Stand up for immigrants before it is too late 

By Sister Patricia Mary Murphy, RSM, and Sister JoAnn Persch, RSM 

For 40 years, we have lived and worked with Central American torture survivors, Venezuelans fleeing economic and political strife, people from Sierra Leone struggling against hunger and civil unrest, and many other newcomers in need. Never have we seen such fear in our immigrant friends as we do now.  

Seven months into the second term of President Donald Trump, his relentlessly cruel immigration policies are wreaking havoc in countless lives nationwide. Americans of goodwill must stand up to this cruelty before the Trump administration constructs an anti-immigrant state that ensnares us all.  

We are Sisters of Mercy who provide practical and emotional support to asylum-seeking families in Chicago, including housing and mentoring. Most of these people are here legally, but they are rightly terrified of being detained by immigration officials and deported either to their home country or a different country where they know no one.  

Over the years, we also built good relationships with immigration officials at local processing and detention centers in Chicago, and one even came to Sister JoAnn’s 90^th birthday party last year. But they will no longer talk with us — they too are afraid.   

A Venezuelan family assisted by our nonprofit was recently deported to Costa Rica – a country they knew nothing about – with only the clothes on their backs. The parents and their five children were seized at a local Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office when they reported for a routine check-in as required by law. ICE officials accused the husband of having a criminal background, which he denied. He never had a chance to present his case in court. 

This family’s plight is being repeated nationwide as President Trump callously deports migrants, most of whom have no criminal records, many who are here legally and came to this country in search of refuge. But the terror they fled found them again. Once detained they are subject to  terrible treatment, like those in an ICE holding cell in New York City who said they were held “like dogs” or those in the newly-constructed prison camp in Florida.” This is inhumane and must stop. We must speak up. 

We are grateful to courageous church leaders like Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso who are calling out the immigration crisis for what it is: “a [sign] that we are losing the story of who we are as a country… Are we no longer a country of immigrants?”  

We never set out to become immigration activists.  

After we entered the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, an international religious order dedicated to solidarity with women and children, migrants and refugees, we became educators. But then Sister Pat spent a decade in Peru and learned firsthand about Latin America’s extreme inequality, poverty and violence.   

We worked with broken, traumatized people from Central America who shared horrific stories about abduction, mutilation and murder by U.S.-backed right-wing governments and lawless death squads in the 1980s. Migrants continued to come from troubled countries worldwide, driven by war and violence, civic and economic meltdown and hunger, so we kept working. We almost retired in 2022 – when Sister Pat turned 93 – but then busloads of migrants sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott started arriving in Chicago. 

As we worked with Sen. Dick Durbin and Illinois state legislators on immigration legislation, including changing state law to allow religious workers access to detained immigrants, we learned important lessons about working effectively with people who disagree with us.  

We treated everyone, including ICE agents and prison guards, with the same dignity and respect, and they showed their humanity in small gestures, such as removing the ankle monitor from a woman so she could serve as a bridesmaid in a wedding. We won’t soon forget the ICE official who thanked us for “not hollering” at him.  

We have been arrested multiple times, including in the U.S. Capitol in 2019, but not everyone is called to civil disobedience. Still, we all can do something. We all know immigrants among us: They are our neighbors, our friends and members of our families and communities. We must treat them as God and human decency calls on us to do. 

Now is the time for compassionate Americans regardless of political or religious beliefs to speak out: Call the White House and your representatives in Congress and demand they end their cruelty and mass deportations. Join a protest or volunteer with immigrants and help them to know their rights.  

Let’s remember we are a nation of immigrants. Let’s stand up for our migrant brothers and sisters before it is too late.  

After co-authoring this essay, Sister Patricia Mary Murphy, RSM, passed away at 96. Her friend, Sister JoAnn Persch, RSM, 91, plans to continue their work of supporting asylum seekers in Chicago. Both are members of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, the largest order of Catholic religious women in the United States. Part of this essay was quoted in a Chicago Tribune remembrance of Sister Pat.