This story is part of RNS’ Love Thy Neighbor series. You can read all the stories here.
LOS ANGELES (RNS) — At Restauración Los Angeles, a nondenominational Christian congregation with more than 2,000 members, many have personal immigration experiences. That means helping asylum-seekers feels “natural” for the church, said René Molina Jr., its executive director and pastor.
“In the first pages of the Bible, God was hospitable,” said Molina, who pastors RLA in South Los Angeles alongside his parents, the church’s founders. “He made room for us, and so we are to make room for humanity.”
Over the last year and a half, about 10 asylum-seekers have lived on RLA’s campus. They were matched through Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice’s Welcome Network, a Southern California interfaith organization that provides shelter for asylum-seekers and refugees working through the legal system to stay in the country.
CLUE’s Welcome Network was created in 2023 to serve migrants in LA who were bused by Republican governors to Democratic cities in protest over immigration policies during the Biden administration. But as President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda has been enforced, fewer asylum-seekers are arriving at the border and making their way to U.S. cities where they don’t have prior connections. Increasingly, faith-based immigrant support networks like CLUE’s are caring for immigrants after they’re released from stints in detention centers — a time when many lose their housing and jobs. Asylum-seekers leaving detention are staying in church housing for just a night, several months or somewhere in between.
Sharon Gomez, 19, who is among the adults who support RLA’s teen ministry, said when her group was recently asked to shelter another asylum-seeker in the house that is the hub for RLA’s teen programming, answering yes was easy. “I love helping others, and once that was told to me, I don’t think a ‘no’ went in my head,” she told RNS.
Being bused to new cities ruptured more traditional ways migrants would establish themselves and find housing in a new city, said Ernesto Castañeda, director of the Immigration Lab at American University in Washington, D.C. They were no longer arriving in cities where they already had family or specific job prospects, creating a need for these kinds of help networks.
But last year, CLUE’s program sheltered 50 asylum-seekers and refugees who needed transitional housing, and about half had previously been in detention, said Sithy Bin, an organizer for CLUE and an ordained Christian minister. Some stayed in houses of worship, others in members’ homes or other community organizations’ buildings.
Some immigrants helped by the Welcome Network leave immigration detention with financial assistance from a CLUE bond fund. Bin said it has helped over 100 LA-area people leave immigration detention and reunite with their families.
In detention, Bin said, asylum-seekers “look hopeless,” but being released to be with their families “rekindles their faith.”
The group relies on extensive cooperation among faith-based congregations, and with LA Mayor Karen Bass’ staff and the immigrants rights group the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. CHIRLA makes referrals to the Welcome Network and handles case management for asylum-seekers — a requirement to participate in the program. Each asylum-seeker also has an exit plan, or a path to transition to stable, independent housing.
Bin, who became connected with CLUE when he sought its accompaniment to his own Immigration and Customs Enforcement check-in, helps organize interfaith partners to find mattresses and bedding. A Muslim group donated hygiene kits that the Welcome Network provides to participants. For one church that was looking to host an asylum-seeker in its basement, Bin painted and remodeled the space.
Meanwhile, in the Midwest, a pastor who asked to be identified only as the Rev. Beth, to protect the immigrant families she serves, said her church has been housing asylum-seekers since 2023, when it voted to become a sanctuary congregation. Churches like hers, through another faith-based network, were also originally housing immigrants new to the country or who had been bused to cities by Republican governors, before helping them move them into apartments.
Things changed under the Trump administration, she said. Like CLUE in LA, her network has also housed people impacted by detentions and deportations that took place over the last year.
“At this point, instead of getting people who have come right from the border, we’re getting people who have lived somewhere else,” she said. “Some of them are ending up in shelters, and then we get a call saying, ‘It’s not working in the shelter, can you find housing for them?’”
The pastor said an influx of Department of Homeland Security agents to her region has left many immigrant families afraid to leave their homes, costing some their jobs. Some families have seen a parent detained or deported, leaving them with less income or without a primary breadwinner. Others have struggled to keep up with fees attached to work permits, which the Trump administration recently shortened. Her group has seen a sharp increase in requests for rental assistance.
“Somebody will contact us and say, ‘I can’t pay my full rent,’” the pastor said. “Or even people who are behind by two months.”
When an RNS reporter visited Beth’s church late last year, she grabbed keys from a staffer and ascended past the sanctuary, up a creaking staircase; dust danced in winter light flooding in from a stained-glass window. At the top, she opened a door to reveal a pair of small rooms: one filled with beds, the other a futon and children’s toys. In the corner, a children’s Bible lay open, surrounded by worksheets and drawings.
The space, she said, houses two children and an adult. Another family, made up of four children and a mother, live in another part of the church.
The pastor’s efforts have been bolstered by disaster assistance grants from her denomination over the past two years. Her group, she said, just received another $50,000 grant for rental assistance.
But Beth noted that meeting the demand has been a struggle. And questions remain as to how long her network can keep up its efforts. “Long-term, we can’t pay everybody’s rent if they’re afraid to go to work,” she said. “There’s kind of this harsh reality of, ‘We understand you’re afraid. You have every right to be afraid. And unfortunately, you still have to work.’”
In LA, Bin also said there are far more detained immigrants reaching out for help getting released on bond than CLUE is able to serve. And the operational costs of housing immigrants in church spaces is a rising issue for many of the faith communities in Beth’s network as well. “Some churches — we have probably two or three — have opted to take a break for a while,” she said.
Another barrier is that the Trump administration has reversed a long-standing policy of releasing immigrants without a criminal record as their immigration cases proceed. The chance of being released within 60 days after being booked into detention has gone down from 16% to 3%, a January Deportation Data Project report showed. ICE has also defied judges’ orders demanding detainees’ release.
CLUE is seeing immigration judges deny bond “all the time,” Bin said, adding that those decisions can seem arbitrary. For example, Bin said the network is working with two Iranian sisters who were granted bond, but their brother was denied without a reason.
Judges also require detainees to have an address before being released. Bin said that as of Feb. 11, there were several people eligible to be released but unable to leave detention because the organization had yet to secure a space for them. While three network houses of worship have available space, they don’t have staff to open it after hours and check on the asylum-seeker and make sure they have adequate food and supplies.
CLUE is working on a strategy to cover such costs, and its other fundraising has been successful, Bin said. When CLUE announced the bond fund had run out at the beginning of 2026, congregations stepped up. Within less than two weeks, Nefesh, an LA Jewish congregation, raised tens of thousands of dollars. As of mid-February, the fund has raised a total of more than $1 million.
At RLA, participating in the Welcome Network also connects to a broader church culture focused on meeting people’s multidimensional needs. And while some church members have an “I struggled, they should struggle too” mentality, Molina said, he rejoices in seeing those members become engaged in helping others.
“Unfortunately, there’s some churches that are more spiritual than Jesus. Jesus was very practical,” Molina said. “What we see in Scripture is not this escapism. What we see in Scripture is this unity of heaven and earth.”
RLA is planning to demolish at least one of its buildings to create space for about 200 units of affordable housing and a recreation center as part of the church’s commitment to making room.
“I don’t think it’s something the church should ever stop doing,” Gomez said. “I feel like the door should always be opened to help.”
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