Across our region, immigrant families contribute daily to the civic, economic, and spiritual life of their communities, yet many live with fear and uncertainty shaped by harmful immigration enforcement practices. Our faith traditions and our nation’s founding share a conviction: all people are created equal and endowed with fundamental rights that must be defended. West/Southwest IAF leaders begin with encounters: listening to parents afraid to drive their children to school, parishioners staying home from Mass, and workers who pay into systems that shut them out. Grounded in lived experience, leaders build the relationships that allow neighbors to respond with clarity, discipline, and purpose.
From stopping the expansion of detention centers to holding public hearings that expose civil rights violations to securing healthcare for undocumented residents, local leaders are turning their shared grief into collective action and strengthening parish and neighborhood life.
This work builds Recognizing the Stranger, an ongoing leadership development strategy launched in 2017 with support from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD). The initiative has trained over 5,000 leaders across 20 dioceses, and strengthened bonds across language, culture, and status to build a constituency committed to the safety, dignity, and full participation of immigrant families.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
- The Declaration of Independence