The new Trump administration is moving fast to fulfill a litany of campaign promises on immigration in his first days in office.
President Donald Trump has signed dozens of executive orders already, including declaring a national emergency on the southern border and shutting down the CBP One app, which allowed immigrants to make appointments with officials in their quest to seek asylum. And he is attempting to end birthright citizenship as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.
Now, his new director of Homeland Security, Tom Homan, has announced an important change in immigration enforcement: He rescinded guidance that restricted immigration authorities from entering schools, health-care facilities and places of worship to conduct arrests.
It’s exactly what the Rev. Jennifer Reddall, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona, feared could happen under the new administration. Last month, Reddall wrote an op-ed in The Arizona Republic along with nearly a dozen other faith leaders across Arizona arguing that immigration raids in their churches a violation of their religious freedom.
It comes just months after Arizonans voted overwhelmingly to pass Proposition 314, making illegal border crossings a state crime and bringing up echoes of the controversial SB1070 from 15 years ago.
Reddall joined The Show to talk more about it all, before the administration’s latest move to open up churches to raids.
Full conversation
BISHOP JENNIFER REDDALL: So I think some of our fears were realized with the executive order that got rid of the Border Patrol app that allowed asylum seekers to apply legally and in an orderly fashion.
That's what the people who live in our shelter on the Mexican side of the border use because we want them to do things the right way. We don't want them to use cartels to take them across the border illegally. We want them to use the right way and the right way, and the legal way just went away.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, so we don't know what will, if anything, replace that at this point, but I want to ask about concerns going forward as well because you were one of many faith leaders in the Valley who wrote an op-ed in The Republic recently talking about concerns about these kinds of things, about respecting the human rights of people as immigration laws shift, which they already are. What are you worried about in your congregations?
REDDALL: In our congregations, we're worried about how these are going to be enforced. We don't know about Prop. 314 and how that's going to be enforced. You know, there are norms that say that you don't invade churches to arrest people, but those are just norms. So, a lot of the norms seemed to go away, so we aren't sure if we're going to be targeted.
When SB1070 was enforced, my understanding, I wasn't here yet, but my understanding is that Sheriff [Joe] Arpaio parked himself outside of some of our churches and was trying to arrest people on their way out of church.
We think that it's really important that every human being have the right to worship. You know, that's, that's not one of the places that you should be arresting people. Everyone needs their freedom of religion. Everyone needs the chance to be with their community and worship their God. And we're worried that that's not going to happen.
GILGER: So these sorts of concerns are about religious freedom for you, religious exercise.
REDDALL: It's about exercise of religious freedom and it's also about the sanctity of churches that, that, you know, we don't exist to, to uphold the state. We exist to be in a creative dialogue with the state, but also to hold the state to a moral compass, you know,. We, as followers of Jesus, you know, I have really strong feelings about the dignity of human beings and about how everyone is made in the image of God, and, you know, this. The state doesn't have that same concern, but we get to be in dialogue about it.
GILGER: Yeah, and I want to ask you more about that in a moment, but let me ask you first, what's happened already in your congregation since the passage of Prop. 314 here in the Valley, which, as you said, is not being enforced yet. We don't know when and if it may be. But have you seen this happen? And you have many churches that are bilingual Spanish speaking.
REDDALL: So anecdotally, attendance is down in our Spanish-speaking churches. People are already afraid to come to church because of all of the rhetoric, even if it's not being enforced yet, people are afraid. You know, if you have to choose between going to church and being deported and leaving your kids behind, you're probably going to worship online.
GILGER: Is family separation there part of the biggest concern for folks?
REDDALL: Family separation is absolutely one of the biggest concerns because we have a lot of families in our churches that are of mixed documentation status. And so the idea that a parent may have to leave, leaving behind U.S. citizen children or a spouse, you know, that, that's kind of the worst scenario for us.
GILGER: Let me ask you about how you're preparing for all of this. You and other religious leaders, I know you're talking about this, trying to figure out how to approach it. Are you talking to attorneys? Are you working with the people who might be able to assist people?
REDDALL: Yeah, so we just had a Zoom with an immigration attorney with all of my clergy a week and a half ago, because, you know, we're in this position of learning, you know, I, I don't know how to do this. I'm not an immigration attorney, but I do need to know and my clergy need to know, you know, what are, what are our rights as citizens and as religious leaders? What are the rights of undocumented people if someone comes to the door and knocks. So we've gotten some good advice for that.
I think we'll be doing some work in the churches again. You know, sort of putting together basically folders for people so that they have all of their important documents and their stuff together so that if someone, you know, gets picked up, their family can find them. They've got someone with power of attorney to help, help find them and help take care of their kids. So it's a lot of very anxious planning.
GILGER: Yeah. How far would you be willing to take this, I wonder, because I know we've seen in the past in Arizona, you mentioned, you know, Sheriff Arpaio at the time waiting outside of churches to arrest people or talk to them.
We've seen other churches act as sanctuaries, protect and house undocumented immigrants and try to keep them from immigration officials. What does this look like for you?
REDDALL: That's probably not something that we would do in Arizona. We have done it in the past and it's not, I don't think it's a bad thing to do. You know, there is some legal peril in there that probably outweighs, the legal peril outweighs the benefit.
You know, I was familiar with some churches in New York City when I lived there who had people in sanctuary and it, it’s a great way of getting a lot of attention, but it's not necessarily a way of actually helping the vast numbers of people. And so for us, I think we're looking at helping the vast number of people.
I want to help our fellow Arizonans. I want to help our law enforcement recognize that human beings are human beings. They're all made in the image of God, and that doesn't mean that no one should ever be deported. But it does mean that we have to think about this and doing it in a way that is, that is not malicious and is not aimed at harming families, harming families.
GILGER: Harming families. You're also affiliated with the Lost Boys, the sort of famous refugee community from Sudan that's been in the Valley for some time. The new president, on his first day in office, suspended refugee resettlement for at least four months going forward. What are your concerns there?
REDDALL: So I was with our Sudanese congregation on Sunday, and they are very anxious because from their perspective, they know how important it was for them to be able to To the United States as refugees that saved their lives.
And now that they've been here for 20-plus years, they are married, they have kids, their kids are Americans, they're American citizens, and they're kind of a huge success story, and they're afraid that the doors are closing for those who are coming behind them.
GILGER: You mentioned a border shelter. What, what does that look like? What's the reaction been there on the border itself?
REDDALL: Yeah, so we run a shelter on the Mexican side of the border for families and women who are wanting to apply for asylum. They come from all over the world, you know, from China, from Russia, from El Salvador, from Mexico, Guatemala. And, you know, we only take families, so that's, it's a lot of kids.
And they have been through just horrific experiences whenever I hear their stories, and we make sure that what we do, you know, people have some time to stay there to get on the app, make the legal way to apply for asylum, which was through the app, make an appointment so that you can present yourself, and we don't want to support cartels. We don't want to support people just jumping over the wall or going around it.
And so that app was taken offline yesterday. And so now there's no legal way for people to apply for asylum. And I don't know what's going to happen. We've probably got about 120 people in that shelter.
I know in, in December, I was down there and we were talking about a family that was crossing and thinking, wow, this, this may be the last family that crosses. And that's just heartbreaking because, you know, they can't go back. They don't have anywhere to go.
GILGER: Let me ask you lastly about the role you see faith leaders like yourself playing in this conversation. I'm sure there are people out there who will hear this and say, you know, they're not policy experts, they're not people who are working in government. What's your role you see this?
REDDALL: So I think as a follower of Jesus and somebody who reads the Bible quite a lot, I'm somebody who recognizes that the entire Scripture is a story of people on the move. It's a story of people migrating, you know, the, the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament is stories of the people of Israel moving. The New Testament is the story of Jesus and his family, you know, going to Egypt and then coming back to Nazareth.
So we have, you know, in our religious traditions of very high understanding that you have to protect the alien among you, and that all of us have experienced being what they call strangers, right? You were a stranger in Egypt. And so with that experience, then we look out at the world and say, OK, well, how, how today in 2025 am I called to welcome the stranger, just like I was, you know, commanded to do in the Bible.