CHICAGO (OSV News) ─ Easter Triduum visits ended the Lenten season for a small group of Chicago-area religious and clergy who ministered to people in the U.S. without legal authorization that are detained at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
The same group started the 40-day period of preparation for the Lord Jesus Christ’s passion, death and resurrection with an Ash Wednesday visit to the processing facility in Broadview, Illinois, to bring holy Communion, give ashes and pray with those Catholics being held there.
The visits during the Church's most sacred period of the year were a result of court orders that compelled the Department of Homeland Security to allow access to members of the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership. Last year, the Chicago-based Catholic social justice organization tried several times to enter the ICE processing unit but it was turned away each time.
Jesuit Father David Inczauskis was part of the CSPL team of three priests and a religious sister who went inside the Broadview facility on Holy Thursday, April 2.
On April 6, Easter Monday, he told OSV News he was struck when the group first saw those being brought for processing in handcuffs and ankle shackles.
It was the first time Father Inczauskis had encountered detainees in shackles. He has done prison and jail ministry in Peru and Honduras, and also ministered to minors in the U.S. who had been separated from their parents.
"I think to see this was unique, and particularly devastating and dehumanizing," he said.
Father Inczauskis and another priest who spoke with OSV News described the setting for the pastoral visits. They said the small delegation prayed, read Scripture and gave Communion through a half door in what they described as an "intersection between two long hallways" separated by the door that opened in two halves. They said the 14 people they ministered to on Holy Thursday were brought to the door in two sets of five, and then four.
On the other days of the Triduum, there were far fewer detainees to minister to, sometimes just one or two, they added.
One priest was allowed to wash the shackled feet of the detainees after Father Inczauskis read the Holy Thursday Gospel on the Last Supper. In the reading, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples before going to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray, where he was then arrested.
The superior of the Claretians' USA-Canada province, Father Paul Keller, led prayers and the opening and closing blessings. Also on Easter Monday, he described the same look of "shock and disorientation" on the detainees’ faces that he recognized when he was last inside the facility on Ash Wednesday. He noted they were within the very first minutes and hours of being brought in.
"Some people really broke down," he said. "It was a moment in which they perhaps let out the sadness and frustration that they had been feeling."
"But then also I got the sense that some of them took the foot washing as a sign of care and humanity in a situation of such dehumanization that this allowed them to experience those emotions of being cared for in this time of great distress," he told OSV News.
The processing facility is located in Broadview, a suburb about 12.5 miles west of Chicago's downtown. It was a flashpoint for heated clashes between protesters and ICE personnel at the height of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.
CSPL sued for access to the facility in November last year, citing violations of their rights to freely exercise their religion under the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
OSV News requested comments from DHS on the recent visits and has not yet received a response.
Among migrants most at risk of arrest and deportation by ICE about 80% are Christian ─ the majority of them (61%) are Catholic ─ according to a joint Catholic-evangelical report published by World Relief and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
U.S. District Judge Robert W. Gettleman of the Northern District of Illinois ordered a preliminary injunction to allow members of CSPL to give ashes and Communion on Ash Wednesday. He also ordered both sides to work out a schedule for future visits and allow religious and lay ministers to once again pray outside the Broadview facility, like they did for years until the immigration crackdown intensified.
In the partial injunction issued March 31 that forced the Triduum visits, Gettleman wrote, "The court finds that the government has substantially burdened plaintiffs’ exercise of religion."
He noted, "The court also agrees with plaintiffs that the injunction is in public interest. Allowing plaintiffs to provide pastoral care to migrants and detainees will improve the condition of those detained at Broadview."
Gettleman reiterated the need for both sides to schedule further, regular visits and prayer just outside Broadview facility, within view of the detainees. A status hearing was scheduled for April 7.
Michael Okinczyc-Cruz, CSPL's executive director, told OSV News the Triduum and Easter visits were a "profoundly moving and stirring experience ... for not only our ministers who entered, but the communities that surrounded those ministers with prayer."
"And for our siblings, who are detained and their families," he said, "it brought some comfort and consolation in a period of profound darkness."
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Simone Orendain is an OSV News correspondent. She writes from Chicago
