By Sandra Marroquin —
During the summer of 2025 — the summer of ICE raids — church attendance dropped 35% in Spanish-speaking congregations, a study shows. Out of fear, many stayed home.
Pastor Samuel Rodriguez, an adviser to President Donald Trump, encourages people to still attend church: “There is no safer space than the church. We need to come together and believe that the God of the impossible who changed the hearts and minds of leaders in the Old and New Testament will do it again for us.”
Since the summer of ICE raids, deportation efforts have focused less on upstanding workers and more on weeding out immigrants who have committed crimes. The neighborhood sweeps have died down, with fewer masked agents jumping out of unmarked cars.
A Lifeway Research study, while finding encouraging signs of revival in the Latino community, also found distress over Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants. Not only did they suffer a 35% drop in church attendance, church finances were adversely affected, the study found.
Additionally, many Latino church-goers were disappointed by Trump’s crackdown since legal immigrants largely voted for him and now cry to see their illegal-immigrant brethren and family members get deported. About a quarter of respondents (27%), were disturbed by the anti-Latino rhetoric, the survey found.
Not all is bad. As the immigrant community faces the new stress of imminent deportation, churches reported a 38% jump in interest among unchurched Latinos looking for hope. So with the challenges, opportunities emerge.
“Rapid changes to government practices related to immigration have caused both challenges and opportunities for new Hispanic congregations,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. “These churches continue to respond biblically with care, hospitality and practical help for these neighbors and members.”
Rodriguez — who heads the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and is pastor of New Season Church in Sacramento — is pushing for passage of the Dignity Act which would give undocumented immigrants a path to legal status while increasing funds for border protection.
Under the Act, immigrants without criminal records who have been in the country more than five years could earn legal status if they pay taxes and $7,000 in restitution.
Ironically, it is the blue states who wish to shield immigrants from ICE that are suffering the sweeps in their streets, Rodriguez says. The reason why is because blue states don’t cooperate with federal agents to help them arrest and deport criminals in jails and courts, so ICE agents, to fill quotas, have to pick up people on the street, he says.
“Let’s say, hypothetically speaking, they reach 2,500 a day that are complete criminals, gang bangers, pedophiles, rapists, drug dealers et cetera,” Rodriguez said. “ If the blue states primarily don’t cooperate and give ICE access to their prisons and jails, then they have to find the other 500 because they have a quota of 3,000.”
Rodriguez says the Dignity Act is conservative legislation, even though the bill is co-sponsored by Texas Democrat Veronica Escobar. (The bill’s author is Republican Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida.)
“There’s never been a more conservative proposal. None ever, ever, ever,” Rodriguez saud. “This does not grant citizenship; this is the opposite of amnesty. (It tells immigrants:) You don’t have to live in fear. It gives people dignity, and that dignity status to me is beautiful. It’s because we’re all created in the image of God.”
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