{"id":599605,"date":"2018-07-02T15:11:42","date_gmt":"2018-07-02T21:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=599605"},"modified":"2018-07-03T08:32:10","modified_gmt":"2018-07-03T14:32:10","slug":"next-to-a-shelter-holding-immigrant-children-churchs-congregants-defend-family-separations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/07\/next-to-a-shelter-holding-immigrant-children-churchs-congregants-defend-family-separations\/","title":{"rendered":"Next to a shelter holding immigrant children, church&#8217;s congregants defend family separations"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_599615\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-599615\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Lighthouse_Harlingen_RL_TT-771x517.jpg\" alt=\"Lighthouse Fellowship\" width=\"771\" height=\"517\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Lighthouse_Harlingen_RL_TT-771x517.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Lighthouse_Harlingen_RL_TT-336x225.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Lighthouse_Harlingen_RL_TT-768x515.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Lighthouse_Harlingen_RL_TT-1170x784.jpg 1170w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Lighthouse_Harlingen_RL_TT.jpg 1250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Reynaldo Leal \/ for The Texas Tribune<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Lighthouse Fellowship church in Harlingen.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>HARLINGEN, Texas \u2014\u00a0It felt like any other Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>A line of congregants filed into church, flipping through hymnbooks and chatting with friends in the pews. On a stage decorated with stars and stripes, a pianist provided musical accompaniment to the congregants&#8217; favorite songs:\u00a0\u201cAmazing Grace,\u201d \u201cHis Name is Wonderful,\u201d \u201cGod Bless America.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But in one key respect, the Lighthouse Fellowship Church in Harlingen is no ordinary house of\u00a0worship.<\/p>\n<p>At a time when faith leaders across the country are condemning the separation of children and parents who entered the U.S. illegally, Lighthouse has an unusual perspective on the conflict. Its chapel is just yards from one of the largest shelters licensed in Texas to house unaccompanied immigrant minors and children taken from their parents under the Trump administration\u2019s \u201czero tolerance\u201d policy.<\/p>\n<p>After splitting from another local congregation over a personnel dispute 18 months ago, leaders of the nondenominational church started a new religious community in a small red-brick chapel owned by the Valley Baptist Missions Education Center, which also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brownsvilleherald.com\/premium\/bcfs-asks-baptist-center-to-renew-lease\/article_242c9bc2-1475-11e4-889b-001a4bcf6878.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">leases an adjacent set of buildings to BCFS Health and Human Services<\/a>, the company that oversees the immigrant holding facility.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This article originally appeared in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2018\/07\/02\/border-church-community-defend-immigrant-family-separations\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Texas Tribune<\/a>,\u00a0a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans and engages with them about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>On Sunday, around 40 congregants sang along to popular\u00a0hymns and dropped spare change into a collection bag. Despite their front-row seat to the immigration conflict, the Harlingen churchgoers, who are predominantly white, seem no more engaged with the political debate over the border than anyone else in the United States. The topic of immigration never came up during the hour-long service, even when one congregant stood up to lament the problems he believes bedevil the country, including political polarization and a lack of respect for the elderly.\u00a0<strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>However, in interviews before the service, several congregants said they are fervent supporters of\u00a0President Donald Trump, whose crackdown on illegal immigration led to the recent family separations. And in stark contrast with the criticism that Trump\u2019s immigration policies have received in some corners of the Christian community, a number of parishioners said the president was right to split up families who entered the country illegally.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you break the laws, there are consequences,\u201d said church pianist Doug Cox, 66, who led this week\u2019s service while the regular pastor recovered from the flu. \u201cIf someone slips into my home uninvited, they are guilty and going to jail.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRight now, the government does not have the facilities to hold a family together,\u201d added Bob Knight, 87. \u201cSo what can they do?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In early June, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/acts-of-faith\/wp\/2018\/06\/14\/jeff-sessions-points-to-the-bible-in-defense-of-separating-immigrant-families\/?utm_term=.9d4d81511131\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">cited a Bible passage<\/a>\u00a0to justify the crackdown at the southern border, which caused more than 2,000 children to be separated from their parents before <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/trump-executive-end-family-separation-at-border-immigration-today-2018-06-20\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Trump ended the practice a week later<\/a>. Sessions\u2019 words sparked a backlash from Christian leaders, who said the zero tolerance policy conflicted with their commitment to family values.<\/p>\n<p>In Richardson, the Arapaho United Methodist Church <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2018\/06\/17\/sunday-sermons-texas-faith-leaders-rebuke-trump-administrations-zero-t\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">put up a road sign<\/a> saying, \u201cPlease don\u2019t use scripture to justify policies that harm families.\u201d And in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network last month, Rev. Franklin Graham, a son of the famous evangelist\u00a0Billy Graham, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/06\/14\/us\/trump-immigration-religion.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">called the family separations \u201cdisgraceful\u201d and \u201cterrible.\u201d<\/a><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>But not all religious communities have embraced that view. \u201cOne of the things we\u2019re seeing is that lots of different Christian denominations are responding to this in really different ways,\u201d said Sara Ronis, a theology professor at St. Mary\u2019s University in San Antonio. \u201cIt\u2019s much more complicated than saying people who are religious feel one way or another.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Craig Mitchell, a Greyhound bus driver who attended Sunday&#8217;s Lighthouse service, said he often picks up immigrants wearing ankle monitors at bus stations in Brownsville and McAllen. He compared undocumented parents who object to being separated from their children to someone who robs a 7-Eleven and expects to bring his family with him to prison.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo see some of the people, you wonder if they\u2019re actually their kids, because the kids look scared,\u201d said Mitchell, 45. \u201cThey don\u2019t know their names too well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It is not clear whether the Harlingen shelter \u2014 the largest of six such facilities that BCFS runs in Texas \u2014 houses children who were separated from their parents at the border. The Texas Department of State Health Services keeps track of the number of immigrant minors held at each licensed facility. But those totals do not differentiate between children who crossed the border unaccompanied and minors the government separated from their parents as part of the zero tolerance policy.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless, the number of unaccompanied immigrant children in the Harlingen center has more than doubled since the zero tolerance policy went into effect in early April. In mid-March, the facility housed 277 children. By June 21, the date of the most recent count, that total had risen to 581, making the Harlingen campus the second-largest operation of its kind in Texas, behind Southwest Key\u2019s facility in Brownsville.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the shelters in Texas that house immigrant children are surrounded by fences and security guards. But on Thursday morning, a Texas Tribune reporter initially walked unchallenged into the central administrative building on the BCFS campus, where children with wristbands and water bottles were lined up in the hallway. After two minutes, a BCFS official instructed the reporter to leave, referring questions to the federal Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the facilities that house unaccompanied migrant children. An HHS spokesman said the department could provide only the total number of children housed at all its approved facilities across the country, which currently stands at 11,800.<\/p>\n<p>The BCFS shelter in Harlingen has a history of health and safety violations, according to state records. Earlier this year, children at the facility complained of raw and undercooked food. And in 2016, two staff members reported that other employees had struck up \u201cinappropriate relationships\u201d with children in their care.<\/p>\n<p>But the churchgoers at Lighthouse say they have had only positive experiences with their next-door neighbors. One congregant, Peggy Reeves, noting that the shelter building used to house a school, said she has seen children at the facility playing soccer and basketball outside.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s wonderful that they\u2019re taking care of them,\u201d said Dovie Dyer, 84, who has attended services at Lighthouse since its establishment. \u201cIt\u2019s a wonderful facility.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cox, the pastor for the day, opened his sermon with verses from Philippians and Chronicles, reminding parishioners that as long as they pray, God \u201cwill heal their land.\u201d In recent weeks, the Lighthouse congregation has mourned the death of the church\u2019s founder and lead pastor, Rev. Gene Horton, who suffered a heart attack last month. As Cox finished his sermon, he implored the congregants to put their trust in God, even in the face of sorrow.<\/p>\n<p>Then he asked them to pray for their country. \u201cThe hate needs to be changed to love,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can\u2019t love God and hate your neighbor.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The service concluded with the morning\u2019s second rendition of \u201cGod Bless America.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Disclosure: St. Mary&#8217;s University has been a financial supporter\u00a0of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune&#8217;s journalism. Find a complete list of them <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/support-us\/corporate-sponsors\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/em><script async src=\"https:\/\/cdn.texastribune.org\/pixel\/dot.min.29c708b3d0da5d17a725.js\" integrity=\"sha384-8Xwf\/TlQnmHiajg1t3dn8w4qlF1rmV33o5NAQVXYu0T2q3rHV5579zrSmRjh+XnM\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\" data-tt-canonical=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2018\/07\/02\/border-church-community-defend-immigrant-family-separations\/\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Congregants at Harlingen&#8217;s Lighthouse Fellowship Church in Texas said the president was right to split up families that entered the country illegally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":599615,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[140,234,177],"class_list":["post-599605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-border-and-immigration","tag-children","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}