The hub of Oak Park’s non-governmental support for migrants arriving in Oak Park has been the Migrant Ministry. This group rose out of an activist local Catholic community but has been fully inclusive of all comers offering help to the thousands of people in need of supports.
In the first phase this help was all about food, clothing, shelter, work permits, legal representation. And at Centro San Edmundo, the old St. Edmund parish school, that support was intense, generous and purposeful.
That was then. This is now.
And the focus of the ministry’s work, as reported today by our Sam Tucker, is now on standing up for the rights of these people who have come from Venezuela and Ecuador and Columbia and even Cuba and Haiti and Ukraine looking for all the good America has offered in terms of safety and opportunity.
In this new and frequently terrifying Trump administration, immigrants are an enemy to be excised after they have been dehumanized. The work of this powerful ministry is to stand up for the constitutional rights of these new neighbors and provide them with protections America offers, even as an American president seeks to shred those safeguards.
This is a moment for bravery and truth-telling. This is not an abstract debate. This is real life in Oak Park in 2025.