When Two Bishops, Clergy and Community Showed Up for Immigrants on Good Friday

Something powerful happened in Fresno this Good Friday, and we think you need to hear about it.

More than 100 community members gathered outside the Fresno ICE office to mark the holiest day on the Christian calendar not in a church pew, but on the sidewalk—in solidarity with immigrant families who are living in fear right now.

Here’s how Fresnoland covered it:

“More than 100 community members gathered Friday afternoon outside the Fresno Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office to mark Good Friday with prayer, song, and scripture, centering their message on compassion for immigrant families.

Good Friday is a Christian observance commemorating the day Jesus Christ was crucified, a moment believers recognize as his ultimate sacrifice for humanity’s sins. During the gathering, pastors guided attendees through the Stations of the Cross, a series of 14 reflections that trace key moments from Jesus’ sentencing to his death and burial.

The Rev. Joseph V. Brennan of the Diocese of Fresno and Armando Ochoa, the diocese’s former bishop, joined other clergy at the gathering, which was organized in collaboration with Faith in the Valley.

As community members moved in procession around the ICE office, clergy took turns reading biblical passages and leading prayers tied to each moment, creating what organizers described as both a spiritual and communal act.

“We’re praying in particular for families who have been separated, families who are struggling, those who are living in fear,” Fr. Art Gramaje, who serves with Claretian Missionaries, said. “It’s an accompaniment of our immigrant brothers and sisters, and these are acts of love.”

Gramaje said it’s “very rare that any prayer event would have two bishops,” highlighting the gathering’s significance to the crowd.”

Let that sink in. Two bishops. Side by side. Outside an ICE office. On Good Friday.

That’s not just symbolic—it’s prophetic.

And that spirit showed up even before the procession began. Bishop Brennan and Fr. Art took a moment to bless our legal observers, the people who show up to watch, document and protect the community when there is ICE activity. It was a quiet but powerful moment. It said out loud what we all needed to hear: that bearing witness matters, that those who show up to protect others are doing sacred work too.

Then we began to walk.

What made this gathering so moving wasn’t just the numbers or the headline. It was the stories at the heart of the Stations of the Cross that we prayed together. Each station didn’t just retrace Jesus’s walk to Calvary—it named the faces of people walking their own version of that road today.

At the Second Station, “Jesus Carries the Cross,” we heard about Geraldine:

“Geraldine and her family—her husband and two small children—escaped a life of poverty and violence, arriving in the United States in October 2023. Their lives were in danger multiple times on their journey, especially in the Darién Gap and while crossing Mexico. A family member had promised to take them in when they arrived in the U.S., but, once they arrived, that person stopped responding to their calls and messages. Currently, Geraldine and her small family live in a one-room apartment with no heat, sharing a single mattress they found in the trash. Yet, every time I see Geraldine, she’s smiling, and her words are filled with hope. I ask her where that joy comes from, since her life isn’t easy. She responds that she doesn’t lose hope, because she knows her life is in God’s hands.”

And at the Third Station, “Jesus Falls for the First Time,” Liza Apper, director of St. Benedict Catholic Worker, shared the stories of Maria and Gustavo, who had each survived the jungle, kidnappers, and guns pointed at their faces. When asked how they got through it, both answered the same way: “Dios estaba conmigo.” God was with me.

There were harder stories too.

At the Fourth Station, “Jesus Meets His Mother,” we heard about Marisol, who arrived at a shelter in Matamoros, Mexico. She arrived cradling a worn backpack. Inside were her daughter’s ashes. Her child had drowned when a small fishing boat sank during their journey. Marisol placed that backpack on the altar and wept.

The Sixth Station brought the story of Veronica and the reminder that wiping the face of Jesus isn’t something that happened just once, two thousand years ago. Apper described the many “Veronicas” they had witnessed in migrant camps in Reynosa, Mexico—ordinary people risking their comfort, their security, even their lives to wipe the face of Jesus in their suffering neighbor carrying the heavy cross of the migrant journey. And then this:

“The risk and love of the women and men who wiped the face and body of the little girl who lost her legs last week as she tried to jump onto ‘la Bestia,’ the train that many migrants risk life and limb to board to get closer to that border that means new life to them.”

At the Ninth Station, we heard how Sacred Heart Parish in El Paso turned its gymnasium into a nightly shelter for up to 200 immigrants—men, women, children, and babies sleeping on pallets on the floor. Each night, a pastor would walk in, the lights would dim, and the room would go quiet as people from all over the world settled onto their mats to hear scripture and prayer. Strangers to each other, united by faith.

“They became a community, bound together by their faith and hope.”

And finally, at the 14th Station, “Jesus is Laid in the Tomb,” we heard about Sonet, a young Haitian asylum-seeker with pancreatic cancer who was denied entry at the border port and died in a shelter in Mexico that same evening. When the pastoral team arrived, they prayed Psalm 23 in Haitian Creole—reminding the grieving community that the Lord is their shepherd, and that Sonet had finally been received, not rejected.

As Pope Francis once said: “A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just.”

That’s what Good Friday in Fresno looked like this year. Not cold. Not indifferent. Full of mercy, full of prayer, full of people who showed up.

We’re grateful to the two bishops, to Fr. Gramaje and all the clergy who led us, and to every organizer and advocate who walked that procession. You reminded us—and the community—that faith without action isn’t faith at all.

The work continues. We hope you’ll keep walking with us.

To read the full story, visit Fresnoland.