She came to her ICE check-in backed by an Episcopal bishop and 500 supporters

By dinnertime the evening before her U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement check-in appointment, Blanca Martinez knew she probably wasn’t going to sleep much that night.

“It gives me a lot of anxiety,” Martinez said of ICE check-ins during an RNS interview in Spanish, on Monday (Sept. 15). She had experienced a restless night before her Aug. 15 check-in, when she was told to come back a month later, an unusually small window of reprieve.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” said the Salem, Massachusetts, resident, alluding to the possibility of detention at the appointment.

But despite Martinez’s high stress levels, she knew she wouldn’t be alone at the appointment Tuesday. About 500 people came to support her outside the immigration office in Burlington, including Massachusetts state Rep. Manny Cruz, Salem Mayor Dominick Pangallo and Bishop Julia Whitworth of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, who skipped the end of a national bishops gathering to support Martinez.

Religion & Politics

Photos of the Week: Charlie Kirk vigils

Carly Jenkins, left, and Alex Thomson, center, pay their respects alongside others during a vigil for Charlie Kirk on Friday, Sept. 12, 2025, in Provo, Utah. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

In Opinion

And finally, Predominantly white church dedicates memorial to the enslaved who worked on its land

A predominantly white church that sought to learn about its racial history has now dedicated a memorial to the enslaved people who once worked on the building’s land in downtown Washington, D.C.

First Congregational United Church of Christ, which dates to 1865, dedicated six recently installed stained-glass panels, titled “Forever in the Path,” on Sunday (Sept. 14).

A decade ago, the congregation began carefully studying its roots. Some members knew that the church’s founders were abolitionists and helped support the creation of Howard University, a historically Black institution in Washington. But when congregants marked the church’s 150th anniversary in 2015, Howard University School of Divinity professor Renee K. Harrison, the preacher for that occasion, challenged them to look deeper into its history, including into the former slave owners from whom the land was purchased.

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