In mid-October, Catholic clergy arrived at the doors of the makeshift ICE detention center in Broadview, Illinois, in hopes of bringing the Eucharist, the central sacrament of the faith, to those inside. As Father David Inczauskis walked alongside the procession, he felt a spark of hope: Maybe ICE really would allow a delegation from their group to offer Communion to people in federal custody. Hundreds of people walked with Inczauskis and fellow clergy, bearing signs invoking scriptural themes alongside images of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a dazzling icon of the Virgin Mary as she appeared to an Indigenous peasant in the 16th century in what is now Mexico. Some helped hold aloft the gold-and-white canopy that protected the monstrance, a vessel for displaying the body of Christ.

Catholics believe that the Eucharist is not a mere symbol but the actual flesh of Jesus, which appears to have meant nothing to ICE. “We had done all of this preparation for weeks. It seemed like we had done all the right things. We just prepared for every scenario,” Inczauskis told me. “And we were told no, and we had to sit with that and the humiliation of that.” On Saturday, Inczauskis walked with another procession to the same location—only this time minus a worshipper, he later told me, as ICE had in the meantime arrested one of the people who had held up a banner depicting the mother of God.

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The procession was one of many such actions carried out by Catholics across the country, a sign of both Catholic solidarity with the targets of the Trump administration’s deportation regime as well as the expanding conflict between President Donald Trump’s policies and the Catholi