Emiliano Andrade-Covarrubias was found dead in his cell in the Rio Grande Processing Center in Texas on Oct. 17, 2026. He had a heart condition and diabetes, and his family claims he was denied life-saving medications. Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero never made it into custody; he was instead shot dead in his car in Biddeford, Me. Likewise, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot on the way to work in Texas. Immigration and Customs Enforcement claimed that Geraldo Lunas Campos died by suicide in custody but then changed their story, and now we do not really know how he died. 

Each November, Catholics are reminded of a sometimes forgotten work of mercy: praying for the dead. The whole month we remember that we will die and are summoned to pray for those who have died. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us, “From the beginning the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them…so that, thus purified, they may attain the beatific vision of God.” Of course, we are commended to do so throughout the year and at funerals. But in November, we more intensely pray that eternal light may shine upon them. 

We tend to offer these prayers generically and specifically. We offer our prayers for “the holy souls in purgatory,” and we also pray for specific people, our friends, neighbors or family members. In churches, we write the names of the deceased in a book or light candles in their memory. To be Catholic is to be in communion with the dead, to pray for them as they pray for us. 

This November, we should pray for those who have died in deaths related to our immigration policy and enforcement, whether in detention centers, on the streets or while driving their cars. There have been at least 30 detainees who have died in detention this year and 33 last year, as well as those gunned down in cars or on the street. The profile of each individual varies from a 19-year-old to an 85-year-old, from an Afghani to a Cambodian, from those who have died protesting—like Renée Good and Alex Pretti—to Silverio Villegas González, an immigrant who was shot after dropping off his children at school and daycare. Those in detention have died from known medical conditions that they could not get treatment for, from incidents determined to be homicide and from suicides by men with little hope or help in this world. And there are those who have been deported to places rife with danger, people who may have died in such places and whose names we will never know. 

The Anglican theologian and former archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, writes about a core part of human dignity as grievability. Drawing on the philosopher Judith Butler, he writes that “the ascription of human dignity is bound up with the recognition that a life lost is a life to be mourned.” For Dr. Williams, the opposite of dignity, then, is “the starkest possible sign of dehumanization directed towards another…the denial of this [grievability].” Think of the White House declaring Alex Pretti a “domestic terrorist” before his parents had even held his dead body. Think of the dehumanizing rhetoric used against Haitians as Pierre Damas Bel committed suicide. Think of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth celebrating raining down death within days of the killing of 150 Iranian schoolchildren. Or think of the sharing of video clips on social media of the 200 people killed in boats blown up in the Caribbean. These are denials of grieveability, denials that these lives are worth mourning. 

Christians should weep for Christ, who wept and declared “Blessed are those who mourn” and, for that matter, “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice.” To grieve is a first step in acknowledging the dignity of the degraded. To mourn is to express our hunger for justice. It is a work of mercy. But we can turn our mourning into action by turning it into prayer. We can pray for those who died unmourned by our country, those whose deaths were met with celebration, with lies, with smirks or with toxic social media posts. 

St. John Chrysostom preached of the dead, “Let us not hesitate to help those who have died and to offer our prayers for them.” We should not hesitate to pray for those who have died at the hands of ICE or under ICE supervision. When we do so, we hope that the faithful departed, too, are praying for us; that our hearts may be turned to love the stranger, the foreigner, the migrant and the dead. Those we pray for are like us, refugees seeking a home in the heavenly city. God promises us that those gates are open to those purified by love and prayer. So perhaps as we prepare our litany for migrants killed by our nation, we may find we are praying for Holy Souls in purgatory and maybe some holy souls in heaven. 

Let us not hesitate this November to pray for them as they might pray for us. 

A Litany for those killed in Detention:

For Geraldo Lunas Campos, we pray to the Lord…

For Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres, we pray to the Lord…

For Luis Beltrán Yañez-Cruz, we pray to the Lord…

For Parady La, we pray to the Lord…

For Victor Manuel Díaz, we pray to the Lord…

For Heber Sanchez Domínguez, we pray to the Lord…

For Lorth Sim, we pray to the Lord…

For Jairo Garcia-Hernandez, we pray to the Lord…

For Alberto Gutiérrez Reyes, we pray to the Lord…

For Pejman Karshenas Najafabadi, we pray to the Lord…

For Emmanuel Cleeford Damas, we pray to the Lord…

For Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal, we pray to the Lord…

For Royer Pérez Jiménez, we pray to the Lord…. 

For José Guadalupe Ramos-Solano, we pray to the Lord….

For Tuan Van Bui, we pray to the Lord….

For Alejandro Cabrera Clemente, we pray to the Lord….

For Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt, we pray to the Lord….

For Denny Adán González, we pray to the Lord…. 

For Mamuka Artmeladze, we pray to the Lord….

For Felix Alcorta-Rodriguez, we pray to the Lord….

For Adrian Andreas Florian, we pray to the Lord….

For Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva, we pray to the Lord….

For Jose Chajon-Raxon, we pray to the Lord…. 

For Prisciliano Trejo Ricano, we pray to the Lord….

For Edwin Lopez-Cornejo, we pray to the Lord….

For Lianyong Wei, we pray to the Lord….

For Carlos Josué Marchena Marchena, we pray to the Lord….

For Julian Curo-Churata, we pray to the Lord….

For Emiliano Andrade-Covarrubias, we pray to the Lord… 

May they rest in peace, and may eternal light shine upon them. 

All you holy refugees and migrants in heaven, pray for us that we may be worthy of the promises of Christ. 

Terence Sweeney is a professor in the Honors Program at Villanova University.