saying the man was later detained a second time in a raid on the car wash.
Evangelista, the priest, said at the hearing that attendance was down at his parishes by 50%, and three parishioners had been detained and two self-deported. Some children attend Mass unaccompanied because their parents are afraid, he said.
“I am speaking out because violently arresting and detaining honest working people is violating their fundamental dignity as human beings,” he said.
Lawmakers announced investigations into arrests of U.S. citizens and the raids. Bass said she hoped the hearing would allow for accountability and that other cities would follow suit.
Hoo, the One LA lead organizer, told RNS he wants people to reject powerlessness, which underscores the group’s efforts.
“ As long as we keep practicing democracy, it’s not dead,” he said. “As long as we keep defending and standing up for our rights, they’re not gone.”
