“The most unsafe place for an immigrant in the United States is inside of an evangelical church.”
A woman said that to me, and as a pastor, it was a major wake up call.
Because the church is meant to be the place where the fearful are welcomed, where the love of Jesus Christ is made visible to the world.
That’s what we’re called to be — and it’s what we can be.
Her story sent me on a journey to lead my church in actively answering God’s call to love our immigrant neighbors.
She worked on the cleaning staff in a retail district where our church is situated.
For months, I could see she was carrying something heavy, but she wasn’t ready to talk, and I wasn’t going to push. We just built a friendship the slow, ordinary way.
Then one day she looked at me and said, “You’re the first person I’m ever telling this to. I am a follower of Jesus. And I am here undocumented.”
She said she didn’t know why she felt like she could tell me.
But there it was — the weight of doing life alone, in secret, hidden, just trying to raise her kids.
We became great friends after that. She came to our house for Thanksgiving, and she told us it was the first time in 10 years that her family had shared a meal in the United States with someone other than an undocumented person.
Over time, I learned more of her story.
At 14 years old, she was kidnapped from a small town in Mexico by a drug cartel and smuggled into the United States to become the wife of one of their men.
She told me that growing up where she did, you learn early that there’s no escaping something like that — so you submit to it before it gets worse.
Eventually, the man discovered he could fast-track his own citizenship by marrying an American citizen. So he left her and their children undocumented, with nothing.
In addition to being left alone to raise her children, she also faced extortion.
