On Sundays, Juan Carlos Ruiz gives his sermons while wearing a white robe. Although his English- and Spanish-speaking congregants at a Brooklyn-based church may not notice it, the neck of his robe is ripped, the cloth frayed. When asked about the tear in his robe, Ruiz gives a charming smile, remembering his 2018 arrest.
That year, during the first Trump administration, Ruiz was participating in a protest to prevent the deportation of a prominent New York immigration activist. As tensions flared, cops began to rough up some demonstrators. Ruiz attempted to intervene. He and 17 others were arrested by police; his white alb ripped during the struggle.
“They beat us for a long time,” Ruiz recalls. “But it exposed that, although New York is a so-called ‘sanctuary city’, in reality, the practice still existed of working hand-in-hand with the migrant police.”
Ruiz is an important figure in New York’s immigrant activist space, one of many providing services and assistance to immigrants at risk of being targeted by federal authorities. Now Ruiz and others are continuing their work to help migrants – but with more urgency and determination under the second Trump administration’s aggressive anti-immigrant full court press.
Although the work is not new for many, immigrant rights activists in New York are adapting their methods, finding new ways to respond to the federal government’s attacks. Some groups are offering legal advice to immigrants navigating the backlogged and bureaucratic proceedings, even as the White House steers around due process; others are providing legal information, in case immigration officials come knocking; and others are providing food and basic assistance to those in need.
There is deep confusion and much fear in many communities – both documented and undocumented, with advocates attempting to anchor those threatened by providing quick-response resources, information and – if necessary – physical refuge.
“We are responsible for our own silence,” Ruiz said. If you do not stand up against injustice, he added, “we will be complicit in a system that is undermining all of us.”
Before Ruiz’s Spanish-language service on Sundays, the church provides a hearty meal to people who attend. During the downtime, while young children laugh and chase each other around the church, many people will wait patiently to visit with the pastor in his office. They will inquire about their immigration cases or request help with their legal process.
On one recent Sunday, a man kissed his baby and his wife, embraced Ruiz and broke down in tears after the pastor handed him an envelope. His work permit had finally arrived in the mail.
“For me, my role is more to accompany, listen, maybe take the person’s hand and, as I accompany them, search for paths forward and solutions,” Ruiz said, with his distinctive central Mexican accent. “A lot of people, what they want, is just to be heard.”
And Ruiz has heard it all. He has sat with immigrants who tell horror stories of the extremely dangerous journey through South and Central America. Others tell Ruiz about loved ones, who have died or been killed. Some migrants have fled their home countries due to political persecution; others are fleeing violence from organized criminal groups. Many also seek economic opportunities, with some leaving due to poverty driven by the climate crisis or weak, corrupt governments.
The toughest aspect is seeing the “normalization of lies” about immigrants: “The lies that ‘having papers makes you superior,’ that ‘having a certain skin color makes you better’ or ‘less’. These lies undermine people’s dignity,” he said.
Since Donald Trump took office for the second time, Ruiz noticed attendance at his Sunday lunches began to wane. On 20 January, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security released a memo allowing for Ice to conduct arrests and enforcement operations at “sensitive locations” or “protected areas”, including churches, schools and medical facilities. Legal challenges partially blocked the “sensitive locations” Trump memo but a nationwide chilling effect and fear lingers. However, life must go on.
“I’ve been in this country for 20 years,” one woman from Mexico said, asking for her name to be withheld for fear of being targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the federal agency that carries out deportations. Last month fear was rampant and she noticed the New York subway trains were emptier than usual on the way to work. “But we have to keep going. We have to go work because, here, no one is going to help us pay rent, no one is going to help us except ourselves,” she said.
Ruiz became the pastor of the Good Shepherd church in 2018. Ever since, during moments of desperate need and heightened threats, he has periodically opened the church’s doors, offering sanctuary to migrants seeking refuge, motivated by his own experience as an immigrant and decades of activism.
He arrived in the US at 16 from Mexico and was himself undocumented – “living in the shadows”, as he describes it – before going through the long process of obtaining legal status. At one point, immigration officials attempted to deport his brother. His family’s church intervened and stopped the deportation – a landmark event in Ruiz’s political, religious and personal development. His religious philosophy was further shaped by a longstanding tradition of progressive faith activism, having studied under liberation theology and leftwing Jesuit priests in Chicago and New Jersey.
“We are a sanctuary church. This means that your body and blood, your dignity and your personhood, is also sacred,” Ruiz preached to his congregants during a recent Spanish-language sermon. “When there are unjust systems that distort that, one has the necessity to protest, or do whatever is possible, to dismantle those unjust systems.”
In the first two months of the Trump administration, the federal government has significantly escalated its offensive against undocumented immigrants. Among its countless actions, the administration has stripped away asylum rights, sent migrants to the Guantánamo naval base to be detained, arrested a green card holder for political activism, issued quotas for Ice arrests and used the Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants, despite a federal judge’s order. Ice arrested more than 32,000 people during Trump’s first 50 days.
Some of the most vigorous challengers to the anti-immigrant agenda have been immigrant and civil rights organizations, including grassroots groups, rather than from Democratic lawmakers, whose resistance has been limited. And as activists routinely point out, the two recent Democratic presidents – Barack Obama and Joe Biden – leaned into the federal detention and deportation machine.
“I correct people when they say that the system is broken, as if someone arrived and broke it,” Ruiz said. “I tell them: ‘No, the system has been designed to work this way’.”
Community organizations and individuals are striving to protect each other.
For the past few years, the non-profit organization South Brooklyn Sanctuary has been providing assistance and advice to recently arrived immigrants in New York. The organization originated in the Good Shepherd church, and became independent in 2023 to formalize its work.
“ We started in 2022 when Texas governor Greg Abbott first started bussing immigrants from the southern border to New York City as a political ploy,” said Emily Shechtman, co-founder and executive director of South Brooklyn Sanctuary. “It was an all-hands-on-deck, volunteer-run effort that included all sorts of support, like clothing, food, language classes, grocery distribution. And among that work was legal support.”
One Saturday evening this month, the organization, in partnership with South Brooklyn Mutual Aid, provided “know your rights” training to a packed room of people, encouraging attendees to look out for their immigrant neighbors.
South Brooklyn Sanctuary also runs a legal clinic for immigrants navigating the complex civil court system that adjudicates immigration cases. Unlike the criminal court system, immigrants are not guaranteed legal representation during procedures, so the group provides community support to better equip immigrants to represent themselves in court.
“ Our goal is to train volunteers to help people fill out their own applications with attorney supervision, and to provide legal empowerment information so that recently arrived immigrants don’t feel steamrolled, overwhelmed and confused by what’s a very complex, bureaucratic and adversarial legal system,” Shechtman added.
Some workshops do not just prepare immigrants to avoid arrest and navigate the immigration system, but they also prepare people for the worst-case scenario. An immigrant woman the Guardian spoke with attended a workshop on how to prepare for deportation if necessary. Although it is a scary lesson, she explains, it is best to be prepared. After the workshop, the mother gave a trusted friend copies of important documents and enough money for four plane tickets, two tickets for her young children to join her in Mexico, and a roundtrip flight for her friend to escort her children – if it comes to that.
“After that, I felt a sense of peace,” the woman said. “We’ve come out on top in a country that is not our own, where we don’t speak the language, where we aren’t wanted. If I am deported to my own country, I can start anew.”
On a sunny but chilly recent Friday evening, volunteers and staff from the New York Immigrant Coalition (NYIC) advocacy took to the streets with an initiative, sparked by Trump, to distribute pamphlets and cards explaining one’s legal rights in case Ice arrives. They went door to door in Sunset Park, a Brooklyn neighborhood primarily made up of Latin American and Chinese immigrants, many undocumented.
The advocates made their way down the main avenue, talking to business owners, workers and pedestrians. They plan to visit other neighborhoods, too.
“ Workplace raids were very common in the first Trump administration, and we expect them to scale [up],” said Wennie Chin, senior director of civic engagement at NYIC.
The organization provides “know your rights” cards in 15 different languages.
Chin also distributed signs for business owners to bar immigration officers from entering without the required warrant signed by a judge – explaining that agents brandishing a simple internal administrative order doesn’t cut it.
“ We recruit members of the community who may have language capacity to do this level of outreach, and really make sure that we are reaching people where they are at,” Chin added.
Later that evening, back at the Good Shepherd church in Bay Ridge, families gathered for music and dance lessons, a place of refuge, where people living with irregular legal status, can breathe a little easier.
A boisterous group of more than two-dozen Spanglish-speaking children rehearsed mariachi music in the church’s main space. The mariachi group, armed with violins and guitars, travels around New York City, performing at community events, weddings and parties. As the kids filed out, excited to enjoy the rest of their Friday evening, the church space filled with the sounds of different music coming from the basement.
There, about 30 girls, between five and 15 years old, were taking Mexican folk dance lessons. Their traditional colorful skirts swayed as they rehearsed Mexico’s national dance with loud footwork. After a long week of work, the girls’ visibly tired parents watched their daughters rehearse.
“We come here, even though there’s fear,” said one father holding a baby. He gestured towards his daughter, a US citizen by birthright who was with the group of folk dancers. “We are not going to take this away from them because of the fear.”
As their children danced, a group of 14 parents, all undocumented, mostly from Mexico, sat in a circle on the main floor of the church to discuss their perspectives on the current atmosphere. Some were vocal, some more shy, there was a mix of fear, courage, also anger at government anti-immigrant hostility and misinformation. All asked that their identities be shielded but all seemed relieved to be seen and heard.
“We are not taking jobs away from people,” one father said. “It is also an absolute lie that we do not pay taxes. We pay taxes. We do not live here for free, we all work and pay rent.”
Although the majority of their children are US citizens, when talking of Trump’s executive order to restrict birthright citizenship, currently in legal limbo awaiting the US supreme court, the parents’ fear was palpable.
And the children feel it, too, many said – not just because of news and rumors on social media, but in their own homes and schools.
One man’s young son, who loved to play soccer then go eat at his favorite restaurant, refused to go out for weeks, fearing that Ice would arrest his father during their regular weekend outings. Another woman’s daughter was being bullied at school, she said – a classmate was threatening to call Ice on her family. Although the mother was insistent on reporting the classmate to the school, her daughter deleted the bully’s messages, out of fear of escalating the situation.
An eight-year-old girl came home from school telling her parents they were going to “deport everyone”. Her parents are of separate nationalities, Mexican and Guatemalan. “Which country are they going to send us to?” the girl asked.
“It’s terrifying,” her mother said. “It scared me to hear small children talking about this. It’s a way of snatching away their innocence – they shouldn’t have to worry about this. And how do you explain this to a child?”
Ruiz said that confusion and fear are part of Trump’s strategy – but the fight must go on.
“ We cannot underestimate the power of a handful of people, willing to work for the common good,” Ruiz said. “We need to keep working, from whichever trench we find ourselves in.”
