The Bishop Who Made ICE Melt Away

Bishop Michael Pham launched a program in which clergy and laypeople accompany immigrants into their court hearings—not to argue the law but to bear witness.

Editor’s Note: This reporting by me originally ran in The New Republic print edition.

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ON MOST MORNINGS in the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building in San Diego, the fourth-floor hallway feels like a gauntlet. Eight immigration courtrooms, their doors spaced evenly along off-white walls, open onto a corridor where masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents lean and wait, arms crossed, boots pressed against the walls—marks of habitual occupation. Immigrants step off the elevator into a narrow passage that can end with a van ride to Otay Mesa Detention Center.

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But on June 20, World Refugee Day, the walls still bore the boot marks—and the agents were gone. They had been there, at first, the masks and the posture of authority. Then a delegation appeared: 10 clergy in collars, one in vestments, an imam in a kufi, two Roman Catholic bishops, and one Episcopal bishop—all from California—walking behind Catholic Bishop Michael Pham of San Diego. As they approached, the agents broke apart, one by one, and disappeared.

“Like the story of Moses and Exodus,” said observer Scott Reid of the immigrant-aiding San Diego Organizing Project. “The Red Sea parted.”

Pham moved through the hallway quietly. He let others enter the courtrooms first. He offered nods, not speeches. A government lawyer introduced himself in the men’s room. “He feels conflicted with the situation,” Pham recalled later. “He knows his morals and his values.” On that day, not a single person was detained. Lawyers whispered thanks. Immigrants walked out the front door instead of through the back.

This was the soft launch of the FAITH (Faithful Accompaniment in Trust & Hope) program—an experiment in walking with the downtrodden, as old as the church and as new as this summer. Its premise is as simple as it is subversive: place volunteers in the immigration courts, not to argue the law but to bear witness. More than 50 have signed on so far—clergy and laypeople, Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, Jews. They sign up for shifts: morning, midmorning, afternoon. They sit in courtrooms, stand in hallways, walk with immigrants past the places where agents wait. Their presence changes the equation.