McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — A nonprofit has made available for free an online toolkit that encourages thousands of faith-based organizations to provide sanctuary from immigration raids and tips on how to avoid arrest.
The “How to Protect People During Ice Raids” toolkit went online Tuesday and is provided by Vote Common Good, a nonprofit organization that promotes social causes and engages in political discourse.
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It’s aim is to give churches across the country information on how pastors and their flock can help families threatened by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. It also gives advice on how they can document and bear witness and possibly change outcomes, Vote Common Good Executive Director Doug Pagitt told Border Report on Thursday.
“A lot of faith leaders and people in churches, they’ve never thought about having to interact with ICE. They don’t know what to do. They don’t know what the laws are. They are unclear about how much they can engage and how much they can act. So part of our work with our toolkit is to help them know what they can do and how they can act,” Pagitt said.
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Pagitt is a pastor in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he says many congregations have never dealt with immigration issues before. He says many of their 5,000 churches in their network have members who voted for President Donald Trump and support immigration reform but do not agree with current ICE arrests that have gone viral in videos circulating on social media…