Pastoral Letter of Support and Lament for Immigrants and Refugees

Beloved People of God—pastors, leaders, classes, assemblies, and churches:

With broken hearts and unwavering resolve, the Commission on Race and Ethnicity (CORE), together with the four racial and ethnic councils of the Reformed Church in America and the general secretary, offers this pastoral letter of lament and support on behalf of immigrant and refugee families across the United States who have been devastated by recent immigration raids carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

We stand in holy grief alongside our siblings, mothers, fathers, children, and elders, whose lives have been disrupted, traumatized, and torn apart by policies and actions that fail to honor the dignity and image of God in every person. These realities call for both moral clarity and compassionate action from the church.

As a people shaped by the gospel of Jesus Christ and grounded in the historic confessions of our Reformed faith, we affirm that:

• All people are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), deserving of dignity, safety, and justice.
• The Heidelberg Catechism teaches that our only comfort in life and death is that we belong, body and soul, to our faithful Savior. This belonging extends across borders and legal categories.
• The Belhar Confession compels us to reject any form of injustice, exclusion, or discrimination that marginalizes people due to race, ethnicity, language, or immigration status.
• The Great Commandment demands that we love our neighbor as ourselves, and Jesus’s family fled as refugees (Matthew 2:13-15).

We lament:

• The pain and terror experienced by children separated from their parents.
• The silence or complicity of institutions, including churches, that fail to protect the vulnerable.
• The long-standing racial and economic inequities that undergird immigration enforcement in communities of color.
• The unjust and illegal deportations that criminalize survival, disproportionately harm families, and disregard human dignity. We also acknowledge that lawful deportations of individuals who pose genuine threats to community safety are a distinct category; our moral witness is directed toward the misuse of systems that treat entire communities as disposable.

And yet we also affirm:

• The courage of congregations offering sanctuary and solidarity.
• The Spirit’s call to embody a justice that rolls down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:24).
• The need for the church to not only comfort the afflicted but also challenge the structures that create their suffering—systems that perpetuate separation, exclusion, and inequity—knowing that injustice against one is injustice against all. 

A Collective Witness

As councils representing African American and Black, Hispanic and Latino, Pacific and Asian American, and Native American and Indigenous communities, we recognize that our histories are interwoven with painful legacies of forced removal, slavery, deportation, incarceration, and exclusion. From Black families broken apart under slavery and mass incarceration, to Asian American families incarcerated during World War II, to Latino families torn apart by deportation raids, and more, we know the pain of state-sanctioned separation. The struggles faced by immigrant and refugee families today echo the injustices Indigenous peoples have endured, and continue to endure, through colonization, boarding schools, and ongoing displacement. The suffering of all marginalized communities is a shared wound, and our healing is bound together.

Today, we also see these patterns continuing in new forms. Communities of color across this nation, immigrant, refugee, Indigenous, documented/undocumented, and U.S.-born, are being disproportionately impacted by immigration raids, policing practices, and deportation policies that target people because of race, ethnicity, and identity. The suffering of these communities echoes the historic traumas we carry, reminding us that the struggle for justice is not behind us, but before us.

Because of these shared histories and current realities, we stand united in declaring that injustice against one is injustice against all. Our collective witness is both a testimony to the radical welcome of the gospel and a call to action for the whole church.

We call upon all RCA leaders, congregations, classes/middle assemblies, and regional synods to:

• Pray fervently for immigrant and refugee families.
• Offer tangible care, legal support, housing, food, community, for those directly affected.
• Advocate boldly for just, humane, and equitable immigration policies at every level of government, and stand in solidarity with all families impacted by unjust immigration policies.
• Preach and teach a theology of hospitality and justice that reflects the radical welcome of Jesus Christ. We recognize that true hospitality begins with honoring the original peoples of this land and respecting their sovereignty and rights.
• Advocate for justice, dignity, and the radical welcome that our traditions teach.

This is not merely a political moment in the U.S., but a moral and theological one. May we be faithful in our witness, persistent in our advocacy, and tender in our compassion.

In solidarity with the sojourner and commitment to the gospel,

The Commission on Race and Ethnicity (CORE)

African American Black Council (AABC)

Global Council for Hispanic Ministries (GCHM)

Council for Pacific and Asian American Ministries (CPAAM)

Council for Native American Indigenous Ministries (NAIM)

Rev. Eddy Alemán, general secretary

Other action steps

• Learn about the theology of migration. To discern how God calls us to engage issues of migration and caring for people on the move or living in diaspora, we must first study what the Bible says about related issues.
• Church resources on migration and immigration, including worship resources, curated by the RCA’s refugee care ministry
• Advocacy resources to stand with immigrants and refugees, compiled by RCA Global Mission and the Commission on Christian Action
• Interested in learning more about loving immigrants and refugees? Gather a small group from your congregation and join the Churches of Welcome program, a partnership between the RCA and World Relief. Through Churches of Welcome, congregations embark on a year-long discipleship and missional journey to learn about God’s love for people on the move or living in diaspora, and to discern how God is calling them to put the love of Christ into action for our immigrant/refugee neighbors, or newcomers in need of resettlement in the United States.
• Read Global Grace Cafe: A Love Story About Battles Lost and Won to Keep Families Together in America’s War on Immigrants by Rev. Elizabeth Colmant Estes