One Place News
(RNS) — Fifty Hispanic Pentecostal bishops and denominational leaders, who represent more than 21,000 congregations across the U.S. and Latin America, are gathering in Washington on Tuesday (Sept. 8) to press the Trump administration to extend the Temporary Protected Status program for about 170,000 Salvadoran immigrants. Their legal immigration status through the program is set to expire on Wednesday.
“The church needs to be where it hurts, and what’s hurting today is the immigrant community,” said Bishop Benjamin Feliz, the general presbyter for the Church of God of Prophecy in Central America, who lives in Cleveland, Tennessee. “According to the Bible, they have the image of God and need to be treated with dignity and respect for the sanctity of life.”
Tuesday’s meeting is organized by the Confraternity of Pentecostal Entities of the Americas (CEPA), a new group launched in January that unites several Pentecostal denominations. Feliz is the group’s vice president.
Agustín Quiles, CEPA’s spokesperson, said the denominational leaders from 36 states were inspired to get more involved politically because of the pain they are witnessing daily. The leaders counted 19 pastors who report to them who have been detained or deported, in addition to nearly 200 church members, Quiles said.
“This is not for us, a political event,” said Quiles, adding that the meeting had come together in under two weeks. “This is for us as a spiritual event … a pastoral work of the church, and we are here to say, we want a solution. We want to work with the government. We want to work with our president…They need to listen to us.”
Superintendent Rigoberto Magaña of the Central District of the Assemblies of God, which spans the Rocky Mountain states, and a CEPA board member, heralded the Washington meeting as a historic step toward unity among 12 Pentecostal denominations. “We’ve been fragmented for too long,” he said. “We haven’t been cooperating together, and I think together we could do a lot more for the kingdom of God.”
“I think God is using this situation with immigration to bring us closer to realize that we all have the same issues,” Magaña said.
Magaña said because he had a type of temporary immigration status when he arrived in the U.S. in the 1970s, he understands the fear immigrants and their children feel that at “any moment things can change.” He, like other leaders, highlighted the strain on the U.S. citizen children of immigrant parents who fear their parents will be detained or deported after they lose TPS.
The group is also calling for a resumption of TPS for Haitians, who lost their status July 27.
Hispanic evangelicals were a key part of the voting block that elected President Donald Trump. The Public Religion Research Institute found that 64% of Hispanic Protestants reported voting for Trump in 2024.
But the Hispanic Pentecostals, a subset of evangelicals who place a strong emphasis on the influence of the Holy Spirit, were divided on whether the Trump administration’s immigration policies would impact how they vote in the future.
“I think we were misled when we voted,” said Bishop Victor Artreche, who oversees 84 churches and about 3,600 members in the North Central Hispanic region of the Church of God. “The policies that have been enacted were not what we voted for,” saying the administration had said it was going to focus immigration enforcement on criminals.
More than half of the more than 49,000 migrants detained in July did not have a criminal record, according to reporting by the Washington Post.
Artreche said his churches are feeling the impacts of soaring non-criminal detentions. One of his pastors was detained about two months ago and another has been unable to re-enter the U.S. for over a year, in addition to several church members who have been detained.
Some of the leaders expected to attend the meeting include superintendents in the Assemblies of God, a denomination in which nearly nine in 10 members voted for Trump. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is a member of an Assemblies of God church.
Magaña said he hoped Mullin would be motivated by their shared faith to listen to the leaders’ concerns. “It’s the same Bible that he reads that I read, and our Bible says to be kind, to take care of the immigrants,” Magaña said, adding that the majority of immigrants do not abuse the system.
He said many in his denomination voted for Trump because he “aligned more with what our biblical stances were.” Immigration laws and policies that harm immigrants are “not new,” Magaña said, pointing to deportations under previous administrations. “I don’t think, in that area, we would change voting for him. We didn’t vote for him for this — we voted for the other ideals that aligned with us as Christians.”
But if they aren’t heard, Artreche said Hispanic Pentecostals are ready to show their strength at the ballot box in the next election. He said widespread fear is impacting church attendance, and it’s even impacting him as a U.S. citizen of Puerto Rican descent, born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He never used to carry his passport, but now, he said, “I don’t feel comfortable walking outside or driving in any city without my passport for the fear that I’m going to get arrested with everybody else, and then I have to spend money to prove that I’m legal.”
Artreche said the Trump administration is targeting people like his pastors, who were “doing it the correct way,” who had pending immigration cases and were complying with government processes. He said he sees hypocrisy in a government that was willing to accept immigrants’ tax dollars for decades before attempting to remove them. “If you don’t want them in the United States, then give them back all their taxes and send them home,” he said.
A letter the denominational leaders signed calling for an extension of TPS invokes a similar sentiment. “Although we support securing our borders and deporting people convicted of serious crimes, current enforcement policies are also harming hardworking immigrants, parents, church members, and neighbors who deserve protection and due process,” the leaders wrote.
The letter also cited Salvadorans’ longstanding connections to U.S. communities in asking the Trump administration to extend TPS.
“For more than 25 years, Salvadoran TPS holders have demonstrated their commitment to the United States through their work, their families, their communities, and their contributions. They have answered the call to provide for their families and strengthen the communities in which God has placed them,” the letter said.
Ultimately, Artreche said he is motivated both by his belief in the U.S. as a “beacon of hope” for immigrants, and by scripture. He’ll tell his congregants that in a “Christian — supposedly — nation,” they need to vote to help “the sojourner, the naked, the hungry, the thirsty.”
