A group of clergy and laypersons led by the Rev. Leeann Culbreath and Martin Dickinson, with support from Rio Grande Borderland Ministries, concluded a 1,300-mile journey on June 5. The five-day pilgrimage, called “Migration with Dignity,” began on June 1 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and took the group through two states, two countries, and two dioceses that play a significant role in the migrant crisis.
The pilgrims, numbering around ten, came from Texas, New Mexico, Georgia, Washington, D.C., Virginia, and California. They are part of the Episcopal Migration Caucus, a grassroots group raising awareness of the effects that mass detention and deportation have on immigrant families and communities.
By the Diocese of the Rio Grande’s estimate, this is the eighth pilgrimage it has supported.
“I’ve lived it all my life,” Ana Reza, chaplain of Borderland Ministries, told TLC of the challenges faced by those trying to enter the country. A native of El Paso, Texas, and a first-generation Mexican American, Reza highlighted the vulnerability of those seeking refuge and fleeing harm.
“They’re not 100 percent healthy—physically and mentally—because they’ve been through a lot of trauma. These places [where they’re from], it’s deadly,” Reza said. “And another thing: They are not criminals. They are not.”
Reza, who welcomed Culbreath and Dickinson the day before the pilgrimage, said that calling for justice on behalf of migrants and asylum seekers has become part of her personal journey and spiritual well-being. What fuels her “whole mission in life is to follow the call of justice from Christ.”
Bishop Michael Hunn of the Diocese of the Rio Grande, who works with Reza, blessed the pilgrims and about 50 people during the journey’s first vigil, held at a park near the Torrance County Detention Center in Estancia, New Mexico.
“The Diocese of the Rio Grande encompasses 40 percent of the U.S.-Mexico border, and we are active in ministry all along that border in cooperation with the Anglican Diocese of Northern Mexico,” Hunn told TLC. “As U.S. government policy has changed, we have changed our ministry in order to adapt and take care of God’s children who are in the borderlands.”
Immigration enforcement remains a hot-button issue, as the Trump administration has set a deportation quota of 3,000 people per day, according to The Guardian. The highest number recorded, achieved on June 3, is two-thirds of that figure.
Reports of arrests made while asylum seekers head to court check-ins, green card holders being detained after traveling abroad, and a makeup artist mistaken for a gang member and sent to a dangerous prison in El Salvador paint a dire picture for those seeking asylum or protection from harm on U.S. soil.
“The system is not organized well, to say the least,” said the Rev. Michael Wallens, who serves as a priest in the Diocese of the Rio Grande, as he, Culbreath, Dickinson, and their fellow pilgrims headed to Marfa, Texas, on the third day of the pilgrimage. “They’re working on old immigration laws, and then you have the administration [which] keeps changing [policies], and then the protocols change.”
“And so not only are the people in detention confused, and hurt, and worried, and not able to be connected with their families—you have the people who are working and following the protocols that keep changing,” he said.
On how it felt to take part in the pilgrimage: “It is harder and more gut-wrenching, especially because you get to talk to people who are desperate, and they don’t know what’s going to happen.” Wallens is vicar of St. Paul’s Church in Marfa, Texas.
In Sierra Blanca, Texas, the pilgrims held a vigil in front of a facility where they could see detained men out in the yard. Culbreath described the moment as “a different and very moving experience.”
“I feel a mix of grief … because we’re hearing so many difficult stories, painful stories of arrests and detention of people who have lived here for a long time, who have been following the process, trying to do everything right,” Culbreath said.
“And then they’re being arrested at their immigration court hearing and learning that their case was dropped, so that they can be immediately arrested and separated from their children on the spot, with their children watching.”
In Reza’s hometown of El Paso, Texas, the group met an advocate who, the day before, was accompanying a woman to an immigration hearing but was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Culbreath, who serves as a priest in the Diocese of Georgia, said the issues they’re highlighting are not limited to migrants’ welfare but also include the moral injury and trauma experienced by employees working in these facilities—especially in rural communities where such jobs are often critical.
“They’re being asked to do things they may know in their heart are wrong, but they have to continue to do it,” Culbreath said. “We are praying for them and concerned about their well-being and their community’s well-being, too.”
On parts of the journey, the pilgrims stayed in Airbnbs. But in El Paso, they stayed at what was once a shelter for asylum seekers at St. Christopher’s Church, which was shut down after the Trump administration took office and cut off funding.
“We were able to stay in the shelter spaces where asylum seekers had also experienced their first few days of freedom, and mercy, and compassion in the U.S.,” Culbreath said. They then went to Juárez, Mexico, where they had a time of prayer and reflection.
On the morning of June 5, the pilgrims held a vigil in Dilley, Texas, their final stop. The city is home to the 2,400-bed South Texas Family Residential Center, managed by a private prison company. The facility was idled in 2024 during the Biden administration.
“People really want to take a stand, and be in solidarity, and show mercy, and uplift the dignity of every human being,” Culbreath said of the response she received when organizing the pilgrimage in March. Reza is encouraged by groups like the one Culbreath and Dickinson led, who “really support and speak out truth.”
“I know God is greater than that,” she said of the challenges they’re witnessing, “and that we just need to continue to advocate and change the system.”
But she said though she has a lot of hope, she still sheds tears.
On the day Reza spoke to TLC, she had just learned that a young man she was helping was denied bail and falsely accused of another crime. “He’s already been in the county jail for eight months,” she said of the man, who was then transferred to El Paso County Detention Facilities. Though she and many others urged him to be patient, the man—who is in his 20s and whose wife is in Mexico—decided to self-deport.
“I’d rather go back to my country, because I live there, I struggle,” he told Reza. “But I’m not seen as a criminal.”
Caleb Maglaya Galaraga is The Living Church’s Episcopal Church reporter. His work has also appeared in Christianity Today, Broadview Magazine, and Presbyterian Outlook, among other publications.
