The Effects of Immigration Enforcement on Faith-Based Organizations: An Analysis of the FEER Survey

Profile of Respondents

This report is based on survey responses from 170 Catholic entities located in 38 states and the District of Columbia, with the largest numbers from California, Texas, New York, Ohio, and Florida (Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Number of Respondents by State, Top States.

Respondents included Catholic Charities/Social Services organizations (58), parishes (35), legal services programs (17), refugee resettlement programs (13), ministerial organizations (10), and lesser numbers of religious orders, universities and colleges, organizing entities, diocesan offices, schools, hospitals and health clinics, seminaries and formation houses, pastoral institutes, and foundations (Figure 2).

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Figure 2.

Type of Institution, Program, or Ministry.

The study’s findings cover all respondents except schools, universities, and hospitals, which received separate questionnaires and produced too few responses for analysis. The findings reflect the share of respondents answering each question, rather than of total respondents to the survey. The report excludes duplicate responses, responses from entities outside the United States, and responses that identified only the name and location of respondents. All responses were recorded between January 7 and February 22, 2019. The pool of respondents represents only a fraction of Catholic institutions ⁴ but nonetheless offers a window on the effect of Trump-era immigration policies on diverse FBOs.

When asked to identify the top five countries of origin of the immigrants they served, respondents listed 52 countries, including Mexico (133), Guatemala (117), El Salvador (110), Honduras (91), the Dominican Republic (24), Venezuela (22), Colombia (26), Cuba (21), the Philippines (21), Haiti (17), and Ecuador (14).

Catholic institutions have ambitious social goals. They seek to promote justice; “integral human development,” which encompasses social, political, economic, spiritual, cultural, and other human needs; and the “common good,” defined as the sum total of conditions that allow human beings “relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfillment” (Paul VI 1965, 26). Consistent with this broad mandate, Catholic institutions provide extensive and varied services to immigrants and refugees (Figure 3), such as:

“Know your rights” presentations (86 agencies);

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Figure 3.

Type of Services Provided.

Catholic Charities/Social Service respondents offered the great majority of these services, with the exception of religious education and youth and adult ministry. The 12 refugee resettlement respondents provided services that are central to the resettlement process like job training (12), health screenings (8), and language classes (8), as well as legal services (7), naturalization assistance (6), and know-your-rights presentations (3).

Catholic parishes offer religious education, formation, sacraments, prayer groups, and pastoral counseling within a particular geographic area, entrusted to a parish priest (pastor). In theological terms, parishes seek to build “communion” between their (often) culturally diverse members (Hoover 2014, 198–202). One challenge for “shared” parishes is to overcome “cultural encapsulation,” that is, different communities of parishioners seeing each other solely from their own cultural perspectives (ibid., 106).

Parishes also serve as a vital source of social, health, educational, and even legal services. Thirty-four parish respondents reported providing immigrants and their families:

Religious education (29 parishes);

Past studies have pointed to the disparity between the ratios of immigrants who participate in Catholic programs and ministries and those in paid and leadership positions (Hoover and Ospino 2016, 41–42; Kerwin and Barron 2017, 13, 33). ⁵ This report found a similar disparity. Fifty-eight percent of 139 respondents reported that immigrants constitute less than 25 percent of their agency’s leadership, but 49.6 percent of 135 respondents reported that immigrants represent 75 percent or more of the persons using their services. ⁶ Only 9.4 percent of respondents reported that immigrants constitute 75 percent or more of their agency’s leadership; 14.8 percent that immigrants comprise 75 percent or more of their program leadership; 19.1 percent that immigrants represent 75 percent or more of paid staff; and 20.3 percent that they constitute 75 percent or more of volunteers. These percentages vary for different types of institutions and programs, and the overall number of respondents varies by category.

Demand for and Impediments to Service

The FEER Survey demonstrates the resilience and flexibility of many Catholic institutions in response to the increased demand for their services. Most respondents reported increased use of their services by immigrants since the beginning of the Trump administration in January 2017. Looking at all respondents — excluding parishes, hospitals, and schools ⁷ — 40 percent reported that participation had increased a lot, 20 percent that it had increased a little, 14 percent it had stayed about the same, 11 percent had decreased a little, 7 percent had decreased, and 7 percent did not know.

Refugee resettlement agencies, which have experienced sharp decreases in refugee admissions and depend heavily on federal funding, reported decreased participation in their programs. While many local resettlement agencies have diversified their services and have drawn more heavily on parish-based resources, overall the work of this network has contracted. Among parishes, 16 percent reported that immigrants’ mass attendance had increased a lot since the beginning of the Trump administration, 19.4 percent reported that it had increased a little, 32.3 percent that it had stayed about the same, 3.2 percent that it had decreased a little, 6.4 percent reported a sharper decrease, and 22.6 percent did not know.

Survey participants were also asked: “Which of the following factors, if any, do you judge to have negatively impacted immigrants’ access to your services in the past year?” These factors included a mix of practical, cultural, and logistical barriers; government policies; lack of status; and community attitudes. ⁸ In particular, 133 respondents identified:

Fear of apprehension or deportation (59 percent);

Among the “other” factors that negatively affect access to services, respondents listed a range of institutional challenges and government policies, including:

Lack of funding and capacity;

Not surprisingly given the drastic cuts in refugee admissions, resettlement programs identified limited funding as one of their greatest obstacles.

Thirty-one parish respondents identified limited English proficiency (16 parishes), fear of apprehension and deportation (15), lack of awareness of services (15), transportation problems (12), lack of status (11), and lack of staff or program leaders from key ethnic communities (6) as factors negatively affecting immigrants’ access to their services.

In 2016, the Center for Migration Studies (CMS), the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Secretariat for Cultural Diversity in the Church, and Catholic Charities USA partnered on two surveys — the “Survey of Catholic Parishes and Schools on Immigrant Integration” and the “Survey of Catholic Social and Charitable Institutions on Immigrant Integration” — that sought to identify obstacles to the work of Catholic institutions with immigrants (Kerwin and Barron 2017).

At the time, federal immigration policies did not impede the work of Catholic institutions with immigrants to the extent that the FEER Survey later found. The findings from these earlier surveys, however, closely align with those of the FEER Survey in other ways. In the two earlier studies, 59 percent of parish and school respondents identified transportation and 56 percent language as barriers immigrants must overcome to access their services, followed by cultural (44 percent), communication (cell phone and internet access) (41 percent), income (39 percent), and citizenship status (20 percent) (ibid., 9). Similarly, 61 percent of charitable and social institutions identified transportation as a barrier that immigrants must overcome, followed by communication, language, culture, income, and citizenship status (ibid., 26). Twenty-eight percent of respondents identified the “receiving community” as one of the “biggest obstacles” they faced in advancing immigrant integration, followed by funding (25 percent) and anti-immigrant policies (12 percent) (ibid., 27).

CMS also asked FEER Survey participants, “What are the greatest obstacles you currently face in serving immigrants and their families?” The 134 respondents answering this question identified:

Limited funding (70 percent);

Among “other” obstacles to serving immigrants and their families, respondents identified:

President Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric;

Many of the 29 parish respondents (19) also identified limited funding as among their greatest obstacles to serving immigrants and their families. Only four Catholic schools responded to the survey. Of these, two identified family poverty and fear of deportation (of the student or a family member) as among the greatest barriers to the success of immigrant students. The few university and college respondents all identified lack of legal status as one of the greatest barriers to the success of their immigrant students. They also reported that federal enforcement “somewhat negatively” affects immigrant students’ participation in university or college-sponsored services or programs. As one respondent wrote, “Our students are less visible or involved in activities. There is also great fear of authorities visiting campus, which required us to get legal clarifications from counsel.” These responses suggest the need for a larger survey of Catholic schools and universities on the effect of immigration enforcement policies and fear on their students.

CMS also asked: “Has your community seen an increase in immigration enforcement since January 2017 (the beginning of the Trump Administration)?” Seventy-two percent of the 138 respondents answering this question reported an increase, compared to 9 percent who said there had not been an increase and 20 percent who did not know or were not sure. ⁹

When asked how federal immigration enforcement affected immigrants’ participation in their programs or ministries, most of the 127 respondents reported that enforcement had very negatively (28 percent) or somewhat negatively (29 percent) affected their participation, while others said it had no effect (21 percent) or had a somewhat positive (10 percent) effect. Still others (12 percent) did not know or were unsure.

Finally, CMS included a question specifically focused on local enforcement: “If applicable, how has cooperation between ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and local law enforcement affected immigrants’ participation in your programs or ministries?” A total of 82 respondents, including parishes, answered this question. The low response rate may have been due to confusion over the status of local/federal enforcement partnerships, different levels of enforcement cooperation in the different jurisdictions served by respondents, or different law enforcement agencies in the same area (like sheriffs and police) with different relationships with ICE. Most respondents to this question said that cooperation between ICE and local law enforcement very negatively (24 percent) or negatively (33 percent) affected immigrant participation in their programs. However, 29 percent said it had no effect, 12 percent reported it had a somewhat positive effect, and 1 percent said it had a very positive effect. ¹⁰

Most respondents to these two questions reported that enforcement had increased the need and demand for services like legal screening, updates on changes in the law, naturalization assistance, legal representation in removal proceedings, service to unaccompanied minors, and assistance to the families of detainees. One respondent said: “Due to increased deportations, we have more people seeking support. Due to changing immigration policies, we have more people seeking information and guidance.” Another reported: “Some have found that people are afraid to come out for services, while others are seeing an increase in people seeking information and services. For us, we are seeing increasing numbers of people accessing the resources we provide.” A third wrote:

People who were residents feared losing their status under [the] Trump administration, therefore we saw an increase in naturalization applications. People wanted to be informed or revisit whether they qualified for any immigration benefit. It forced people to become alert and take action as opposed to maybe not being a major priority before.

Some respondents reported that lack of funding, resources, and capacity precluded their ability to respond to increased demand for their services. One described the acute need for increased funding for legal services:

There are many people in need of our legal services but we don’t have the necessary funds to hire more experienced attorneys that can take on more cases. People come to us, especially people in removal proceedings but we have to refer people out and even then it is difficult for many to find affordable attorneys or help from other nonprofits because they are not accepting new cases.

Yet while fear of deportation has created more demand for services, some said that it also keeps many from attending know-your-rights sessions, legal consultations, and screening that might lead to immigration status. According to one respondent, “Immigrants are reluctant to attend events, such as KNOW YOUR RIGHTS for fear of gathering. They are also afraid of going to court since people are getting picked up there.” Participants in the March 11–13, 2019, gathering of the Catholic Immigrant Integration Initiative likewise reported on the sharp drop in attendance at citizenship workshops. “People hesitate to apply,” said one, “because they’re afraid it might backfire in some way.”

Respondents also reported that immigrants are hesitant to leave home at night, to drive, and to apply for immigration benefits that require them to provide their addresses. Programs serving unaccompanied children reported that fewer sponsors were coming forward due to the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s policy of sharing with ICE information on sponsors that could lead to their removal. A healthcare provider “strongly agreed” that immigrants were avoiding or delaying visits to hospitals or clinics out of fear of apprehension and deportation.