(RNS) — When immigrants detained at Georgia’s Stewart Detention Center, well known for overcrowding and harsh conditions, ask for prayer, volunteers from El Refugio don’t hesitate.
The small secular nonprofit was founded in 2010 in Lumpkin, Georgia, to serve those imprisoned in Stewart, the second-largest immigrant detention center in the United States. El Refugio sends volunteers weekly to spend an hour with detainees.
“It usually starts with someone saying, ‘Can you pray for me? Can I pray for you?’” said Amilcar Valencia, the organization’s executive director, who has been visiting detention facilities more than 14 years. “I think faith is what many people who are detained say sustains them. It’s what gives them a sense to continue to fight for their case and to support other people who may be struggling inside of the detention center.”
Though El Refugio operates with only four staff, its small team of volunteers each week drives hours in some cases to offer detainees accompaniment, help with legal navigation, emotional support and, at times, prayer. Volunteers sit across glass dividers, using phones to speak with detainees, much like regular visitors. “The guards know about us and what we do,” Valencia said. “Typically, we try to establish a relationship with the warden.”
More than 61,000 people are being held in American immigration detention — up from around 36,000 in August 2024, amid the Trump administration’s crackdown. As the numbers rise, access to pastoral care inside remains inconsistent, faith leaders and volunteers serving immigrant communities told RNS. Chaplaincy is often left to volunteers, sometimes assigned to prison staff, occasionally contracted to outside nonprofits and, in rare cases, negotiated directly by local Catholic dioceses. The result is a patchwork system that leaves many detainees, more than 70% of whom have no criminal conviction, without reliable spiritual support.
Valencia said he reaches out to each new warden at the 2,000-bed Stewart Detention Center to explain his group’s work. But a high staff turnover rate at the facility, which is owned and operated by CoreCivic, one of the largest private prison companies in the U.S., makes it difficult to build a lasting relationship with the administration, Valencia said.
“It’s complicated,” he said. “Sometimes we just don’t get any response, and it’s been like that for the last few months, I will say. They just don’t talk to us, the warden nor the new administration at the facility.”
A chaplain is on staff at Stewart and is supported by volunteers, including those from El Refugio, said Ryan Gustin, a spokesperson for CoreCivic.
“Chaplains rely on a robust network of volunteers and religious resource groups to ensure a variety of faiths are accommodated for those in our care,” Gustin said. “This allows individuals, especially those navigating the immigration system, to continue growing in their faith.”
However, Valencia said he’s concerned religious materials are not provided to detained people who request them in the facility, among other issues.
“We hear from people all the time, too, that religious dietary restrictions are hardly ever met,” Valencia said.
El Refugio volunteers respond directly to detainees’ requests for religious items. They have supplied Bibles, hymnals, Christian coloring books, a Torah translated into Russian and hijabs for women in detention, where the average stay is more than 50 days.
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The U.S. Constitution protects the free exercise of religion, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Performance-Based National Detention Standards state that each facility requires a chaplain or religious services coordinator to oversee worship, religious texts, holiday meals and special diets. But ICE does not directly provide chaplains; that responsibility falls to detention facility administration.
This seems to lend itself to a lack of oversight. Last week, the British news website The Independent reported that a chaplain hired at Moshannon Valley Processing Center, an ICE prison in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, was allowed to return after months away as a federal lawsuit alleging he sexually harassed a detained woman remains pending. The lawsuit claims the Baptist chaplain, Pastor Mark Melhorn, made unwanted sexual comments and gestures while carrying out religious duties.
“Regardless of whether this is a chaplain or not, this is an abuse of power,” said Adrianna Torres-García, deputy director of Free Migration Project, a Philadelphia group, and a member of a coalition pushing to shut down Moshannon. “We had heard from people detained right now about their experience with the chaplain. For us, it isn’t shocking. These places are pretty much made to torture people psychologically, to break them down. And even when they try to access their religion or their faith, they’re denied that opportunity.”
While most detention centers depend on volunteers or staff assigned as chaplains, in five U.S. facilities, ICE directly contracts with outside organizations to provide religious services. One of those groups is Jesuit Refugee Service/USA, the American branch of the global Catholic ministry founded by the Jesuits.
“There are literally dozens and dozens of these detention facilities,” said Hilary Chester, JRS/USA’s programs director. “If you are not in the five (detention centers where) ICE is quite literally contracting an organization to fill that role, then it’s up to the individual facility to staff it or to organize on a volunteer basis to somehow meet that standard. That is, I think, where you can sort of see that variability in access.”
JRS/USA holds a roughly $7 million, five-year federal contract with ICE, placing 11 chaplains at the five detention centers. Its staff lead Mass and interfaith services, provide one-on-one counseling and coordinate with nearby faith communities to meet detainees’ religious needs.
“The goal is for people who are in these really difficult settings, with all the restrictions and all the uncertainty, to at least have some access to how they want to express and practice their faith,” Chester said.
Unlike volunteers, federally contracted chaplains must clear extensive background checks with fingerprinting and sign nondisclosure agreements before entering facilities. Restrictions can limit what they are able to share publicly about their work. ICE awards such contracts through a competitive process that opens every five years.
Valencia said El Refugio chose not to pursue that route. “We intentionally did that when we started because then we knew that becoming an official program will bring a lot more barriers and background checks, and it’s easier for them to deny us access that way,” he said.
ICE did not respond to RNS’ requests for comment.
The Archdiocese of Miami, led by Archbishop Thomas Wenski, who is one of the nation’s most vocal Catholic leaders on the current immigrant detention system, spent months pressing ICE and Florida officials for access to the remote detention facility in southern Florida known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” officially called the South Florida Detention Facility. Successful in its efforts, the archdiocese is now the only Catholic diocese in the country to secure ongoing permission for priests to celebrate Mass weekly inside an ICE detention facility.
“Pastoral care is probably needed there more than any other place because you have to give people reason to hope that despite their circumstances, they are loved by God, and that God has a purpose in life for them,” said Wenski, who has been visiting federal prisons, jails and detention centers in Florida to provide chaplain care for more than 50 years.
Catholic dioceses generally have no special access to detention centers. Most Catholic clergy must apply as a volunteer to visit, and in many cases, the process can take months.
“It’s not an easy ministry to get off the ground because there’s just so many regulations,” said Deacon Michael Carbo, the director of prison ministry for the Archdiocese of Savannah, Georgia. Carbo has applied to send priests as chaplains to an immigrant detention facility in Folkston, Georgia, but has so far been unsuccessful.
Maria Margiotta, a spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey, said the diocese is “just beginning” communicating with Delaney Hall, the 1,100-bed immigration detention center that reopened in Newark in May.
Valencia said she knows of Catholic missionaries who applied for volunteer chaplaincy at Stewart, in Georgia, but have experienced “a lot of bureaucracy in the process. I know some (priests) who submitted their applications many, many months ago.”
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