Dear Friends, 

In celebration of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage month, we uplift the voices of our Asian American Pacific Island (AAPI) immigrant clients. AAPI immigrants are in distress. ICE arrests, detention, and deportations involving AAPI individuals have increased five to seven-fold as compared to the Biden Administration. Vulnerable AAPI immigrants must navigate language and cultural barriers when trying to access immigration legal services (most Bay Area nonprofits primarily have Spanish-speaking staff), in addition to battling the shame and stigma associated with being undocumented in many AAPI communities. Dehumanization, exclusion, incarceration, and suspicion of the “perpetual foreigner” are not only part of our shared AAPI immigrant history, but also mirror the cruelty and injustice inflicted against ALL immigrant communities today. We are grateful for the resilience and courage of our AAPI communities, both past and present, who refuse to be silenced by injustice. 

Dear Friends, 

I had a moment last month when I broke down. I learned that the Guatemalan mother and young daughter who were snatched by ICE at SFO and promptly deported, were part of a Spanish-speaking congregation I had visited. I told my good friend’s long-time neighbor that he had no viable immigration pathways and faced the real possibility of ICE showing up at his home because his application had been wrongly denied. And then there was the father with the cancer diagnosis who was part of another Spanish-speaking congregation. Having exhausted all his appeals, he confronted the impossible choice between surrendering himself for deportation on the scheduled date or remaining with his family and continuing his cancer treatment. The coalescing of these three stories made evil and cruelty feel hauntingly close to home. 

Dear Friends, 

Last week, many of us gathered with friends and family to usher in Lunar New Year, the year of the Fire Horse. And the next day, many Christians around the world showed up at church on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent and the 40-day journey toward Easter. We had the sign of the cross smudged on our foreheads with ashes. We were told: remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Naming our vulnerability, with our mortality physically imprinted on our bodies. Holding in tension — life and death, hope and grief. 

As a U.S. citizen, Bert could help his undocumented spouse, Patricia, apply for a green card. Unfortunately, USCIS issued a new draconian enforcement policy that significantly heightened Patricia’s risk of being arrested by ICE. This new policy gives immigration service officers new, unprecedented enforcement authority to carry firearms and arrest immigrants at their green card and naturalization interviews.