By John Wojcik
Photos: People’s World
A leading priest in the Episcopal Church of the Diocese of Chicago, after Sunday Mass at a Southside Church here, condemned the latest move by the Internal Revenue Service to help The Trump administration’s hunting down of and deportation of immigrants.
“It is illegal to deport anyone who has applied for asylum and not yet had a court hearing, or to arrest and deport green card holders or to arrest anyone without a valid court order to do so but this new use of the I.R.S. is a particularly cruel system of entrapment,” according to a priest leading the immigration rights efforts of the Episcopal Church here.
Speaking at St. Margaret of Scotland Episcopal Church here the Rev. Sandra Castillo, chair of Chicago’s Episcopal Church task force on immigration, noted that undocumented immigrants have long been encouraged by the government to file for returns and pay their taxes and that they have been issued nine-digit taxpayer identification numbers in place of the Social Security numbers they don’t have. “To use that information to round up people, destroy families, and instill terror in communities is an outrage but it does not surprise me that the Trump administration would be doing this.”
Castillo castigated the Trump administration for its immigration policy in the sermon she delivered here Sunday at the church and in a discussion afterward in the church hall. The group of parishioners involved in the talks included white, African American, Nigerian, and other African immigrants, Filipinos, and Latinos.
The Episcopal Church here and nationally has been outspoken in its condemnation of the Trump administration’s immigration policy and is warning immigrants and their friends and neighbors about the growing dangers in communities across the country….
