Friday, November 28, 2025: Announcement!  Attend if You Can: “Making Life Unbearable”: The Impacts of Immigration Enforcement on Families and CommunitiesAn In-Person and Livestreamed

When: 

Thursday, December 4, 2025

7:00 - 8:00 pm Eastern Time - 4:00 - 5:00 West Coast Time

Georgetown University Capitol Campus

111 Massachusetts Ave, NW

Lower Level Multipurpose Room

Washington, DC 20001

Also livestreamed (to watch if you're not in Washington 

RSVP Please Use This Link, in order to sign up for in person or livestream attendance:

https://catholicsocialthought.georgetown.edu/events/making-life-unbearable#rsvp

Overview: 

The Trump administration’s approach to immigration enforcement “seeks to make life unbearable for undocumented immigrants,” as Washington’s Cardinal Robert McElroy recently lamented. “It is willing to tear families apart, separating grieving mothers from their children, and fathers from the sons and daughters who are the center of their lives.”

Past Initiative dialogues have focused on the moral dimensions of deportation and other immigration policies, as well as the Catholic Church’s teaching around human dignity and solidarity. 

This Latino Leader Gathering will focus on the way deportations have affected the lives of families and their communities. Schools, businesses, and churches lose essential members; children grow up without their parents or siblings; and people live with a fear of walking to the store, visiting their friends and relatives, going to work, and engaging in normal social life.

This conversation will focus on the effects of fear-inducing immigration enforcement tactics, the separation of families, and racial prejudice resulting from the violent rhetoric and policing that have accompanied the immigration policies of the last year. It will explore the impacts these dynamics are having now in Latino communities across the nation, as well as the lasting damage they will continue to do in the future.

A dialogue and conversation on “‘Making Life Unbearable’” with four leaders

Dialogue: 7:00 - 8:00 p.m. ET | 4:00 PM West Coast Time

Participants/Leaders:

Yolanda Chávez is a theologian and pastoral leader whose work is shaped by decades of accompanying migrant women in Los Angeles and by her own experience of being forcibly returned to Mexico. Her research and writing explore how communities facing persecution and fear reveal the Gospel through resilience, dignity, and spiritual creativity at the margins.

Paula Fitzgerald is the executive director of Ayuda, an organization that works to increase the availability of direct legal, social, and language services for more than 3,000 low-income immigrants annually. She was awarded the 2023 John Thompson Jr. Legacy of a Dream Award from Georgetown University for this work.

Rosa Reyes is the director of the Dream Partnership and a student success advisor at Trinity Washington University, where she provides programming and services to support Trinity’s immigrant students. 

Roxana Rueda Moreno is a community leader with Iskali, an organization in the Chicago area that forms young Latinos in the Catholic faith to be transformative leaders. Her community in the Chicago area has been severely affected by recent immigration enforcement actions.

Christian Soenen, projects manager of the Initiative, will moderate the conversation.

This Latino Leader Gathering is for young adult Latino Catholics to come together to explore links between faith, Catholic social thought, and their lives and work, especially on public policy.

Recording and Accessibility

For those who cannot join us in person, the dialogue will be livestreamed, starting at 7:00 pm ET, and posted online for later viewing.

All in-person accommodation requests should be sent to cathsocialthought@georgetown.edu by November 28. A good-faith effort will be made to fulfill requests.