Hispanic pastor says his church may close because of ICE raids; leaders call for reform at NHCLC event

By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, January 27, 2026

A Hispanic pastor said Monday that his church faces the risk of closure as a result of deportation fears because of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, as Hispanic leaders call for the passage of legislation to ensure that most illegal immigrants can remain in the United States while preventing them from obtaining citizenship. 

A group of Hispanic Christian leaders, led by Pastor Samuel Rodriguez of the Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, held a call Monday to discuss how the faith community should respond to the ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Minneapolis, Minnesota and nationwide.

Pastor Victor Martinez of New Generation Church in Minneapolis, detailed the impact ICE raids were having on his community, specifically on church attendance. 

“This is traumatizing,” he said. “I’m 40 years old, born in California and for me as a pastor, I am traumatized. Every now and then, I get worried and emotional. I’ve had white Republican suburban pastors call me and just apologize to me so profusely.”

After stressing that “pastors are getting ready to maybe lose their buildings” because church attendance has declined by 80%, Martinez said that his church "is probably considering closing at this point now because it’s so traumatic for me as a pastor to worry about people in our church.”

“We have a pantry now out of our building. A lot of our pastors on this call, there’s about six of us here, and most of ours are leading some sort of relief effort. Our buildings look like some sort of refugee center for food distribution.”

Martinez said two people he knows “were both arrested three weeks ago.” They include a beneficiary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that allows illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to remain in the country and a person about to get his legal residency.

“They were just released with no explanation of why,” the pastor said, adding, “one of them was released in Texas without his ID.”

“So, he had to figure out how to get back to Minneapolis, and the other one was transported back to Minneapolis. And these are stories that are compiling and compiling and compiling,” he added. 

Rodriguez, who heads New Season Church in Sacramento, California, and prayed at President Donald Trump's 2017 inauguration, urged participants on the call to help Martinez to ensure that his church does not close, saying he felt “the Holy Spirit now pushing us towards a sense of urgency where apathy is not an option and complacency must be rejected.” 

Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., appeared on the call and identified the quota of 3,000 deportations per day that President Donald Trump has ordered ICE to as a “very big mess” and a “very big problem.”

Salazar, who endorsed Trump in the 2024 election, said that many within the Hispanic community “feel that they were deceived." Trump gained enormous ground among Hispanic voters in the 2024 election, securing 46% of the Latino vote. 

“There’s great … lamentation because they thought that they were going to be treated better," she said. She contends that the administration's push for a mass deportation of illegal immigrants, including those who do not have criminal records outside of entering the country illegally, is leaving “a sour taste in their mouth.”

Salazar, a Cuban American who represents Miami, promoted the Dignity Act, legislation she has sponsored, as a solution that will enable Republicans to reverse what she characterized as catastrophic damage to their poll numbers with Hispanic voters.

She shared statistics finding that 55% of Hispanic men supported Trump in the 2024 presidential election, adding that numbers measuring current support for Trump among Hispanics are in the 20s. 

Salazar said her legislation has “no path to citizenship” for illegal immigrants who have remained in the U.S. for more than five years but allows them to stay in the country. Salazar previously promoted the Dignity Act at an NHCLC conference last year. The bill would also require illegal immigrants allowed to remain in the U.S. to pay $7,000 in fines over seven years and donate 1% of their salary to the federal government. The measure also requires the use of eVerify to verify workers' immigration status. 

As of Monday, the Dignity Act has 35 co-sponsors: 18 Democrats and 17 Republicans. The bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee and has not been brought up for a vote. 

Pastor Todd Lamphere, a member of the White House’s National Faith Advisory Board who participated in the call, prayed that “God would … stop and squelch and minimize the … voice of the agitators” in Minneapolis. He insisted that the majority of the activists protesting ICE in Minneapolis “are not from Minneapolis.”

“They’re bused in, they’re brought in, they’re professional agitators, they’re paid agitators, they’re paid activists,” he asserted. “They’re people who have come to just wreak havoc. … And that’s just not reflective of the people within that community.” 

Lamphere detailed how ICE raids were happening all across the U.S., in places like Florida and Texas, but were not resulting in violent protests because “they have the backing of the local authorities there.” He contrasted the treatment ICE has received in Florida and Texas with the rhetoric used by political leaders in Minnesota.

“When you have a governor who is using verbiage and, quite frankly, calling it a genocide, that stirs up … a lot of emotion. And then when you have a mayor that echoes that … rhetoric, that makes it really difficult for … authorities to do their job,” he declared. 

Lamphere concluded his remarks by portraying Trump as willing to listen to the Hispanic community's concerns.

“President Trump is … a man of empathy. He cares. He really does. And he wants to bring a solution to this. He loves America. He loves the Hispanic community and he just wants to get the bad elements that were brought in from a prior administration, particularly, and get that bad element out.”