Mercy Sisters Prepare Asylum Seekers For Uncertainties Under Trump

CHICAGO — A pair of nonagenarian Catholic nuns who have been at the forefront of providing assistance to Venezuelan asylum seekers on Chicago’s South Side are now preparing them for the uncertainties of a second Trump presidency later this month.

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to launch a mass deportation effort of undocumented immigrants, as well as try to end birthright citizenship on “day one” of his second presidency.

Mercy Sister JoAnn Persch, 90, who along with Sr. Pat Murphy, 95, have spent the past 45 years helping immigrants seeking asylum land on their feet by arranging housing and gathering the necessary papers so they can get jobs and put them on the path to U.S. citizenship.

With their vast experience navigating the legalities of the U.S. immigration system, both were called into action by the City of Chicago and immigration activists in August 2022 when the first busloads of Venezuelan immigrants began arriving from Texas. The Mount Greenwood sisters soon took 11 families under their wing, paying a year’s rent and utilities for nine furnished apartments. Seeking funding from their religious order, Srs. JoAnn and Pat were compelled to start Catherine’s Caring Cause, named for Sisters of Mercy foundress, Catherine McAuley, with a mission to help other asylum-seeking families.

“All are doing well,” Sr. JoAnn Persch told Patch of the original group. “About six families have completed their year and have work permits, jobs and are independent. They have been replaced by other families. All of them are as concerned as we are about what happen after Jan. 20 [the date of the presidential inauguration].”

Last month, the president-elect’s “Immigration czar” Tom Homan claimed Chicago would be ground zero for mass deportations.

“This is where it will start,” Sr. JoAnn said. “ICE will not respect churches or hospitals like they have in the past. They’ll walk into a Spanish language mass and arrest everyone. We tell people attending such masses who are U.S. citizens to carry their documents with them because citizens have been deported before.”

Sr. JoAnn added that she and the “mentors,” compassionate volunteers matched with a family who provide advocacy and support, spent about two hours this week reviewing “Know Your Rights If You Encounter ICE,” published by the National Immigrant Justice Center. Each head of the household has been provided with a copy in Spanish to review with their families.

“It tells you how to respond if immigration comes to your door,” she said. “We’re telling them to gather all the documents that they have and carry their papers with them, and to memorize their lawyer’s phone number so they can call their attorney if they’re picked up.”

The families being helped by Catherine’s Caring Cause have applied for asylum through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which can take up to 180 days or longer depending on the circumstances. During the asylum-seeking process, work permits to seek employment in the United States may be obtained. Despite pending asylum applications and work permits Sr. JoAnn said it doesn’t necessarily protect the families they’ve helped from being deported.

She refers to the “Muslim travel ban” that occurred a week into the first Trump presidency in January 2017. The president’s executive order banned travel to the United States for 90 days from seven predominantly Muslim countries–Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen and suspended the resettlement of all Syrian refugees. Many of Muslim faith who had obtained U.S. citizenship were left stranded at airports returning home from visiting or tending to sick family members from one of the "banned" countries.

“We know Trump can do something. The trouble is we don’t know how much he can do,” Sr. JoAnn said. “How can you suddenly round up all these people, and where are you going to put them? We’re thinking he can’t do all that on the first day.”

An Illinois law prohibits local police from cooperating with ICE agents and detaining a person because of their immigration status was signed by republican governor Bruce Rauner during the first Trump administration.

Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker strengthened the law in 2021, prohibiting local police departments from allowing their jails from being used by immigration agents for detention and deportation purposes.

“The hardest past is helping them find someone to provide for their children in case they’re picked up with their children are in school,” Sr. JoAnn Persch said. “That person has to be a standby guardian, so if the parents are gone they can make decisions for children if they become ill they can advocate on the children’s behalf.”

Meanwhile, the sisters and their volunteers are helping the families under their charge to be as prepared as possible. Next week, Sr. JoAnn said they’re going to an area where a group of their apartments are and where the families all go to the same church to attend the Spanish-language mass.

“We’re talking to our pastors there that if bring in all the families that’s a prime ground for ICE to come in,” she said. “There is great fear

“We have to make sure our families have some idea of what to do if it happens to them,” she said. “It’s hard because they have great fear and we’re not exactly comfortable either.”

“We’re preparing for the worst, but hoping and praying for the best.”