On Feb. 8, a group of Latino men were leaving an overnight hypothermia shelter at Rising Hope Mission Church in Alexandria, Va., when they were surrounded by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, arrested and taken away in vans.
The church's pastor, Kerry Kincannon, worries that ICE is now targeting churches, abandoning long-standing ICE guidelines that treat houses of worship, hospitals and schools as “sensitive areas” to be avoided when rounding up people for deportation.
“They are making people fearful of coming to church,” Kincannon told a local TV station. “They are making people fearful of coming in, to get out of the cold, to get help in a shelter, and we are not going to stand for it, we are absolutely not going to stand for it.”
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